A couple of months ago I left downtown Shanghai and I now live in the suburbs of the city. To be precise, close to the old Hongqiao village in Minhang district. I always thought nothing happens in the suburbs, but now that I am paying a bit more attention to what’s going on in Minhang I take that back. Just today’s paper already had two articles with scary things going on in my current district.

First, a 5-month old baby was kidnapped from its own house while the mother was home. Baby kidnapping is not uncommon in China, at least this is what I hear from Chinese friends. I always thought this mainly happens in the countryside where baby boys are taken from their parents and sold to farmers who need a son. I did not realize this is also something that happens in Shanghai. In this case two women were in need of cash and decided to look for a mother with a baby. They spotted one and found out she was home alone with the kid. After ringing the bell pretending to be a new neighbor they overpowered the mother, took the baby from its bed and sped off in a car. Luckily for the mother they had not found a buyer yet, and that turned out to be a bit more difficult than they originally thought. Because of that the police caught up with them, and seven days after the baby was stolen he was returned to his parents. A terrible story, especially because I have a baby boy myself and because it happens so close to where I live.

The other story is scary in a different way. A school boy is playing at a pond in Minhang district looking to catch a turtle. But to his big surprise he sees a crocodile swimming in the pond. He runs back to school and informs the head master, who at first does not believe it. They call the police, who also do not believe the story at first but decided to come anyway. And indeed there is a one-meter long crocodile slowly moving through the pond. The police calls the Shanghai Zoo, whose staff catches the animal and they send it off to the Shanghai Zoo (also close to our home). The article ends by saying that nobody knows how the crocodile ended up there, as there are no crocodile farms or restaurant in the neigborhood. I hope so… If I find I am living close to a crocodile farm I might consider moving again!

Next week Ad:Tech Shanghai will take place, a conference and exhibition about online marketing and advertising. For the first time Spil Games Asia will also have its own booth here. If you want to talk with me or one of my colleagues about advertising possibilities on one of our online game sites in China, India, Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines or Japan feel free to drop by at booth 19. Also if you have any casual gaming cooperation ideas you would like to discuss with me you can find me at stand 19. I will likely also attend some of the keynote speeches, so I might not be at the stand the whole day. If you want to make sure I am there at a certain time send me an email in advance (marc (at) spilgamesasia (dot) com). See you there!

It seems the upcoming cold that had been hanging around me for the past 3 weeks finally managed to hit me in full force. The cold suddenly turned from quite innocent to pretty nasty, which is a major headache (both literally and figuratively). The fact that I had a flu shot does not make any difference to this virus.

It started Thursday night during drinks at M1NT with the China Web 2.0 crowd. During the evening my legs felt more and more tired, and I first thought that was because I had done a 1.5 hour spinning session right before the drinks started at 9 PM. But when I got home I realized I was really not feeling well and I took my first Advil. The next morning I felt worse but because I had a busy schedule I got up early anyway and went straight to the office. At 11 AM I gave a talk to the bloggers on the China 2.0 Tour which I barely managed to do (Tylenol kept me on my feet). I don’t think any of them realized I was sick (I tried not to show it), but I was happy when the talk was over and I could sit down again.

During the afternoon I went to the Lunch 2.0 event at Tudou and later on followed the bloggers to Web 2.0 language learning site italki.com. When that session was over I literally crashed on the backseat of my car. While my driver drove me back to the office I was sound asleep. I had no aspirin left, so he bought me some on the way and I did not even realize he had stopped to buy it. Back at the office I put some water on my face (which felt overheated because of fever) and then picked up my wife for a shareholder dinner at M1NT. I had some vodka passion fruit cocktails, that helped to make me feel a bit better temporarily. I enjoyed the food at M1NT but was feeling so sick that I left as soon as I could. At home I went straight to bed and slept for 14 hours.

Saturday I mainly spent in bed, until the early afternoon when I felt so useless that I pulled myself together and got up to do a bit of work. I even managed to drive Scott, my wife and our nanny to Gymboree for Scott’s baby class there, but was glad when I was home again. At 5:30 PM we had some guests visiting, and I felt a lot better while they were there. I had a couple of glasses of Argentinean Malbec and got the idea that the worst of my cold was over. Not. As soon as they had left I started to feel cold again and an hour later I was in bed for another long sleep (this time I managed 12 hours of zzz-time). I missed M1NT’s Grand Opening Party because of this, but it was impossible I could have made it out there (let alone enjoy it).

Sunday was similar to Saturday, except for the fact that I managed to go out for a walk with Scott. Not a good idea, afterward it took me an hour to warm up (and it was not even very cold: I was wearing a winter coat but I met some neigbors wearing just shorts). We had tickets for the final of the Tennis Master’s in Shanghai, but there was no way I could have gone there so we gave them away to friends. I spent quite some time working on emails and reading my RSS feeds, but in the end I realized I did not accomplish very much. We went to bed early and watched a movie, but I was feeling so bad that I did not really enjoy it. Not a weekend to remember, that’s for sure.

Today, Monday, things have not improved much. I am sitting in my office with the air conditioner heater at 30 degrees Celsius trying to warm up, but that does not help much. Hot tea helps a bit, but my hands feel like freezing. I probably should be in bed, but I don’t want to mess up my schedule too much. But I realize I am less productive, I cannot concentrate well on difficult things. At least writing a quick blog post is not too difficult 🙂 Hopefully one more good night of sleep will make a difference. Tomorrow night I will be traveling and being sick on a plane is something I would like to avoid.

The Shanghai Daily regularly has small articles that make me laugh. Today’s paper contained another nice piece: a Chinese man, Mr. Liu, was walking around Shanghai’s Wusong port yesterday morning when he encountered a couple of foreign sailors. His English was quite poor but he still wanted to greet them in English, and by mistake said: “Hi gays!”.

The sailors grabbed Mr. Liu and demanded an explanation. Because Mr. Liu had no idea what he had done wrong and did not speak enough English to explain what he was trying to say, he was almost beaten up. Just in time a police man walked by and figured out what had happened. He explained both parties that Mr. Liu had meant to say “Hi guys!”, and Mr. Liu and the sailors shook hands. The story would make for a nice cartoon!

The Shanghai Daily had an interesting story today in its paper version. It turns out that most good wedding venues in Shanghai are fully booked on weekends and holidays until 2010. The reason according to the local paper is a surge in weddings next year because many people postponed their wedding plans after the Sichuan earthquake in May. Honestly, that sounds a bit strangy to me. The earthquake certainly had a big impact for a few weeks and maybe some couples postponed their wedding, but not so many that all wedding venues are suddenly fully booked next year.

I think the real reason is that people have more money than before, and young couples naturally want to show off their “wealth” during their wedding. But likely the number of high-end wedding venues has not increased too much, leading to longer waiting times. My advice to couples that want to marry next year but cannot get their preferred location: be creative!

If you cannot get the Okura Garden Hotel until next November (the article gave this location as an example), look for a different venue that you can decorate nicely and get a good catering service. For the price of a 5-star hotel you can get a lot of nice other locations. An additional advantage is that people will actually remember your wedding instead of confusing it with many other weddings that were exactly the same.

It’s Sunday morning in Hong Kong and in a few hours I will fly back to my family in Shanghai. I am sitting in my hotel room after a night mainly thinking what went wrong during the Trailwalker. Right after the Trailwalker I slept very well because I was so tired and feeling sick. But on Saturday morning I woke up and felt pretty good again. I did not have much muscle ache, just some serious blisters on my feet. To me the fact that I felt fine was not a good sign. Did I give up too easily? I thought about it for a long time and my conclusion is that I did the right thing. Continuing in the state I was in would have been dangerous for myself and would have slowed down the team even further. But it still feels very bad to give up in an event that I trained hard for.

Two people out of my team eventually managed to finish, one other person had to get out at CP 8 (around 80 km) after getting hallucinations (seeing animals that were not there etc.). Marcel and Martin finished in a much slower time than originally planned, but they made it. Completely exhausted and with some injuries, but they managed to get over the finish line. Congrats guys, you’re tough!

Was the race more difficult than other years? Some people say yes because of the high temperatures and very high humidity, but on the other hand the Gurkha’s set a new record on Friday with a time of 11 hours and 52 minutes. To me it is impossible to understand how they can pull that off. They seem to fly over the mountains. On Saturday afternoon I was at Thomas Crampton‘s place where I met one of his neighbors who also participated in the race. He finished 3 times before, but this time he (literally) passed out right before CP3 after about 35 km because of the heat. So I guess it really depends on how well your body can handle the temperature.

Saturday night we had a dinner with our team mates and the support team, and afterward I could not sleep until about 5 AM thinking about why I failed. I finally came to the conclusion that I could not have done things differently. Living in Shanghai with a busy job and a family I could not have any more (or better) training. Being in top shape is still not enough apparently to be prepared for all the mountains in combination with high temperatures and humidity. Maybe things would have been better if it had been a few degrees cooler, but I will never know that. Anyway, it’s good to fail sometimes and to learn the limits of your physical shape.

So what’s next? I made the decision not to do the HK Trailwalker again if I do not live in Hong Kong myself. It seems training for this event in Shanghai to finish in a good time is not something I can do. Next challenges should probably be in lower temperature areas where I do not get dehydrated as fast. I don’t know what’s next, but I plan to stay in reasonably good shape for the next couple of months, but not to run any half marathons before breakfast anymore like I did sometimes over the past months.

Thanks everybody for the emails and SMS messages that I received yesterday and thanks to the team for pushing me to get through some difficult parts. Like Marcel said in his speech last night, our team had an excellent team spirit. We tried to stay together and helped each other. At least I had a great time in Hong Kong, both during the practice sessions over the past months and during the actual Trailwalker. And most important, we raised some good money for Oxfam. For potential sponsors, the fact that I did not finish does not mean you cannot sponsor our team anymore (see also my post about this from last Thursday)!

Today I participated in the Hong Kong Trailwalker. I trained very hard for it, changed my diet over the past 2 months (more veggies, hardl any meat), stopped drinking alcohol, and drastically reduced my coffee intake. I don’t think I have ever been in a better shape than I am at the moment. But it seems it all did not help, because I had to pull out of the race after 52 kilometers.

The day started off well, we were early at registration and were at the front of the starting grid when the Trailwalker started at 9 AM. The weather was nice, but soon it got very hot. Official temperatures were around 30 degrees and it was very humid. Not the kind of weather I like for a long-distance run. I drank huge amounts of water and sports drink in order to stay hydrated, and also took regular salt tablets.

The heat was not just killing for me, at the second mountain already lots of people had difficulties to continue. It was so hot there, there was no shadow and no wind. To me it felt like over 40 degrees during the climb. Later in the day there were some clouds, but not enough to cool off the heat. My body felt like it was boiling during the first two sections.

Section three was a bit cooler, but because it’s quite steep it was not an easy one. My dad ran with me and he even carried my backpack. The section was OK, but not as good as I’d hoped. Marcel was not feeling very well during this section, but he managed to recover in later sections.

For me the ‘man with the hammer’ hit me around 32 kilometers. Suddenly I felt very dizzy, I had a headache and felt sick. I had no idea what happened and also not why it happened. Marcel helped me a lot and he got me to the top of highest mountain in that section. But despite eating and drinking more the man with the hammer did not go away.

At CP 4 (around 45 km) I got a doctor to check me up. She could not find anything serious, but I got some painkillers and medicine against dizziness. But that did not help too much either. At around 52 km I realized it would be the most sensible thing to pull the plug. It was a very difficult decision, I normally would never give up. But after struggling for 20 km and slowing down the team considerably I realized chances that I would recover were getting smaller and smaller. I also realized that medical consequences could be considerable if I would go on for another 48 km.

It’s a pity and I feel bad for letting the team down. Even though the 2nd part is a bit easier than the first part, I don’t think I could have made it. Sorry Marcel, Dolphin and Martin! The three of them are still running while I type this, I hope they will enjoy the rest of the Trailwalker and will still be able to get a reasonable finish time. Marcel, Dolphin and Martin, I look forward to seeing you tomorrow night for dinner and drinks and hear all your stories.

Tomorrow’s 100 km Oxfam Trailwalker is not only a physical challenge, it is also an event to help people get out of poverty. All proceeds from the Trailwalker will go to Oxfam, that since its start in 1976 has assisted millions of poor people with among others schooling, health care and water. Our team will raise at least HKD 27,000 this year for Oxfam and I hope you or your company is willing to sponsor me for the event as well. There is now also a special page on the Hong Kong Trailwalker site for this at http://admin.oxfamtrailwalker.org.hk/en/donation.html?walkerNo=0140B where you can donate using a credit card – Note: the site only works with Internet Explorer, so if you have an Apple like me you’ll have trouble donating any money there.

You can also get in touch with me directly at marcvanderchijs (at) gmail (dot) com for sponsorships (I can take cash and deposit that into Oxfam’s account). Oxfam also takes cheques, they should be made payable to “Oxfam Hong Kong”. On the back of the cheque please write down “Oxfam Trailwalker 2008”, the Oxfam account number (Bank of China account: 012-874-0-013039-1) and our team number (number 140).

If you want to transfer money directly into the Oxfam bank account, that’s possible as well:
HSBC Hong Kong (direct transfer) A/C number 001-537000-005 or Bank of China Hong Kong A/C number 012-874-0-013039-1.

For start-ups or any other company donating HKD 1500 or more I will write a blog post on this blog about your company, of course including a link. For every person donating HKD 500 or more I offer to write a short post with a link to your blog or website. Please get in touch with me if you are interested in this. If you have any other ideas related to publicity through this blog, that you would be willing to donate money for, let me know as well.

Thanks in advance to everybody for donating money for this year’s Oxfam Trailwalker!