Archive for January, 2011

Looking for an exclusive golf tournament? Here is one

About 10 years ago I spent a week in North-Korea as a tourist, it was one of the strangest vacations I ever had (see for more on this trip here on Quora). But it's also one of the few holidays that I will probably never forget, being inside the Hermit Kingdom left a deep impression on me - and not necessarily a positive one. It's not a place I would immediately think of for a relaxed holiday, but it seems a tour operator is trying to do that by organizing a trip to the DPRK Amateur Golf Open in...
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The location of Egypt according to Fox News

What can I say... Not that the average Fox News viewer would notice. Source:...
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Amsterdam is beautiful early in the morning

Early this morning (at 4:40 AM) I landed in Amsterdam for a short business trip. After a shower and an early breakfast I decided to go for a walk along the Amsterdam canals, and of course I took a couple of pictures there. The sky was clear and it was just getting light, the most beautiful moment of the day. I like Amsterdam's city center. It's always so quiet there, especially when you're used to Shanghai's noise and chaotic traffic. Going for a walk there was a great start of the...
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My latest gadget: Xbox360 with Kinect

Yesterday I bought a Xbox360 with Kinect to play with at home. In case you are not familiar yet with the product or technology, it's basically a game console that let's you play games without a controller, using your body to play the game. A bit similar to the Wii, but this time without even holding a controller in your hand. For example, you move to the right and the game character moves to the right, or you kick like you would kick a ball and on screen you see the ball going in the...
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Strange sights at the new Joy City mall in Shanghai

A couple of weeks ago the Joy City Mall opened, conveniently located just a few hundred meters from my office. Even though not all restaurants have opened yet I now regularly go there for lunch. While walking to my favorite (Japanese) restaurant I noticed a lot of strange (or at least interesting) things in the mall and I took a couple of pictures them. First of all this ad. As the saying goes "Sex sells", but I am not sure if the Chinese copywriter really understood what he was writing in...
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Last post about snow in Shanghai

It's probably getting boring, 3 days in a row posts about the snow in Shanghai. But last night and most of today it snowed so hard that I felt that I should put some pictures up, it hardly ever happens that this city sees so much snow. It's beautiful outside, but I am afraid it won't last long. I promise this will be my last post about snow in Shanghai - at least for this month. The kids play area in our backyard Scott at Soong Ching Ling kindergarten this morning Elaine in the...
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Snow again

Yesterday I blogged about the low temperatures in Shanghai and that it had started snowing again. The snow kept on falling for most of the day, and overnight even stayed on the ground. This morning most of Shanghai was covered in a very thin layer of snow. Of course Scott loved it, and when we arrived at his kindergarten he immediately started running through the snow. Today's temperatures will be a few degrees above zero Celsius, so likely the snow won't be here for...
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UnitedStyles looking for girls ages 8-12 for photoshoots

UnitedStyles.com is looking for girls for a photoshoot again, this time a bit older than during our last shoots. If you are a 8-12 year old girl living in Shanghai and interested to help with fittings and photoshoots, please feel free to get in touch with Ms. Anna Haude of United Styles at 1376 432 1290 or per email at annahaude@gmail.com. We would love to hear from...
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It’s still winter in Shanghai

Normally winters in Shanghai are not that cold, the temperature generally hovers around 5 or 10 degrees Celsius but it hardly ever drops below zero. It feels much colder though, because the Shanghai air is quite humid and most buildings don't have central heating. Personally I prefer real winters like in Beijing, with very dry air (too dry actually, I always had humidifiers in every room) and temperatures far below zero Celcius. But it looks Shanghai is trying to catch up with Beijing:...
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Running is the best medicine when you’re tired

Tonight I was doing emails on the back seat of my car while driving home, when I realized that I could not keep my eyes open. I didn't get enough sleep over the past days and had a pretty intensive day today and tiredness suddenly hit me. When I got home my kids wanted to play with me, but the only thing I wanted to do was sleep on the couch for a while. But if I would do that my Friday night would be virtually over, so I decided to push myself to change into my running clothes and do a short...
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Scott’s first presentation

I don't think I had to give any presentations until I was about 8 or 9 years old, but things are a bit different now - at least at Soong Ching Ling Kindergarten. Today Scott gave his first 'presentation' for his classmates! He talked about his Christmas vacation with the help of a couple of pictures that my wife had printed for him. He had to do the talk in English, quite a feat for a boy who just turned 3 and only learned to speak English about 4 months ago. Of course I don't know how the...
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Scott’s 3rd birthday party

On Saturday Scott gave a party for his classmates from Soong Ching Ling and for a few from last year's nursery class in our compound. He was very excited about it days in advance already, the fact that he could play with his friends with all his toys and that they would have cake together was a very big thing for him. To make it even more special Grace had decorated the house with happy birthday signs and balloons. For the kids we had also organized a clown who made balloon animals, they...
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According to Google I was in Mexico on Monday

As some of you may know I use Google Latitude to record exactly where I am at any given moment (whenever my phone is on). And of course I also share it with a couple of people, so if you want to stalk me you can do that from your couch on a laptop. At least if I add you as a friend on Latitude, I am a bit more conservative there than with Twitter, LinkedIn or Facebook. Why do I do this? Not sure actually, I just turned on the feature when it became available to try it out and never really...
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Birthday present blooper

Today my wife has her birthday and I decided to buy her a Kindle 3G (an e-book reader) as a present. For the past years she's been too busy with her extremely demanding job plus our young kids so she had never had time to read a book (let alone buy an e-book reader). I figured this may be a good incentive for her to start reading books...
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Back in Shanghai

This morning I arrived back in Shanghai after a long and tiring flight. Traveling with young kids is always a hassle, but this was worse than expected. It started in the afternoon when Scott was so excited that he did not want to sleep. So he was very tired before the flight already. In the KLM business lounge at Schiphol airport he did not want to listen (typical when he is tired) and kept on running around. Elaine copies a lot of his behavior these days, so she also started running. Luckily...
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Buitenhof

My holiday in Holland is almost over, tomorrow we will fly back to China. But today I could still participate in the Dutch TV program Buitenhof to talk about doing business in China. This show is one of the best talk shows in The Netherlands (in terms of high quality guests and discussions), so of course I accepted the invitation. The driver for the program picked up my dad and me (he joined me) at 9:30 at my parents place with a luxurious VW Phaeton to drive us to the studio in Amsterdam....
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