After our trip to Hong Kong Disneyland a few weeks ago, the kids keep on singing It’s A Small World. They have a video on their iPads that we shot inside the It’s A Small World ride, and they watch that video often while singing along to the tunes of the song. When they sing it I regularly muse about this world being really small – or that my network is really big? – because everywhere I go I meet people that I already know. Last night was a good example.

I organized a small bbq party and had among others invited Nicky Koopman to join. Nicky works for Dutch media company Talpa and is in town for the pre-production of TV program The Voice. I had not met her in person yet, but we had been in touch over email over the past weeks because of my experiences in the Chinese media industry. So we had a few glasses of good wine – among others an 18-year old Beringer Cabernet Sauvignon (thanks to serial fashion entrepreneur Jeff Clark!). and then we talked a bit about mutual friends. It turned out we indeed had a couple of them, not unusual if you are both Dutch and work in media.

She then asked me if I knew a certain person, and I told her yes, this person had even been to my wedding 7 years ago. She then looked at me and said: “But then I’ve likely been to your wedding as well!”. I had to think for a second and then I realized who she was. Friends of mine who were flying to my wedding had met her on the plane from Amsterdam to Beijing and told her they had a dinner party that night (for my wedding, which was to take place the next day) and had asked her to come along. So she sort of “wedding crashed” the party without really knowing who I was – and without me knowing anymore who she was. I only vaguely remembered that she was presenting a Dutch TV program at that time, and because there were probably about 150 other guests at the dinner I sort of forgot about it.

It’s quite a coincidence that you meet a person almost 7 years later, when you are both in very different roles and without realizing that you met before. If she had not asked me about the mutual acquaintance we may have never found out. Often serendipities occur because of the social media, but this time it was totally unrelated. It’s a small world!

A few weeks ago Joe Constanty restarted the successful NextStep Tuesday events and I agreed to speak at tonight’s one at Kartel in Shanghai. Topic will mainly be online fashion start-up unitedstyles.com (last time I spoke at NextStep I already talked about Tudou and Spil Games), but feel free to ask any other questions after the event.

NextStep starts at 7 PM and I will give a short talk at 7:30 PM. Free entrance & drinks are 50% off, so no reason not to come. See you there!

See also: http://nschina.tumblr.com/post/21322587084/nschina-on-tuesday-may-8th-we-will-host

Location:KARTEL
5/F, 1 Xiangyang Bei Lu, near Julu Lu, Shanghai
襄阳北路1号5楼, 巨鹿路

I am spending a few days on Koh Samui with my family, one of my favorite tropical islands. The place has everything: from unspoiled beaches and endless coconut plantations, to high-end dining and a good night life. Although I was here mainly for business related reasons I had a great time.

This morning I drove from our villa to the French bakery to buy a baguette for breakfast and then wanted to get gas, when I realized I did not bring enough cash. So I stopped at an ATM (every 7-11 and Family Mart has an ATM here, meaning that you are never more than a few hundred meters away from one) to get some more Thai Baht. In Thailand you normally first get your receipt, then your money and only then your bank card. Not smart, because people may forget their cards after taking their money, but that’s a different story.

Anyway, I got my receipt and money and was waiting for my card to come out. After waiting for about 10 seconds the card still did not come out, and I got a bit worried that my card may have been lost. But that was not the case, because when I looked at the ATM screen I saw and ad with the question whether I liked the advertising or not. Only after clicking that I would get my card back!

I have seen a lot of ATMs all over the world, and many of them have advertising on it. Either before you start, during the transaction or you get your money. But this is the first time that I was asked to let the bank know whether I liked the ad before getting back my card! An innovative idea, but I hope China won’t start copying this.

Early this morning I was doing my emails in my study, when I suddenly heard my wife arguing with someone downstairs. The arguing got louder and louder and I heard one of the nannies scream at Grace. I had no idea what was going on, and because the kids were also downstairs I walked down to see what was happening.

It seemed that Grace was extremely angry, and I heard something about medicine but could not really figure out what the whole thing was about. The kids pretended they did not hear anything and talked to me as if nobody else was in the room (“Good morning daddy, shall we play?”), but I thought it was better for them to play in a different room because the situation looked like it would escalate.

So I put the kids in the play room and then Grace’s mother (who is visiting) came in to tell me that Scott’s nanny had given him 10 times too much medicine! I understood that that may be a life threatening mistake and that Grace had every right to be angry. Grace then fired the nanny on the spot, which I found a bit harsh, upon which the nanny threatened to call the police. When Grace said that was fine she (of course) did not call the cops and after some more arguing about how much money we owed her (and being paid) she left to pack her belongings.

Then I heard the whole story, which was even worse than I had expected. Scott had been sick with high fever over the past days, so he went to see a doctor on Monday. Turns out he had a throat infection. Nothing too bad, he had it a few months before as well (pollution related? I hope not) and we still had the medicine left at home for him in a bottle. He was supposed to get 4 ml once or twice a day. At night Grace noticed that the bottle was almost empty, which surprised her because she thought the bottle had still been half full.

So she asked the nanny whether she had given Scott too much medicine. She said that that was not the case and that she had given Scott the amount that Grace’ father had told her to give to Scott. Grace asked how much that was and she told Grace to ask her father. So she did and he confirmed 4 ml per time. Then the nanny said that she indeed had given Scott 4 ml but that she had given him twice 4 ml. Grace showed her how much 4 ml is and she said that that is how much Scott got. Strange of course, but it could be that there had been less medicine left in the bottle than we thought.

But this morning the nanny went to Grace’ parents and told them that she had not slept the whole night and confessed she had given Scott 40 ml instead of 4 ml. Grace parents then told this to Grace right away, and then she got really upset with the nanny. Not only because the nanny had made a huge mistake, but especially because she had tried to cover it up and put Scott in potentially serious danger. Had she told Grace right away she would not have been fired, but by trying to cover it up there was no other choice than to fire her. So she left, and as we found out a few minutes later, she had stolen a few hundred RMB as well right before she walked out of the house.

We then immediately got in touch with the doctor. She told us that it was too late to do anything, had we come to her yesterday they would have emptied Scott’s stomach, but now the medicine was in his system already. There is not much we can do except giving him as much to drink as possible so he can go to the toilet. He may have stomach ache and may have to vomit (which he did actually). For now Scott seems to be okay, he was laying on the couch playing a bit with the cushions and told me he had a headache, but there did not seem to be anything seriously wrong with him. Likely things will be fine as long as Scott keeps on drinking. If he does not he will have to get an IV drip in the hospital to stay hydrated.

What happened today was a major scare for us, and not the first one we had with nannies: I could write a book about all the things we have experienced so far with domestic staff. From now on we will give the kids their medicine ourselves, it seems you can’t trust nannies to do this anymore. We have to go to Singapore tonight but of course will only go if Scott is really fine over the next couple of hours.

I was in Beijing today for a few meetings and just like last time the weather in the capital city was awful. It was supposed to be sunny and warm, but instead a thick layer of smog covered the city and kept the temperature much lower than it should have been. I felt the smoky air in my throat as we crossed the city from meeting to meeting, and my colleagues had the same (one even bought a face mask). I still love Beijing, but there is no way anybody can get me to live there anymore. It’s just not healthy and I have the feeling it’s only getting worse each time I go there.

So I was glad I could leave the city at night again, this time by train. Yesterday I flew in because I could not catch the last train anymore, but today I decided to book a sleeper seat on the fast train back to Shanghai. It was a good choice, traveling by train is so much more relaxing than traveling by plane. First of all you can arrive at the train station until a few minutes before departure (try that at the airport!), but you also don’t have the hassle of checking in bags or the annoying security checks.

The trip is much longer (5h22m for my train, it made quite some stops, there are faster trains on this route vs. about 2 hours for the BJ-SH flight), but you save at least 1-1.5 hours with all the airport formalities and the fact that Beijing airport is farther away from the city (of course depending on where your meetings are at). But the best thing is that you can keep on working on the train, during most of the ride there is a great 3G signal (much better than a few months ago, when half the trip I could not go online) and also your phone works during the whole trip.

The seats are superior to the seats on most airplanes and much cheaper than first or even biz class seats on an airplane (RMB 1750 for a one-way trip on sleeper seats). The air on board is obviously much better than on an airplane because cabins aren’t pressurized, and because the train stops every 45 minutes you can step out several times during the trip if you would like to. Just don’t step out too long, normally the train seems to stop for less than a minute!

Food is just as bad as on a plane, but the good thing is that it’s easier to bring your own food and drinks. This time I bought some snacks from Burger King at the train station and only ate a small part of the dinner that the staff served me. I didn’t bring drinks but had a beer: a Tibetan beer called “Green Barley”. I had never heard of this beer before. It was drinkable, but next time I’ll bring my own Tsingtao.

Interesting is that during most of the ride I was the only passenger in the sleeper compartment, only during the first hour (between Beijing and Jinan) there were a few other passengers. After that silence. Except for the 4-5 times when passenger that booked tickets in other classes sneaked in and sat down, only to be kicked out again within a few minutes by the well-trained female train attendants. Some tried to bribe them (didn’t work), one got angry (a foreign business man that thought he had booked the most expensive seats but ended up in first class seats instead), and 3 guys who were just plain drunk and walked out the moment the attendant told them to go.

I enjoyed the train ride and although the trip is longer than the flight I feel like it was a much shorter trip. I highly recommend taking a train to anybody traveling in China, especially during day time when  you can see a bit of the China’s countryside as well.

Unitedstyles is still a very lean organization (14 full-time employees), but we now decided that we need to hire an additional senior IT person in our Shanghai office. We put the profile on a few career sites today, so of course I also put it on my blog. Please forward to anybody that would be a fit for this position!

IT operations and development manager

About us

Unitedstyles has developed a fashion customization platform on unitedstyles.com and also in an iframe on other websites. Users can design, share and buy their own creations, soon they should be able to sell using our affiliate system. Unitedstyles is based in Shanghai and was a finalist at Techcrunch Beijing 2011.

Job description

You should have experience managing servers with over 50,000 visitors both in and outside china. Proficiency in CSS and Javascript is a plus. You should appreciate the details that make a front-end user experience memorable, and demonstrate enthusiasm for efficient server implementation. Besides that, enthusiasm to use technology to improve our backend processes.

Fundamentals
• Experienced with Linux/Unix/BSD in CDN. Database management in MySQL.
• Architecting MySQL databases a plus.
• Stability of website and scaling of website.
•  Security of webshops is a plus.
•  PHP and javascript expert.
• Ability to work proactively.
•  A desire to improve yourself as an engineer.
• Should be able to speak both Chinese and English

Salary
Depending on experience, up to RMB 15,000/month (gross salary)

Education
BA/BS degree in Math or Computer Science a plus.

Contact
Email: joop@unitedstyles.com

This morning I went through my email and saw a mail from Chinese social network P1.cn. I decided a long time ago not to become a member of the site, so I almost deleted the mail. But then the title ‘your recommendation letter’ intrigued me, so I took a quick peek at the spam they were mailing. Turns out that the site is sending out recommendation letters to prospective members, probably to convince these people to sign up. Fine, except for the fact that this was a recommendation that was supposed to come from me!!!

I don’t know what happened, but I know I am not a member of P1 and I certainly don’t recommend the site to others. It looks like they are just using my name and send out a mass mail with my name on it, so people may think I recommend the site? But then they made the mistake to also send it to me… Not very smart guys!

I assume P1.cn is not doing very well that they need to use this kind of tactics. I will check with P1 about what they are doing and why they are using my name for this. I have at least 2 of their board members in my network, Net Jacobsson and Curt Shi, I hope they can tell me in the comments or in an email what’s going on and why P1 is using this kind of spam mail?

Every year Carrefour organizes 2 wine fairs at its Shanghai stores, and right now the Spring 2012 wine fair is going on. I missed the opening night (with special discounts), but tonight both nannies are back so Grace and I could drive over to taste and buy some wines.

As regular readers may know I buy the majority of my day-to-day wines at Carrefour and normally most of them at their wine fairs (the high end wines I normally buy overseas, I always bring wine back with me when traveling). Wine is China is quite expensive and at these bi-annual events you at least pay a bit more reasonable price for decent wines. And you can taste them!

Tonight I drove myself, so I could not taste many wines (you can’t spit out the wine like at a normal wine tasting), but I bought quite a few. Well, that’s probably an understatement. It was not very busy at the store at 10 PM on a Sunday night and I was by far the best customer. One of the sales persons walked with us and even offered to push the shopping cart that was completely filled with bottles within 30 minutes (I decided to push it myself). He was a good sales man and we bought tons of nice wines, among others a case of New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc from Marlborough and some very nice Cabernet Sauvignons.

But he made one mistake. The guy was French and he had no idea that I spoke French as well. He had told me about a Gewurztraminer Grand Cru that he wanted me to try. Gewurztraminer used to be my favorite wine (which he did not know) and I still like to drink a nice bottle of the Alsace white wine. So he took us to the seller of the wine, but they had no open bottles. Instead of convincing him to open one for me, he talked to him in French and told him not to open one! Maybe he thought I would buy anyway, or maybe he wanted me to buy other more expensive wines, but the result was that I could not try the Grand Cru AND (worse for him!) that I had overheard and understood most of their conversation.

So after he told me that they could not open a bottle I told him “C’est dommage” (“That’s a pity” in French), because I could have bought a case. He realized I had understood what they said, so he immediately apologized and said he would talk to him again. But now it was too late for me of course, so I told him I didn’t want to try the wine anymore and wanted to pay for the wines I had already bought.

At the check-out he tried again to convince me try the Grand Cru and he even said he would pay for the bottle himself (!). I have my principles, so I thanked him for his help and shook his hand. He then continued telling me that the wine fair would last until Wednesday and that I could come back at any time and try the Grand Cru. He said: “You will regret it if you don’t try it”, to which I almost wanted to reply that he was probably the one who should regret something. Two of my main sales business rules were both broken: “Your customer is always number 1” and “Never underestimate your customer”.

Anyway, I have enough stock for the next couple of months again. If you live in Shanghai and like wines, make sure you check out the wine fair in the basement of the Gubei Carrefour, it’s open until Wednesday midnight. If you just want to taste wines that’s fine as well, there were a few very red faced people sitting at the tasting counters tonight. Cheers!