Everybody can freely use my Flickr pictures under the Creative Commons license, and because of that they end up on many websites. Sometimes even on commercial ones, which is actually not allowed according to the Creative Commons license that I use (Attribution, non-commercial, no derivatives). I don’t mind that very much, but people should at least have the decency to check if it’s OK.

Recently for example Nokia used one of my pictures on its website to promote the E65 phone: http://europe.nokia.com/A4368290. They did not check with me if I would agree to this, and except for the credit I did not receive a penny. This is fine with me, I am not blogging nor taking pictures to make a living – that’s also why I do not put ads on this blog for example. But it’s a bit weird that someone else finds out and asks me about it. I did not even get a link (trackback), which is the least they could have done.

And amazingly they even dare to put Copyright Nokia 2007 next to it. So now they suddenly own the copyright to this picture? That’s turning the world upside down Nokia!

I just noted that I have over 50,000 views of my Flickr pictures already. To be exact, 50,503 visitors have looked at my photos at the moment I write this. The count seems to be picking up, even though most people in China cannot look at my pictures anymore (Flickr has been blocked since a few months).

Some more statistics: I started my Flickr photo stream (http://www.flickr.com/photos/chijs) in July 2005, so about two years ago. Since then I posted 4701 pictures, or over 6 pictures per day. According to my blog I hit the 10,000 pictures views milestone early March 2006.

Last night we had once again a very good dinner, this time at the quite famous Khyber restaurant, that serves North Indian food. After dinner we decided to walk back, because the weather was very pleasant (27 degrees and dry). It was an “interesting” walk!

It started with the beggars outside the restaurant that tried to follow us. They did not understand why we did not take a cab, because everybody who dines at Khyber seems to do that. We crossed the road, where lots of people were just making their beds in the open air (making a bed = putting some cartons on the ground to sleep on). We walked around them into a dark street that leads to the Oval Maidan grassland.

I had planned to walk through that park in the direction of our hotel, but the gates were locked. So we continued along the dark road covered by trees that made it even darker. Suddenly four guys crossed the road in our direction. It looked like they were not there to just say hello to us, and we sped up a bit walked on the road itself where there was some light. Then they noticed that Bennie was quite tall (1.96 m) and they decided to leave us alone. A bit scary. This never happened to me in Shanghai, although in Jakarta I had a similar experience once during daytime.

We continued past the university and the High Court, and suddenly noted some well-dressed young women standing in the shade of the trees. At first we were wondering what they were doing, but when we saw some other men walking by very slowing while looking at the women, it became clear to us that we had come across some street prostitutes. Maybe the guys who seemed to try to rob us had assumed that we were heading for these women, so that we must have cash on us. The girls were wearing traditional dresses, and were very different from what you would see in a Dutch red light area. We decided not to linger here, but move away as soon as possible.

Walking on the street at night in Shanghai has never caused me any trouble, but in Mumbai things seem to be a bit more dangerous. Maybe this was just a coincidence, I am not sure, but I will just take a taxi from now on. I like an after dinner walk, the only quiet time in this city, but I don’t want to end up in trouble.

This afternoon I had a few hours left to explore Mumbai a bit on foot. I made a walk from the hotel on the west side of the peninsula through the old English town to the waterfront at Colaba on the east side. It was way too hot to walk, because finally the sun came out, but it was a fantastic walk anyway. This is literally London in the tropics, but a bit greener. Some of the building are absolutely stunning, especially Bombay University and the High Court. I walked for about 2 hours, and only saw European architecture. I probably could have know this, had I prepared a bit for this trip in advance (I did prepare, but only the business part, not the tourist part), but I was very surprised.

Mumbai (or Bombay, the original name that many people still use) is a great city to spend a few days, there is so much to see and do. And a lot looks so familiar if you know England a bit. My impression of India gets better and better. But the CEO of the company that we talked to this morning warned us: Mumbai is not representative of the whole of India, and the part of Mumbai that we are staying in is not representative of the whole of Mumbai. So we start with the best of the best so to speak. No power cuts, good internet, relatively clean and not too poor (relatively speaking to what I was expecting). Wednesday and Thursday we will travel a bit farther out of town, let’s see if we still like it then.

For some of the pictures that I took of the street scenes and the European architecture, see my pictures at http://www.flickr.com/photos/chijs (or if you read this later, click on the photo set Mumbai/Bombay on the right side of the screen).

Yesterday we walked through Churchgate station in Mumbai, and noticed the railways have some interesting classes of trains. Of course there is the first class section, but this compartment was in worse shape than any train in Holland (or even China) would ever be.

But they also have a compartments only for women, so they won’t be crushed between the men on the often totally overloaded trains.

The front part of the train was for luggage, this part had no seats – just a dirty floor without any windows. To my surprise this part was not only for luggage, however, but also specially reserved for handicapped and cancer patients…

Namaste! Late last night I arrived in Mumbai (India) after spending most of last week in the Netherlands. This is my first time in India. It does not happen often anymore that I am in a country for the first time, and I am always excited when I get to see a new culture. India has not disappointed me so far. Yes, it is dirty, it is poor, it is busy everywhere and it’s warm and humid (it’s monsoon here), but I was prepared for that and overall I like the atmosphere. People smile and (a big difference with China) most people speak English.

This country has a big potential, but a lot of things will first have to be changed, especially the infrastructure. As an example, we (I am here with one of the founders of Spill Group) walked into a train station this afternoon, and it was just plain dirty. Trains were totally worn-out, and looked like they would fall apart. I could not find any signs where trains would be going, and they seemed to leave without any announcement. In the Sunday Times I read just now that some of the train stations in Mumbai were flooded because of the monsoon, not only the tracks but even the platforms!

We are staying at a nice 5-star boutique hotel, the Marine Plaza. Our rooms overlook the Arabian sea, which was a big surprise when I opened my curtains this morning (we arrived after midnight last night when it was pitch dark outside). Rooms are big, with a separate dressing room and a luxurious bath room. Their is a nice rooftop swimming pool, with a good view over the bay and part of the city. One of our business partners in India recommended it to us, and it was a good choice.

Not sure how busy the coming week will be, but I will try to post updates here every now and then. Twitter will likely even have more regular updates (I plan to blog about Twitter soon, for people who don’t know it yet). You can follow me there at http://twitter.com/marcvanderchijs

I am in Hilversum now, in the house that Spill arranged for all its personnel worldwide that visits headquarters. Quite convenient, because I am not a big fan of staying in hotels all the time. Especially not the rather mediocre hotels in Hilversum (especially Gooiland and to a lesser extent Lapershoek), or maybe I am just a bit spoilt by Asian hospitality standards. The Spill Residence, as I decided to call it, is a 3-story house (probably from the 1930s?) with 4 bedrooms and a nice small garden. I have a big room with a large desk to work from, downstairs there is a living room with cable TV and big kitchen. The company sends in housekeepers to keep it clean, and the fridge was well-stocked when I came in last night.

This morning I first went for a run in the woods (in order wake up after just four hours of sleep – thanks to my jetlag), and then made myself a “healthy” breakfast of bread with fried eggs, ham and cheese, while watching the Dutch news on TV. Nicer than in a hotel, where I tend to over-indulge on the buffet breakfasts. The other good thing about this, is that some other Spill people might also stay here, which gives me a chance to get to know them better. Today for example, Jonathan (who is running working for Spill Group in Paris) is visiting and we had a beer last night before I went to bed. Spill is growing so fast (not only in China, also in the rest of the world) that it gets more and more difficult to know all the people in the company, and the Spill Residence certainly helps to partially solve that problem.

I am sitting in the front row of the upper deck of a KLM B-747 from Shanghai to Amsterdam, while listening to an 80’s playlist on my iPod with a new pair of Sennheiser NoiseGard headphones (great for intercontinental flights, because the noise the plane makes is filtered out). As regular readers may know I stopped flying business class after I turned entrepreneur, but every now and then KLM still upgrades me (thanks to the Elite status that I still have). Normally this happens while checking in or when you enter the plane, but today they came to me right after take-off with the question if I would mind to change into a better seat for the remainder of the flight. I did not mind.

I assume they normally upgrade when the economy class is overbooked and there are still a few spaces left in business. But maybe it is also some kind of marketing trick to lure you back into sleeper seats on your next trip. If that is the case the airline certainly had a small success today. The flight is almost over (we are above Sweden while I write this) and I feel fitter than ever after a long flight. Not only did I have a good rest, but I also worked a lot, caught up on all my RSS feeds (good that Google Reader also works offline), watched a movie and read two thick Dutch Saturday newspapers.

Business class is still way too overpriced I feel, because the price difference on an intercontinental flight covers the monthly salary of one or two additional employees. Those are things that count when you run a business instead of when you are a small part of a big multinational. On the other hand, I now always take day flights when flying to Europe. That means it costs me a full working day (even though I normally try to use the weekend to fly), but if I would fly business class again I would probably opt for a night flight. It would be possible to leave the office in Shanghai at 9:30 PM, drive to the airport, take the Air France midnight flight to Paris, change planes there early in the morning and arrive fresh in our office in Hilversum at 9:30 AM. Putting a value on me being in the office instead of being in a plane is a bit arbitrary, but likely the balance would be for me to keep flying economy. So I probably won’t do it in the near future, but at least KLM made me think about it. So, if this is a marketing action: smart move KLM. Feel free to upgrade me again!