In just over one month, Gary Wang, my dad and I will arrive in Tanzania. Not for a safari like most tourists, but to climb Africa’s highest mountain, the Kilimanjaro. Today I faxed all documents to the organizer and now there is no way back anymore. That feels pretty good actually, until now we were not completely sure if we would be able to get all documents together on time and whether it would work with flights and work arrangements. But suddenly everything started to fall into place and we now know that we’ll be on a plane to Africa in a few weeks time.

The plan is to reach the 5895-meter summit of Kilimanjaro on June 3, at about 6 AM. Most people climb the last and most difficult part during the night, because then the snow is frozen and it’s easier to move forward. We will arrive in Tanzania only 6 days before that, so we won’t have much time to acclimatize. From what I understand there are two main problems. First the temperature difference, because you start off on the equator in the middle of the tropics at temperatures far above 30 degrees Celcius and at the top you can encounter temperatures of -25 degrees Celcius.

A much more dangerous problem is the high altitude. From last year’s trip in Tibet we know that above 4500 meters it gets very very difficult to move forward and your brain starts to function more slowly, especially if you did not spend enough time to get your body used to less oxygen. Because we do not have much time to acclimatize, the high altitude will likely be our biggest enemy. We’ll see, last year we made it on our mountain bikes to Mount Everest base camp (at 5200 meters), so we should have the will power to climb to the top of this mountain as well. But I also know that if mountain sickness hits, I will not be foolish enough to risk my life and I will go down immediately.

A lesser problem is to get in shape on time. None of us really trained much so far specifically for this, but we are probably all in a decent shape. On Sunday I ran a relaxed 10.7 kilometers on the treadmill in one hour without feeling tired, Tuesday I jogged 30 minutes at an incline of 8.5 – 10%, followed by a slower walk at an incline of 15%. That also went quite well, although I felt my muscles. And just now I decided to walk up to my apartment, which is located on the 37th floor. That also went quite good actually. The next weeks I will mainly do long slow runs in the gym, and I plan to do a lot of stair climbing. This weekend we will be in Moganshan, where I will have the opportunity to test my new hiking boots for the first time. That will likely be the only time that I can train on a real mountain as well.

Another part of the preparation is that I will cut back as much as possible on my alcohol intake. Not a big deal, because I normally don’t drink much during the week anyway. But the problem is that I do have a couple of good parties ahead of me: among others this weekend the Tudou Film Festival at Moganshan, and (even more worrying) the weekend before going to Tanzania the INSEAD ball at the Chateau de Fontainebleau in France…

I look very much forward to this exciting new challenge, very different from last year’s bike ride but also with a lot of similarities. It’s great to combine hard work with even harder physical challenges. It gives me a kick to to see if I can physically and mentally reach the goals I set for myself. And it certainly fits one of my life’s motto’s: Always try to live your life to the fullest!

Picture (creative commons): Rob Parkin

UPDATE: On May 24 Shanghaiist corrected its earlier story. Things were not as bad as described in the original email that they received. Although one person unsuccessfully tried to attack the volunteer and the crowd indeed surrounded his taxi (quite scary experience, I think), he was not physically harmed in the incident. I sincerely hope that this was an isolated incident and that things will calm down soon in China.

In order to avoid other media from using this story I have decided to delete the original blog post. You can still read the original article on Shanghaiist here.

In case you follow me on Twitter you know I have been posting there more and more over the past months. It’s a great tool to always keep in touch with real-life friends, people with similar interests and fellow entrepreneurs. I shared most of my life on Twitter, and got a lot back as a result as well. Try it for yourself, hard to explain in a blog post – but the social Internet basically works because the more you give the more you get. The same as with traffic on your site: the more you send people away the more they will come back. But I digress.

But I have always had a bit of a love-hate relationship with Twitter because of its frequent outages. There were times when the service was more often not working than that it was up. But it seems people like the service so much that they take that for granted. The problem is that there is simply no alternative, because the whole audience is on Twitter and you cannot just transfer that to Pownce or Jaiku. But honestly, I am a bit fed up with it now.

Early on Saturday morning (China time) I realized that I was not getting updates from people that I was following. I un-followed and re-followed them, and that did the trick – but only for about 1 hour. Then they were gone again. And the thing is that they also could not see my updates. Right now I have over 370 followers on Twitter, but I have no clue who I will reach with my messages and who I will not reach. A bit like sending a mass email, but not knowing who is able to receive it. And the other way around: others are broadcasting messages that might be interesting for me to see, but they don’t show up in my time line.

It’s now Monday night and the folks at Twitter still did not manage to solve the problem. Therefore I have decided to stop posting on Twitter until this issue is solved. It’s also a good way to test whether I am addicted to Twitter or not (I don’t think so, it’s just fun to get instant feedback on things you are doing). In the meantime I might post some messages on my Pownce account or on Facebook instead. Or I might just go back to the good old days before micro blogging, when I just had this weblog.

Last Friday Tudou celebrated its 3rd anniversary party in the Tudou Warehouse in Shanghai. About 200-300 people attended the party, that already started at 8 PM (parties in China always start a lot earlier than in Europe). The entrance lane to the Warehouse was decorated with lights, and the new Tudou logo was projected in several colors on the outside walls. Inside, part of the first floor was redecorated as a club with a small stage and professional DJ’s. As usual during our parties there was an open bar, with among others Absolut vodka mixes (Absolut sponsored some of the drinks) and all kinds of beers (several US microbrews and of course Tsingtao). After a not-so-good experience with Absolut during an earlier Tudou party (where I cannot even remember how I got home), I mainly drank the microbrews, and they were excellent.

Around 9 pm a video of the past 3 years was shown (I missed it, because I was trying to direct guests to the Warehouse – it’s not easy to find), and then Gary gave a short speech. Then the evening really started with professional dancers doing a show. Later in the evening Gary and I cut the 3-year anniversary cake (that was made by Yang Lei, good job!), and I was glad that this time people ate it instead of throwing it all around like during our 2nd anniversary. The first floor hallway walls were still virgin white, and soon the party goers were putting graffiti all over it. Now those walls look as cool as the second floor, that was covered in user-generated content two years ago already.

On the middle rooftop we had a BBQ and we played some older music (think ABBA), and it soon got pretty crowded up there. I was not sure if the roof would hold it (it luckily did) and did not want to stand in the “yang rou chuanr” smoke, so I went up to the top roof. We brought along some beers and soon a lot more people followed us up the steep steps. We had a lot of fun up there, especially when others volunteered to go down to supply us with more cold beers and even some birthday cake (thanks Koen).

It was a great evening, and we were lucky that the weather was also quite good so we could spend most of the night outside. Around 2 AM we decided to call it a night, when I realized I had not seen my wife for quite some time. It turned out she had called a meeting of some of her staff and they were just finishing up (she is very dedicated to her work!). She then went home, but Gary and I decided to continue the celebration in Lounge 18. We managed to get a table there and had a few bottles of champagne. Once again a Tudou night to remember!

I put some pictures on my Flickr account, but doing a search Flickr on the words Tudou party should give some more results. Also on Facebook I already found some pictures, for example this set by George Godula.

A friend of mine just sent me this picture. Not sure where it was taken, but the claims the product makes are so impressive that I just have to post it here!

Today it is exactly three years ago that Tudou.com went live! (See also this blog post that I wrote about Toodou – the former name of Tudou- on April 15, 2005 on my old weblog). “Only” three years I should probably say, because more has happened in these 36 months than what happens to most companies in 10-15 years. It was a great 3 years though, something like a big roller coaster that started to go faster and faster once it was set in motion. A roller coaster with ups and downs, like every start-up, but mainly ups.

Because of this there will be another Tudou Party this Friday in our office, the biggest one so far (at least if I look at the budget for it 🙂 Expect a combination of cool DJ’s, lots of drinks (Absolut vodka is a sponsor I heard) and hot dancers. If you have been involved with Tudou over the past years, or if you consider yourself a good friend of the company (or of mine), get in touch with me for an invitation.

The weekend after that (April 26-27) will be the first Tudou Film Festival on the Moganshan in Zhejiang province. We already had a film festival planned two years ago, but never found the time and resources to pull it off. Our three-year anniversary is a good occasion. The Tudou “Oscars” will be awarded in many categories, among others Best Actor, Best Actress, Best Documentary, Best Cartoon and Best Script.

The voting for the winners will depend for 50% on online votes. You can still vote here for the shortlisted films. The other 50% depends on a professional jury, consisting among others of famous directors, people from the media and advertising world (including Kaiser Kuo), journalists and even professors from films schools in the US. If you vote online you will have a chance to win a trip to the award ceremony on Moganshan, but you can also go there yourself (you will need to register here). It promises to be a great weekend in one of the most beautiful places in China. Good luck to all the nominees and see you on the mountain!

A couple of weeks ago Christine Lu from the China Business Network visited Shanghai and Beijing, and during that visit I met her for the first time. First during the geek dinner at Moon River Diner in the New Factories, and two days later for lunch and an interview. The interview was used for a Harvard conference that took place in late March, and she now also posted it on the China Business Network.

During the interview I talk a bit about Spill Group Asia (how it started, my strategy for the future), but also about foreigners vs. Chinese running companies, the role of guanxi and I give some advice to people that want to set up a business in China.

Last Friday the Chinese embassy in The Netherlands announced new visa regulations, regulations that took effect immediately and should take effect in the rest of the world tomorrow. The biggest changes are that a tourist visa has a maximum validity of 30 days (or according to some sources 20 days) instead of maximum 3 months before. Furthermore, much more information than before is needed (hotel reservations, flight details). Also for a business visa much more information is needed. For both visa types no new multiple entry visas are given, the maximum is now a double entry visa.

Just before that, the regulation for F-visa’s was changed as well. In the past interns at Spill Group Asia came to China on a tourist visa, that was changed to an F-visa during their first week here. But that’s suddenly not possible anymore. One intern had bad luck, we had to postpone his internship until after the Olympics, when things likely will go back to normal.

It looks like these measures are directly related to the protests outside China against the Olympics. I assume the country is trying to reduce the impact of protests during the Olympics by being more strict on who can come in. It’s a pity, I initially hoped that there would be visa-upon-arrival policy during the Olympics, but the protesters now led the government to make the rules even more strict.

The protesters probably have no idea that their protests have the opposite effect of what they think that they will achieve, as most Chinese feel the outside world is treating them unfairly and only become more supportive of the government. As Paul Midler writes in his blog “The unintended consequence of global protests is that many Chinese will feel more emboldened to display extreme national pride. While China was inclined to hide its jingoistic nature so that it could play host, protests have struck a nerve and the world may have unwittingly triggered a we’ll-show-them-attitude”.

Things have changed so much since China was awarded the Olympics in 2001, I personally think this country completely deserves a successful Olympics. The protesters have no idea what is really happening here, and as I said here before most of the foreign press are the reason for this. As a Dutch journalist told me recently: positive articles just do not get published or are put in the back of newspapers, only negative ones make the it to the front page. The Chinese press may be censored, but the past weeks have taught me that the foreign press is not much better. The difference is that people all know this about the Chinese press, but don’t realize it about the foreign press.

Anyway, the new visa regulations will likely mean less tourists and business visitors to China, but I think China does not care too much. It knows that nowasdays the West needs China more than China needs the West. In the end it is the foreign tourists and business men that will be affected most. Although I should also not overrate the changes, because they are not that big, it’s just more of a hassle to get the visa. And as one commenter said on the China Herald, the Chinese visa rules are still much less strict than the regulations the Dutch have for visa for Chinese. I fully agree.