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Photos Shanghai Half Marathon 2011

Running over the Nanpu bridge during the Shanghai Half Marathon 2011

During most of the big races in the world photographers take pictures of the runners and put them online so you can order them. For the Shanghai Half Marathon I ordered a CD with my pictures on it (price: RMB 298 for about 25 photos, which is less money than a single picture at the New York Marathon costs) and I received it a couple of days ago. They also put some general pictures of the race on there, quite nice to get them actually. Below a few pictures of me during the race.

Shanghai Half Marathon 2011

Start of the race at the Bund with the Pudong skyline in the background

Shanghai Half Marathon 2011

On the EXPO 2010 grounds close to the China pavilion

Shanghai Half Marathon 2011

Easy running! As you can see I run on my Vibram FiveFingers, not on normal running shoes

Crossing the finish line of the Shanghai Half Marathon 2011

Giving it all in the last meters before the finish line. Gross time 1:36:05, net time 1:35:53

Giving it all at the finish line of the Shanghai Half Marathon 2011

Going to the limit while crossing the finish line

Right after the finish of the Shanghai Half Marathon 2011

But two minutes later I feel great again for the post finish photo!

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“A Friend’s Departure” – Horrible China Daily headline today…

"A Friend's Departure" - so that's what the China Daily calls a mass murderer...

I don’t regularly read the China Daily, except when Elaine is featured on the front page or when Air China has no other English papers available. Today’s headline confirms why I stay clear from this paper as much as possible. How in the world can you call an insane mass murderer who starves his own people a friend? It’s a shame.

I am not naive and know this is the Party’s English mouthpiece, and that China considers the DPRK an ally. But the China Daily should know that its average reader is not a Party member and likely sees the dead guy more as Dr. Evil than a friend. I wonder if this will cost them any readers. At least the US online version of the China Daily had a more balanced headline.

The US version of the China Daily has a more balanced headline than the China paper version

Also the Shanghai Daily had a more diplomatic headline today with “North Korea: Nation in grief for Dear Leader”.

Shanghai Daily's headline is more diplomatic than the China Daily

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Hand, foot and mouth disease

Scott has hand, foot and mouth disease

There are some diseases that are not very common in Western Europe or the USA anymore, but that still have regular outbreaks in Asia. One example is hand, foot and mouth disease, a contagious viral disease that normally only affects children below 5 years of age.

Last week Sunday Elaine suddenly got a high fever and when my wife on Monday morning saw some red spots in her mouth she took Elaine to see a doctor right away. On the way home she called me to say that Elaine had hand, foot and mouth disease… Up to that point I had never even heard about the illness. I initially thought it was similar to hoof-and-mouth disease, but that turned out to be something completely different (hoof-and-mouth is an animal disease only).

Because the virus illness is contagious we immediately went to Scott’s school and took him home. My wife then told me that at Scott’s school a whole class had been quarantined a week earlier because of this disease, but it had apparently spread. We had to keep Scott and Elaine separate at home, in order to avoid a potential contamination of Scott. That was not easy, the kids always play together and now Elaine had her own playroom upstairs and Scott had to play alone downstairs.

Elaine got pretty sick from the hand, food and mouth, and soon started to develop blister-like sores in her mouth, on her hands and on her feet. Especially the ones in her mouth were very painful, and she refused to eat or drink anything because it hurt so much. It’s impossible to force a 2 year old to eat or drink when it hurts, but because toddlers dehydrate quickly we had to find a solution. Eventually she drank some milk, but it was a major effort for us.

On Wednesday night I was in a business dinner when Grace called me, because Scott also started to develop sores on his hands… So the next morning both kids went back to the hospital and it turned out that Scott had also been infected. He was not in pain yet and when I talked to him at night he almost seemed proud to also have it. The doctor also looked at Elaine again and told us that she was one of the most severe cases she had ever seen. Scary to hear that, she is such a small girl and as a parent you want to protect her from pain and suffering as much as possible. But there is not much you can do except for waiting. The doctor also told us that she had to report the cases to the government and that it was likely that people would come to our house to check whether the kids had been quarantined.

Later on Thursday Elaine’s situation suddenly started to improve. By Friday she started eating almost normally again which made me quite happy. And Scott was still playing happily without complaining. He did not have fever and just had some sores, and we hoped that would be it. But on Friday afternoon Scott suddenly started crying while eating, the sores in his mouth were very painful and he was not able to eat anything anymore. Luckily he could still drink and we also found that soft things like yoghurt and pudding were not as painful.

So for the past 2 days Scott has been eating chocolate pudding (he loves it!) and nothing else. I took him to the French bakery this morning (breaking his quarantine, I realize it now that I write it here) where he bough a croissant. But when he tried to eat it he was screaming from pain again. Poor boy.

He seems to be getting better soon now though, and I hope in 1 or 2 days both kids will be fine. A bit scary, especially because you don’t know how serious the disease is and how much worse it will get. But it seems both will be okay and hopefully we can still go on holiday with the kids at the end of this week.

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A cheap ticket? Don’t lie to your customers KLM…

KLM gives an extremely low price for return ticket Amsterdam-Shanghai

One of my business partners at unitedstyles, Xander Slager, was booking a ticket for a return trip Amsterdam-Shanghai when he got a very low price for the ticket. To be precise, he could book a return flight for only CNY 1621 (less than EUR 200). I have taken this roundtrip at least 70 or 80 times over the past years and I never paid less than EUR 500, so this seemed to good to be true. Xander flies even more than I do on this route so when he saw the price he took a picture of the screen before going to the payment screen.

To his surprise he was able to pay and finalize the order in the next screen. He was happy to see that of course but because he still felt something must be wrong he took another picture.

KLM allows payment for the very low price

And then… he got the message that the ticket had just been sold. Instead of a ticket for CNY 1721 (incl. tax) he could buy one for CNY 14,415! That seems like a more usual price for a ticket that you buy a few days in advance, but that’s not the point of this blog post.

But then KLM says the ticket has just been sold...

Companies make mistakes, that’s fine. But don’t lie to the customer if that happens. Because that is exactly what happened here. As an experienced ticket booker Xander had both the klm.com Chinese and Dutch version open to take advantage of possible price differences. And that’s where something went wrong, because KLM suddenly showed the EUR price as CNY in the screen (the last price of CNY 14,415 is exactly EUR 1721). And they let Xander pay for this price (good for him), except that they probably had some internal red flag that shows up if a ticket price seems too low. And then? Well then they just tell the customer that the ticket was just booked by someone else. Total bullsh*t of course.

KLM is one of the best airlines in social media, they have come a long way over the years and they have surprised me (literally) with their social media events. But this sort of thing should not happen. If you find an internal error just tell the customer that something went wrong. They may not like it, but it’s better than telling your customer a lie. Don’t say that someone else booked the ticket for this price, because that is just not true.

KLM, if I am wrong feel free to show me that at that exact moment someone else booked a ticket for this extremely low price. I will take this post down right away and do a follow-up post with apologies with copies on Twitter & Facebook. If not I hope you can give Xander at least an upgrade on one of these flights. As a long time Platinum Elite member I think he deserves better than this from you.

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Give and you will receive: unitedstyles gift certificates

With the Holidays approaching we all know how hard it can be sometimes to find the right gift – be it for your girlfriend, sister, wife, mother, friend, lover, grandma, daughter, auntie, neighbour, etc

Well, look no further!! Give the gift of designing at unitedstyles. Let her create her one-of-a-kind dream dress or top herself! We promise she will love it.

To make things even better, buy a unitedstyles gift certificate now and for a limited time only you will receive another one for free:

Buy a $50 gift certificate, get a $10 one free
Buy a $100 gift certificate, get a $25 one free
Buy a $150 gift certificate, get a $50 one free

Unitedstyles gift certificate

Details

Offer valid til 24 December 2011. Gift certificates valid for 1 year from date of purchase. Buy a certificate by adding it to your shopping cart and checking out as normal. We will automatically add the free one to your delivery. You will receive a digital version per email the next working day and a beautiful physical printed copy will be posted to you as well (please contact us for delivery times to your country).

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Three days in Kyoto

Marc at temple in Kyoto

Last week I was invited to speak at the Infinity Ventures Summit 2011 in Kyoto, Japan. It was an excellent conference and I learned a lot about Internet and investing in Japan. Because it is an invitation-only conference the level of participants is quite high, with lots of CEOs and founders of (mainly Japanese) Internet tech companies. The conference was held at the Westin Miyako in Kyoto, an excellent 5-star hotel close to many of Kyoto’s temple complexes.

Although I spent most of the time at the conference I managed to see a bit of Kyoto as well. It was my first trip to this city and people had told me that it would be an amazing experience. And they were right, I am very impressed with what I saw here. The city is surrounded by low mountains covered with dense forests and on the foot of these hills there are a large number of temple complexes. Also in the city itself you see a lot of shrines and temples, it is as if you are going back in time.

I arrived around 9:30 PM on the first night, so I had no idea where I was exactly. I had to work on a presentation in my hotel room, so that’s what I did at first, but around midnight I decided to go for a stroll. The city was deserted, even the coffee shops and bars had closed down for the night. I had planned to eat something at a cafe or so, but that didn’t seem possible around my hotel. Luckily I found a Lawsons where I bought a beer and some snacks. I walked around a bit longer but because the place was deserted and it was pretty cold I decided to get back to my hotel.

Temple in Kyoto

I got up early the next morning and watched the sunrise over the mountains from my hotel room (pure coincidence, I opened the curtains just as the sun was coming up). At 8:30 AM Infinity Ventures had invited some of the speakers and guests for a Zazen session in a temple. Not really knowing what it was I decided to join as well. With some other guests we shared a taxi to the temple, only to end up at a different temple complex! It could have been China… We didn’t realize this right away so walked around a bit and took some pictures. Luckily we had a Japanese lady in our taxi (who later turned out to be the CEO of a Japanese e-fashion company) who was able to get directions to the right temple, so with a 20 min delay we arrived at the Zen session.

Temple in Kyoto

Basically we had to meditate on the floor of the temple while trying not to think of anything, for 2 times 15 minutes. A priest first told us a story and explained how it worked (luckily with an English translation) and then we got started. I tried as hard as I could to sit comfortably and relax, but it was difficult. I couldn’t keep my mind from wandering off with all kinds of new ideas or things I had to work on, but I eventually managed to relax. Suddenly the priest rang a small bell and I realized where I was. Kind of a strange experience.

End of zazen session in Kyoto

After 15 min we could relax our legs a bit and then the second session started. My legs were stiff and hurting and I could hardly sit anymore. During the second session you could request the priest to hit you twice with a wooden stick on your shoulders. I sort of missed the significance of that and decided not to do it. It was interesting to hear the sound of the others being hit though, it seemed like they were hit quite hard.

Zazen room in temple in Kyoto

At the same time my body started protesting because of me sitting a long time in such a ‘strange’ position. My legs started trembling and I started sweating as if it was very hot in the room. I was relieved when the priest rang the bell and announced that the session was over. I guess I am not used to this kind of traditions, but it’s something I’d like to try again. I will train my legs a bit first though, because the next day I had serious muscle ache from sitting down in a semi lotus position for half an hour!

Zazen temple

After the zazen session we visited another nearby temple complex with a nice view over Kyoto. I was talking to a lot of IVS participants so didn’t see a lot of the temples, but I realized how peaceful and quiet it was everywhere. I enjoyed being there in the complex, very different from the hectic daily life in Shanghai.

View over Kyoto

We then walked back to the hotel for the official start of the conference. We had an excellent lunch and then the presentations started, all with good simultaneous Japanes-English and English-Japanese translations. The China gang (Fritz Demopoulos, Richard Robinson, Gang Lu, Rekoo’s Patrick Liu and myself – we seem to meet at different conferences around the world) had their session that afternoon as well.

After our presentation and discussion I watched a couple of more sessions and then spent an hour in my hotel room to catch up on emails. That’s always the curse when you are away from the office, emails keep piling up. I normally try to spend 2 hours in the morning and 2 hours at night to answer emails when on a business trip, but it’s just not enough. Starting the day at 6 AM with 100-150 new emails is not fun, but it seems there is no way around it…

Trying out the Windows 8 tablet with Chris Demopoulos and Gang Lu

At dinner (excellent Japanese food, actually I only had great food at the conference) some of the sponsors showed off their upcoming gadgets and games. Among others the Kinect Star Wars game was on display (Richard Robinson loved it!) and we got to try out the Windows 8 table (not a bad product, but more of a laptop replacement than an iPad competitor).

Richard Robinson playing Star Wars Kinect

After dinner we were invited for a VIP party in one of the bars of the hotel. Among others I tried out a Kyojito – not something I recommend, sake is not a good replacement in a Mojito. The wines were good though and I had some nice conversations with among others Peng Ong and KKBOX’s Chris Lin.

The next morning I could hardly get up. Not because of the drinks but because my legs were hurting so much from the Zazen session! After breakfast I watched Launch, a start-up pitch competiton for Japanese companies. I didn’t spot anything outstanding, but it was fun to look at the products and ideas (most were apps) being presented on stage. The rest of the day I spent either in sessions or in my hotel room working on emails and calls.

Kyoto

Around 4 pm I decided to quickly go out and see a bit more of Kyoto before it would get dark. I made a 1.5 hour walk from the hotel through some backstreets to the Heian temple and from there to the river. It was very quiet on the streets and even at the Heian complex there seemed to be just a few people.

Kyoto

Also along the river I hardly saw anybody. Not sure if this is because the time of year, the time of day, or if there are just not a lot of tourists in Japan anymore after the earthquake (the 3/11 event still plays a major role in conversations by the way, it was brought up several times during the conference). When it was almost completely dark I walked back to my hotel, spent some time on Facebook and Twitter and then changed for dinner.

Dinner in a temple at Infinity Ventures Summmit 2011 in Kyoto

Dinner was quite an event, because it was held in a temple close to the hotel. The temple complex was beautifully lit, it was literally amazing. I tried to capture it, but with my iPhone camera that was not easy. We made a walk through the gardens and then had drinks and dinner in two of the temple’s halls. I am not easily impressed but this dinner location really made a deep impression on me. It makes you realize that there is more than just working hard day and night.

Dinner in a temple at Infinity Ventures Summmit 2011 in Kyoto

I didn’t stay too long because I was tired after the two long days. I made another stroll through the gardens before walking back to the hotel. There I spent another hour on emails and skype, and uploaded some pictures on Flickr. Then I went to bed early instead of going for another drinking session in the bar, I felt I needed some rest.

Friday morning I started with 2 hours on email, then I had a big breakfast in the hotel (Japanese & international buffet, not bad). I took me 5 minutes to pack my hand luggage and then I took a cab to the bus station. There I took the express bus to Osaka Kansai airport and from there I took the plane back to Shanghai. I look back on 3 nice days in Kyoto, a city I should spend some more time in in the future.

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Spil Games launches Uphill Rush 4 and shows off some amazing stats

Uphill Rush 4

Today Spil Games launches the latest edition of its Uphill Rush racing game series, and this one is better than ever. As our press release says: Uphill Rush is Spil Games’ blockbusting, stunt-racing game for teens, and today it welcomes the fourth edition in the much-loved, high-speed, smash-hit series.

To date, the Uphill Rush series has been played over 600 million (!) times, with the continuing popularity credited to the development team’s focus on ensuring the teen audience is provided with a constant adrenaline rush, whacky new worlds and endless surprises.

The Uphill Rush games have what players crave: funny, unexpected vehicles and tons of customisation options. Players can drive with a geisha outfit in a motorboat or race as a sumo wrestler on a dolphin—the options are endless.

Uphill Rush 4 retains the tried and tested formula that’s made the series a success, while introducing a host of new features such as new racers, new worlds, new outfits and new physics.

Check out the game on one of Spil Games sites, among others Uphill Rush 4 is playable on http://www.agame.com/game/uphill-rush-4.html, starting today at 10 AM CET.

Below an infographic with some of the amazing stats about this racing games series. I still remember when we made the first game in the series, I liked it (and played it a lot) but it’s hard to believe that the series has become such a huge success. Congrats to the team for designing and making these games!

Spil Games Uphill Rush 4 Infographic

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Shanghai (Half) Marathon 2011

Marc before the Shanghai Marathon

This morning I ran the Shanghai Half Marathon 2011, a race I participated in a couple of times over the past years already (incl. the full marathon once). Because I did the New York marathon less than a month ago and I took a break in training after that, I did not really think I would be able to run a good time. My aim was to have a fun race and test how good my condition was after 4 weeks without hardly any practice.

Because the start was at 7:30 I got up at 5 AM so I could have a decent breakfast more than 2 hours before the start. I have learned over the years that a big meal full of carbs (pasta) the night before a full or half marathon makes a huge difference, but that a breakfast is even more important. So I had half a liter of yoghurt with muesli and two knackebrod with jam, plus a huge mug of tea (with sugar for a change). Then my driver picked up Grace and me at 6 AM to drive us to the start at the Bund.

Before the start of the Shanghai Half Marathon

We could not get very close to the Bund because of traffic control, so we had to walk the last couple of blocks. It was still pretty cold at this time, so a lot of people were doing their warm up runs. However, I decided to enter the starting area the moment it opened (at 6:30) in order to get a good place to start from. Over the past years I had learned that if you don’t start at the front you will lose minutes right away and you will spend the first kilometers overtaking other people.

Before the start of the Shanghai Half Marathon

I managed to get a place at the very front, so I had a lot to see. As usual in China a lot of people sneaked in from the side in the last 20 minutes before the start, or they just fought their way from the back to the front. Outside China this may cause a fight, here people seem to just ignore it.

Before the start of the Shanghai Half Marathon

At 7:20 the professional athletes entered the starting grid and a few minutes later about 20 young guys were also let in by the security guards. At first I thought they were local top athletes or so, but they were not wearing typical top athletes running gear. After the start they took off very slowly (I passed most of them in the first kilometer, and 2 others who got away fast were walking after 10 km already) blocking other people. I assume they are probably related to some high level government officials so they don’t have to queue at the start. Typical China.

Before the start of the Shanghai Half Marathon

After the obligatory speeches and the Chinese national anthem the race started at exactly 7:30. I took off fast with the front runners and ran my first km in just over 4 minutes. A bit too fast, so I slowed down a little bit to a pace just below 14 km/h for the next 2 km. I still felt great, but I know the risk of starting too fast so I forced myself to run slower (not easy).

Running up the Nanpu Bridge during Shanghai Marathon

After 5 km the biggest hurdle of the race was in front of us: the Nanpu bridge. I slowed down a bit on the way up (to about 12 km/h) so my heartbeat would not go up to too much and then accelerated on the way down to 15 km/h. I still felt pretty good when we entered Pudong where we would run straight ahead for almost 8 km. Quite some people were singing, clapping and screaming “Jia You” along the road, making running even easier.

Running over the Nanpu bridge

At the 10 km point Grace and my driver were cheering for me and they took some pictures. Always nice to see people you know along the course. I told them I still felt great, and that was indeed the case. The next couple of km were quite boring, especially the part over the old Expo 2010 area where most buildings had been demolished already. The Dutch pavilion was still there though. At km 14 we saw the front runners of the half marathon who were at km 19 already, cool to see them race. I gave me inspiration to run even faster.

Marc during the Shanghai Marathon

The last couple of kilometers were a bit harder, especially my muscles were a bit painful. Not running for a few weeks comes at a price I guess. But I kept up my speed (around 13 km/h) and did not feel particularly tired. Some other people around me seemed to be having a harder time, so at the 20 km point I decided to speed up one more time.

Expo 2011 grounds, Dutch pavilllion is still standing (yellow crown building)

There was still a bridge right before the finish and I managed to pass quite a few people there. Then we ran down, took a left and 200 meters ahead of us was the finish line. I looked at the clock and realized I could still finish below 1:36, so I gave all I had and managed to finish the half marathon in 1:35:53. A new personal best for me, despite the rather difficult course and not training too much. A lot faster than expected, but considering that I don’t feel very tired I might have been able to run even faster. I was #183 out of a field of 8000 half marathon runners, which I also was quite happy about.

Marc after the finish of the Shanghai Half Marathon 2011

After the finish I picked up my medal and goodie bag (pair of socks, energy drink, some cookies and a Snickers) and then went to look for Grace. I found her at the finish line and we walked around a bit until the finish of the men’s full marathon about 35 minutes later. Great to see how fast these guys can run and how skinny they are. After the first women also finished we walked back to the car and by 10:30 I was home and had even showered already.

The winner of the Shanghai Marathon

All in all a nice race, although I did not particularly like the course. There are a lot of things that can be improved, but compared to a few years ago the organization was already much better. One important thing they have to change though: the organization was serving local herbal tea at the refreshments posts… I had no idea what it was (I assumed it was cola), so took a cup, but after one sip I threw the rest away. A terrible taste, something bitter made of raisins it seemed, but certainly not something you want to have in the middle of a race. Grace told me that at the 10 km point they ran out of water after 1 hour already, this can absolutely not happen and is actually dangerous. It’s a local race, so you can’t expect too much I suppose, but these are basic things that should not happen again next year.

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Google Analytics: A different perspective on Belgium

Joop Dorresteijn, who is co-founder and CTO at unitedstyles, noticed some interesting statistics in our Google Analytics about traffic from Belgium and wrote about it on his personal blog. I repost the full article here with his permission:

 

Belgium is about to reach an accord to form a government after a 536 day impasse, as we could read on bloomberg today. “A cut in Belgium’s credit rating by Standard & Poor’s last week triggered the final push to end the stalemate between Dutch and French speakers that had threatened to tear the country apart.”

Whilst I follow this news and have seen some of Belgium a few times, it never so clearly showed to me how divided the country is until unitedstyles was featured in an article (click here to read) on de standaard, a Flemish tabloid sized newspaper.

At unitedstyles, and most other webshops, we use software to track where our visitors come from, in our case Google Analytics. You can see your visitors per country, but also per city. When I was just browsing around and took a peek at our Belgium traffic, I couldn’t believe what I was seeing:

A divided Belgium

I figured when the article came out, visitors would mostly come from the Flemish side, which is Dutch speaking. But besides one single dot for the French speaking part, all our visits came from the Flemish north!

Of course I hope the country will stabilize and  ’L’union fait la force’ will return, just thought this was a interesting stat for others to see.