Today Grace had her birthday and Elaine sang “Happy Birthday To You” for her! Below I embed the video from Tudou.

Elaine first sings “Itsy Witsy Spider” and then decided to sing “Happy Birthday”. Happy birthday Grace & a very nice performance Elaine.

Direct link to the video:
http://www.tudou.com/programs/view/0H5h5JyMGgY/

This year we decided not to spend Christmas and New Year in Europe, but to fly for a week to a tropical beach with the kids. We opted to go to Koh Samui, one of my favorite islands in South-East Asia. I had not been there since May 2005 (I had to check my blog for that!) and I was looking forward to see the beautiful Thai island again. We also invited Grace’ parents and her sister to join us for this trip, so we had a pretty large group.

Because we booked quite late it was not easy to find a suitable accommodation, with suitable meaning a big private villa directly on a quiet beach with full service (maid, cook etc.). Most villas had been rented out months in advance, but we eventually found one through a Russian (!) website. I have to admit that it took a bit of courage to send a big amount of money as a prepayment to a company I didn’t know and for which I could not find any references online, but everything worked out fine. Grace was a bit worried though, but no risk, no fun, right?

There is still no direct flight from Shanghai to Koh Samui (I guess the runway is too short for larger airplanes?), so we had to change planes in Bangkok. That made the whole trip quite long, but the kids could sleep in the lounge. Well theoretically they could, but in the end they refused to sleep and only wanted to run around or play with their iPads and Nintendos. At least they slept a bit on the plane, so they were not too tired when we arrived on Koh Samui. The airport on the island was still as special as a few years ago: it’s an open air airport, in a tropical garden setting, where you immediately feel that your holiday has started.

A van picked us up and drove us in about 20 minutes to our villa on Bang Po beach, on the northern side of the island. The villa was managed by a hotel, where we had to check in and from there we walked to the house. The place was amazing. You never know what you get when you book through a website, but the pictures online were just as good as the villa itself. The villa consisted of 2 structures, one was the main building with a living/dining room with kitchen, and the master bedroom with huge bathroom (partly inside and partly outside). The other structure consisted of 2 stories, a suite with living room, bedroom, bathroom, kitchen and balcony upstairs and a bedroom with bathroom downstairs. The villa had a nice garden with a pool that was directly next to the beach. I am not easily impressed, but this was just amazing to see.

We ordered a quick dinner and then put the kids to sleep. That was not too difficult, Scott was asleep the moment we put him in his bed. I did a couple of emails and had a few glasses of Australian Chardonnay on one of the outside deckchairs. Then I went to bed quite early, which was a good thing because the kids were awake early the next morning. I decided to go for a walk on the beach and Scott wanted to join me. We seemed to be the only ones on the beach, partly because it was so early in the morning and partly because it turned out to be a very quiet beach. Scott like walking in the sand a lot, but it went quite slow. He had so many new things to see and for everything he asked me what it was or why it was like that. “Why daddy?” is probably his most common phrase at the moment, he wants to understand everything around him.

Another thing he kept on saying at the island was “I don’t like the sound of the sea”. For some reason he did not find the sound of the waves relaxing… It started the first morning when he asked me “What’s that noise?”. I did not hear anything except for the waves so I asked him what he meant, and it turned out the sea was what was irritating him. He said it many times over the holiday, each time when we were on a beach. Only at the end of the week he stopped saying it, I wonder if he will say it again during a next holiday.

When we got back from the walk the kids wanted to go for a swim, so that’s what we did. Then we had breakfast at the hotel (we could choose, they could bring us breakfast or we could use the buffet breakfast at the hotel, the latter seemed much better). After breakfast I rented a car for the whole week and then we relaxed a bit by the pool.

During most of the vacation (which lasted a week) we followed a similar schedule most of the days. Scott normally woke me up around 7 when he wanted to go for a swim. I then put his swim shorts on and put him in the pool. Then I normally made a coffee or went for a short run on the beach (with someone else staying with Scott of course) and after that I joined Scott in the pool. Around 8:30 we would have breakfast with the whole family, followed by a few hours of sightseeing and a lunch at an upscale beach resort or golf course. Then the kids slept for 2 hours, during which I normally did some work and tried to keep up with my RSS feeds and social media. After the kids woke up they played in the pool or on the beach, before we went for an early dinner. We often went out for dinner at nearby seaside restaurants, or we had staff to prepare dinner in our house. After the kids went to bed (normally not before 9:30 PM) I had a glass of wine and checked Facebook and Twitter, or I tried to read a bit in my book. I only read one book during my whole holiday, normally I manage to read 1 book ever 1-2 days while on a beach vacation.

Koh Samui is still a fantastic island, I had great memories from a few years ago and I still feel the same about the place. There are definitively more tourists (I especially noticed a lot of Russians everywhere), but it’s also more westernized with big supermarkets like Tesco and Makro, and even German and French bakeries. There are even international schools and I was told the hospitals were excellent (medical tourism anyone?). It would be a great place to retire if I would have been a bit older than my 39 years. We actually even looked at some property on the island, there are some amazing plots of land and villas for sale. If you want to buy a house in South-East Asia this is probably one of the best locations in terms of quality of life, availability of property on the beach or with ocean view, and price. Sure, it’s not cheap and there are restrictions on buying real estate for foreigners, but for me the pros outweigh the cons if I would buy anywhere. Who knows…

Were there any negative experiences? Sure, a couple of them. One is the fact that even at upscale resorts communications with staff was difficult. Bringing the wrong food or drinks, or only bringing part of it and the rest 30 minutes later. Not a big thing on a holiday, and something that also happens to tourists in China. I guess learning a few words of Thai will make a big difference. Another one was that traffic was quite dangerous, especially because of the many inexperienced tourists on motorcycles and sometimes trucks that overtake at the wrong moment. I feel traffic in China is a lot less dangerous than on Samui, but maybe that’s also because I am more used to Chinese driving behavior. Lastly, the Internet connection at our villa was pretty bad at times. Often Skype calls were interrupted and playing music through Spotify only worked 1 out of 4 times. I understood that some places have glass fiber on the island, so likely it was just a local experience.

Overall I loved the island and the vacation we had there. It was fantastic to spend more time with the kids and to see how happy they are playing outside the whole day – something they often miss in Shanghai. Koh Samui is very cheap, you can have great food everywhere for prices that are much lower than you get similar food in Shanghai. The last night on Samui I was looking out over the sea in front of our place when I started wondering if this would not be a great place to start an incubator. I am sure lots of young people would not mind living here for 1-2 years (or even longer) to build an (Internet) company, and the cost of living here is a fraction of what it is of that in Silicon Valley or even Shanghai. Likely Thai law will make it difficult (I didn’t really look into this yet), but it’s something I will keep in mind for the future.

More of our Koh Samui holiday pictures here in a set on Flickr

I want to wish all my readers a very happy and healthy 2012! I was on holiday in Thailand with the family during Christmas and New Year and decided to spend not much time behind my laptop, meaning no blogging for the past couple of days. Therefore I didn’t write any posts with the highs and lows of 2011 yet, so here just a couple of thoughts when looking back.

I guess the most important event was Tudou’s IPO in August, but also Spil Games new round in November has quite some impact. In terms of sport the New York Marathon in November was an important event, but I also did other runs this year (a.o. the Yangzhou half marathon in April and the Shanghai one in December). And of course relaunching unitedstyles (we changed the spelling from UnitedStyles to unitedstyles) and being a finalist at TechCrunch Disrupt with the start-up were highlights this year. 2011 was an eventful year that I won’t easily forget, that’s for sure.

On the negative side I traveled way too much (I started flying KLM a lot less after some issues with them, but still managed to reach Platinum level this year, and I became a 1K member at United in about 6 months after joining them), but I learned over the years that the only way to network and make deals is by being physically in the same location. And most of the trips were related to speaking engagements and you can’t do those without being at a conference in person. I always try to combine a business trip over more than 6 time zones with at least one or two days of private time, normally on the weekend. Especially the trips to California were fantastic, I love that state more and more and hope that one day I will be able to move there for a longer time.

Being away from home so often and working very long hours when in Shanghai was not easy for my family. I realize that I need to spend more time with my young kids, they grow up so quickly. That was one reason why during the past week on Koh Samui I mainly spent time with Scott and Elaine. My laptop was on for max. 2-3 hours per day, and in that time I mainly went through my RSS feeds and read my emails (and hardly answered them – if you’re waiting for a reply you’ll likely get one over the next 2-3 days).

Not sure what 2012 will bring, but that’s what I like. I can’t imagine having a life in which I know what I will be doing 12 months from now. Likely I’ll still be in Shanghai, but chances are that I will eventually be leaving China. I have been here for 12 years already and am still having a great time, but I also realize there may be better places to live and work with kids. Especially pollution is an issue for me, as you can see if you follow me on Twitter and Facebook. Shanghai is not as bad as Beijing, but things are not improving here.

I still like to update my blog regularly next to other social media, and I enjoy the discussions that sometimes start. It’s a pity that I have to moderate the comments. I get some very strange comments sometimes (not spam, but real people trying to convince me of their world views that sometimes even consist of denying the Holocaust…) and also insulting comments cursing me are more common than before. Do people realize that it’s not so difficult for me to find out where they are posting from? Anyway, I plan to continue this blog like before with a few blog posts per week and with more regular updates on other social networks. Feel free to comment and if you see me in real life please say ‘hi’!

Happy New Year!

During most of the big races in the world photographers take pictures of the runners and put them online so you can order them. For the Shanghai Half Marathon I ordered a CD with my pictures on it (price: RMB 298 for about 25 photos, which is less money than a single picture at the New York Marathon costs) and I received it a couple of days ago. They also put some general pictures of the race on there, quite nice to get them actually. Below a few pictures of me during the race.

Start of the race at the Bund with the Pudong skyline in the background

On the EXPO 2010 grounds close to the China pavilion

Easy running! As you can see I run on my Vibram FiveFingers, not on normal running shoes

Giving it all in the last meters before the finish line. Gross time 1:36:05, net time 1:35:53

Going to the limit while crossing the finish line

But two minutes later I feel great again for the post finish photo!

I don’t regularly read the China Daily, except when Elaine is featured on the front page or when Air China has no other English papers available. Today’s headline confirms why I stay clear from this paper as much as possible. How in the world can you call an insane mass murderer who starves his own people a friend? It’s a shame.

I am not naive and know this is the Party’s English mouthpiece, and that China considers the DPRK an ally. But the China Daily should know that its average reader is not a Party member and likely sees the dead guy more as Dr. Evil than a friend. I wonder if this will cost them any readers. At least the US online version of the China Daily had a more balanced headline.

Also the Shanghai Daily had a more diplomatic headline today with “North Korea: Nation in grief for Dear Leader”.

There are some diseases that are not very common in Western Europe or the USA anymore, but that still have regular outbreaks in Asia. One example is hand, foot and mouth disease, a contagious viral disease that normally only affects children below 5 years of age.

Last week Sunday Elaine suddenly got a high fever and when my wife on Monday morning saw some red spots in her mouth she took Elaine to see a doctor right away. On the way home she called me to say that Elaine had hand, foot and mouth disease… Up to that point I had never even heard about the illness. I initially thought it was similar to hoof-and-mouth disease, but that turned out to be something completely different (hoof-and-mouth is an animal disease only).

Because the virus illness is contagious we immediately went to Scott’s school and took him home. My wife then told me that at Scott’s school a whole class had been quarantined a week earlier because of this disease, but it had apparently spread. We had to keep Scott and Elaine separate at home, in order to avoid a potential contamination of Scott. That was not easy, the kids always play together and now Elaine had her own playroom upstairs and Scott had to play alone downstairs.

Elaine got pretty sick from the hand, food and mouth, and soon started to develop blister-like sores in her mouth, on her hands and on her feet. Especially the ones in her mouth were very painful, and she refused to eat or drink anything because it hurt so much. It’s impossible to force a 2 year old to eat or drink when it hurts, but because toddlers dehydrate quickly we had to find a solution. Eventually she drank some milk, but it was a major effort for us.

On Wednesday night I was in a business dinner when Grace called me, because Scott also started to develop sores on his hands… So the next morning both kids went back to the hospital and it turned out that Scott had also been infected. He was not in pain yet and when I talked to him at night he almost seemed proud to also have it. The doctor also looked at Elaine again and told us that she was one of the most severe cases she had ever seen. Scary to hear that, she is such a small girl and as a parent you want to protect her from pain and suffering as much as possible. But there is not much you can do except for waiting. The doctor also told us that she had to report the cases to the government and that it was likely that people would come to our house to check whether the kids had been quarantined.

Later on Thursday Elaine’s situation suddenly started to improve. By Friday she started eating almost normally again which made me quite happy. And Scott was still playing happily without complaining. He did not have fever and just had some sores, and we hoped that would be it. But on Friday afternoon Scott suddenly started crying while eating, the sores in his mouth were very painful and he was not able to eat anything anymore. Luckily he could still drink and we also found that soft things like yoghurt and pudding were not as painful.

So for the past 2 days Scott has been eating chocolate pudding (he loves it!) and nothing else. I took him to the French bakery this morning (breaking his quarantine, I realize it now that I write it here) where he bough a croissant. But when he tried to eat it he was screaming from pain again. Poor boy.

He seems to be getting better soon now though, and I hope in 1 or 2 days both kids will be fine. A bit scary, especially because you don’t know how serious the disease is and how much worse it will get. But it seems both will be okay and hopefully we can still go on holiday with the kids at the end of this week.

One of my business partners at unitedstyles, Xander Slager, was booking a ticket for a return trip Amsterdam-Shanghai when he got a very low price for the ticket. To be precise, he could book a return flight for only CNY 1621 (less than EUR 200). I have taken this roundtrip at least 70 or 80 times over the past years and I never paid less than EUR 500, so this seemed to good to be true. Xander flies even more than I do on this route so when he saw the price he took a picture of the screen before going to the payment screen.

To his surprise he was able to pay and finalize the order in the next screen. He was happy to see that of course but because he still felt something must be wrong he took another picture.

And then… he got the message that the ticket had just been sold. Instead of a ticket for CNY 1721 (incl. tax) he could buy one for CNY 14,415! That seems like a more usual price for a ticket that you buy a few days in advance, but that’s not the point of this blog post.

Companies make mistakes, that’s fine. But don’t lie to the customer if that happens. Because that is exactly what happened here. As an experienced ticket booker Xander had both the klm.com Chinese and Dutch version open to take advantage of possible price differences. And that’s where something went wrong, because KLM suddenly showed the EUR price as CNY in the screen (the last price of CNY 14,415 is exactly EUR 1721). And they let Xander pay for this price (good for him), except that they probably had some internal red flag that shows up if a ticket price seems too low. And then? Well then they just tell the customer that the ticket was just booked by someone else. Total bullsh*t of course.

KLM is one of the best airlines in social media, they have come a long way over the years and they have surprised me (literally) with their social media events. But this sort of thing should not happen. If you find an internal error just tell the customer that something went wrong. They may not like it, but it’s better than telling your customer a lie. Don’t say that someone else booked the ticket for this price, because that is just not true.

KLM, if I am wrong feel free to show me that at that exact moment someone else booked a ticket for this extremely low price. I will take this post down right away and do a follow-up post with apologies with copies on Twitter & Facebook. If not I hope you can give Xander at least an upgrade on one of these flights. As a long time Platinum Elite member I think he deserves better than this from you.

With the Holidays approaching we all know how hard it can be sometimes to find the right gift – be it for your girlfriend, sister, wife, mother, friend, lover, grandma, daughter, auntie, neighbour, etc

Well, look no further!! Give the gift of designing at unitedstyles. Let her create her one-of-a-kind dream dress or top herself! We promise she will love it.

To make things even better, buy a unitedstyles gift certificate now and for a limited time only you will receive another one for free:

Buy a $50 gift certificate, get a $10 one free
Buy a $100 gift certificate, get a $25 one free
Buy a $150 gift certificate, get a $50 one free

Details

Offer valid til 24 December 2011. Gift certificates valid for 1 year from date of purchase. Buy a certificate by adding it to your shopping cart and checking out as normal. We will automatically add the free one to your delivery. You will receive a digital version per email the next working day and a beautiful physical printed copy will be posted to you as well (please contact us for delivery times to your country).