This evening I had a couple of beers at Bar Rouge with Spil Games colleagues from Holland and took a cab back home afterward. I let the driver stop outside my compound and gave him RMB 100 to pay the RMB 45 fare. A second later he had an old RMB 10 note in his hand and told me that I had given him only RMB 10. For a moment I thought I made a mistake and took another RMB 100 from my wallet. But then I realized that he was cheating me, because I had just spent my last RMB 10 in the cab to Bar Rouge and I remember thinking to get some change in the bar for my taxi ride home (which I then of course forgot about in the bar).

So I looked at him and told him angrily he was trying to cheat me. He said no, I made a mistake and showed me he did not have any RMB 100 notes in his wallet. I repeated it again and then he said, ah, sorry I made a mistake. He then tried to give me RMB 25 back instead of RMB 55, which made me really angry. So he then apologized again and gave me RMB 55 back. I asked for a receipt, but he refused. Then I got really angry and tried to write down his taxi number, but he ripped the card out of its holder so I could not see his number.

That was too much for me and I told him I was going to call the cops. He started pleading me not to do this, offering me several hundred RMB (suddenly he had RMB 100 notes!) if I would let him go. This confirmed to me that he had probably played this trick before and may have gotten a warning and would lose his taxi license if he would be caught again.

I told him I did not care about money, but that it’s about ethics (well, at least I tried to explain that to him in Chinese, not sure if he understood what I meant), and that I hated him for trying to cheat his customers. I was very angry now and sort of felt that he deserved to lose his license, this kind of cab drivers give the others a bad reputation. On the other hand the punishment would be a bit too harsh, but at least I wanted to teach him a lesson. So instead of the cops I called my wife who turned out to be at home. The driver was almost crying when he saw me calling, probably assuming I was calling the police. In a way I felt bad for him, even though he was the one trying to cheat me.

My wife came out and the driver apologized to her many times and told her that his receipt printer was broken so he could not give me a receipt. She then said she would call his company to check if his printer was really not working after which he also offered her money not to do this and pleaded her to please be generous.

My wife argued with him for a while but was smarter than me and eventually let it go, telling him that he should never try this trick again. So I went out and tried to take a picture of his license plate. When he saw that he jumped out, standing in front of his plate and pleading me not to do this. So I just took a picture of him instead in front of his car. I had planned to put the picture above this post, but it’s probably better I leave it like this. He got his punishment and I don’t think he will easily try this trick again.

It’s Sunday night just past 11 PM and I am sitting behind my laptop to read some emails and RSS feeds. I had a great weekend with my family, doing lots of things and with quite nice weather as well (up to 22 degrees yesterday).

Friday night we stayed home and because my parents were visiting we decided to open two very good bottles of wine. We started with a bottle of

This month is book month at Soong Ching Ling kindergarten and parents could sign up to read a story in class. Of course I decided to participate and signed up for yesterday to tell the kids a story. I didn’t really know what to expect with 2 and 3 year old kids, most of whom just started learning English 3 months ago. Would they be able to sit and listen quietly or start running around? It turned out that it was a great experience and I don’t think I ever had a more captive audience!

I only read for 10 minutes, because the attention span of young kids is not that long. I chose a story about a mother duck that had laid several small eggs and one big one, and she went to visit all different animals to check if the big egg was theirs. So on each page I could ask the question if the egg belonged to a cat, a monkey, a bear etc. After two animals the kids realized the answer was always no, so they all started screaming “No!” to my question. So cute to see them so involved in the story.

I really enjoyed it. “The best things in life are for free” may be a cliche, but this kind of experience is just priceless. Scott was very happy and proud to see his dad in his class room, and I later heard that he told both our driver and his nanny that I had read a story in his class. And he even told my parents what the story was about. Glad I had the opportunity to do this!

Yesterday I saw from my office window that a construction company was building a strange looking device just 200 meters from my office window. It looked like a ferris wheel but because it’s in the middle of a residential area I assumed it was some sort of machine used in constructing a new road or a subway line. But when opening today’s Shanghai Daily I learned that it will indeed be a ferris wheel.

The newspaper writes that from the wheel you will have a bird’s eye view over the Suzhou Creek. Really? Maybe if all buildings along the Suzhou Creek would be demolished first, but otherwise I don’t think you’ll be able to see anything except for concrete buildings. The ferris wheel will only be 42 meters high, which is only a bit taller than our 7-story office building and similar to some of the other buildings along the creek.

According to the paper the attraction was built by a new shopping mall that’s opening next to my office. Using the ferris wheel will be free (expect long waiting lines), so if you want to peek into my office bring a pair of binoculars and enjoy the ferris wheel ride. The planned opening is in about 4 weeks, on December 18, and likely the wheel will be torn down in 3 or 4 months time (land is too valuable to ‘waste’ in downtown Shanghai). The ferris wheel will be open from 10 AM to 10 PM and is located on the corner of Xizang Lu and Qufu Lu.

One of the things that never ceases to amaze me, is how quickly China’s cities change. Buildings seem to pop up out of nowhere, and if you don’t visit a neighborhood for a few months it can look quite different. On average skyscrapers grow 1-2 stories per week, but sometimes it can go a lot quicker. See for example this time lapse video in which a 15-story hotel in Changsha gets build in just 6 days! Amazing.

(source: TheNextWeb.com)

I spent the past 4 days in Jakarta on a business trip and got back early this morning. I had not been in Indonesia since last year June (see last year’s blog post), and it was great to be back. Spil Games’ Indonesian site games.co.id has grown tremendously over the past 1.5 years: it’s now the #1 online game site in Indonesia with 8.5 monthly unique players, and over 30% come back every single day to play!

The trip gave me a lot of new insights about the Indonesian Internet market and the game market in particular. I won’t mention too many of the insights here (the competition also reads blogs), but most are quite straightforward and the main one is that this is just the beginning for the Indonesian Internet. There are tremendous opportunities for players that follow the right strategy and I think I now know for sure what that strategy is.

I arrived on Thursday evening on a delayed Garuda flight. The delay was partly Garuda’s fault, because the airplane we were supposed to take had technical problems and they had to use a smaller one. The smaller plane (a brand new B737-800) could however not make it to Jakarta in one time and had to make a refueling stop in Singapore which caused a 1.5 hour delay. But because a Quantas A380 had just made an emergency landing after one of its engines exploded right after take off, one of the runways was blocked and we had to stay much longer than planned at the gate. I actually read about the Quantas accident online when we were waiting at the gate and when we finally took off I managed to get a good look at the A380 that was still parked on taxi lane next to the main runway.

Upon arrival in Jakarta things went relatively smoothly, except for the fact that my cab driver refused to put on his meter when my suitcase was already in the trunk and we were on the road already. This was of course totally my own fault, and after so many years in Asia I can’t believe I made this mistake. I had actually planned to take a Silver Bird Mercedes taxis but found their price too expensive, so I just walked out looking for the Blue Bird stand. I didn’t see it, but many other taxis were waiting, and I just took one of those, totally forgetting to tell him to use the meter before getting in. I still managed to negotiated a Rp. 150,000 rate which was about the same as my trip back to the airport so I didn’t do too bad (as a comparison, Silver Bird charges Rp. 440,000).

Because of major traffic jams I did not get to the hotel until 8 PM, meaning I would miss the StartupLokal event that I had planned to go to. A pity, but instead I went for dinner and drinks with TechCrunch writer Sarah Lacey. We were looking for a nice outdoor restaurant and through a friend I got the address of a good restaurant. But of course the taxi driver couldn’t find it (or pretended he couldn’t find it), so we eventually told him to stop and looked for a restaurant ourselves. It turned out we were lucky, because we ended up at a very nice Bali-style restaurant, Payon (see link for some pictures of the place). We had a fun evening with good Indonesian food and of course some cold Bir Bintangs, talking about Sarah’s Indonesian and Singaporean experiences so far and of course discussing the latest happenings in the Chinese Internet market.

The next morning at 8 AM the conference that I was attending started. I was a few minutes late because it was supposed to be in the Grand Ballroom of the Kempinski, which turned out to be a 15 minute walk all through the (huge) Grand Indonesia shopping mall. The mall was still closed and its air conditioning turned off, so I had to climb 5 floors of escalators in the hot environment to get to the elevator that took me to the Ballroom. Of course I later found out there was a much easier way, but the Kempinski staff neglected to tell me that when I asked them. Actually, being late was not a big deal because the conference also started late, about 30 minutes or so. Jam karet as the Indonesians say. I still remember it from my time working in Jakarta in 1996, and it’s not a big deal for anybody. I had a coffee and talked to several people, it was actually a great networking opportunity.

The conference was very interesting, I learned a lot about the Indonesian Internet industry and got to know a lot of the Indonesian Internet start-ups and their founders/CEOs. There are some really cool companies in Indonesia, but most are purely focused on the local market. I talked a lot about Spil Games and our site games.co.id and was surprised how many people know the site nowadays. During my last visit that was still very different, things can change quickly. Not only the conference was good, also the food was excellent: an Indonesian buffet prepared by Kempinski. I love Indonesian food and managed to eat a lot of it during the past days.

After the conference I had a meeting in my hotel and then joined Sarah Lacey and the people from Indomog.com in their car to the FX Mall for the finalist pitches of the SparxUp Awards 2010. Because of traffic jams it took us almost an hour to get there (it’s only about 3 kilometers)… The pitches were all in Bahasa Indonesia so I mainly spent time at the Expo where I could try demos or live versions of all the start-ups. Some interesting companies to invest in if I would have lived in Indonesia (I only invest in China right now because there may added value is biggest). After the pitches I had dinner and drinks with games.co.id sales rep Romeo Reijman, I had never met him so far so it was very good to be able to meet him in person and hear his vision on the Indonesian game market.

Saturday was a mix of meetings with entrepreneurs and game developers, mainly at my hotel: traveling in Jakarta is such a hassle because of the traffic jams, even on weekends, that it’s hardly possible to set up several meetings in different locations in one day. Saturday night I attended the Awards night of the SparxUp Awards 2010 and gave a talk about games.co.id. Once again I met a lot of interesting people, it was exactly the right event to go to for me. After the Awards night I was invited to the Oktoberfest in Paulaner Jakarta and had a fun night there with Yanik Cantieni and his girlfriend. Yanik is a long time friend (I have known him since 1996 when he was my successor in a SAP implementation project in Jakarta) and the CFO of Mercedes-Benz Indonesia. However, he told me they will move to Switzerland later this month where he will become CFO. Career wise probably a good move, but life in Jakarta seems more interesting than Zurich…

On Sunday I worked on my emails for quite some time and among others met up with some friends. I had lunch at Poste with Marnix Beugel and Corine Tap, who I knew from the old days in Beijing (around 2001-2002 I think) before they moved to Indonesia. Nice to catch up after all these years, and interesting to see that we have quite some friends in common. After that I met a friend from my fraternity for a drink, Thomas Schok. He is still studying so I had never met him in person, but it was cool to meet up anyway. He is a medical student and is doing an assignment at a local hospital in Jakarta (low end). Pretty intense stories about children dying etc., I am not sure if I could handle that.

Monday I again had planned some meetings in my hotel until after lunch with operators and game developers. After that I took a few hours off, sitting at the pool writing down my thoughts about the past days and doing some emails (I love a good wifi connection at the pool!). I went for a 6 km run in the gym around 5 PM before packing my suitcase and heading for the airport. Again I avoided the Silver Bird taxi and saved USD 40 by just walking 100 meters with my suitcase until the closest Blue Bird stop. Of course the taxi ride was long once again because of traffic jams but I was working on emails, so it didn’ bother me much. But I can’t imagine what traffic will be like when it rains (or when Obama comes to town, like he does today). Anyway, I had a very good trip to Indonesia and I hope to be back sooner rather than later.

If you’re active in the Indonesian game or mobile industry and want to get in touch, drop me an email at marcvanderchijs (at) gmail (dot) com

If you follow me on DailyMile.com you probably noticed that I didn’t run for the past 25 days. Not because of an injury but because I had a pretty bad cold that didn’t go away. I got the cold in Korea and because I kept on working and traveling it got worse and worse. Last week in Holland I seriously thought about staying in bed one day, but I finally took some more Tylenol and dragged myself out of bed.

Back in China things didn’t really improve either but today I am suddenly feeling much better. It probably has to do with the tropical weather (I am in Jakarta right now), that is always a good medicine for a cold. That in combination with one good night of sleep (almost 9 hours last night, I was exhausted) means I feel like reborn today.

For the past weeks I totally didn’t feel like running, but today I looked forward to putting on my FiveFingers again. My hotel has a 420 meter jogging track all around it, it’s pretty cool how they made it. It’s on the 5th floor of the hotel and runs through its tropical rooftop gardens, along the swimming pools and rooftop bars and restaurants and then on a small path all around the back, side and front of the hotel.

I did 10 laps for a total of about 4200 meters and it was quite difficult. I am totally out of shape, and the not-completely-clean air plus tropical heat didn’t help much either. But I am glad I am running again. In less than one month I plan to participate in the Shanghai half marathon, I am not sure if I will be back in shape by then, but I’ll try.

My cold also taught me something else, and that is that I need to start working a bit less. Continuous 60-80 hour weeks plus lots of traveling are no problem when you’re in your twenties, but I now realize that at 38 years your body doesn’t recover as quickly anymore. No complaints, I love the work I’m doing and love to go to the limit every day, but I should watch out not to go over it. Feeling sick for more than a week is not healthy I guess. And my family deserves also more time, I miss my kids very often (and worse, they miss me).

So even though it’s not time for New Year’s resolutions yet I decided that I am not doing any more investments this year and will say no to all speaking gigs and other ‘opportunities’ until the end of the year (well, I still have one talk that I need to give in the FX Mall in Jakarta tonight, but that’s the last one). Let’s see if I can hold this promise to myself…

When I drove to the office on Monday morning the whole city was covered in a brown blanket of smog, the sun could hardly get through. I tweeted about it saying “The Shanghai Expo is over and immediately the air pollution is worse than any day during the past 6 months”. Shanghaiist even made it the tweet of the day (thanks Elaine Chow), so I decided to dive a bit deeper into this and see if I could find some data to back up my observation.

A Twitter reply by @bpoasia helped me out, and I now have the data that show that the pollution indeed shot up to unhealthy levels right after the Expo closed its gates. I made a screen shot, check out the original data here: http://datacenter.mep.gov.cn/TestRunQian/air_dairy_en.jsp (change the city and dates manually or if that does not work in the URL).

Will we see the blue skies days again in the near future? I seriously doubt it, this was the clearest summer I had in the past decade here. For this reason I might really start missing the Expo…