I just read a post on DeluxZilla about Chinglish signs at the Shanghai World Expo 2010. I was not too

As you can see from the pictures my kids love computers just as much as I do. Elaine at 10 months (now 11 actually, she had her “birthday” yesterday) old already plays games on an old Sony laptop, and the first thing Scott says when I come home is “Papa, iPad, papa, iPad”. For babies and toddlers computers are the most normal things in the world, and they have no fear for them at all.

When I gave Scott my iPad for the first time it took him less than 2 minutes to figure out how to turn it on, how to unlock the opening screen and to open up an app. No manual needed for kids! I bought a lot of toddler games for Scott and Elaine, and Scott already remembers which one he likes best and fires them up before I get a chance to help him. The touch screen user interface is so natural to him that he now tries to move icons on my (non-touch screen) MacBook Pro with his hands as well!

Scott also knows the Apple logo. When he sees the Apple logo on one of my laptops or on my iPad he immediately says Apple! Also when he sees the Apple logo on my screen he points at it and says Apple. I often watch car videos on Tudou with

Yesterday Peter Driessen, CEO and co-founder of Spil Games, was invited to open the stock market at the NYSE Euronext in Amsterdam. NYSE Euronext is the pan-European stock exchange that started in 2000 after the merger of the Paris, Brussels and Amsterdam exchanges.

Opening the stock market by ringing the opening bell (or in this case using a gong) is an old stock exchange tradition. At NYSE

Yesterday Spil Games and social network Hyves announced that they together launched a game platform on Hyves, www.hyves.nl/games. Hyves is Holland’s biggest social network, with 10 million registered users (out of a total Dutch population of 16.5 million people).

The social aspect of gaming is central in the new Hyves game platform, people can for example try to beat their friends high scores. The platform starts off with 300 games, and new content will be added constantly. The platform is similar to the Zapapa Games platform that Spil Games already operates on Facebook.

Today is an official day of National Mourning in China for the people that died in the Qinghai earthquake, exactly one week ago. All public entertainment will be suspended today, so also all entertainment websites were requested to cease operations for 24 hours. Our Chinese sites game.com.cn and xiaoyouxi.cn changed their design to reflect that day of National Mourning. After the Sichuan earthquake in 2008 we did something similar, but at that time we had to stop our sites for 3 days.

Two weeks ago I booked a flight to Amsterdam for a short business trip. First I wanted to fly on Sunday already, but because we had the Tudou Festival on Saturday and I prefer to spend as much time in the Shanghai office as possible, I decided to fly on Tuesday. That turned out to be a lucky decision, because Sunday’s flight was cancelled because of the ash cloud. But I still wasn’t sure whether I could fly today.

Yesterday I had been in touch with KLM on Twitter a few times, and they even called me personally last night to inform me about the latest situation. I had tried to check-in the whole day, but that didn’t work. But finally late at night the check-in went through and I managed to get a good seat on the plane. So I packed my bag, not knowing whether the flight would take off or not.

In the morning I drove my wife to Tudou and then continued to the airport. There was hardly anybody waiting in the check-in line, but a long queue of people at the ticketing desk, so I assumed the worst. But it turned out that the flight would depart and would even be on time! But then I also found out that my Spil Games Asia colleague -who was booked on the evening flight- was not able to depart: his flight had been cancelled (or at least they did not allow him to take it). Not a good thing, because an important part of the reason for this trip was because of him.

I checked in without any problems and went to the lounge to have a pre-boarding coffee and work on my emails. In the lounge I noted that KLM would be the first plane to leave Shanghai, both the LH flight to Frankfurt and BA to London had been delayed for 7 and 12 hours respectively.

Well, so far so good, but when the boarding time came there was no announcement. Not a good sign. After about half an hour a fellow passenger checked with airline staff and they told him we would likely depart but that there were still a lot of people at check-in. Finally, about 1.5 hours after we should have been boarding, the boarding announcement was made. Everybody was very happy, especially the people that had been waiting for days to get on a plane back to Europe. Most people on the plane seemed to be passengers that had been waiting for days already to get back to Europe, I had the feeling that I was lucky to get on because of my frequent flyer status. That also explains why the captains apologized on the intercom that “we had several days delay”.

On the plane I had an emergency exit seat (first row of economy class), so I could chat a bit with the main flight attendant during take-off about the situation. She told me that only at 3 AM they had made the decision to fly (the plane had an official departure time of 12:50 PM). The original plan had actually been to fly to Istanbul or Budapest, but the ash cleared more than expected and now we had a good chance of flying all the way to Amsterdam. Only problem was that we were not allowed to land after sun set, so they had pushed the baggage people to work as fast as possible to get the plane ready for departure. We had to leave before 2:30 PM in order to arrive in Amsterdam by daylight. And guess what, when we were ready to go at 2:15 PM China air traffic control told us to wait for another 15 minutes… We eventually left at 2:35 PM.

Now that I am writing this I am on the plane halfway through the flight somewhere above Russia. Nobody knows whether we will make it on time to Schiphol airport, but I am not going to worry about it. I am glad I am on this plane, and even if I arrive half a day later it’s not a very big deal.

Update: We made it to Amsterdam just before sun set. I did not see any traces of ash clouds anywhere along the route, just clear blue skies and some clouds. When I arrived KLM sent me a direct message on Twitter to welcome me back to The Netherlands! My colleague who was supposed to fly as well heard that he has to wait until May 10 before he can fly… That’s almost 3 weeks! All flights from Shanghai to China are apparently fully booked until then…

On Saturday the 2010 Tudou Video Festival was held in Beijing. A total of 1000 invited guests attended this year’s festival in the northeastern suburbs of Beijing and watched the winners in 16 categories receive their awards. The prizes were handed out by famous Chinese directors and representatives of the sponsors of this year’s festival. The quality of the winning films was once again amazing, there is so much talent in China. And that talent now has the chance of showing their works to the rest of world with many clips getting millions of views. That’s the power of online video!

The winner of this year’s festival was the already famous machinima film ???? a.k.a. War of Internet Addiction. The movie was shot entirely inside the game World of Warcraft by 100 gamers who performed with their characters inside the game world and recorded everything themselves. Director :???? (Sexy Corn, I did not make up that name) then edited all the material in 3 months to a 64-minute movie. Total production cost of the “War of Internet Addiction” was literally zero – except for broadband connections, electricity bills, buying cigarettes, beers and snacks to get through the long hours.

The movie is quite controversial (see for more details the Wikipedia entry about this movie or the detailed English Google Document about it), and the audience was cheering when they saw this film among the finalists for the big prize, and even more when Gary announced that War of Internet Addiction won. Sexy Corn commented: “Tudou.com was the only video website that supported the broadcasting of “War of Internet Addiction” on the web through and through, unlike other websites that temporarily banned the content. I like the open and free spirit of Tudou.”

Watch the movie for yourself below, or watch it here on Tudou.com. Other works of Sexy Corn are available on his Tudou page here. The film has also been uploaded in 7 parts to YouTube (with English subtitles), see part 1 here.

As you are probably aware, a big cloud of volcanic ash is disrupting air traffic in big parts of Europe. Just now a former Spil Games Asia colleague (who now works at Spil Games in Hilversum) gave me a call. He is on holiday in China and planned to fly back to Amsterdam today. But because of the ash cloud there are no flights to Europe, so he had to rebook his ticket. And guess what: the earliest plane KLM can put him on will leave in 10 days time! He told me he first thought he misunderstood what KLM was telling him, but all earlier flights are fully booked and they could not rebook him on other airlines either (I assume they are also fully booked).

I understand that the airline is losing tons of money because of this extraordinary situation, but leaving stranded passengers for 10 days in Beijing seems a bit too much to me. My colleague asked and was told that the KLM does not want to add additional flights to fly passengers back to Europe.

I don’t know yet how other airlines handle this situation, please let me know in the comments if you have information on this. They should face the same problem, but I wonder if they also let their passengers figure it out themselves and just tell them wait for 10 days… You may as well take the Trans-Siberian train back, that should be faster.

On Tuesday I plan to fly to Amsterdam myself – if the ash cloud has disappeared of course. I plan to ask the staff on board about this as well: Is the KLM really not able to find a better solution for its customers?