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Looking for an exclusive golf tournament? Here is one

North Korean Open - probably one of the most exclusive golf tournaments in the worldAbout 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 Pyongyang.

The trip consists of a 3-day sightseeing tour of the standard tourist locations in North-Korea followed by the golf tournament itself. I remember our North-Korean tour guide talking about the golf course back in 2001 but I never imagined that the government would organize an international tournament there. But that’s exactly what will be happening from April 26 to April 30 this year.

I just hope for the competitors that “The Dear Leader” Kim Jong Il won’t participate, because legend has it that when he opened the course in 1991 he shot a 38 under par with 11

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Amsterdam is beautiful early in the morning

Amsterdam early in the morning (Jan. 26, 2010)

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 trip.

Amsterdam early in the morning (Jan. 26, 2010)

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My latest gadget: Xbox360 with Kinect

My lateste 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 direction you are kicking it in. It’s very intuitive, you just set it up, calibrate the system and get going. Within minutes I was playing my first games.

Of course Scott and Elaine were curious as well to see what I had bought, and they wanted to join right away. Elaine is still a bit too young to use it (she runs away from the sensor so the connection is lost), but Scott picked up it quickly. It’s the most natural thing for him that when he jumps the person on the screen also jumps. He was able to play a level of River Rush in Kinect Adventures (see image below) with a decent score. With a controller he can’t do this yet (he just turned 3 years old), so this is the perfect game console for young kids.

Image source: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/0/04/Kinect_Adventures_cover.jpg

I am sure I’ll be spending quite some time with the Kinect over the next couple of months. This is the future of console games, and maybe in the future for casual online games as well. The experience to play games together is amazing. Too bad I am flying to Holland tonight for a short business trip, I would have loved to play a bit more today.

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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.
A new restaurant in Joy City serves the Sex Roll
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 English. Combining your ‘soft opening’ with a ‘sex roll’ in an ad certainly gave me a good laugh. But whether I want to try the sushi once the store opens I don’t know yet.

Work man working on top of the elevator in Joy City mall

Not all the elevators are working yet and when I walked by one I noticed an engineer sitting on top of the elevator reading a magazine! Not the most logical place to sit, but at least nobody can disturb him there.

Strip - Ministry of Waxing in Joy City Mall

The ad for the ‘Ministry of Waxing’ store is also quite nice. Coming up with a decent ad for a waxing salon is not an easy feat (esp. not in conservative China), so I like the creativity of combining a hairy ape with two girls just wearing a bikini.

From the escalator you can observe the women who are getting a waxing treatment!

And when going up the escalator I suddenly realized that the ‘Ministry of Waxing’ has a glass front where you can literally see the women laying in the waxing chairs. I am not sure if that’s really what I want to see when going for lunch. And even though the word privacy is virtually unknown in China, I still don’t think that clients like to be watched while they get a waxing treatment.

Ordering food at a restaurant through a terminal at the entrance. Smart solution.

Wages for waiters and waitresses are still quite low in China, but increasing fast. This restaurant found a good way to reduce the number of staff required and also made the ordering process a lot easier. They use terminals outside the restaurant where you order your food before you go in and get seated. Smart idea.

View from Joy City mall over the ferris wheel next door

The last picture that I felt worth taking is of the ferris wheel that was built next to the mall in order to attract customers. The idea itself is a good one, free entertainment always attracts crowds, but the only thing is that the views from the mall itself are much better than from the ferris wheel. This picture was taken from a middle floor in the mall, and you already look down on it. And as I wrote in an earlier blog post about this ferris wheel, they advertise with looking at the Suzhou Creek from the wheel but as you can see in this picture there is no way that you can see the actual river from up there. Nice try though.

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Last post about snow in Shanghai

More snow in Shanghai today
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.

Our garden in the snowThe kids play area in our backyard
Scott at his kindergarten in the snowScott at Soong Ching Ling kindergarten this morning

Elaine in the snow in our backyardElaine in the backyard

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Snow again

Light snow in Shanghai (Jan 19, 2011)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 long.
Scott running in the snow at Soong Ching Ling Kindergarten

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UnitedStyles looking for girls ages 8-12 for photoshoots

United Styles looking for girls 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 you!

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It’s still winter in Shanghai

Snow 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: today for the third time this winter it is snowing in the city. Very unusual, you normally only see snow once every few years. It’s been snowing for several hours already, but the snow does not stay on the ground yet (at least not in downtown Shanghai) like a few weeks ago.

This weekend we had a problem with our shower, for some reason the water did not flow out anymore. We tried to unclog the pipes but nothing worked. Eventually we got some work men to help, but even they didn’t understand what the problem was and they wanted to come back with other tools on Monday. But Sunday night the water was suddenly gone. I turned on the shower and the water disappeared as usual.

So Monday morning we planned to take a shower there again and guess what: the water again did not flow out. This was quite strange, and we told the work men the story when they arrived. They couldn’t figure it out either, and checked out the whole pipe. Then they found what happened: the water in the pipe was frozen! This never happened before to us in Shanghai, so we did not even think about this as a potential cause. Our house is clearly not built for sub-zero temperatures, because it was only -4 or -5 at night.

As ‘proof’ of how unusual these temperatures are, the Shanghai Daily had a picture yesterday of a boy playing next to a creek with a big chunk of ice. The fact that there was some ice on the water was news in Shanghai! The weather will not change much over the next couple of days so we might see more of these pictures. I feel sorry for all the people without heating in the city…