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).

Last week I was invited to speak at the Infinity Ventures Summit 2011 in Kyoto, Japan. It was an excellent conference and I learned a lot about Internet and investing in Japan. Because it is an invitation-only conference the level of participants is quite high, with lots of CEOs and founders of (mainly Japanese) Internet tech companies. The conference was held at the Westin Miyako in Kyoto, an excellent 5-star hotel close to many of Kyoto’s temple complexes.

Although I spent most of the time at the conference I managed to see a bit of Kyoto as well. It was my first trip to this city and people had told me that it would be an amazing experience. And they were right, I am very impressed with what I saw here. The city is surrounded by low mountains covered with dense forests and on the foot of these hills there are a large number of temple complexes. Also in the city itself you see a lot of shrines and temples, it is as if you are going back in time.

I arrived around 9:30 PM on the first night, so I had no idea where I was exactly. I had to work on a presentation in my hotel room, so that’s what I did at first, but around midnight I decided to go for a stroll. The city was deserted, even the coffee shops and bars had closed down for the night. I had planned to eat something at a cafe or so, but that didn’t seem possible around my hotel. Luckily I found a Lawsons where I bought a beer and some snacks. I walked around a bit longer but because the place was deserted and it was pretty cold I decided to get back to my hotel.

I got up early the next morning and watched the sunrise over the mountains from my hotel room (pure coincidence, I opened the curtains just as the sun was coming up). At 8:30 AM Infinity Ventures had invited some of the speakers and guests for a Zazen session in a temple. Not really knowing what it was I decided to join as well. With some other guests we shared a taxi to the temple, only to end up at a different temple complex! It could have been China… We didn’t realize this right away so walked around a bit and took some pictures. Luckily we had a Japanese lady in our taxi (who later turned out to be the CEO of a Japanese e-fashion company) who was able to get directions to the right temple, so with a 20 min delay we arrived at the Zen session.

Basically we had to meditate on the floor of the temple while trying not to think of anything, for 2 times 15 minutes. A priest first told us a story and explained how it worked (luckily with an English translation) and then we got started. I tried as hard as I could to sit comfortably and relax, but it was difficult. I couldn’t keep my mind from wandering off with all kinds of new ideas or things I had to work on, but I eventually managed to relax. Suddenly the priest rang a small bell and I realized where I was. Kind of a strange experience.

After 15 min we could relax our legs a bit and then the second session started. My legs were stiff and hurting and I could hardly sit anymore. During the second session you could request the priest to hit you twice with a wooden stick on your shoulders. I sort of missed the significance of that and decided not to do it. It was interesting to hear the sound of the others being hit though, it seemed like they were hit quite hard.

At the same time my body started protesting because of me sitting a long time in such a ‘strange’ position. My legs started trembling and I started sweating as if it was very hot in the room. I was relieved when the priest rang the bell and announced that the session was over. I guess I am not used to this kind of traditions, but it’s something I’d like to try again. I will train my legs a bit first though, because the next day I had serious muscle ache from sitting down in a semi lotus position for half an hour!

After the zazen session we visited another nearby temple complex with a nice view over Kyoto. I was talking to a lot of IVS participants so didn’t see a lot of the temples, but I realized how peaceful and quiet it was everywhere. I enjoyed being there in the complex, very different from the hectic daily life in Shanghai.

We then walked back to the hotel for the official start of the conference. We had an excellent lunch and then the presentations started, all with good simultaneous Japanes-English and English-Japanese translations. The China gang (Fritz Demopoulos, Richard Robinson, Gang Lu, Rekoo’s Patrick Liu and myself – we seem to meet at different conferences around the world) had their session that afternoon as well.

After our presentation and discussion I watched a couple of more sessions and then spent an hour in my hotel room to catch up on emails. That’s always the curse when you are away from the office, emails keep piling up. I normally try to spend 2 hours in the morning and 2 hours at night to answer emails when on a business trip, but it’s just not enough. Starting the day at 6 AM with 100-150 new emails is not fun, but it seems there is no way around it…

At dinner (excellent Japanese food, actually I only had great food at the conference) some of the sponsors showed off their upcoming gadgets and games. Among others the Kinect Star Wars game was on display (Richard Robinson loved it!) and we got to try out the Windows 8 table (not a bad product, but more of a laptop replacement than an iPad competitor).

After dinner we were invited for a VIP party in one of the bars of the hotel. Among others I tried out a Kyojito – not something I recommend, sake is not a good replacement in a Mojito. The wines were good though and I had some nice conversations with among others Peng Ong and KKBOX’s Chris Lin.

The next morning I could hardly get up. Not because of the drinks but because my legs were hurting so much from the Zazen session! After breakfast I watched Launch, a start-up pitch competiton for Japanese companies. I didn’t spot anything outstanding, but it was fun to look at the products and ideas (most were apps) being presented on stage. The rest of the day I spent either in sessions or in my hotel room working on emails and calls.

Around 4 pm I decided to quickly go out and see a bit more of Kyoto before it would get dark. I made a 1.5 hour walk from the hotel through some backstreets to the Heian temple and from there to the river. It was very quiet on the streets and even at the Heian complex there seemed to be just a few people.

Also along the river I hardly saw anybody. Not sure if this is because the time of year, the time of day, or if there are just not a lot of tourists in Japan anymore after the earthquake (the 3/11 event still plays a major role in conversations by the way, it was brought up several times during the conference). When it was almost completely dark I walked back to my hotel, spent some time on Facebook and Twitter and then changed for dinner.

Dinner was quite an event, because it was held in a temple close to the hotel. The temple complex was beautifully lit, it was literally amazing. I tried to capture it, but with my iPhone camera that was not easy. We made a walk through the gardens and then had drinks and dinner in two of the temple’s halls. I am not easily impressed but this dinner location really made a deep impression on me. It makes you realize that there is more than just working hard day and night.

I didn’t stay too long because I was tired after the two long days. I made another stroll through the gardens before walking back to the hotel. There I spent another hour on emails and skype, and uploaded some pictures on Flickr. Then I went to bed early instead of going for another drinking session in the bar, I felt I needed some rest.

Friday morning I started with 2 hours on email, then I had a big breakfast in the hotel (Japanese & international buffet, not bad). I took me 5 minutes to pack my hand luggage and then I took a cab to the bus station. There I took the express bus to Osaka Kansai airport and from there I took the plane back to Shanghai. I look back on 3 nice days in Kyoto, a city I should spend some more time in in the future.

Today Spil Games launches the latest edition of its Uphill Rush racing game series, and this one is better than ever. As our press release says: Uphill Rush is Spil Games’ blockbusting, stunt-racing game for teens, and today it welcomes the fourth edition in the much-loved, high-speed, smash-hit series.

To date, the Uphill Rush series has been played over 600 million (!) times, with the continuing popularity credited to the development team’s focus on ensuring the teen audience is provided with a constant adrenaline rush, whacky new worlds and endless surprises.

The Uphill Rush games have what players crave: funny, unexpected vehicles and tons of customisation options. Players can drive with a geisha outfit in a motorboat or race as a sumo wrestler on a dolphin—the options are endless.

Uphill Rush 4 retains the tried and tested formula that’s made the series a success, while introducing a host of new features such as new racers, new worlds, new outfits and new physics.

Check out the game on one of Spil Games sites, among others Uphill Rush 4 is playable on http://www.agame.com/game/uphill-rush-4.html, starting today at 10 AM CET.

Below an infographic with some of the amazing stats about this racing games series. I still remember when we made the first game in the series, I liked it (and played it a lot) but it’s hard to believe that the series has become such a huge success. Congrats to the team for designing and making these games!