Bonus points for the KLM

I just landed in Amsterdam after the regular 12 hour KLM flight from Shanghai, a bit jetlagged but feeling fine. I mainly spent the flight catching up on emails and RSS feeds, reading 2 newspapers, 3 magazines and part of a book. I’ll mainly be in Maastricht this week where I will give 2 talks, one at the Global Entrepreneurship Week and one at award ceremony for a start-up competition. Always nice to be back in Holland for a few days and especially to be back at my Alma Mater Maastricht University (the University Fund paid for my trip).

KLM has a special this month, where they only serve wines made by Dutch abroad, called “A Touch of the Dutch”. So I got to taste a couple of nice new wines as well, among others a South African Pinotage (Aaldering Pinotage 2009 from Stellenbosch), a Cotes de Bourg (Chateau Beaulieu 2010, Bordeaux), and a young South African Chardonnay (Breedeweelde, Chardonnay Private Collection 2012). I am generally not a big fan of Pinotage, but this was a very nice one (even at 35,000 feet!). The Bordeaux was probably a decent wine, but it had no nose and it wasn’t anything special (maybe because of the altitude?). The 2012 SA Chardonnay was really nice, still very young but despite that very aromatic. Actually not a good combination with the red snapper that I had ordered, but that’s my own mistake (I should have ordered the De Kleine Schorre 2011 instead, but I think I already tasted that one on another KLM flight a few months ago). Bonus points for the KLM for this wine selection!

But the KLM actually deserves more bonus points on today’s flight. This weekend I was featured in an article in FD Persoonlijk, the weekend magazine of Holland’s largest (or better: only) financial newspaper. The interview (about my working style, especially the number of hours that I used to work per week) was done a couple of months ago already and I had totally forgotten about it. I only remembered the photo shoot that took place at Amsterdam Schiphol airport in September during a stop-over from a morning flight from Cyprus to an afternoon flight to Shanghai.

Someone mentioned that the FD article had been published on Twitter on Saturday, but of course I can’t buy the magazine in China. Therefore I tweeted @KLM and asked if they could have a copy on board the flight from Shanghai to Amsterdam on Sunday. They replied right away and indeed the paper including the magazine was waiting for me on the plane. I am often quite negative about the service of the airline, but this was a nice experience. Thanks KLM!