Today I had a photo shoot for an article in the Holland Herald, KLM’s inflight magazine. After taking some pictures in the Spil Games office we drove to the Bund for some outdoor ones. For days I could not see the Pudong skyline from my office window, but today the smog had cleared up a lot and the sun was finally visible again. Perfect weather for taking magazine pictures, except for the fact that it was freezing cold (around 0 degrees Celsius but with a major wind chill factor over the river). 

The past days were not the best ones for most parts of China, because pollution levels were getting from bad to worse. I am glad that I don’t live in Beijing where the pollution was off the charts for several days, but even Shanghai (which is directly on the sea) had hazardous levels of air quality. The air was smelling foul and I had a headache for 2 days in a row, something which is very unusual for me. 

The air was so bad that several friends of ours were considering to fly with their kids to Hong Kong until the smog would disappear. We kept Scott and Elaine inside, no playing in the garden or in the playground for them. Also the school informed us that the kids were not allowed to go outside if the air quality was over 150 (=unhealthy level threshold).

I wonder what the government will do about this, because the situation seems to be getting worse by the month. When I lived in Beijing from 2000-2002 we had heavy smog in wintertime as well, but nobody measured it and at the time most people blamed it on the fact that Beijingers in the hutongs heated their houses with coal. But that has changed and now cars and industrial pollution are the main culprits.

The good thing about China is that the government has the power to change things radically and they may be forced to make radical changes (only hybrid or electric cars anyone?). Everyone knows this will jeopardize growth in the short run, but I think they don’t really have a choice. Because of the hukou system most Chinese still can’t easily move to different cities, and there is a limit to how much pollution they are willing to endure for themselves and their families. At least for now the worst pollution seems to be over and I could take some pictures from the riverside promenade at the Bund, a place I had not visited in a very long time.

A Happy 2013 to all my readers!

On New Year’s Eve I took it relatively easy with a big family dinner followed by a party at Danny Wilms Floet place and then Champagne at home at midnight, because New Year’s Day would be longer than usual. Yesterday we flew to Vancouver with the family for a few days of winter vacation combined with several business meetings.

Because Vancouver is 16 hours behind Shanghai the day lasted 40 hour and my experience is that partying late or drinking a lot does not help a lot with jet lag. Certainly not if you also have to take care of the kids during the flight.

The trip itself went better than expected, although I did not get a lot of sleep. Air Canada has a rule that your kids have to sit in the row in front of you in their Executive First Class suites, something we did not know when we booked the flight. But the kids fly so much that they both did not mind that they could not see us during the flight. Take-off and landing are sometimes a problem for Elaine, but after talking to the purser Scott and Elaine were allowed to sit next to us at the beginning and end of the flight.

After dinner Scott watched a cartoon TV program for about 10 minutes and then went to sleep very quickly. Elaine, however, did not want to sleep. She got up from her seat all the time and wanted to watch films or play games. First I let her do that but after a while I also wanted to sleep myself, so eventually I decided to lie down next to her until she was asleep. Then she started complaining that her bed was too small… After about an hour of trying I just sat at the end of her bed and sang the Dutch song “Slaap Kindje Slaap” to her, which immediately worked.

Then I was not sleepy myself anymore and watched a stand-up comedy program with a glass of port wine and some cheese. When I went to sleep it was 7 AM in Vancouver already… About an hour later Scott woke me up because he had to go to the toilet. I helped him with that, but as a result I was completely awake again and could not sleep anymore. I nodded off a few times, but all in all I did not get more than an 1-2 hours of real sleep.

We landed in Vancouver around 12:45 PM, went through immigration and got our suitcases. My parents picked us up and drove us to our house in West Vancouver (booked through AirBnB). The place we rented is quite nice and I especially like the view over Howe Sound with the snowcapped mountains in the background. Beautiful!

At night a friend came over for a glass of wine and afterward we had a quick dinner in Horseshoe Bay. During the meal both Scott and Elaine almost fell asleep, so we didn’t stay long and put the kids to bed. I was so tired that I started to write this post but stopped after about 10 minutes and went to bed as well. It was a long but very eventful New Year’s Day, a good start of 2013.

Last night we had dinner at Sam Flemming’s house and while driving back it was snowing hard. So this morning when I got up the first thing I did was to look outside to see if Shanghai would be white. And indeed it was, although it was just a very thin layer of snow.

It hardly ever snows in Shanghai, so Scott and Elaine were very excited and wanted to go outside before breakfast already. I didn’t think that was a good idea, so they both finished their meal in record time and then immediately put on their winter coat, shoes and gloves.

There was not a lot of snow, but just enough to throw snowballs at their dad and for them to realize that snow in your face is really cold. After playing in our garden they rode their bikes to the playground where they both played on the snow-covered slides and had a lot of fun.

I had a hard time getting Scott and Elaine to go back home with me, but the promise of making them both a hot chocolate worked. They asked me if they could play in the snow again in the afternoon, but most of the snow has melted away in the meantime so I’m afraid that won’t be possible anymore. At least we still have the pictures!

Yesterday Scott celebrated his 5th birthday. He had been talking about it for weeks, counting the nights until he would turn 5. After getting a lot of presents during Christmas already we still managed to find a few new ones for him, among others a new (bigger) bicycle.

Our birthday boy could also choose what he wanted to eat. I had expected him to go for pancakes or french fries, but it turned out I was wrong: Scott insisted to go to a Robatayaki restaurant! Of all the restaurants that he goes to (on average probably about 2 restaurants per week) a Japanese grill is his favorite. I know he likes the restaurant because of the way the food is served (the cooks grill over charcoals right in front of you and hand it to you with long wooden paddles while shouting something in Japanese), but when I asked Scott he told me that their salmon fried rice is his personal favorite and that’s why he wanted to go there.

Before we left I checked again with Scott and gave him some other choices, but he insisted on robatayaki. The dinner was nice as usual although, as with many local Japanese restaurants, it was still quite empty. Right after the Diaoyu/Senkaku anti-Japanese protests the restaurant was almost deserted, at least now about 40% of the seats were taken. Local Chinese don’t seem to come here anymore and many of the Japanese businessmen that used to come here to eat and drink after work haven’t returned yet either.

A real pity, because it’s a great restaurant and the owner is very friendly. The stickers on the stores and restaurants around this robatayaki place (‘we boycot Japanese products’) certainly don’t help either. Luckily Scott is unaware of the tensions and for us the advantage is that we could easily get a table: in the past you could not just walk in without a reservation.

Restaurant name & adress: Robatayaki Ryunosuke, 2988 Hongmei Lu (near Wuzhong Lu), Chinese: 虹梅路2988号, 近吴中路

I just finished reading Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged, the famous novel that starts with the rhetorical queston “Who is John Galt?”. When I ordered the book I mainly did so because I felt it’s a book that everyone should read at least once in his/her life. During the US presidential campaign I saw references to the book quite often (both Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan counted the book among their favorites) and that intrigued me. I am not a fan of the current Republican Party (especially because of their pro-religion and anti-global warming stance), but I wanted to understand the Republican’s points of view a bit better, and the book certainly helps to do that.

Because of this I didn’t really think I would enjoy the book, and when I saw that the novel was 1168 pages long and printed in a small font I wasn’t sure whether reading it would be a worthwhile investment of my time. But it turned out it was: Atlas Shrugged is actually one of the best books I ever read, a great story that makes you think about the virtues and disadvantages of capitalism, socialism/communism, politics, business and most important, reason.

Although I still don’t fully agree with the theme of the book (the role of man’s mind in existence) and especially not with the way Mrs. Rand describes it (too binary, it’s not either 0% or 100%), the book itself is excellent and makes you think about the world around you and the way people act – or don’t act. But it’s not just about economic theory or existential philosophy, because that would make an almost 1200 page book too boring to read for me.

The story is quite intriguing, describing the People’s State of America in a 1950’s like setting , in which the government is taking more and more control of businesses, leading the real business men to give up and disappear. The main character in the book is Ms. Dagny Taggart who runs Taggert Transcontinental, the biggest railroad in the country. She gives everything to let the railroad survive, despite the fact that it’s clear from the beginning that it will be impossible to win if the government’s goal is to eventually control (and thereby destroy) all businesses.

The book is a combination of a mythical story (think about a present-day Atlantis), an economic and political story, but also a love story with several of the main personas getting romantically involved with Dagny. And there is some mystery as well, because it takes more than half the book before you realize what is really going on and who John Galt is.

The only thing I would have changed is that I would have liked the book to be a bit shorter. Is it really necessary to have a 60-page speech (without a single interruption or remark, from page 1009-1069) by John Galt? Sometimes Mrs. Rand drags on for too long and she keeps on revisiting her favorite themes. Because of that it took me over a month to read this book, when I normally finish a book in 2-3 days. I even read a few books in between, but once I was halfway I finished the rest of the book in just over a week, and the last 270 pages in one day.

This book is not for everyone, but if you have an entrepreneurial mind I think you will enjoy it. The entrepreneurs are the heroes in this book and even though they are despised by the government they are idolized through Ayn Rand’s theories. Many people seem to have read Atlas Shrugged in high school, but I think that would have been too early for me. You need more life experience to really understand and enjoy it.

For me the book was much better than I had expected, but it’s not a novel that you can read in a few nights. It’s one of the very few books that I would describe as important to read at least once in your life. I am sure that over the coming years I will discuss it more than once over a glass of wine with others that also read it, and I may even reread it eventually.

Note: the book has been made into a movie as well, into 2 movies actually (part I and II). So if you are mainly interested in the story and less in the details of it philosophical themes, the film may be a decent substitute. I only watched the trailer of the movie and it saw that it plays in a different era, but from what I read the story seems to be quite similar.

I am celebrating Christmas 2012 at home in Shanghai with my family instead of traveling to a tropical island or to a snow-covered mountain. Just relaxing, reading books, watching a Christmas movie, drinking a good glass of wine, taking the kids to Ocean World, play with them and their new toys, and generally just having a good time.

Merry Christmas to all my readers!

After Santa Claus visited our house in the middle of the night

Cheese fondue on Christmas Eve

Scott and Elaine unpacking their presents

At Shanghai Ocean World (Changfeng Park) where we were one of the very few visitors

The nice thing about the Christmas holiday is that you have time to read things that you normally would not make time for. A few days ago I saw several links on Twitter to the Snow Fall multimedia article that the New York Times published. It seemed too long to read that day so I saved it for later. Often that means that I would read it in Pocket on my iPad or iPhone while commuting, but for this article that would have taken away the extra features that make it so special.

The multimedia content blew me away and that’s why I decided to put this post on my blog. I am not sure whether the New York Times plans to publish more articles like this or if this is just a test, but what they published was just amazing. A great design and a combination of pictures, video and audio that I have not seen before. If it was just a test I think it was probably a big success, considering how much was written about this article in different online media. The New York Times once again shows the way forward for Old Media.

Snow Fall describes a deadly avalanche at Tunnel Creek (Stevens Pass, WA) in February this year. It’s not just a very readable story, but it uses all forms of multimedia to illustrate the article. The piece starts with a full screen looping video of snow blowing over a mountain slope, which disappears when you scroll down. After reading a few paragraphs the story talks about one of the survivors of the avalanche and this is illustrated with a video interview with her about her experience.

This is how the feature keeps on illustrating the written content: from videos about backcountry skiing (very inspiring, although that was likely not the intent of the article) to maps of the area showing not only where the skiers were during the avalanche but also how the avalanche moves down the mountain. There is video from the helmet cameras of some of the skiers, slideshows with private pictures of the skiers, but also features on how and why avalanches occur. Even audio of the 911 calls of the survivors of the avalanche was included, which makes the story even more real.

This feature may be the future of online quality journalism, and this is something I would gladly pay for. The New York Times is actually the only online newspaper that I pay for right now (I subscribe to their online and iPad editions), but this feature is also free for non-subscribers. The only thing I was surprised about was that the iPad edition did not contain most of the multimedia features of the online article. If you spend so much time and money on an article like this the New York Times should have also put it into their iPad app.

You should read, watch and listen to this for yourself, so go to the article to experience it when you have some time during the upcoming holidays. I don’t think you will regret it.

There is also a 10-minute documentary at the end of the article about the avalanche. If you don’t want to read the whole feature, you can watch the documentary here.

This afternoon Scott and Elaine wanted to ride their bikes, so I took them to the playground in our compound. While they rode around I realized that it seems like we were the only ones of our neighbors still in Shanghai. Nobody seemed to be home in the last weekend before Christmas.

For the 30 minutes that we were outside I did not see a single other person. Normally on a Saturday afternoon it’s quite busy with kids running, screaming and playing, but now it was totally silent. We didn’t see any other kids, and not even ayis buying groceries or drivers waiting in cars. Everybody was either on a tropical beach, on the ski slopes in Europe or North America, or back in their home country.

Normally we would also be in a more exotic location, but because Grace and I are working on a project we will stay in China until New Year. It’s actually quite nice to be home in a quiet compound during Christmas. But of course Shanghai is not the best location to be in during the holidays, because Chinese don’t celebrate Christmas (schools and offices are open as usual). But we decided not to leave the compound much over the next days, so we won’t notice that the world outside keeps on turning as usual.