This morning Grace and I took Scott for the first time to his new school, the Soong Ching Ling kindergarten (Hongqiao Campus). Grace did a lot of research on schools and eventually decided that this was the best for Scott. I visited the campus once before and was surprised how big it was, over 10 hectares full of gardens, playgrounds and even a swimming pool in the middle of Hongqiao. This used to be the edge of town many years ago when the campus was built (1994), but nowadays so much space is very unusual in Shanghai.

Scott was excited, and so was I actually. It’s quite something to bring your little boy to school and leave him there. Last year he already went to the nursery in our compound, but that was different. It was just a 3 minute walk to see him, now you leave him behind in a big school. Initially Scott seemed to like it, but when we had to leave he of course started crying. Becky (one of the 3 teachers for the 10 students, she is British) held him and when we walked past the window a few minutes later he had calmed down again.

The teachers told us that Scott behaved well, but some other kids did not stop crying the whole morning. I guess Scott had the advantage of having been in the nursery, which was a bit similar. When I asked Scott how he liked it he didn’t say much, so I assumed it was okay. But tonight he opened up to Grace: he liked the nursery much better and misses his teacher there, so he wants to go back there. She explained that he is now a big boy so he has to go to a different school and that all his classmates are now also in different schools. She also explained that Elaine will soon go to the nursery now, but his reaction was that she can then go to his school so he can go back to nursery!

I am sure he will get used to the new school quickly and also make new friends soon. The school itself is better than any school I ever attended (and I attended a lot of schools when I was young!), so he is privileged. Soon he will likely speak a lot better English as well, because that’s the first language in his class (second language is Chinese). We are encouraged to speak English with him every now and then as well. Must be confusing for him…

I noted this morning that quite some Chinese kids go to Soong Ching Ling as well, it’s luckily not a pure expat school. The school is popular (we were happy that Scott was admitted) but obviously not very cheap and you can see that from the cars that some of the people, or normally their drivers, bring the kids to school in. When we went there this morning a Mercedes-Benz S600 limousine had been parked next to our car, another S600 was parked 2 places next to it and a Porsche 911 was parked opposite us! Nice for Scott, he is a big car fan now already and each time he spots a Porsche he will inform me about that, so he will have a lot to tell me every day.

Note (Jan. 2013): in the comments below this post people wrote negative things about the school, but if you scroll until the end you will see that they are referring to a school with the same name in Chengdu. At first I wanted to delete the comments, but I now decided to keep them and make this short edit to the post. Soong Ching Ling Kindergarten is probably the best kindergarten in Shanghai and maybe even in China. It was the best choice I could have made for my kids.

On December 5 the 2010 Shanghai Marathon will take place, and for the first time the route will go through both Puxi and Pudong. The start will be at Nanjing Road as usual and from there it will go along the Bund and the South Bund to the Fuxing Road Tunnel. After the tunnel the runners will pass the World Expo (at least what’s left of it by then) and continue on along the Huangpu river. The half marathon will then go East in the direction of the Shanghai Oriental Sports Center (where the finish is). For the full marathon the organizers decided to make the last 25 km as boring as possible by including a 12.5 km straight road with a turn at the end from where the participants will have to run back the same 12.5 km. It might lead to fast running times, but it’s not what you hope for as a runner.

If I am in China around December 5 I will probably participate in the half marathon, I likely won’t have enough time to train enough for the full marathon. Next to that I am not a big fan of the new full marathon course, so that makes the decision even easier.

If you are planning to participate, you can sign up for the race starting from September 1 until November 14 (note: after September 27 prices will go up). As usual they discriminate foreigners by charging them more money than Chinese (I wonder if that’s actually allowed in China? I remember that about 10 years ago a law was passed to stop the practice of having different prices for foreigners at for example tourist sites), but the entry fees are still reasonable: USD 45 for foreigners (full marathon), RMB 180 for foreigners living in China and RMB 60 for local Chinese. You can find more information about the registration procedures for the marathon here.

Map credit: http://shmarathon.com/map_cn.html

One of the annoyances of living in China is the flood of daily spam calls from telemarketers. Most are in Chinese and I just pretend that I don’t understand a single word of the language (‘hello? hello?’) and hang up on them. The English language ones are mainly trying to ‘help to manage your money’ or they have some ‘special offshore investment opportunities’. Also these ones I would normally hang up on without wasting any further time, angry that they interrupted my work: telemarketers got hold of my direct office phone that I normally don’t give out – it was probably listed on some official form and then a government employee sold it.

But now I found an excellent way to get back at them through “the counterscript”. Dutch company EGBG prepared a telescript just like the telemarketers use, which you can apply to fool the telemarketer. Today a Chinese person called me to to invite me to some investment forum but before he could tell me more I already cut him off by asking his name. I then followed the script by asking him to spell it for me (twice, I told him I could not write it down so quickly) and then asked him how he got my phone number (his boss gave it to him). I followed the counterscript precisely and now have his mobile number, his salary (a full-time job for about RMB 5000/month) and I even know that he is not allowed to go to the dentist during work hours. He couldn’t tell me his favorite toothpaste brand though.

At a certain point he got annoyed and asked me why I was asking him all these questions, so I asked him whether he ‘had problems answering questions for which he did not know the purpose, from a stranger on the phone’. He didn’t see the irony I guess, so I told him we had to continue the interview because I didn’t have a lot of time. He obliged and kept on answering the rest of the questions without further questioning me. In the end I thanked him for his time and hung op.

Two minutes later he called back. I told him I was happy that he called back because I still did not have his toothpaste brand. He said he didn’t know the brand, so I replied that he should look it up first before calling me again so that we can finish my investigation. Then I thanked him once again and hang up. He didn’t call back anymore.

Too bad I could not record the call, I found it hilarious. I now put the script next to my office phone, so if any more people call they will have to go through the interview process as well. I am actually looking forward to the next spam calls.

The counterscript can be downloaded here (pdf). You can also read it through here first. Make sure you read it through before your first interview, especially the right side is important in case the caller gets annoyed (‘I can appreciate your concern, but aren’t you calling me? Let’s continue with the next question’).

Yesterday we landed in Shanghai around 12 PM and when I left the terminal I was still wearing the sweater that I usually wear during flights. Not a smart idea, the Shanghai heat literally hit me when the doors opened. It was extremely hot and humid and I immediately took it off. But it didn’t help much: I only stayed outside for 2 minutes but I was already sweating before I got into the car.

Today I read in the Shanghai Daily that the mercury broke another record yesterday, it was officially 39.8 degrees Celcius – it never gets over 40 degrees in Shanghai because then people get a day off I think. My car thermometer (normally pretty accurate) showed 43 degrees while driving home from the airport. It was also the 4th day in a row that temperatures were above 39 degrees, a record according to the Shanghai Daily, this never happened since people started recording Shanghai temperatures in 1833. In total we already had 21 days above 35 degrees this summer…

At night a heavy thunderstorm with rain and a lot of wind cooled down the air a lot (overnight it was only 27 degrees, the night before it was 34 degrees!), but today it was again over 35 degrees. And the heat wave will continue, tomorrow it will be 36 and later in the week even warmer. Luckily both my house and office have good air conditioning systems, although it can still get hot during the regular power blackouts (this morning we had another one, I already lost count of the number of blackouts this summer).

Update 18 Aug 2010: KLM contacted me after reading this post, see the end of the article

I have a love / hate relationship with KLM. I am happy with the many upgrades that they give me and with the way their Twitter team works. But there are also a lot of things that KLM needs to improve and that I complain about on Twitter when I encounter them (some examples: a website in China that is often not working because it seems to be hosted outside the Great Firewall, continuous problems with their customer service & call center in China, delays on every single daytime flight from Shanghai to Amsterdam, rude/non-service oriented flight attendants).

On Twitter I sometimes get the question why I still fly KLM. The answer is simply because they have the monopoly on the route Shanghai-Amsterdam, there are no other airlines with direct flights. If you fly regularly for short trips you don’t want to have the additional hassle (and time!) of stop-overs. Many of my Dutch business friends here feel exactly the same, the topic of frustration with KLM often comes up over dinner or a beer. There is so much KLM can learn from airlines like Cathay Pacific or Singapore Airlines, but they seem not to care. The flights to Shanghai are always fully booked so they probably feel there is no need to improve their service.

Yesterday I encountered another typical example of why I have a problem with KLM. I dropped off my luggage for the delayed flight from Amsterdam to Shanghai. We had 4 suitcases: 2 small trolleys of around 10 kg, one bigger of 18 kg and one of 24.5 kg. Our total luggage allowance was 46 kg each for me and my wife, 23 kg for Scott and 10 kg for Elaine, so no problem at all I would say. No, not for KLM: The lady at the baggage drop off told me the 24.5 kg suitcase was too heavy and I would have to pay EUR 100 to check it in. The 46 kg allowance has to be split into 2 times 23 kg. Why? She had no idea, but those are the rules.

The maximum weight of a suitcase is 32 kg, just like at many other airlines. But if one of your suitcases is more than 23 kg, even if your allowance is much higher, KLM will charge you. This is ridiculous of course and I see it as one more way for the airline to make money off its customers. That they also scare their customers away is something they seem to forget.

To solve the problem we opened our suitcases at the check-in desk, took out 3 pairs of jeans and put them in another suitcase. Nothing changed in the total weight of the suitcases, so I felt it was a totally useless thing to do. But rules are rules at KLM, even if nobody knows why. Even if you are one of their best customers (I am a platinum elite member) and already paid a ridiculous EUR 3700 for 2 economy class tickets for 2 adults, plus a baby and a toddler.

The check-in lady then hoped we would have too much hand luggage and asked us to put those bags on the scale. Bad luck for her, because we were easily within the limits, so KLM could not charge or punish us for this. Not sure if this is a new KLM policy, but this is the first time ever that I am asked to weigh my hand luggage at check-in.

Many airlines are not so strict with weight, if you have 2-3 kilos extra they won’t balk, some even have policies that the first 5 kgs are no problem (I learned this on Twitter when I tweeted about this yesterday). But the lady at the KLM desk told me that she gets into trouble within 24 hours if she allows a suitcase that is above 23 kilo without an additional payment. Is that really the way KLM instructs its staff? Can a staff member not make some decisions on his or her own like in the past?

I will file a formal complaint with KLM about this. I would like to know if these are really their policies and would like to understand what the reasoning behind them is. I wonder if KLM management has any idea what the results of their policies are and how their regular customers perceive the airline. Maybe they will think about it and eventually change this rule. Wishful thinking? Maybe, but they also just reversed their new regulation to pay for check-in golf bags after customer complaints.

Update: KLM contacted me after reading this post. They explained that there are additional costs for suitcases of between 23 kg and 32 kg (32 kg is still the maximum weight) because of labor legislation, therefore the price increase. They suggest to book overweight in advance, then you get a 20% discount. I thanked them for their reply and told them to inform ground staff about this, that would solve a lot of problems. Also I said that you normally don’t know the weight of your suitcases until a few hours before departure, so booking overweight with a discount is not a solution. Personally I think that KLM should be more flexible for (at least) business class and for its Elite members, just like some other airlines do. KLM has to become more service oriented, not only on board but also on the ground.

The past week I spent in The Netherlands with my family for a short vacation (we’ll be back in China this weekend). Work has been quite intense over the past couple of months and I felt I really needed to be away from the office for a while. I therefore decided to take it really easy this week and not travel all around the country like I normally do on holidays in my home country. Except for a day trip to Gent (Belgium) and a trip to the zoo in Arnhem we stayed at my parents place the whole vacation.

The trip started off with a 4 hour delay. The daytime KLM flight from Shanghai to Amsterdam is always delayed, but normally just 1-2 hours. Luckily the KLM called me a few hours before departure so we went to the airport a bit later (they only called a few people I found out, we were the only ones at check-in 2 hours before departure! Thanks KLM). The flight itself was not easy, taking care of 2 small kids on a 12 hour flight is quite a task. I was very happy when we were finally at my parents place. The kid’s jet lags didn’t make the first days easy either, they were sleepy (or not sleepy at all) at the wrong times.

I read a lot, among others the book Nina, about Dutch business woman Nina Brink. She is the former CEO of World Online which listing at the stock exchange was a disaster and that lost many people tons of money. Not many people seem to like her and now I understand why: if only 10% of the book is true I would stay away from her as far as possible in business. The book describes her as a billionaire criminal in business disguise who sues everybody that she doesn’t like. Scary. The book is in Dutch, so most of your won’t be able to read it, but this is the link to the book.

I also read The Passage by Justin Cronin (Amazon site, official site for the book). I wasn’t sure whether I would like this kind of book (I never read, nor like, horror or SF) but bought it as an ebook for my Kindle a few weeks ago because it was chosen as one of Amazon’s books of the month. It’s a huge book (784 pages in the print version) but for me it was worth every page of it – and when I finished it I found out that this is only part one of a future trilogy! I am not going to review it here (over 600 people already did that on Amazon) but I loved it, once I started reading it I couldn’t stop.

Of course I also did a bit of work, but I tried to reduce it to max. 2-3 hours a day (my wife had to work a lot harder than I did this time…). One day I tried to keep my laptop off the whole day but I realized I felt less relaxed than when I would check my mails every 2 hours or so. I guess that’s the curse of modern business life, but I don’t feel it impacted this vacation as much as some other vacations over the past years. I feel I am almost stress free after a week here and can start next week relaxed and with some new business (strategy) ideas, but without hundreds of unread emails.

I am happy that I could spend a lot of time with the kids over the past days. I walked a lot with Elaine in and around the house (she loves to walk barefoot on the grass) and she lost her fear for walking on her own. She could already walk alone, but she felt much safer if somebody would hold her hand. Now she just gets up and walks off, so we have to watch her a lot more.

Scott changed his language completely from Chinese to Dutch in a few days. Even in his dreams he is now talking in Dutch! He can translate well now, if I tell him a word in Dutch he translates it for me into Chinese. And Elaine now answers in Chinese if you ask her something in Chinese (saying simple things like ? or ?), and in Dutch if you speak Dutch to her. A week ago she only understood Chinese!

We took the kids to Burgers Zoo in Arnhem one day. I had not been there in about 25 years and it had completely changed, it’s a great zoo. I am not a big fan of zoos, but if you design a zoo this is the kind of zoo you should build. No cages but open air areas for most animals and huge domes to simulate a tropical rainforest, a desert and the ocean. The kids really enjoyed it, especially Scott who knew most of the animals by name in Dutch, English and Chinese. After the zoo we went to my sister’s new house close to Sonsbeek Park in Arnhem for a late lunch and a bottle of wine.

Tuesday I went to Ghent (Gent in Dutch) in Belgium with my dad, where we had dinner and drinks with friends. I had never been to Ghent, so we left home a bit earlier to do some sightseeing. Ghent is a beautiful old city, it was much nicer than I had expected. The atmosphere is one of enjoying life: people wear nice clothes and everybody seemed to be relaxing with beer and wine on one of the many outdoor terraces in the city. I felt at home right away!

Today we made a ‘cruise’ on the river Vecht in Ommen with the family. Although my grandparents had lived in Ommen since long before I was born and my parents lived here since 1995 (and I lived here for a while during my high school years) I had never taken this cruise. For some reason some things you just don’t do when you live somewhere. It was a very nice boat ride, not just for the kids but also for us. From the water a place always looks different. Among others I took a last look at my grandparents house (not visible from the road, but visible from the river). My grandma passed away last year and the house has now been sold, so I will never go there anymore.

This vacation was very different from the ones we had before the kids were born. Less relaxing than our former tropical beach holidays or vacations in Southern Europe (also because of work I suppose) but more rewarding as well. Spending more time with our kids is something I would like to do more regularly, it’s so nice to see how they develop and to have real conversations with them. It was also nice to be at my parents place, to drink good wines and eat good food. All in all an enjoyable week with good memories.

As usual I took a lot of pictures, you can see many of them here.

Tudou just announced that we closed a USD 50 million dollar round, led by Singapore’s Temasek. Below the official press release.

Tudou