After almost 8 years in China, my Chinese is still not at the level that I want it to be. Of course that is totally my own fault, because I have focussed mainly on my businesses over the past years, instead of improving my Chinese. In fact, 5 years ago I spoke the language a lot better than now. I could express myself quite well, and my vocabulary was a lot bigger than it is at the moment. At that time I was even able to write 1000 different characters, right now I already have trouble to write my own Chinese name!

In 2002 I spent one semester at Beiwai (Beijing Foreign Studies University), and my plan was to continue one more semester at Beida (Peking University) right after that. Even though I was admitted to the program, I decided to skip the second semester and focus on my business instead. I had just set up my first company, because just studying only took me 6 hours a day, so there was enough time to do something else. I still regret that decision, but on the other hand I might not have been where I am right now.

Anyway, during my early entrepreneurial career I did not manage to keep up my Chinese skills. I had some good private teachers, but I did not focus enough on the language. Work always came first, and I did not give learning Chinese enough priority. I now feel that I should change that. I want to improve my oral Chinese only (listening comprehension and conversation), without spending time to learn the characters.

My idea is to find a Chinese teacher who can come to my office twice a week in the morning (before work) to teach / talk with me for 1.5-2 hours per session. I am looking for a teacher who does not speak English fluently, I prefer someone who hardly speaks English. The reason is that it is so easy to switch to English, and I want to avoid that. This person preferably should have experience in teaching foreigners and prepare the lessons in advance. Furthermore, the teacher should speak Putonghua without any accent and be able to use pinyin without mistakes (if not using characters I need to rely on pinyin).

I realize that people who fit this profile might not read this blog, but I want to give it a try anyway. Feel free to spread the word (no reward this time :-). Renumeration to be discussed, depending on qualifications and experience. Location: Spill Group Asia office in Xujiahui, next to Jiaotong University. If you are interested, or know a suitable candidate, please contact me at marcvanderchijs (at) gmail (dot) com, or by leaving a message in the comments.

Yesterday I had a flight booked from Shanghai to Guangzhou, for meetings with the management and other investors in 1bib.com. I was a bit late, but just in time to check in for my China Eastern flight at 2:10 PM. I arrived at the gate around 1:55, but they were not boarding yet. So I sat down and listened to a podcast on my new iPod Touch. After about 10 minutes there was still no movement at the gate, so I asked one of the flight attendants. She said there had been a gate change, which they had announced 20 minutes before that (when I had just checked in but had not yet arrived at the gate). OK, my fault, I should have probably checked the monitors for a gate change, but because I checked in so late I assumed that the gate was correct, and that they would announce a gate change more than once.

So I had to run to the other gate, because it was 5 minutes before scheduled departure time. I arrived at the gate, and saw that there were no other passengers there and the gate was closed. My first thought was that I had missed the flight due to the gate change, so I went up to the ladies at the gate to check if there would still be a possibility to board. Well, it turned out the flight had not boarded at all, because there had been a mechanical problem. They asked me to go to the departure hall again (so back into the public area) and get my ticket changed to a later flight.

Five minutes later I was at the China Eastern desk, where over 100 people were fighting to get to the front of the line in order to get their tickets changed. That’s one of the things I totally dislike in China, people do not have the decency (or education?) to form a line and wait for their turn. Well, I was in the back anyway, so I decided to just wait until the crowd had disappeared.

However, I was not sure if I was in the right line, and nobody could tell me that. So I went to the counter next to the busy one, but China Eastern staff just ignored me. I had to literally knock one guy on his head (softly!) in order for him to answer my question. His answer was still not friendly (just a gesture that I should be at the overcrowded counter) but at least I knew I was at the right place.

I waited for another 30 minutes, and then found out that all tickets on flights that would depart in the next 2-3 hours had been given out already to other passengers. Most flights were fully booked already due to the Guangzhou Trade Fair… The staff was extremely rude and did not want to give any other information. Very badly trained people, who do not care about the passengers, and have likely never heard the word service before.

So I had to wait several hours, if I would be lucky. I checked if any business class seats were available, but also those were sold out. I finally decided to forget about it, and cancel the trip. I was only going to Guangzhou for one day for meetings, and I did not want to spend half a day at an airport for such a short trip. A pity, because now I would not get to meet one of the German angel investors. Also I had not been to the 1bib office in quite a long time, and I would have liked to see how it has changed. The company has grown to about 40 people since I first invested early last year, quite a change since their first office in an apartment in Guangzhou.

Luckily China Eastern was willing to fully reimburse my tickets, although they sent me to 3 different counters before I got the required stamps for this. All in all not a good experience. Maybe I should just stop flying the airline, because it is not the first time this happens (see e.g. my blog posting from May 10, 2005). Problem is that most other Chinese airlines are quite similar to China Eastern. I guess you just have to cope with the fact that airlines here treat you like dirt if something goes wrong. And anyway, in the rest of the world it is not much better.

Yesterday I celebrated my 35th birthday. Normally I don’t really celebrate it, and I generally don’t even tell people that it’s my birthday. But thanks to social networks like Facebook, Plaxo, Hyves and Twitter a lot more people sent me messages and mails congratulating me with my birthday than in years before. I tried to send a personal message to all of them, but because I also had some work to do I might have missed some (sorry for that!).

The staff in my office had also organized a small party for me. After a slightly stressful meeting Winnie (our receptionist) came in and told me to follow her with my eyes closed. I had no idea what she was planning to do, but I suspected it would be related to me getting a year older. She took me to our recreation room, where -when I opened my eyes- lots of colleagues were waiting for me.

There was a big cake with 35 candles and many smaller cakes for the about 70 staff that Zlong and Spill Group Asia have at the moment. I could do a wish and then blew out all the candles (in two times, impossible to blow out 35 at once). Then all of them sang Happy Birthday for me. I also got a nice card and a big picture of all the staff with ‘Happy Birthday Dear Marc’ artistically written around it. Pictures see here. Thanks to all for the nice small party, it was a big surprise to me (and all my stress was gone right away 🙂

When I came back to my room 35 red roses were delivered there (from my wife!) together with a small package wrapped in Tudou.com paper. The package turned out to be a 16G iPod Touch! Very cool, and an excellent toy to play with.

At night my wife and I went to Casa 13, a new mediterranean restaurant on Huashan Lu. This was very nice as well: located in a restored old villa just off the main road (at Lane 11oo, opposite the Radisson Hotel). The food is excelllent, and not too expensive (this is their menu). The only problem was that the main course came too quickly, but that is quite normal in Shanghai (I guess it’s the US influence, where main courses tends to be served much faster after the appetizers and starters than in Europe). They also have some good wines by the glass that are reasonably priced.

The villa is very nicely decorated, in a dark, classical style with big mirrors. Inside the lights are dimmed so much that it is almost difficult to read the menu, but it adds to the atmosphere. They also have a glass covered terrace, and an outside terrace that was completely full last night. The place has valet parking for RMB 10, not unimportant in this city where it is increasingly difficult to find a parking spot at night. On Sunday’s there is brunch from 12-5 PM, and if you are into art, there is an art gallery on the second floor.

You would expect that at the Shanghai Formula One circuit at least one person would check the signs for bad English. But no, in the middle of the Grand Stand – the most expensive seats on the track – I found this sign!

One of the things I miss a bit about China when I am in Holland is having a coffee at Starbucks. Not that their coffee is particularly good, but it’s the only coffee that I manage to drink half a liter of, and still think about ordering another one. In summertime it’s great to pick up a frappucino, and in winter time I like to go for a Grande Hot Chocolate with whipped cream.

What is so special about it? Probably the atmosphere, every store is similar in a way. Wherever you are in the world a Starbucks coffee tastes like a Starbucks coffee, just like a McD burger is a McDonalds hamburger. Even in China. Another thing is the level of their service – you feel welcome as a customer, something other coffee chains (in both Holland and China) could learn a lot from. Plus you normally get your order within 2 minutes, not unimportant when you are in a hurry.

For some reason Starbucks never opened any stores in Holland. Their European headquarters are located in The Netherlands, but they did not roll out the concept yet. Actually, that is not completely true. There are two Starbucks stores in Holland: the first one is in Hilversum (yes, Spill Group’s HQ location) inside the Nike HQ, and the second one is in Terminal 1 at Amsterdam Schiphol airport (European departures). Problem is, if you are not a Nike employee you cannot buy a drink in Hilversum, and in order to buy a drink at Schiphol you need to have a flight ticket to a destination in Europe.

I hardly ever fly from Amsterdam to European destinations anymore, but I wanted to check out the Starbucks anyway. Normally customs does not let you through from international to European departures with an international ticket, but I told them I just wanted to get a Starbucks coffee. Because it was a quiet day they let me through. To be honest, I was not too impressed. The store is in the middle of what used to be an open area, and the staff was not trained too well (yet). The coffee was nice though, and that’s the main thing. And of course I got myself an Amsterdam Starbucks mug (I collect these and buy one in every country that I visit, I have about 40 different ones so far).

I heard that next month Starbucks will open 2 more locations on the Amsterdam airport, one in the international terminal and one in the arrivals hall before customs. That mean that from next month on everybody can have a Starbucks coffee in Holland, although you will have to drive to Schiphol to get it. Is this the beginning of the Starbucks invasion in Holland?

I have turned comment moderation on on my blog. This means that from now on a comment only appears on my blog after I have approved it. The reason is that the spam comments were getting out of hand. On some days I had up to 50 spam comments, and manually deleting them cost me too much time.

It does not mean that I will only approve comments that are favorable, as long as it is not spam the comment should appear on my blog as soon as I get a chance to approve it (which is basically whenever I am online).

I need challenges in my life. A life that is predictable and similar every day is something I cannot handle. My daily work is quite a challenge already, but I set myself a goal three years ago that I also want to have a real physical challenge once a year. The first year I ran the Shanghai marathon, and last year the Macau one (both within 4 hours). This year the Tibet bike trip was a major challenge, and for next year Gary and I are thinking about climbing Mt. Kilimanjaro, Africa’s highest mountain.

It looks that there might be another physical challenge ahead as well. I told Marcel Ekkel that if he would be able to secure an entry to next year’s Hong Kong Trailwalker, I would join him. I just got this Twitter message from him: http://twitter.com/marcelekkel/statuses/311121592
Cool!

In case you have not heard about the Hong Kong Trailwalker, this is an annual event in which teams have to run/walk the 100 km MacLehose Trail in Hong Kong. The trail is mainly through the hills, and in order to do it in a reasonable time you have a good preparation. Teams have 48 hours to cover the distance (all 4 team members have to reach the finish line), but of course we want to do it a lot faster than that. I look forward to this Marcel, thanks a lot!