Last week someone posted some amazing pictures of pollution in China on the QQ BBS news forum. The post was translated in English on China Hush and is spreading through the blogosphere and on Twitter. The pictures were taken by Lu Guang, a freelance photographer, who won a USD 30,000 prize for the pollution documentary project. You can find the original BBS post here (in Chinese), and the translated article and pictures here.

Will you be in Shanghai this Friday (October 23) and do you like to drink good wines? If so, you should consider to join a Charity Wine Tasting event at Mesa-Manifesto. The event is organized by Tom Stader of The Library Project, and the proceeds will go toward a library for an elementary school in Anhui province. The event is from 7-9 PM and entry is RMB 250 per person. As usual there is also a lucky draw with among others stays in the Royal Meridien and Marriott Hongqiao, plus diners and brunches at several locations. More info see here. You can get in touch with Tom directly at (+86) 159-2955-6183 or send him an email at tom@library-project.org

In case you don’t know The Library Project, this initiative donates books and libraries to under-financed schools and orphanages in China and Vietnam. The project is based on the belief that education is the key motivator to breaking the cycle of poverty that exists in the developing world. So far about 179 library donations have been made, with another 14 this week to rural elementary schools in Sichuan province. If you want to support the Library Project by making a donation you can do so here. You can also opt to sponsor a complete library (USD 750 for a small one, USD 1100 for a big one), for more information see here.

This weekend my wife and I spent mainly at home with the kids. The nannies and ayi all had days off, so we could spend some private time with our kids. I enjoyed it very much. Especially Elaine has suddenly grown a lot bigger and is changing from a helpless baby into a little person with her own will. Of course she is still completely helpless, she cannot sit yet on her own and if she manages to roll over she cannot roll back, but she is capable of expressing a lot more things than just a few weeks ago. She smiles a lot when she likes things, and she tries to talk back when I talk to her. Mostly just some random sounds of course, no real talking, but it’s fun to see her reacting.

I also played airplane with her (which used to be Scott’s favorite game with me), but she looked more confused than happy after flying through the room above my head. Either she is not as much into rough games as Scott or she is just too young. Then I put her on Scott’s neck, and Scott walked around the room with her – with me holding Elaine of course. She seemed to like it, and Scott liked it even more. I often walk around the compound with him like this and he was really proud that he can do this now with his mei mei.

The weather was still very nice during the past two days, with blue skies and temperatures around 25 degrees. So I decided to have a last swim in the outdoor pool. I was the only one there, and probably rightfully so: the water was much colder than before. Either they put cold water in or the night temperatures (around 16 degrees) cool the water off more than it heats up during the day. Anyway, after it took me a minute to get used to the temperature I still enjoyed it, but it will likely be my last outdoor swim this year.

Scott also keeps on developing. He starts to make real sentences now, although still very short ones, but only in Chinese: he still understands Dutch when I talk to him but he does not use any Dutch words anymore (except for ‘nee’ which means ‘no’). He also knows how to make coffee with my help. We have been making coffee in the Senseo machine together for the past weekends and he now knows the routine. He is always very happy when the coffee comes out and claps his hands when it’s finished. He now also knows how to ride his tricycle: so far he used his legs to push himself forward or backward, but now he uses the pedals to move. I tried to teach him for weeks, but he did not (want to) pay attention, and suddenly he starts doing it by himself!

I am very happy with our two kids, they are the best thing that’s happened to me. A few years ago I would not have believed this, but kids literally give more meaning to my life. Of course I am very happy with the businesses that we are involved in and with the comfortable life that we live, but Scott and Elaine are most important to me. I am glad I could spend a lot of time with them this weekend.

Taxis in Shanghai are ridiculously cheap compared to most major cities in the world. For a few USD you can drive all over the city, and you are not even expected to tip (if you tip they will normally hand you the money back, because it’s so uncommon). I have no idea how taxi drivers can earn money at the current rates.

Now that the National Holiday is over and the city is back to work again the local government announced that the prices will go up starting tomorrow. Not a lot, the base price goes from RMB 11 to RMB 12 for the first 3 km, and to 2.4 RMB (from 2.1 RMB) per km thereafter. Prices between 11 PM and 6 AM will increase to RMB 16 for the first 3 km and RMB 3.1 for every additional kilometer. This is of course still very cheap compared to what I am usually paying in Holland, or to what taxis dare to charge in Tokyo (that city must have the most expensive taxi fleet in the world). But compared to the average salary in Shanghai, many people will think again before taking a cab.

I wish the government would put a surcharge between 7 AM-9 AM and 5 PM-8 PM instead of after 11 PM. Especially during rush hour it’s often impossible to find a taxi. That makes a lot more sense than charging more after 11 PM when most taxis are empty anyway.

Picture: The taxi receipt next to this post is from a business partner of mine who was seriously overcharged by a cab: RMB 626 for a 19 minute ride (the driver added RMB 600 in toll fees). He paid for it, and the taxi company later said they could not identify the driver.

My laptop got extremely slow over the past couple of days, so I decided to find out what the reason could be for this unexpected behavior. I could not really figure it out, until I noticed that my trash bin had over 3 million items in it. Several hundred GB of data that I had deleted but that was still sitting in there. After emptying the trash (which took at least an hour) and restarting the computer it is now noticeably faster, so maybe this was indeed the reason?

My training over the past days went pretty well, and I had been looking forward to today’s run: a long run on and around Tianmashan. With 3 friends we gathered at my place at 8:15 AM, and despite a traffic jam we arrived at the hill about 35 minutes later. We started with a climb to the Buddha statue and from there ran to the next top over a concrete path. From that top you go downhill until the path stops and you start running along a small trail through a bamboo forest. And that’s where it happened: I was running in front and suddenly stepped into a hole that was covered with leaves. I heard a tearing sound and felt a terrible pain, and at that moment I knew something was wrong big time. I managed to hold on to a bamboo tree, but the pain was so bad that I had to sit down. The others could not do much of course, but luckily the pain got a bit less after a couple of minutes.

I tried to stand up and realized nothing was broken, something I was very relieved about. But I also realized that we were about as far from our car as we could get, with a hill in between. The best thing would have been if I could stay seated with some ice, but I had to go to the car first. So I bit on my tongue in order not to feel the pain too much and slowly started walking back with the others. After a while it got easier until I stepped on something, and almost fell on the ground because of the pain. I had to sit down for a few minutes again before I could continue. It hurt a lot, but I managed to get over the hill and back to the car. I was very happy that I was wearing my trail running shoes instead of my regular running shoes, the trail shoes protect the foot a lot more and without them I think my problems would have been a lot bigger.

At the car I realized that the right ankle that was sprained is exactly the foot that you use to drive. The other 3 people either could not drive or did not have a Chinese driver’s license, so I decided to give it a try anyway. To make a long story short, it was not a good idea. Driving at a fixed speed was okay, but braking or speeding up was painful.

Because I felt bad for the others that had gotten up early to run a long distance and only spent about 3 km on the hill, I decided to show them Sun Island. This is a nearby island resort, with among others a very nice golf course. I could not walk, so we just drove around there a bit before going back to Shanghai. At home the pain got worse and my foot became about twice its normal size. But after I put ice packs on my swollen foot it now finally seems to get a bit better.

I won’t be able to run for the next 1-2 weeks, however. That means I won’t be able to run the Hanghzou Mountain Race in 10 days…. A pity, I was secretly planning to go there to run the 30 km trail run. But the half marathon in late November won’t be a problem, in 2005 I sprained my ankle less than two weeks before a full marathon and still ran the 42 km race (despite doctor’s advice, and because of this I could not run for 6 weeks afterward – but I did it!).

I am on quite a lot of social networks, but most of them I don’t really use. Only about five or so I use regularly; my favorite one is of course Twitter, but the number two is a quite unknown one where I only have eight friends: dailymile.com. It’s a social network for runners, and running happens to my favorite sport. I try to run at least one marathon a year or something similar. This year it will likely just be the Shanghai half marathon in November, although I am still considering to participate again in the grueling 30k Hangzhou Mountain Marathon later this month. I even read novels about long-distance running, right now I am in the middle of “What I talk about when I talk about running” by the famous Japanese writer Haruki Murakami (thanks for borrowing Richard Yu).

I think I found out about dailymile around Christmas last year, and I started using the site actively from January this year. I use it to track all my runs and to see what my web-savvy running friends are up to. It’s more like a public running diary for me: I track how far I ran, how long it took me, how I felt and where I ran. Almost all my runs this year are on it. I now started training for the Shanghai half marathon, and my daily miles go up a lot. The site tells me that I ran 47 km over the past week, out of which 40 over the past 4 days. In the whole of September I only ran 91 kilometers, so I really picked up my training schedule now (also because of the Chinese holidays of course, I won’t be able to keep this up when work starts again). I normally also mention my runs on Twitter, but there is no way to easily find them back on there, let alone to get some useful statistics.

When I just signed up for dailymile the site was still quite new and had hardly any functions. But after a few weeks they asked their users what functions they would like to see, and I sent them a list of must-haves and nice-to-haves. It turns out that 9 months later many of these functions have been implemented. Exactly like I would have done it, they implement changes step by step: not all at once, but one feature after the other. You can now for example sync your Nike+ with dailymile, so it updates your runs automatically. And this week for example, I received for the first time a weekly training report, with the number of kilometers that I ran and the amount of calories that I burned. The site is now much easier to use than when I first started using it, and I really enjoy spending a few minutes on it on an (almost) daily basis.

The site is actually not only for runners, you can also use it for other sports like cycling or swimming. If you like to keep track of your progress or need some extra motivation to keep your schedule, you should sign up for DailyMile.com. And once you’ve done that feel free to add me as a friend!

This morning I decided to spend some quality time with Scott. His nanny has vacation and I had the idea to take him out for a walk on Hongmei Lu and have a drink with him. The first stop on our walk was the golf course opposite our compound. I showed Scott the driving range and he was intrigued by all the people hitting balls. Right at that moment a helicopter flew over (a very rare thing in Shanghai, you never see a helicopter above the city), which he liked even more.

We then walked on to have a coffee somewhere. The terrace at Starbucks was full, but Costa Coffee still had a table, so we sat down there. I had a Caramel Latte and Scott a Kiwi Strawberry Snapple. I also ordered a piece of chocolate cheesecake that I shared with Scott. The weather was very nice, about 26 degrees and sunny, and in the sun it still felt like summer. Scott also seemed to be warm because he finished the Snapple (16 fl. oz, a bit less than half a liter) within 10 minutes!

We then continued our walk and had an early lunch at the Bastiaan Bakery (the Dutch bakery on Hongmei Pedestrian Street). I had a soup and turkey roll that I wanted to share with Scott, but he was only interested in the piece of bread that came with the soup. After lunch we went over to the Pearl Market, that is becoming more and more popular with tourists because of the fake products they sell there. I just went to the foreign language book store (ground floor in the back) and checked out the Nintendo DS games shop, but did not buy anything. The last stop was the DVD shop where I bought an old documentary about China that I plan to watch while running on the treadmill today. Scott was getting a bit tired by then and while walking back he fell asleep. We had a very nice morning together and I want to do this more often.