Today CNNIC (China Network Information Center) published its half yearly Internet statistics (pdf, in Chinese). As expected the total number of Internet users kept on growing and there are now 420 million Chinese online. Almost everybody has access to broadband, the penetration rate is over 98%.

But what’s actually even more interesting is the number of people that go online on a mobile device. At the end of June 2010 there were almost 277 million mobile Internet users in China. That is more than the total number of people that are online in the US. Amazing how this number is growing (44 million new users over the past 6 months), and I think it’s just the beginning. Phones with wifi only now start to appear on the Chinese market (for a long time phones were not allowed to have wifi here) and also 3G is taking off after it was launched in 2009.

CNNIC also published what people are actually doing on a mobile device. So far it’s still mainly low bandwidth usage, such as instant messaging and search. But Internet applications that need a higher connection speed are growing fast. According to the report 20% of all mobile Internet users now already watches online video on a mobile (Tudou has an exclusive deal with China Mobile where people can watch and upload unlimited videos for just RMB 6 per month) and 21% now play mobile online games.

I expect these figures to grow very quickly over the next year. Especially the announcement of MTK to start producing cheap Android chips for China’s ubiquitous shanzai phones means that very soon inexpensive Android smart phones will appear on the Chinese market. This likely means that Android will become the standard mobile operating system in China, and it will also help to further boost the mobile internet. Exciting opportunities ahead for entrepreneurs!

About 10 days ago Elaine took her first steps without any help. Just 2 steps, after that someone had to catch her. But she is learning very quickly, because today I took the kids to the City Supermarket after work and Elaine walked around everywhere. I still had to hold her hand in case she would lose her balance, something that happened every couple of steps, but most of the time she was basically walking without my help. I love my little girl!

Scott was not so happy that Elaine was suddenly getting all attention. To protest he decided to sit in Elaine’s stroller and he refused to get out. I tried to carry him but he was stubborn and completely ignored me. Luckily I figured out a trick for this: after I told him that the stroller was now a race car (making fast turns and race car sounds) he was a happy boy right away again and forgot all about the fact that he was supposed to be unhappy with us. Scott is a great little boy, I am so happy to have him around every day.

Another interesting thing that I happened this week had to do with Elaine’s vocabulary. She knows about 100 words I think, mainly Chinese ones but also a couple of Dutch ones. But yesterday she surprised me when I came home an she said something like “papa eye bat”. At first I did not realize what she was trying to tell me, until I noticed that she was pointing at my iPad. She is just 13 months old and now already asks for my iPad, she is a real Apple fan girl! When I give it to her she knows which button to push to turn it on, how to swipe to go the home screen and how to launch her favorite app. To me it proves that the Apple UI (=user interface) is the most intuitive in the world and that the iPad is the perfect toy for all ages.

Holland has a ‘tradition’ that when the national football team wins a European or World Championship, they

When I do sports in Shanghai I normally only run on my treadmill or occasionally do a spinning work-out. I felt something was missing in my exercise regime and so I decided to invest some money in a good rowing machine. After a bit of research I found that the best rowing machine on the market is probably the Concept 2, so I decided to order their latest model.

I have the machine for about 2 weeks now and I am very happy with it. It makes a lot less noise than the Concept 2 rowing machines that I used while in university (I did a bit of rowing there, but to be honest I spent more time in the bar of the rowing association than in a boat). Furthermore, on the Model E that I bought you sit much higher than on a conventional rower, so it feels much better. The computer display that is part of the machine is quite sophisticated, it does a lot more than measuring your time, speed and distance. There are some games on it for example and you can save your work-outs to a computer. Pretty cool stuff.

Scott also likes the machine. When I use it he laughs really loud, like I am a clown (I probably am in his eyes, sliding up and down on a seat while pulling a chain). But after 2 minutes he gets bored and tells me in Dutch that I should stop. If I don’t do that he tries to stop me by grabbing the rowing chain, which is quite dangerous. So from now on I only row with the door to the gym closed and him on the other side of the door. When I am not rowing he likes to slide the seat from the back to the front, for him the machine is just a big toy – like most things around him!

If you live in Shanghai and want to buy a Concept 2 machine as well you can buy it from http://www.concept2china.com/en/how-buy. Mine was delivered within a day and for a small fee (RMB 200) they also installed the machine for me.

Yesterday I came back from a trip to Europe, so last night we decided to have a family dinner. We couldn’t decide where to go (too much choice in the Hongmei Lu area & some of the best places had no tables available), but when I walked back from a visit to the wine shop on Saturday afternoon I got a flyer from a Japanese sushi/sashimi & BBQ place. I had been there once before and I remembered it was pretty good, so after a phone call to check if they would have 2 kids chairs available we decided to go.

The food was excellent indeed, esp. the barbecued beef, but what was even more remarkable was their menu: they used the iPad as a menu for their restaurant! A great idea, because the pictures they took of their food looked much better on the iPad screen than in a regular menu. I had seen the iPod Touch in hotels as a directory before (e.g. in the Upper House in Hong Kong), but of course the iPad is a much better device for this.

The app was quite basic, mainly pictures and prices, but of course it gave me a business idea right away. It should be fairly simple to develop an app that makes the user experience even better, for example by being able to choose the food in the app (we still needed a waiter) and show an overiew of everything you ordered.

Or go even one step further and let clients log in with Facebook Connect, Twitter or a Chinese non-blocked service, so they can see what they ordered last time. Show stats of the most popular food today, this week and this month, and give people the chance to log in at home to leave a review that appears in the iPad app. I am sure many restaurants would love an app like this, and I am convinced that 10 years from now something like this will be quite standard.

During the dinner I realized that it was no coincidence that this restaurant had an iPad, because they were quite innovative with the presentation of their dishes as well. See for example the picture below of the way the sashimi was presented. It looked very cool and the kids loved it as well!

Someone asked for the name & address of the restaurant in the comments, I found their website: http://www.gudumami.cn/en/shop/cs08127/index.html Address: 3211 Hongmei Road, 3/F

For the past couple of years Gary and I have tried to do at least one physical challenge per year. Over the past years that led us to ride a mountain bike through the Himalaya and to the top of Kilimanjaro. Because we are both too busy these days to train a lot the physical challenge for this year was a relatively easy one: climb Japan’s highest mountain, Mount Fuji.

To make things a bit more difficult we decided to climb outside the main season (that starts next week), when it’s still a bit more difficult and dangerous to climb the mountain. Furthermore we decided to do the climb at once, without staying overnight in one of the huts on the mountain before the final climb to the summit. Originally we had planned to climb last year November already, but when I mentioned that on Twitter I quickly learned that that climbing Fuji can be extremely dangerous outside the main season. Even though it’s just a small mountain (the summit is at 3776 meters), the weather at the top can be similar to that at 8000 meter mountains in the Himalaya, with hurricane-like winds and temperatures of -30 degrees. Also avalanches are a regular thing on the mountain. Even in the summer months some people still die (last year July for example it happened to some climbers), so we decided to postpone the trip to June this year.

About 2 weeks ago we finalized our plans to go up the mountain, even though we were told by Japanese friends that the mountain was still closed and it was considered dangerous to climb. A quick search online learned me that there was still a lot of snow but that it was doable to reach the top if you were well prepared. Well, we weren’t that well prepared, when I met Gary last Monday he realized that his mountain gear was still in his apartment in Beijing! But we were quite confident that we could do it based on our will power and the fact that each year thousands of others also reach the top.

So on Friday morning at 4 AM we set off from Tokyo to the mountain together with Suzuki-san of JAFCO, the Japanese VC firm that invested in Tudou. The night before we had had a big dinner at a top crab restaurant in Shinjuku with a couple of beers and some wine. That combined with just 3 hours of sleep meant that we were not really in top shape… During the drive over we listened to the live radio commentary of the football world cup match between Japan and Denmark (in Japanese, I didn’t understand a thing but still knew when Japan had or missed a chance or made goal) and we watched the final minutes of the game at a highway restaurant.

At 6:30 we had parked our car at the so-called 5th station and started the ascent. All shops and restaurants for the tourists and climbers were still closed, it felt a bit strange to be climbing this mountain almost alone. The first part was easy and we reached the 6th station within 30 minutes or so. The stations are normally just huts on the mountain where you can stay overnight or a first aid station. After passing the 6th station we came above the treeline and the ascent became more steep. Following what we learned from our Kilimanjaro guide we used the ‘polle polle’ strategy: walk very slowly but without stopping.

It worked well and we arrived at the 7th station without too many problems. I drank some energy drink and took some pictures before going up to the 8th station. Around us there were patches of snow, but the path was still clear of snow. Just below the 8th station we had to climb the first few hundred meters through the snow. Suzuki-san had a bit of a problem there because he was wearing basketball shoes instead of mountain shoes, which is not the best choice for the top of a snow covered mountain.

But we all made it to the 8th station at 3100 meters, and took a short break here. I ate two cold pancakes, drank some Japanese energy drink (called Pocari Sweat, the sports drink that helped me a lot during the Hong Kong Traiwalker as well) and read a couple of pages in The Facebook Effect on my iPad (yes, I carry my iPad everywhere!). There was still a phone connection, so I called my wife and kids in Shanghai to tell them things were going well. The temperature was still quite nice but the air was becoming a bit thinner. I noticed that while climbing I had to breathe harder and my heart was beating a lot faster now.

Above the 8th station the path was getting more and more difficult, but still easier than I had expected. I met 2 other climbers, one guy from Switzerland and another from the US, who I chatted with a bit. They climbed faster than we did (they were a bit younger and seemed in much better shape), so I decided to be wise and keep the Tanzanian polle polle strategy. There were hardly any other climbers on the mountain on our climbing day, I think we saw in total about 20-30 different people during the whole day. We had been very lucky with the date that we had chosen, because not only was it extremely quiet, the weather was also very nice. For most of the day it was sunny and we had great views over Japan while climbing. I had brought my rain gear (well, only my coat, I found out halfway the mountain that I left my rain trousers in China), but luckily we didn’t need it. Most important, there was not too much wind for most of the climb. Wind is supposedly one of the most dangerous factors on Mt. Fuji (others are avalanches, falling rocks and thunderstorms). I just climbed in my jeans, a long sleeve sports shirt and on some stretches my coat until the 9th station.

At the 9th station at about 3400 meter the wind started to blow a bit harder and it really started to get colder. Because we had to climb through snow and over rocks most of the time (the official path was hidden below meters of snow) I put on my gloves as well. The last few hundred vertical meters were the hardest. I started to get a bit of a headache because of the altitude, I always have this when going up to a high altitude quickly. But I know it’s nothing serious yet, so I don’t pay much attention to it. Especially the last stretch to the top seemed almost vertical and we had to really climb. People were cutting out a path through the snow for when the season would start, but we were a few days too early for that and had to find our own way.

But we made it of course and at 12:30 we reached the summit of Mount Fuji. It was pretty cold here and the wind was blowing hard. We stayed on the top for about 10 minutes enjoying the views into the crater. The crater was still completely snow-covered, a beautiful sight. We took some pictures and a short video and then decided to head back.

The descent was even more difficult than the ascent, especially because we were tired and a bit cold as well. After a couple of minutes we decided to take a different strategy and slide down the mountain! We sat down on the snow and just let ourselves glide down. It worked fantastic and we managed to slide all the way over the snow to the 8th station. At first it was a bit scary (the mountain is quite steep), but we quickly learned how to brake and had a great time sliding down Fuji. I am sure it’s not allowed what we did and it’s probably also not without danger, but I would advise everybody to give it a try (of course most of the snow will likely be gone in the next 2 weeks or so because of higher temperatures).

From the 8th station we had to take the path again, at some points there were rocks coming out of the snow and you don’t want to hit those at 3100 meters altitude far away from any hospital. We walked down pretty fast over a soft sandy (or volcanic ashes?) road, it felt a bit like walking on a beach. The ascent and descent routes are different and I would have actually preferred to take the original route – it’s a lot shorter and once you have reached the top you just want to go down as soon as possible.

Also my headache had gotten a lot worse, to the point that I did not really want to walk anymore. But I had no choice of course, so I just continued. It took us about 3 hours to get back to the car. My headache was still very bad, so it likely was not because of the altitude (that normally goes away quickly if you descend a few hundred meters). I took a Red Bull, an aspirin and a salty soup and laid down for a few minutes and suddenly I felt great again. Very weird, maybe it was just dehydration?

Anyway, the three of use drove back to Tokyo and then went to a traditional hot spring bath house to let let our tired legs and feet relax in the warm water. The hot springs were followed by an excellent sashimi dinner with lots of beer. My wife had flown into Tokyo that night as well, so she and Suziki’s wife also joined us. Gary still had a 9:30 PM meeting and left early, but we also did not make it too late. The day on the mountain combined with the good food and drinks suddenly make me very sleepy. We took an expensive taxi back to the hotel (it was quite a long taxi ride) and when I was in the hotel I was asleep within 10 seconds after hitting my bed. I don’t think I have often been this tired!

But it was totally worth it. Mount Fuji is a fun mountain to climb and it’s not too hard, especially if you do it in the official season. Just make sure you bring enough food and drinks (or buy them in the huts, they are probably all open in the season) and take it easy going up. Most people should be able to do this climb without too much trouble, it’s not technically difficult, you just need to be able to keep on walking uphill or climbing for about 6 hours. And if you stay overnight in one of the huts it’s just a walk in the park. Don’t believe the stories on the Internet that you have to be in good shape or that it’s dangerous (well, you should not slip of course, but that’s normal on a mountain). I think it’s often more psychological than physical, giving up is always easy right? All in all I enjoyed the climb and it was fun to do it with Gary and Suzuki-san. And I am now already thinking about what next year’s challenge should be!

Some more pictures of the climb are here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/chijs/sets/72157624366957724/

And some pictures of the weekend in Tokyo: http://www.flickr.com/photos/chijs/sets/72157624367079994/

In 1996 I spent 12 months as an international management trainee in the Mercedes-Benz “Nachwuchsgruppe”. We were a group of 12 ambitious young men and women who during the course of one year were allowed to do 3-4 months projects at Mercedes-Benz/Daimler plants and offices all over the world. Even though we did not see each other much (most were not at headquarters in Stuttgart, Germany) we became pretty good friends during the year. We used a predecessor to regular email to keep in touch when we were abroad and every 3 months we all had a one week management training session in Germany.

After the one year program all of us started the rat race within Daimler to get to a good management position as soon as possible. We kept in touch through lunches (making lunch appointments was a very important task at Daimler, without planning them days in advance you had to go to lunch alone – but that’s another story) and sometimes because our work fields overlapped in projects. After I left headquarters in Germany at the end of 1999 to move to Beijing contact reduced a lot, except for some emails. And when I left Daimler in 2002 I only kept in touch with a few people.

One of the people that still sent regular updates was Markus Keiper, among others about the non-profit ChildrensFriends.org that he set up in his spare time with his wife Dinoshi. He had left Germany (and Daimler) not long after me, and his career for MTU led him to Australia, India and now Singapore. A few days ago he sent me a mail saying that he would be in town this week, so we decided to meet up.

It was great to see him again after all these years. I think we had not seen each other in person for maybe 12 years, but he hadn’t changed much. Quite amazing. We talked for a few hours about what life had brought us over the past years, about our interests and of course about our families and kids.

Markus is still in direct contact with several of our former colleagues, and it struck me that the ones who had always said that they wanted an international career were still in headquarters in Stuttgart. But most of them had great careers within the company (several are at the vice-president level or higher by now) and that’s also worth a lot of course.

I am glad we’re back in touch and I will certainly visit Markus and Dinoshi on my next trip to Singapore, so we can catch up in more detail.

Yesterday my parents picked me up from the office together with Scott and Elaine. We then took the kids for a stroll along the Bund. Scott loved it, he pointed out all the different boats to me and he was happily running and jumping on the newly opened river promenade.

Many people took pictures of him, but Elaine was even more popular: because of the Expo there were a lot of local tourists who have likely never seen a blonde baby girl before. So quite a few tried to take a picture with her, preferably with themselves in it as well. Elaine wasn’t scared at all, she just looked curiously at all the photographers around her. And of course I took a picture of her with the photographers!