Friday night we organized the Toodou NY party in our offices in the Si Hang warehouse on Suzhou Creek. Lots of people showed up to toast with us to the new year. We had prepared 30 liters of Gluehwein (hot red wine with cloves, cinnamon, orange and lots of sugar), and most guests seemed to like it a lot.

Next to that we also had set up several PC’s for gaming and we had an Xbox 360. Gary bought the machine the night before, he noticed it by coincidence in a shop’s window and asked if it was for sale, which it was. Although he burned it after plugging it in (it was 110 volt instead of 220 volt) he managed to get it repaired on time. It is an amazing gaming experience with fantastic graphics and great music. Gary bought Need for Speed for 400 RMB, a great game for this console. We asked the people from Electronic Arts China (who were also invited to the party – this is the company that develops and sells among others Need for Speed ) to bring some games, but they did not have any Xbox 360 games yet!

Several bloggers came to the party, among them Asiapundit and Thijs from Heyworldhereiam. It’s always interesting to meet people who you read online and whose views you already know, in real life. But there were even some people who did not know what blogging is yet. Interesting to see how big the knowledge gap is, and to find out that some people still only use newspapers and TV to get their daily news. We tried to convince Floris, a Dutch lawyers studying Chinese, to also set up a blog. I promised that if he would I would link to it from here.

At the end of the party the Dutch guests were suddenly in the majority, so we decided to put on some ‘typical’ Dutch music: Andre Hazes and Marco Borsato. Singing along with the music while drinking a couple of beers reminded me of my student days. A great way to end the party!