Weekend trip to South-Korea for Joop & Suna’s wedding

This weekend Grace and I flew to Korea for Joop Dorresteijn & Suna Cho’s wedding and we had a great time there. The traveling itself did not completely go well, but that’s something you get used to in Asia. It started off with the regular two hour delay on the tarmac before take off from Shanghai because of ‘air traffic control’. I lost quite a number of working days already sitting on a plane that does not move. If the airline would just let you wait in the lounge it would be okay, but in that case the flight would be officially delayed and they would get a fine (if the doors are closed before departure time China calls the flight on time…). Anyway, I now already expect delays and normally keep on working on my laptop even if they tell me not to, but the worst thing is that you never know how long it will take.

We arrived in Seoul (Incheon) where everything went fine, except that China Southern had the gate that was furthest from immigration, it was literally a 25 min walk and train ride go get to the exit of the airport. After going through immigration and getting our luggage we went to buy tickets for the bus to Daejeon (3 hours), and found we had just missed it. The next bus was fully booked, so we had to wait another hour… We had a quick dinner at the airport and I checked my emails. My mailbox was flooded with new Twitter followers and at first I did not know why. Turned out Dutch magazine Management Team had put me in a list of the 15 Twitterers that you have to follow (others in the list are a.o. Richard Branson, Tim O’Reilly and Seth Godin). Probably a bit too much honor for me but thanks anyway!

The bus ride to Daejeon was pretty good, the bus has excellent seats (almost similar to business class seats on a plane) and I got a ton of work done on the bus. Around 11 PM we arrived in Daejeon and we managed to find a taxi to drive us to the hotel. At least that was the plan, but the taxi driver did not know how to operate his GPS, so after 10 minutes we decided to get out in the middle of nowhere and try to find another cab. That eventually worked and at 11:45 we arrived in the hotel, where they could not find our reservation. Well, with a bit of patience and by being very determined they finally managed to locate it and right before 12 AM we were in our hotel room. Exactly on time for a conference call that my wife had planned for midnight…

The next morning we had breakfast and then met several of Joop’s family members in the lobby to go to the wedding venue. That was about an hour’s drive from the hotel (Joop had rented a bus for us). Originally the weather seemed to be overcast with a chance of rain, but when we arrived the sun broke through the clouds and within no time most clouds disappeared. A good omen Joop!

Joop and Suna were already completely dressed up for the ritual, and then it was my turn to get dressed in traditional Korean wear as well. The reason was that I was among the carriers (together with Richard Yu) who would have to carry first the groom and later the bride to the altar. An interesting ritual and pretty heavy as well (especially the heavy wooden carriage that the bride uses was quite something to lift!). Very cool to be part of this, thanks for letting me do this Joop!

The wedding ceremony itself was full of rituals, and although I didn’t understand much (it was all in Korean) it was an interesting and impressive sight. At the end of the ceremony Richard and I were asked to be part of the ceremony again, this time to throw live chicken into the audience. People did their best to grab them and later somebody explained to me that the one who catches it can bring the chicken home!

After the ceremony was over we took pictures with the couple and then it was time for a big buffet. It was quiet warm actually so I enjoyed the cold beers in the nice Korean village setting. Interesting is that we among others met a Dutch lady living in Seoul (her husband is an expat in South Korea) who knew all about me because of this blog and Twitter (Hi Esther!), that’s why I love social media! When the lunch was finished we went back to the hotel for a rest or to do some sightseeing, before we would go for dinner. The evening was again in a traditional Korean setting, we had an intimate dinner with family and close friends in a 250-year old Korean restaurant in the countryside outside Daejeon. Very enjoyable, but a dinner can be quite long if you need to sit on the ground with a traditional low Korean table… But we managed and it was a very special evening with some traditional performances, traditional food and of course speeches and presents.

After we got back to the hotel we decided to have an after-party in one of the local Hofs (a kind of German-style bar). And an after-party it was: I even decided not to put the pictures online! Let me say that we had a lot of fun drinking a mixture of local draught beer and shoju wine, that we made friends with other Koreans that loved our performances of Dutch and English drinking songs and that I had a bit of a headache when I got up the next morning!

On Sunday we left Daejeon (Joop & Suna stayed a day longer) and went back to Seoul by the fast KTX train (top speed > 300 km/h). An efficient and not-too-expensive way to travel all over Korea (the 1 hour trip cost about USD 18,-). In Seoul we took a taxi to our hotel, checked-in and immediately left again to go shopping and sight-seeing.

We walked a lot that afternoon and eventually ended up at a sunset Han river cruise. Not very special (there is not a lot to see on the Han river), but still a nice way to end the afternoon. We then had dinner in a good Korean BBQ restaurant where we had a Chinese waitress/BBQ cook, so we finally could communicate relatively easy (not many people speak decent English in Korea). After dinner we went to a nice JjimJilBang (a traditional Korean bath house), the Dragon Hills Spa, to refresh and relax. Very enjoyable, I love this kind of spa (there is one in Shanghai as well, one of the few bathhouses where you can bring your whole family).

Today we did a bit more sightseeing and eventually ended up at Lotte World for a nice lunch and to do some more shopping. In the afternoon we took a taxi to Incheon before flying back to the kids in Shanghai. We missed them a lot, that’s the only down side for this kind of trips: I’d love to bring the kids but they are still too young. We had a very nice time in Korea and a fabulous experience at the wedding. Joop & Suna, thanks a lot for the invitation and all the best in your future together!

Tudou

This is a copy of a post on TudouChina.com, original post here

A quick update that the long awaited

Elaine going to school for the first time!

Today Elaine went to the kindergarten in our compound for the first time. She is now 16 months old and is able to walk and talk very well, so she is ready for kindergarten. It is the same one where Scott also went until a couple of months ago, and she went there many times already to take a look.

Elaine was very excited when we told her yesterday that she could finally go, and she could not wait this morning to leave the house. Grace dressed her up very nicely (actually, she always gets dressed up nicely) and she could carry her own little back pack.

When we arrived at the kindergarten she immediately felt at ease. We changed her shoes and after she got used to one of the teachers she followed the teacher to some toys. She seemed to totally forget about us, which was actually good (it’s so difficult to leave your kid alone if she is crying).

Elaine didn’t even notice that we left and kept on playing happily. A few minutes later we came back to take a secret look at her and she was still playing nicely with the teacher and another kid. However, we later heard that she started crying loudly a while after we had left and could not stop anymore. Poor baby…

When we picked her up, however, she was fine. She was drinking something and looking around with a serious face. She was very happy to see us though and only wanted her mom to hold her. We also took Scott with us to pick Elaine up, and he was very happy to see his old teachers and some of his old classmates. He now understands that he is a big boy and that he therefore has to go to another school (he told me this). He loves his new school as well and I hope Elaine will soon be just as happy in her kindergarten as Scott always used to be.

For now Elaine will only go one day a week to kindergarten to get used to spending time with other kids a bit. If things go well she will probably go full-time after Christmas and New Year. It’s so nice to see your kids grow up, but in a way it is a bit sad as well. They change from cute innocent babies into naughty toddlers so quickly… But the older they get the nicer it is actually, because you can do so much more with them. I love being a father!

I’m going to Korea and the exchange rate is….

Later today my wife and I will fly to Seoul and then travel on to Daejeon for the wedding of Joop Dorresteijn. Just now I was checking the weather (cold, only 17 degrees Celsius…) and the Korean Won exchange rate and I was very surprised to see it’s exactly KRW 1111,11111 for 1 USD. Easy to remember!

Speaking in Rotterdam, Shanghai and Jakarta over the next 3 weeks

Over the next weeks I will be giving a few talks about entrepreneurship, social media and the online casual games industry. Instead of only tweeting about them while at the event itself I decided to put the next ones on my blog as well.

On Monday October 25 I will be speaking at the STAR Management Week at the Erasmus University in Rotterdam. The topic is entrepreneurship, so I will probably give a personal talk about my career so far, what drives me as an entrepreneur and how I look at the future. Other speakers that day include Dutch entrepreneurs Marlies Dekkers, Harald Swinkels, Igor Milder, Walter Peteri and Bob Ultee. In the afternoon I will give a lecture/workshop for Master students of the Chinese Economy & Business program of the Rotterdam School of Management and Leiden University.
Update 14 Oct.: The organization told me today that both events are completely sold out already, the entrepreneurial seminar was sold out in 6 days and the workshop in 5 days!

A week later, on Tuesday November 2, I will give a talk in Shanghai for the Benelux Chamber of Commerce. This time I plan to talk about my vision on the use of social media in the business world and how it will evolve over the next couple of years. I will show how I use social media tools to grow the businesses I am involved in and will give some tips on how others can do this as well for their company. Rogier Bikker who runs ad agency Energize in Shanghai will give the second talk that evening, about successful ways of using social media in your business. The location will be the Dutch Design Work Space and the evening will start at 7 PM.

That weekend I will fly to Indonesia to give a talk on Saturday November 6 during the SparxUp Awards 2010, the biggest and most significant tech start-up event in Indonesia. The awards night will start at 7 PM and my talk should start at 7:30 PM. Location: FX Lifestyle X’nter, free entrance. I will talk about Spil Games and especially how we managed to make games.co.id into the biggest online game portal in Indonesia, with currently about 9 million unique visitors per month.

Indonesia is an amazing market with a huge potential and Spil Games sees it as one of our key future markets, both for online games and mobile games. If you’re in the Internet or mobile industry in Indonesia and would like to talk to me, please get in touch at marcvanderchijs (at) gmail (dot) com or leave a message in the comments.

United Styles looking for girls for photo shoot on Oct. 30

I mentioned United Styles a few times on this blog and in other media already, but so far never revealed what the company will be doing. UnitedStyles.com is a website where a mother or a child (or the two of them together) can design kids personalized clothing and immediately see the result in 3D. United Styles will then produce the clothes you designed and mail them to you. The site is is in closed alpha at the moment, and very soon an email will go out to all the people that signed up on the mailing list with a sneak peak and with some more details about what we will do exactly.

The website will go into open beta by mid-November and we are now looking for girls in Shanghai that would like to help us with fittings and photo shoots. The next shoot will be on Saturday October 30, and we are specifically looking for girls around 98 cm, 122 cm and 140 cm. Are you interested or do you know anybody that would be interested? Please get in touch with Anna Haude at annahaude (at) gmail (com) com.

1st Shanghai Indoor Rowing Charity Challenge on Nov. 13

A couple of months ago I bought a Concept2 indoor rowing machine and I am using it regularly, especially when I don’t feel like running but still want to do an intensive work-out. It seems I am not the only one in Shanghai that likes to row, because a few days ago I came across the 1st Shanghai Indoor Rowing Charity Challenge. This race will be held on Saturday November 13, 2010 from 10 AM to 4 PM at the Shanghai Sharks Practice Facility, Bai Se Road No.1333 (???1333?).

There will both be individual and team races, the individual races are over 500 and 1000 meters and the relays are 4 * 500 meters and 10 * 3 minutes. You can sign up until November 8 at http://www.bohdi.com.cn/concept2challenge.html. All proceeds will go to the charity Roots & Shoots

National Holiday luckily almost over

I am not a big fan of the Chinese nationwide vacations, especially when I am staying at home and when most friends are off to some tropical beaches. The past several days we had the October National Holiday in China and I am glad it’s almost over. After I came back from TechCrunch Disrupt I was full of new ideas that I wanted to share, but because nobody was working I felt I couldn’t do much.

That doesn’t mean I didn’t have a good time, because I certainly enjoyed spending more time at home. It gave me the chance to play a lot with the kids, and we had tons of fun together. Elaine now runs around the house on her own and calls out for me when she knows I am working in my study. Scott is a naughty boy and just climbs up the 2 flights of stairs to my study (which he is not allowed to do) when his nanny doesn’t notice. I finally taught Scott how to ride his bike (with side wheels), I had tried it a few times before but after teaching him for 2 days he is finally confident enough to ride on his own. So confident that he now even rides around our living room, which was not really my intention!

Elaine and Scott know my birthday will come up in a few days and both learned to say “Happy Birthday To You” – although Elaine normally just says “Happy To You”. Scott can already sing Happy birthday to you as well (both in Chinese and English), and he is now in charge of choosing a birthday cake for me. I wonder what he will buy me.

Because the weather finally cooled off a bit (temperatures in the mid-20s right now), we put up a tent in the garden for the kids to play in. And two days ago Scott and I even spent the night there! Scott loved it so much that it took quite some time for him to fall asleep, he was excited to be in a tent and to listen to all the strange sounds. Because we went to bed at 9 PM already it also took me some time to fall asleep, and during the night I woke up frequently to make sure Scott was okay. It was very quiet outside actually, the only sound I heard was that of the crickets. And of course the birds woke us up just when it got light (after which I could not sleep anymore…). It was fun to sleep in a tent with Scott and it’s great for father-son bonding.

We also had a BBQ during the holiday, where we invited some friends to catch up, eat a lot of food and drink some wines and beer. Always fun to do, but it’s always difficult to figure out who is in town or not. This time – among others – Sam Flemming dropped by with his family (they just flew back to Shanghai from a short holiday), Jim Feldkamp with wife and son were there (he flew in from a sailing regatta in Xiamen), Alexandre Imperatori and fiancee also joined (Formula 3 driver, he flew in from Japan 2 hours before the BBQ – Scott loved his Porsche 911!), and also Joop Dorresteijn just made it (he flew back from Korea where he was preparing for his wedding). Several of the guests brought their kids, so it was also a big childrens party in our kids play room and in the garden. A great evening!

We had a couple of dinners during the week and also a brunch with the parents of Scott’s classmates. A fun get together at the Green Apple, where the kids could play and we could talk. An interesting group of parents by the way, with many of them C-level executives for multinational companies or running their own businesses. Tonight we’ll have a dinner with friends at South Beauty and then I plan to have a couple of drinks with Gary to catch up on the latest Tudou gossip. All in all not a bad week, but I look forward to going back to the office tomorrow (but not to having to work this weekend as well as compensation for the National Holiday…).

Jarvis Winery in Napa Valley

Last weekend I had the chance to visit the Jarvis Winery just outside Napa, one of the top wineries in the US. During the summer Will Jarvis (the son of the owners) had visited both Spil Games and Tudou, so I already heard a lot about the wines before my visit and I was really looking forward to seeing the winery operations.

On Sunday morning I drove over with some friends, it’s a scenic drive to the Jarvis vineyards that are located in the northeastern part of Napa Valley. Once you arrive at the gate to the winery you still don’t see much, just some small vineyards on the mountain slopes but no buildings at all. The reason is simple: the owners built a cave inside the mountain where all operations are located. Even the offices are inside the cave! This winery was the first in the US to tunnel a cave so big that all its operations would fit in there.

I was very honored that Mr. and Mrs. Jarvis (the owners of the winery) would give us a private tour of their cave facilities, it made the visit extra special for me. We met them at the reception at the entrance of the cave and from there we walked around through the whole underground tunnel system that Mr. Jarvis had designed and built. What I saw was very impressive, everything was designed with an eye for detail. There is even a stream and waterfall underground, something I had never seen before in any winery caves.

The wines are also made with attention to every detail. Mr. Jarvis told me for example that the barrels are made out of the very best French wood (they tested many different kinds) and are only used once, unlike most other wineries where they are used several times. This is one of the reasons why their wines are so unique, but of course it also increases the cost (if I remember correctly a barrel costs about USD 900 per piece). The tunnel system has a parabolic shape to make it more stable, and deeper inside the caves there are some huge rooms. One is used among others for their bi-yearly harvest ball and it’s probably big enough to put a few indoor tennis courts.

Because of the attention to detail and only going for the very best quality, the Jarvis wines are among the very best on the market. For example, where normal wineries sometimes have over 2000 vines per acre, Jarvis only has 566 in order to get the very best grapes. Quality is the only thing that counts, and that you can not only see in the whole underground operation, but you can also taste it during their wine tastings.

Mr. and Mrs. Jarvis invited us to a private wine tasting deep inside the caves with some of their very best wines. As regular readers of this blog know I love to drink good wines, so I looked forward to this tasting. I am no real expert (yet), but their wines were incredible. They mainly have reds (Cabernet, Merlot) but also a Chardonnay that totally blew me away. I love Californian Chardonnays and have tried quite a few over the years, but this was probably the best I had ever had.

After the wine tasting Mr. and Mrs. Jarvis invited us for lunch at the newly opened Morimoto in Napa. This restaurant is also highly recommended: we enjoyed our lunch on the terrace next to the Napa river and had among others some wonderful maki sushi. Before driving back to San Francisco we visited the Napa Conservatory that the Jarvis family started in 1995. A very nice theater in the middle of Napa, mainly used for Spanish opera and baroque ballet.

All in all a fantastic day in beautiful Napa Valley. Mr. and Mrs. Jarvis, in case you should read this, thank you very much for your hospitality, I enjoyed it very much.

The Jarvis Winery is located at 2970 Monticello Rd., Napa, CA 94558. Phone: 1-800-255-5280 Email: info@jarviswines.com. Winery tours incl. wine tasting only after appointment, you can book online here. Interested to buy some of the excellent Jarvis wines? Here you can order their products online.
Website: http://www.jarviswines.com
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/jarviswines