I just finished reading Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged, the famous novel that starts with the rhetorical queston “Who is John Galt?”. When I ordered the book I mainly did so because I felt it’s a book that everyone should read at least once in his/her life. During the US presidential campaign I saw references to the book quite often (both Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan counted the book among their favorites) and that intrigued me. I am not a fan of the current Republican Party (especially because of their pro-religion and anti-global warming stance), but I wanted to understand the Republican’s points of view a bit better, and the book certainly helps to do that.

Because of this I didn’t really think I would enjoy the book, and when I saw that the novel was 1168 pages long and printed in a small font I wasn’t sure whether reading it would be a worthwhile investment of my time. But it turned out it was: Atlas Shrugged is actually one of the best books I ever read, a great story that makes you think about the virtues and disadvantages of capitalism, socialism/communism, politics, business and most important, reason.

Although I still don’t fully agree with the theme of the book (the role of man’s mind in existence) and especially not with the way Mrs. Rand describes it (too binary, it’s not either 0% or 100%), the book itself is excellent and makes you think about the world around you and the way people act – or don’t act. But it’s not just about economic theory or existential philosophy, because that would make an almost 1200 page book too boring to read for me.

The story is quite intriguing, describing the People’s State of America in a 1950’s like setting , in which the government is taking more and more control of businesses, leading the real business men to give up and disappear. The main character in the book is Ms. Dagny Taggart who runs Taggert Transcontinental, the biggest railroad in the country. She gives everything to let the railroad survive, despite the fact that it’s clear from the beginning that it will be impossible to win if the government’s goal is to eventually control (and thereby destroy) all businesses.

The book is a combination of a mythical story (think about a present-day Atlantis), an economic and political story, but also a love story with several of the main personas getting romantically involved with Dagny. And there is some mystery as well, because it takes more than half the book before you realize what is really going on and who John Galt is.

The only thing I would have changed is that I would have liked the book to be a bit shorter. Is it really necessary to have a 60-page speech (without a single interruption or remark, from page 1009-1069) by John Galt? Sometimes Mrs. Rand drags on for too long and she keeps on revisiting her favorite themes. Because of that it took me over a month to read this book, when I normally finish a book in 2-3 days. I even read a few books in between, but once I was halfway I finished the rest of the book in just over a week, and the last 270 pages in one day.

This book is not for everyone, but if you have an entrepreneurial mind I think you will enjoy it. The entrepreneurs are the heroes in this book and even though they are despised by the government they are idolized through Ayn Rand’s theories. Many people seem to have read Atlas Shrugged in high school, but I think that would have been too early for me. You need more life experience to really understand and enjoy it.

For me the book was much better than I had expected, but it’s not a novel that you can read in a few nights. It’s one of the very few books that I would describe as important to read at least once in your life. I am sure that over the coming years I will discuss it more than once over a glass of wine with others that also read it, and I may even reread it eventually.

Note: the book has been made into a movie as well, into 2 movies actually (part I and II). So if you are mainly interested in the story and less in the details of it philosophical themes, the film may be a decent substitute. I only watched the trailer of the movie and it saw that it plays in a different era, but from what I read the story seems to be quite similar.

I am celebrating Christmas 2012 at home in Shanghai with my family instead of traveling to a tropical island or to a snow-covered mountain. Just relaxing, reading books, watching a Christmas movie, drinking a good glass of wine, taking the kids to Ocean World, play with them and their new toys, and generally just having a good time.

Merry Christmas to all my readers!

After Santa Claus visited our house in the middle of the night

Cheese fondue on Christmas Eve

Scott and Elaine unpacking their presents

At Shanghai Ocean World (Changfeng Park) where we were one of the very few visitors

The nice thing about the Christmas holiday is that you have time to read things that you normally would not make time for. A few days ago I saw several links on Twitter to the Snow Fall multimedia article that the New York Times published. It seemed too long to read that day so I saved it for later. Often that means that I would read it in Pocket on my iPad or iPhone while commuting, but for this article that would have taken away the extra features that make it so special.

The multimedia content blew me away and that’s why I decided to put this post on my blog. I am not sure whether the New York Times plans to publish more articles like this or if this is just a test, but what they published was just amazing. A great design and a combination of pictures, video and audio that I have not seen before. If it was just a test I think it was probably a big success, considering how much was written about this article in different online media. The New York Times once again shows the way forward for Old Media.

Snow Fall describes a deadly avalanche at Tunnel Creek (Stevens Pass, WA) in February this year. It’s not just a very readable story, but it uses all forms of multimedia to illustrate the article. The piece starts with a full screen looping video of snow blowing over a mountain slope, which disappears when you scroll down. After reading a few paragraphs the story talks about one of the survivors of the avalanche and this is illustrated with a video interview with her about her experience.

This is how the feature keeps on illustrating the written content: from videos about backcountry skiing (very inspiring, although that was likely not the intent of the article) to maps of the area showing not only where the skiers were during the avalanche but also how the avalanche moves down the mountain. There is video from the helmet cameras of some of the skiers, slideshows with private pictures of the skiers, but also features on how and why avalanches occur. Even audio of the 911 calls of the survivors of the avalanche was included, which makes the story even more real.

This feature may be the future of online quality journalism, and this is something I would gladly pay for. The New York Times is actually the only online newspaper that I pay for right now (I subscribe to their online and iPad editions), but this feature is also free for non-subscribers. The only thing I was surprised about was that the iPad edition did not contain most of the multimedia features of the online article. If you spend so much time and money on an article like this the New York Times should have also put it into their iPad app.

You should read, watch and listen to this for yourself, so go to the article to experience it when you have some time during the upcoming holidays. I don’t think you will regret it.

There is also a 10-minute documentary at the end of the article about the avalanche. If you don’t want to read the whole feature, you can watch the documentary here.

This afternoon Scott and Elaine wanted to ride their bikes, so I took them to the playground in our compound. While they rode around I realized that it seems like we were the only ones of our neighbors still in Shanghai. Nobody seemed to be home in the last weekend before Christmas.

For the 30 minutes that we were outside I did not see a single other person. Normally on a Saturday afternoon it’s quite busy with kids running, screaming and playing, but now it was totally silent. We didn’t see any other kids, and not even ayis buying groceries or drivers waiting in cars. Everybody was either on a tropical beach, on the ski slopes in Europe or North America, or back in their home country.

Normally we would also be in a more exotic location, but because Grace and I are working on a project we will stay in China until New Year. It’s actually quite nice to be home in a quiet compound during Christmas. But of course Shanghai is not the best location to be in during the holidays, because Chinese don’t celebrate Christmas (schools and offices are open as usual). But we decided not to leave the compound much over the next days, so we won’t notice that the world outside keeps on turning as usual.

After a run from downtown Hong Kong up to the Peak

I got back on Sunday afternoon from a long weekend in Hong Kong. We had a couple of meetings, Grace did a lot of shopping (she managed to fill an additional empty suitcase that she brought from Shanghai), and we met up with friends for every lunch/brunch and dinner. Plus of course lots of good wines and beers during the evenings, which was a good reason to do some extra sports while there.

I always love to run when I am in Hong Kong and over the years found some nice places for an early morning work-out. My favorite is Bowen Road, a flat road without motorized traffic that runs along the hill above Central and Wanchai. The road is about 3.5 km one way, so if you go back and forth you can run for about 7 km without seeing any cars and with a great view over Hong Kong.

Bowen Road, Hong Kong

The downside is that you won’t be the only runner, unless you go very early. On weekend mornings it can actually be really busy here, as many Hong Kongers go for a hike or stroll here and many dogwalkers take the neighborhoods dogs out for a walk. It’s a mixed crowd and that makes it interesting, but because the speeds of the runners and walkers are so different you have to watch out not to hit anybody.

Bowen Road, Hong Kong

On Saturday morning I ran Bowen Road again and still liked it as much as before. The climb up to the road from Admiralty was quite difficult, esp. if you run without doing much stretching in advance (I normally just start running slowly, but that’s not a good strategy if you go uphill almost straight away). But the good thing is that at the end of your work-out you can just run downhill to cool down. I took it quite easy during the run and ran 7 km in about 42 min.

View from Bowen Road, Hong Kong

On Sunday morning before flying back to Shanghai I decided to put my alarm clock and go for a longer run. The weather was nice (about 18 degrees and sunny at 7:30 AM), so I put on my FiveFingers and decided to run to The Peak. I had walked up to The Peak before and had also jogged/walked up to section 3 and 4 of the Hong Kong Trail from Central, but I had never run to the actual Peak from downtown Hong Kong.

I also did not know what the fastest route would be, so I took my phone with me so I could follow my route on a map. I started from Admiralty again and ran up to Bowen Road. Halfway Bowen Road I took a right on the Wan Chai Gap Road, that goes almost straight up the mountain (over 20% incline at many parts of the road). The advantage is that you rise quickly, but the disadvantage is that it’s impossible to run up. It’s just too steep, so I decided to walk up to the top where the road hits the Peak Road.

View to the south side of Hong Kong Island

There I took a one minute break to check my phone’s map and then started running again in the direction of the Peak. I took the Peak Road until the top because of the nice natural scenery on the south side of Hong Kong island, but taking Barker Road (on the north side of the ridge) would have been much faster. The downside of taking the Peak Road is that there is a lot of traffic as most of the cars and buses to the Peak takes this road.

Finally, The Peak

After arriving at the Peak I decided not to go back right away but to run the 3 km loop around the mountain as well. It was not very busy yet so I could run quite fast, especially because this road is relatively flat. Views over Hong Kong are incredible from up here!

Incredible views over Hong Kong from the loop around the Peak

When I finished the loop I realized I had to hurry because we had a plane to catch, so I took Barker Road back to the Peak Road and from there the Wan Chai Gap Road back into Bowen Road. That went very fast, running downhill always means that you can make up a lot of lost time. But I felt that my muscles were hurting every step I took, which was not a good sign.

I got back in time to the hotel for a hot shower, a liter of water and a hot coffee, before taking a taxi to the Airport Express. I felt great after the 15.8 km run (in 1:45 hour) and wished I could do this every weekend. This morning my muscles reminded me, however, that I may have overdone it a bit: my legs were hurting a lot and I could hardly walk down the 2 flights of stairs to the breakfast table! But no pain no gain, right?

Last night Grace and I had dinner at Ultraviolet again – the restaurant that I called ‘an incredible food experience’ and ‘a restaurant that people may travel to Shanghai for, just to try it out’ on this blog after our first visit. It’s extremely hard to get seats and to get them I had to make a reservation exactly 3 months in advance on Ultraviolet’s website. Sometimes a few seats open up at a later time, but the best way is to just check the website regularly and grab seats once a new day is added to the schedule. There are only 10 seats per night at Ultraviolet so you have to be quick once you see available places.

In the Ultraviolet kitchen with Paul Pairet

I won’t describe the whole Ultraviolet experience again, you can read that in the post I wrote last June, but I can tell you that the experience the second time is at least as good as the first time. Because you know where you will go and what will happen you can actually focus more on the food itself, which was again out-of-this-world. Too bad China does not have Michelin stars yet, but if they ever will this will likely be the first 3-star one in mainland China. The first time the experience was sometimes almost overwhelming, meaning that all your senses are so hard at work looking at the video projections, listening to the audio, smelling the fragrances and looking at the wait staff performing, that you focus less on just the food.

Last time we were part of table #7 and last night’s table number was 133. The guests were a very different group than during our first visit. The first time people were there more for professional purposes than too purely relax, therefore it was relatively quiet and people did not talk much during the meal. Last night, however, the group was more of a mixed bunch (among others a VC, a doctor, expats working for multinationals, a student and an American tourist who had read about Ultraviolet in the New York Times and had flown in to try it out. Some had actually read my blog post about Ultraviolet!). We had a lot of fun and were frequently laughing during the dinner, it felt a lot less formal than in June this year.

The 22-course course menu was the same as half a year ago (menu UV A), but we knew that in advance and it did not matter. I was actually looking forward to eating some of the special dishes again, because there is no other place on this planet where you can get them. Fabien and Greg both told me that there will be a new menu (UV B) from late February onwards, they are working hard on that right now. After the second menu is in place they will change from UV A to UV B in weekly or bi-weekly intervals. Eventually there will also a menu UV C and UV D, but I assume that will be at least another 1-2 years from now.

Talking about Ultraviolet’s  future plans with Greg Robinson, Ultraviolet’s Head of Research

The staff knew that we were returning guests (it does not happen very often yet, partly because of the difficulty to get seats and partly because of the price) and we were personally welcomed back, which is always a nice gesture. During the gummi bear run (hard to explain…) I was even asked to join the staff to run around the table!

Gummi Bear run at Ultraviolet

What I had not expected is that the staff was still having as much fun as they did 6 months ago. They are not acting but you can see that they truly love their jobs. It must be great to give interesting guests every night the best meal they have ever had in a setting that nobody can really imagine in advance. Ultraviolet is here to stay and we’ll be back as well, thanks to all the staff for another unforgettable evening!

‘Cleaning the dishes’ after another fantastic meal at Ultraviolet

On Weibo I saw the infographic below, posted 2 weeks ago on the Socially Aware Blog. There are a couple of interesting statistics on there, but 2 of them really blew me away.

The first one is a comparison between Facebook and Google+. The average American visitor spends 6.75 hours per month on Facebook, which seems reasonable to me. But if you look at Google+, there the time spent is only 3 minutes! Google+ may have a lot of users, but most are users by default because of their Google profile and never seem to use it.

The other one is about how much time Americans spend on online video sites. YouTube is the winner with 3 hours per month (a lot less than I had expected), but number 2 is… Tudou! U.S. customers spend an average of 2.5 hours on Tudou per month, the same time as on Hulu.

Of course this is only the average time that people who visit Tudou (in the US obviously a much small number than YouTube visitors) spend on the site, but it’s still a lot of time considering the fact that Tudou is hosted in China and is therefore relatively slow. And of course now I’m wondering how Tudou ended up on this list at all…

Over the past years I looked at Sonos audio equipment a few times, but I always assumed their wireless hifi systems would not work well in China. Because of that I never bought their audio players and amplifiers. But this summer a friend of mine at Sonos gave me some of their equipment and I realized Sonos actually works very well, even behind the Great Firewall.

In case you don’t know what Sonos is, it’s an audio equipment brand that lets you stream music wireless to different speakers in your house. For example, I can now listen to Spotify in all rooms where I installed Sonos audio speakers. Or I can listen in one room to an online radio station and in another to music that sits on a hard disk on one of my computers. Sonos streams it all wirelessly to the different locations in your house. If you want to have the same music in all rooms that’s easy as well, with one click your whole house has the same music everywhere.

You can control all your music through an app on your iPhone, iPad, Android or computer – or if you prefer an extra remote control you can buy a separate Sonos controller. The interface is very easy to use, even Scott (almost 5 years old) can already find his favorite song (currently Psy’s Gangnam Style) on Spotify and play it on the system in our living room.

I liked the Sonos gadgets so much that I bought a couple of more speakers for my house and even got some as presents for my family. In a way Sonos reminds me of Apple: the products look great, are very easy to install (basically plug-and-play) and even more easy to use.

And the best thing (at least for me) is that Sonos works great in China. I was worried about this as the Great Firewall normally leads to a very bad reception of foreign Internet radio stations, but generally this is no problem with Sonos (there have been a few exceptions, especially during the the time of the 18th Party Congress when all Internet traffic was severely reduced).

Sonos comes pre-installed with 1000s of radio stations, but in China all foreign ones are blocked by default. However, there is a simple way around that because you can manually add the streaming URL of each radio station that you want to listen to. It took me just a few minutes to set this up for my favorite stations. After that you click on the radio station and it starts playing right away.

If you are interested to buy yourself a Christmas present, the best (and currently only?) way to get Sonos in China is to go to MediaMarkt. They should have all the equipment on stock. Just don’t go during your lunch break like I did once: when I was there MediaMarkt only had one employee that knew anything about Sonos and he was on his lunch break as well…

And in case you are wondering, even though Sonos gave me some equipment half a year ago they never asked me to blog about it. I just love their products!