I was wondering if it would ever happen, but China Telecom finally announced a higher internet speed in China. The new infrastructure will be ready by the end of this year. Currently the highest speed available for ADSL is 8 Megabits/second, this will triple to 24 Megabits/second. According to the Shanghai Daily, however, in practice customers likely will have a real maximum speed of 3 Megabits/second (currently 1 Mb/sec). And thanks to the Great Firewall loading speeds of websites located outside China will likely stay far below this level.

It’s good news for high-bandwidth sites with servers inside China, especially sites that use video or large flash files, such as Toodou.com or online gaming sites. Possbibly IPTV could take off because of this. I expect a lot more broadband applications to see the light because of the higher available ADSL speed.

I did not write about it on my blog before, but last month I was appointed as CEO of Spill Group Asia, a European online gaming company. I am setting up an office for Spill Group in Shanghai, and will from here roll out casual gaming and skill gaming websites in several other Asian countries. Because a day only has 24 hours, and I still have several other activities that I am involved in, time management skills are becoming even more important!

Spill Group currently consists of Spill Group Europe (located in The Netherlands), Spill Group Asia (located in China) and Kottabus (our own ad agency focused solely on in-game advertising, located in London). The company has many leading casual gaming websites in Europe, among others Spel.nl, Spelletjes.nl, Game.nl (Netherlands), Jeux.fr, Jeu.fr (France), Gioco.it (Italy), GameToday.co.uk, StartGames.co.uk (UK), Gry.pl (Poland) and Spielen.com (Germany). We are also active in skill gaming, look for example at our site Zigiz.com.

Today an article on Marketingfacts.nl, a well-known Dutch weblog about online media and marketing, writes about online gaming and Spill Group in particular. If you can read Dutch you can find the article here. Our company also has a weblog (http://www.gameminded.com) where I post on China-related online gaming topics. The corporate blog also contains an overview of all our gaming websites and more details on our activities all over the world.

Last week I was interviewed by Hong Kong newspaper the South China Morning Post for an article in today’s paper. I do not have an online subscription, so cannot read it myself (any readers with access who can mail it to me? Article can be found here). What I did not know is that part of the interview was also used for a podcast. I did the interview while I was in bed with flu, and over a bad mobile connection, so the quality is horrible. The interview discussed the ideas and business model behind Toodou, and we talked about the future of podcasting in China.

An anonymous reader just posted a comment on my post about the Anonymouse proxy from last August, that is very useful: go to http://Anonymouse.org/addons/addons.html for excellent add-on tools for Google or Firefox toolbars. I just installed the tool for Firefox, and it is great. Just type or copy the address of a blocked website in China in the search box and it loads right away through the anyonymouse proxy. Thanks for the tip!

Yesterday Qi asked for a window seat on the flight from Beijing to Shanghai, and the check-in person said that was no problem and gave us seat 26F and G. But when we entered the plane (an old B737) it turned out that F and G were middle seats, and we were surrounded by a loud Chinese tour group from Jiangsu province. It was the second time they were flying (first time was on their way to Beiijng) and they were all extremely excited about it, and were screaming all across the plane to each other. They brought their own food and drinks (thermos flasks of tea), and the guy next to me smelled as if he had not taken a bath since Chinese New Year’s eve. Because I was quite sick I did not feel too comfortable with them around me.

But we managed to find a solution. Qi had already complained about not getting the window seats we were supposed to get, and the stewardess said she would see if she could arrange something. Well, she could not, because the plane was fully booked. Just when she came to tell us this, the tour group people in the emergency exit seats were given the instructions on how to open the doors in case of an emergency landing. You cannot sit there if you do not understand those. The purser and two stewardesses gave them the instructions to read, which they tried to do. But it soon became obvious that they were illiterate, so they were not allowed to sit there. Although I felt bad for them we gladly volunteered to change places with them!

My stay in Beijing was mainly a stay in bed: I have spent about 20 hours per day there since Monday night. No skiing and no skating as I planned to do, and I got hardly any work done. Tuesday and Wednesday I spent entirely in bed. Thursday I had an interview with the South China Morning Post (HK newspaper) in the morning, and then an outside meeting with a German client in the afternoon. With aspirin I managed to handle it. I even joined the farewell dinner Qi’s parents had organized in the Russian Moscow restaurant in Xizhimen, in the sidewing of the old Russian-built and Russian style exhibition center. It was the first and for many years the only Western style restaurant in Beijing, and therefore still famous among Beijingnese. A fantastic place (great architecture), but the food was mediocre at best (maybe because I was sick?). After the dinner I collapsed into bed for a 12 hour sleep.

When I got up I felt worse than before with a high fever and hardly able to stand on my feet. I guess I had overdone it a bit the day before. Problem is that we had tickets booked for a 2PM flight to Beijing, and I felt like I would not be able to make it. But after a long hot shower I put on two pairs of pants, two t-shirts, a long sleeve shirt and 2 thick sweaters (no joke!), took some aspirin and decided to give it a try. It was extremely crowded at the airport (end of CNY), and the flight was fully booked, but I made it home alive. I had a conference call planned for Friday night 10 PM, but I cancelled that. I took a hot bath and then had another 12 hours sleep. It’s now Saturday morning and I finally start feeling a little better. Just in time for the new working week that starts today 🙂 (this Saturday and Sunday are declared official working days by the Chinese government, and most companies, including China Bay, start work again today)

It’s the same thing every time I have vacation, or at least when I reduce my workload and also do some things other than just working: I manage to get sick. Yesterday night I went to get a foot massage and it was much more painful than normally. So I told the masseuse to take it easy, but even though she applied less pressure it still hurt a lot. I suddenly realized I might get sick… And yes, that happened.

After driving home I went to bed straight away. I had a bad night with strange dreams. I was planning to go skiing today with former DaimlerChrysler colleagues, but when my alarm rang at 6:30 AM I was hardly able to turn it off, let alone get up to go skiing. Qi then also decided to stay home, although I told her she should go. I turned around and fell into a deep sleep. I woke up around 11, took a shower, and already felt much better. So I decided to start working, but that was not too smart. After 2 hours I almost fell from my chair (exhausted and dizzy). I managed to get back to bed and slept most of the afternoon. I am feeling a little better now, but plan to quickly check my mails and then go to sleep again. Fever was at 38.1 Celcius just now, so I’d better watch it.

p.s. the place where I got a foot massage was quite good. If you should be in Beijing and want to try an upclass massage place, try Bodhi on Gongti Bei Lu 17 (opposite North gate of Workers Stadium).

Last night we celebrated Chinese New Year (or Spring Festival, as it is also called) with Qi’s family. We watched the CCTV Spring Festival TV show, a combination of stand-up comedians, songs (modern and traditional), dance and short sketches. Even though China becomes more modern, it is still a must for most people to see this program, and it has the highest ratings of all programs on TV. It’s not really my kind of program, so during the show I could catch up on several magazines that I did not have time to read during the past month.

Around 10 PM it started to get difficult to understand the program because of the noise of all the fireworks outside, and around 11:45 we all decided to watch the sky instead of the screen. Until 12:30 AM I watched the fireworks from their balcony. They live on the top floor of an apartment building, and it was an amazing sight. The sky was quite clear, so we could see several kilometers in to the west, east and south. The sky was continuously lit up in red, yellow, green and white colors from all the fireworks that were set off. The sounds were like being in a war zone, and it was impossible to talk to each other because of the loud bangs.

After watching the fireworks the family decided to make jiaozi (dumplings) by hand. This is also a Chinese tradition. They prepared several big plates of jiaozi, and were finished by 2:30 AM. Many Chinese traditionally stay up the whole night during the first night of the New Year to make sure the Nian (a monster) cannot come into their house to bring bad luck, but luckily Qi’s family did not follow that tradition. Sleeping was not easy though, because the lightning of fireworks went on the whole night. And people are still setting off fireworks while I am writing this (it’s afternoon now). The jiaozi were great by the way, much better than the frozen ones that you buy in the supermarket. I just had a big plate of them for lunch, and likely will have a lot more during the next days.