Chinese 2009 public holidays announced

In the past the Chinese government used to announce the dates of its public holidays just a few weeks in advance, but yesterday the schedule for the whole of 2009 was published already. Good for people who want to start making vacation plans ahead of time.

Next year there will be a Golden Week during Spring Festival (from Jan. 25-31), but people will have to work the weekend before that to compensate for the holiday. Labor day will be just a one-day holiday this year (officially 3 days, but 2 fall on Saturday and Sunday) on May 1. And the National Day Holiday will be combined with the mid-Autumn Festival giving people time off from Oct. 1-8 (of course also here people have to compensate by working during the weekend before the holiday). Other holidays are on Jan 1-2 (New Year), April 6 (Qingming Festival) and May 28 (Dragon Boat Festival). No Christmas holidays in China of course.

Back in China

Yesterday I arrived back in Shanghai after a busy week in Holland, without even enough time to write some blog posts… Lots of business appointments at Spil Games, a visit to the Dutch university of arts (HKU), a couple of media interviews, and a weekend visit to my parents. For some more details see my Tweets from last week, although I did not put everything on Twitter.

I was in Holland with 3 Chinese colleagues, who seemed to have enjoyed the trip. Business-wise it was certainly good to have had them in our Hilversum office for a few days, so they understand more about what Spil Games is doing in Holland and for the Spil Games people to see what we are up to in China. Of course we also had lots of beers together, among others in Spil Games office bar in Hilversum. We should do this at least once a year, especially now that Spil Games is growing so fast worldwide.

In the Spil Games Bar in Hilversum (shot with iPhone, hence the low quality)

Now I am back in my office in Shanghai (yesterday already actually, the best way to fight a jet lag is to start working right away) catching up on work. As usual there is quite a back log of work when you are away for a few days. And tomorrow night I am off to Beijing again for a 1.5-day business trip. If you want to meet me, Saturday afternoon I have no meetings yet between 12:30-4 PM, so feel free to get in touch (marcvanderchijs (at) gmail (dot) com). I will be staying close to Houhai.

Lost laptop returned!

There are still some good people in this world. Last night my colleague Guo Haibin left his MacBook Pro laptop in a taxi, but we did not have the name of the taxi company nor the license plate number (see my blog post from this morning). Today a Spil Games secretary called all taxi companies in and around Hilversum and after about 15 companies she found the one that drove my colleagues to their hotel. At first they did not realize they had the bag, but they called the company back an hour later that they found it! They even brought it to our office (of course we paid for the taxi fee, plus a nice tip). After last night I honestly did not expect we would still be able to trace the laptop, but I am very happy to see that the taxi driver was honest and returned the computer.