Archive for November, 2009

Rest in peace oma

My dad just called to inform me that my grandmother (from my mother's side) passed away. A week ago she suddenly fell ill with pneumonia and was hospitalized. But she seemed to be recovering well on Friday and was supposed to leave the hospital today. But this morning at 3 AM my parents got a call that her situation was deteriorating fast and they were advised to come to the hospital quickly. They were by her side when she passed away about an hour ago. During my last year of high school I...
READ THE FULL ARTICLE >>

Shanghai Half Marathon 2009

This morning the 2009 edition of the annual Shanghai Marathon took place. This year a group of 15 Spil Games Asia staff had decided to run the half marathon (21.1 km), and of course I also joined the race. Because of my ankle injury in early October I could not practice a lot (I had to stop running for 5 weeks), and I did not have high expectations of the run. I told myself I would be content with a time below 2 hours, and happy with 1:50-1:55. But even though the race was a lot harder than...
READ THE FULL ARTICLE >>

Shanghai Marathon t-shirt: great design….

Today I received my t-shirt for this weekend's 2009 Shanghai Marathon. In previous years the t-shirt was white with a logo and the text Shanghai Marathon in black, but this year the organization had the luminous idea to experiment with colors. The result: a plain ugly light blue shirt with the text in even uglier colors...Luckily we Spil Games Asia made t-shirts for all our runners (in total 15 colleagues will participate, we're a sportive company!), so we won't be tempted to wear the official...
READ THE FULL ARTICLE >>

New books

One of the things I always try to do when traveling, is to spend some time in a bookstore. In Hong Kong last weekend my wife and I spent about an hour at Dymocks. Some of the books that I bought there include:China Cuckooo - Mark KittoI know Mark (I even blogged about his 40th birthday party) and therefore the story about how he built and lost his Chinese media 'empire' and how he ended up at Moganshan is one that interests me a lot. I already started reading the book and it's written in a very...
READ THE FULL ARTICLE >>

Hong Kong Trailwalker controversy

This morning's editon of the Sunday Morning Post had an interesting headline: "PLA didn't play fair, runners claim". The SCMP publication story was about this weekend's Trailwalker, a 100 km hike/run mainly through the New Territories. This year for the first time two teams of the PLA (Public Liberation Army, the Chinese army) participated, and to many people's surprise they managed to take place 1 and 2 in the race. But according to some participants the PLA did not play fair. Why? The main...
READ THE FULL ARTICLE >>

Long weekend at the Upper House in Hong Kong

This weekend my wife had an INSEAD girlfriend get-together in Hong Kong and I decided to join her. Normally when she goes shopping (the main activity during this kind of women-weekends) I can enjoy a coffee and a good book in one of Hong Kong's many cafes or go for a run in the hills, and so that's what I did. We left Shanghai on Friday morning and arrived in Hong Kong just after lunch. As usual China air traffic control caused the flight to be delayed, the third time in a week that planes I...
READ THE FULL ARTICLE >>

A service for smokers at Shanghai Hongqiao Airport

Except for an occasional cigar I am not a smoker. But I can imagine that it's frustrating that you have to hand in your lighter each time you board a plane. If you're a smoker and land at Shanghai Honqiao Airport you are lucky: At the exit of the terminal you can choose another one from the lighters they confiscated there from departing passengers.I noticed that many people took a lighter from the pile, I had to wait about a minute in order to take a picture without any passengers in it. I...
READ THE FULL ARTICLE >>

Excel where your competitors suck

A couple of days ago I read an excellent piece on Venturebeat in which serial entrepreneur Scott Olson talks about how easy companies can loose (and win) customers. When I read the article I recognized a lot of what he said, so I decided to use it as the basis for a blog post as well.Scott's point is that companies often loose clients because of minor annoyances. He gives an example of a bureaucratic procedure to deposit a check at his bank that ticks him off, a procedure other banks do not...
READ THE FULL ARTICLE >>

Futuretainment

On Friday Mike Walsh visited me at the Spil Games Asia office to catch up and to do another video interview (wanted to put link here to a documentary he made last year for which he also interviewed me, but cannot find it right now) . Mike is a key note speaker on the digital future and CEO of innovation research agency Tomorrow, and he seems to travel constantly all over the world (he arrived Friday in Shanghai and I just saw on his picture feed that he is now in New York already). And now he...
READ THE FULL ARTICLE >>

Tomorrow: TEDxBeijing

Tomorrow TEDxBeijing will take place at CNEX. This is the second TEDx event in China, after TEDxShanghai that took place at M1NT in June this year.Never heard of TEDx? You probably have heard of TED (if not, check out their Wikipedia page), TEDx is an independently organized TED event. As the TEDxBeijing website describes it:In the spirit of ideas worth spreading, TED has created a program called TEDx.TEDx is a program of local, self-organized events that bring people together to share a...
READ THE FULL ARTICLE >>

Macau could run out of water soon

Because of severe drought in Southern China (the worst in decades), drinking water levels in Macau have fallen to dangerously low levels. The gambling enclave just south of Hong Kong could run out of water in a matter of weeks. Salinity levels in the water are going up already, and when they get too high the government may start a bottled water program for its inhabitants.With the Macau Grand Prix coming up in 10 days and the Macau Marathon in early December, this is not a good prospect for the...
READ THE FULL ARTICLE >>

Obama is messing up my travel plans

Next Monday I was planning to fly to Beijing in the late afternoon for a 2 day trip. However, it now turns out that President Obama will be in Shanghai on Monday and plans to fly to Beijing on Monday late afternoon for a dinner with Hu Jintao. Knowing China a little bit that likely means road closures in both Shanghai and Beijing around the time that Obama plans to travel, and delayed or cancelled flights on the Shanghai-Beijing route. Obama (or Oba-Mao as some people started calling him here)...
READ THE FULL ARTICLE >>

Books that I recently read (part 2)

After the first part of this post yesterday with three book descriptions (actually five, because the first was a trilogy), today four other English language books - plus a few Dutch titles that I read but won't review.The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz ZafonIn a list of best novels read in 2009 this will likely be number one. What a marvelous book! I bought it as an ebook in August this year after reading some positive book reviews for the book. Then to my surprise I noticed that I already...
READ THE FULL ARTICLE >>

Books that I recently read (part 1)

A few weeks ago I received an email from a reader of my blog who wanted to know something about what books I normally read. Then I realized I did not write about books for quite some time. The last time was probably around New Year, when I wrote about the best books that I read in 2008. That post was about non-fiction books, but I also read quite a lot of fiction (mainly novels). I normally read in bed before going to sleep, to relax a bit and get my mind off of work (I often work until late at...
READ THE FULL ARTICLE >>

Sprained ankle injury (almost) over

Almost 5 weeks ago I sprained my ankle pretty badly while doing a trail run at Tianmashan. I originally thought that I would not be able to run for 1-2 weeks, but it turned out the injury was a bit worse than I had  expected. It took 3 weeks just to get rid of most of the pain, so then I tried running again for the first time. But that was a bad idea: after running for just 10-15 minutes the foot and ankle were suddenly a lot more painful. I managed to wait another 2 weeks before this...
READ THE FULL ARTICLE >>

An evening with Adriaan van Dis

When I was growing up in the 1980's in Holland I used to watch the literary talk show Hier is... Adriaan van Dis. That's probably what made Adriaan van Dis quite famous, but he is much more than just a TV host, because he is actually one of Holland's most famous writers (both novels and poetry). Over the years I read most of his books, with themes that are mainly related to his personal life, such as his families Indonesian roots, his homosexuality and his travels all over the world. Most of...
READ THE FULL ARTICLE >>

Job opening: Chief Commercial Officer at Spil Games Asia

Spil Games Asia is looking for a Chief Commercial Officer (CCO), based in Shanghai. I have spoken to a couple of good candidates already, but I want to make sure I don't miss any candidates that are not aware of the job opening. In the past I found some excellent people through this blog, therefore I decided to put some information on this position here as well.What does the CCO at Spil Games Asia do? This will be a new position in the company. The way I see it, is that the CCO will be in...
READ THE FULL ARTICLE >>

The end of my Android G1 – and the real reason why the iPhone doesn't sell well in China

Bad luck, I dropped my G1 phone last night and my screen did not survive it. Because the phone has a touch screen it is virtually useless now. I am going to try to get it repaired, because I really like the phone's operating system. If that doesn't work I will need to start looking for a new phone. Not sure what I will do in that case, another Android or going back to the iPhone?I like Android, but I also still like the iPhone. However, buying a iPhone 3G or 3GS in China does not make sense....
READ THE FULL ARTICLE >>

Shanghai Disneyland to open in 2014

It took a few years, but Shanghai Disneyland has finally been approved! The original idea to build a Shanghai Disneyland was thought up by former premier Zhu Rongji in 1990 during his tenure as mayor of Shanghai. It took Disney and the Chinese authorities almost 20 years to get from an idea to an approved plan! In 2006 it seemed there would be a go (see my blogpost about it), but it seemed the Shanghai mayor was not able to get it past the State Council.The park will be about 1000 acres, which...
READ THE FULL ARTICLE >>