New Years Eve was nice and relaxed. Qi and I first went to see the New Year’s Concert in the Shanghai Center Concert Hall. We almost did not make it on time: the government had decided that Dec. 31 was a normal working day (people get in Jan. 2 and 3 off in return – I don’t like it at all), so there were no taxi’s to be found, and once we had one we had to endure Shanghai’s traffic jams. The concert by the London Mozart Players featured several Mozart pieces (among others Le Nozze di Figaro and the Ouverture to Don Giovanni), but of course also the Strauss classics such as The Blue Danube and the Pizzicato Polka. The final was the Radetzky March, and to my amazement the mainly Chinese audience also started clapping to the rhythm, just like in Vienna.

When the concert was over we had some cocktails in the Long Bar (right below the theater), before heading back home. From the bar we could watch the audience scrambling to find taxi’s. Once most were gone our drinks were finished, and went over to the Ritz-Carlton hotel to get a taxi. At home I had prepared cheese fondue with a bottle of Veuve Clicquot-Ponsardin champagne, a great combinaton! We watched the movie ‘Bewitched’ while keeping an eye on the clock. At 12 AM we went outside to watch the fireworks, but that was rather disappointing. Inside the inner ring road (where we live) fireworks were apparantly banned, so we could only watch them in the far distance. A big difference from Chinese NY 2004 when I thought a war broke out at midnight, so much firework was suddenly lighted (I still have footage from that, I should probably upload it to Toodou).

2006 had a good start: I woke up around 9 AM refreshed and ready for a new year! Gmail is working again, and both my Apple Powerbook and my BenQ laptop seem to be working fine. Already got some work done this morning, and now I am going to prepare a brunch with croissants, banana bread, french bread, several french cheeses, and scrambled eggs. The espresso machine is already heating up!

2005 was one big roller-coaster ride for me, lots of changes, lots of action, ups and downs, and never a dull moment. I enjoyed the year, but it was certainly not always easy. Being an entrepreneur means taking risks and working (sometimes extremely) hard on things you believe in. This is not always easy to combine with a normal private life.

On the private life-side the beginning of 2005 was difficult when Qi had an operation, but luckily everything turned out well. Shortly after that I proposed to her and we had a wonderful wedding in September. I am happy that she always supports me, and does not complain too much about my working hours. We had some great vacations this year, on Koh Samui and in the Philippines. I realize more and more how important these trips are to look at your work and daily life from a different perspective.

Sportswise I finally ran my first marathon, although with an injury (that has still not gone away). I hope to keep the habit of training regularly, I feel I can accomplish a lot more when I am in good shape.

What will 2006 be like? Hopefully just as exciting, but hopefully also with a bit more time for my friends and family. I plan to keep doing lots of sports, but am not sure of a second marathon yet. The plan to ride from Lhasa to Kathmandu on my mountain bike still stands, and I have started training for that already. Vacation wise I don’t know, but I hope to spend next year Christmas in Europe. In China, I miss the Christmas and NY atmosphere. Workwise there are many new exciting projects and ideas, and I am currently in the process of deciding on what to focus. I’ll keep you posted.

I want to wish all my readers a healthy and happy 2006, xin nian kuai le!

This picture I took last weekend in the Longhua Cemetery. It seems like someone took his mother out for a walk around the place, but got tired of it. So this person stopped the wheelchair next to a monument, threw a coat over her head and walked off. The mother did not seem to mind, maybe she was asleep? I could not check that out because the coat covered her face. 15 minutes later she was still there. Funny or sad?

I cannot believe it, my Gmail account is blocked again. This afternoon I decided to download the remaining messages to my mail client. I only had a few months left to download and estimated that the amount would be less than what I downloaded 2 days ago, so I should be safe. But no, ten minutes ago I received the lockdown message again. Luckily I now have almost all my messages downloaded (it stopped on Dec. 24, so one week left), and so I have a back-up of most mails. I will send Google an email once again, but am afraid it does not make any difference. I only received an automated reply to the mail I sent them two days ago, so I wonder if anybody is actually looking into this.

So a warning to all of you: if you use Gmail do not download all messages at once to a new email client. At least not when you have so many emails in there as I do: over 12,000 business and private emails in about 8 months of Gmail usage (I delete all spam and non-important mails), in total about 1.6 GB of information. Will keep you posted when they decide to let me use it again. Thanks Google 🙁

Update: Gmail started working again after about 20 hours.

On Christmas Day I also went to the Longhua Cemetery of Revolutionary Martyrs. It’s a nice place for a walk, because it is one of the very few places in Shanghai where it is actually quiet. You don’t hear the noise of cars, and there are hardly any people. In summer you are even allowed to walk and sit on the grass (very unusual for China). The place is a museum for Revolutionary Martyrs, and some of them are supposed to be buried here as well.

The museum is located in a glass pyramid, and is actually quite interesting. And not unimportant for tourists, most exhibits and pictures have English descriptions. It gives a (very one-sided) view of life in China in the time before the Communists took over power, and it has photos of all the ‘martyrs’ that were executed during that time. I think we were the only visitors in the museum, so the subject does not seem to be very popular among Chinese. If you want to take a look, the entrance to the cemetary is on Longhua Xi Lu next to the Longhua Temple.

I did a radio interview with CRI about two weeks ago, but was informed that there was no mp3 of the program available (something went wrong in the studio). But someone just told me that the program is actually online, and can be found here. Click on the “listen” link on that page, the segment with the interview (about Toodou and the influence of podcasting on radio) starts at 18min22sec.

My Gmail account suddenly started working again 2 hours ago (I did not get a reply from Google to the email in which I had to give them all the details about what happened). I feel relieved!

I missed 38 emails over the past 24 hours, luckily most people are on vacation, otherwise it would have been a much bigger problem. I am not sure if I should start downloading my mails again right now. I am a bit afraid it will close down automatically again, I’ll probably wait a few days first.

One thing I did not realize until today is how much my daily life depends on Gmail. Because of the all the computer problems I had recently, I lost all my emails that I saved in Outlook and Entourage. But that was not a big deal because all my emails accounts are automatically forwarded to my Gmail account, so I have a back-up there.

Today I decided to reinstall Outlook on my laptop and Mail (not Entourage this time) on my Apple. I set up the Gmail pop3 account settings on both machines and let them run to download all my mails. At the same time I was using the Gmail on the web to write and answer emails. When a new email came in I clicked on it, and suddenly my screen read “Lockdown in sector 4!” and then: Our system indicates unusual usage of your account. In order to protect Gmail users from potentially harmful use of Gmail, this account has been disabled for up to 24 hours.

What happened? I guess I was downloading too much data, and they suspected abuse. But can they just shut down my mail without any warning? And is downloading information from Gmail to a mail client not something standard? I contacted them directly (they have a special email account for this), and got an automated reply back with several questions. I answered those right away, but have not heard from them since, which is about 4 or 5 hours ag0. This is giving me a serious headache, because I have no back-up whatsoever now. And what will happen when I manage to access my account again tomorrow? If I continue to download my files, will they disable my account completely?