December 2009

There were 14 posts published in December 2009 (this is page 2 of 2).

Paul's delivery service in Shanghai: please order 2 hours in advance

Paul’s is by far the best French bakery in town, I regularly go there on weekends to buy croissants or a baguette. But I also order my lunch there every now and then. So far I used Sherpa’s for that, until I found out that Paul has its own delivery service and only charges RMB 8 for a delivery (with a RMB 30 minimum order). Sherpa’s normally delivered in about 30-45 minutes and I expected Paul to deliver even faster. But I was wrong.

The first time I called Paul’s delivery hotline was last week. It was a rainy day and I did not want to go out for lunch. I ordered a sandwich and waited. After about an hour I was still waiting and called again. Paul’s told me that because of the weather it took a bit longer today, but the delivery guy was on his way. Another 30 minutes later the food had still not arrived, but after I called once more it only took another 10 minutes for the my sandwich to arrive. The delivery guy said that he could not find it. Okay, that’s pretty stupid (he has our phone number and could call), but it can happen.

So yesterday I ordered another sandwich. It did not rain and they had been to our office before, so when I ordered at 11:45 I expected my sandwich to be here by 12:15. It wasn’t of course. When the sandwich was still not there by 1 PM I called them again. They said that they don’t have enough delivery people so it could take a bit longer. And that was the case indeed, because it took them over 2 hours to deliver a sandwich from their shop to our office…

When I called again to clarify if this was normal, they told me that I should order a sandwich 2 hours in advance! Paul’s, if you think you can get away with a 2 hour delivery time in Shanghai you are wrong. And another advice, you should tell your customers when they order that there will be a long delivery time. In that case they may not order with you, but that’s better than having unhappy customers.

Paul’s, even though I love your sandwiches I don’t think I am going to order again from you soon. I will either use Sherpa’s (which at RMB 15-30 is a bit more expensive to deliver, but at least delivers on time), or I order from one of the other sandwich shops around People’s Square that bring the food to our office for free. And by the way, not having enough delivery people is not a good excuse: then you either should hire and train some more people (they are not so hard to find) or temporarily outsource to for example Sherpa’s. That may be a bit more expensive, but at least you won’t get angry customers or lose your good reputation.

If you want to try your luck with Paul’s call 4008-800-852, they deliver from 9:30 AM -7:00 PM

Bye Bye Farmville!

A couple of weeks ago I decided to give Farmville a try. Farmville is an online game developed by Zynga in which you have to manage and build out a farm. The game can be played on Facebook and on Farmville.com and is extremely popular, it’s currently the #1 online game in the world. The game has over 65 million players worldwide, which makes it the biggest online game in history.

When I started playing it, it was more for professional reasons than because I really wanted to play the game. I did not expect the game to be as addictive as it turned out to be. The first days I just planted some strawberries and let them die again, but once I connected to some friends I wanted to grow my farm and beat them. That’s not so difficult if you have a lot of time on your hands, but that’s exactly what I don’t have. Of course you can ‘cheat’ by spending real money in the game, but I did not want to do that either. So I had to come up with strategies to plant the most money- and time-efficient vegetables to grow your revenues and the size of your farm.

It was fun to do and I learned a lot about how to get people addicted to a game or how to persuade them to spend money. But after a couple of weeks of spending about 15 minutes every 2-3 days in the game, I now decided to call it quits. The game just takes too much time and actually also gets a bit repetitive. I now understand pretty much why this game performs so well, important to know and something that can be used for Spil Games’ business as well. The picture above is what my farm in Farmville looks like, my final action was to grow roses in the form of the word Bye.

My grandmother's funeral

Yesterday my grandmother’s funeral was held and I had flown to Holland the day before to attend it. My parents, two cousins and me arrived at the funeral home attached to the cemetery in Nieuwleusen around 9:15 AM. We first had a chat with the master of ceremonies, the same person who had also been in charge of my other grandmothers funeral about 6 months ago, about the details of the funeral. Between 10 AM and 10:30 there was time for condolences and then the guests were asked to sit down in the chapel. The direct family then closed the casket after taking one last look at the deceased, always a bit of an emotional moment. Some of the children and grandchildren (including myself) then carried the casket into the chapel.

A church service of about one hour then followed, with the singing of psalms and prayers. The minister held a talk about my grandma’s life and also some of the grandchildren and my uncle Ernst talked about their memories of oma. Especially the personal stories were very touching, but the minister’s talk was quite disappointing. He made it all far too religious to my liking and he did not follow the guidelines that my mom and uncle had given him a few days in advance. A pity, but the families personal stories more than made up for this.

After the service we carried oma to her final resting place, next to her husband who had passed away over 50 (!) years ago already. The coffin is not so heavy if you just carry it for just a few meters, but we had to carry her quite far and I was glad that we could change sides halfway! At the grave we put the casket down and after a few words by the minister the coffin was lowered into the grave. We all put some sand on the grave and some of us put a rose on the casket. We then went inside again for a cup of coffee and a sandwich with the guests. This is a tradition in my grandmother’s village and it was an interesting experience. I hardly knew any of her acquaintances and friends, but quite a few knew about me (several even read this blog they told me), so I talked to a lot of people there.

Around 1 PM most people left and then the direct family had a lunch at Mooirivier in Dalfsen, a restaurant next to the Vecht river. After the late lunch we all went back to the grave during sunset, to say a final goodbye to our grandmother.

Buying a Christmas tree online in Shanghai

Because most Chinese don’t celebrate Christmas, there are not that many places in town where you can buy Christmas trees. I still remember that about 3 years ago my wife and I spent a whole Saturday afternoon trying to find a decent Christmas tree and eventually ended up buying a fake one. But times are changing, and it seems you can now also get them online. A fellow Dutch entrepreneur, Nic Pannekeet, sells them through his company rosagallica.com.

How does it work? Very simple, just send an email to info@rosagallica.com with the size you want, your name, address and phone number, and the company will contact you for delivery. You can also call them at 021-2821 2241 or mobile 158 2171 1221 (Camille). The available sizes and prices:

Available sizes            Price ex transport
80   –  150 cm              180 RMB
150 – 200 cm               350 RMB
200 – 250 cm               450 RMB
250 – 300 cm               600 RMB
300 – 350 cm               800 RMB

I did not try out the service myself (our gardener already provided us with a tree before we even thought about buying one), so feel free to let me know your experiences in the comments.