China Eastern flight cancellation

Yesterday I had a flight booked from Shanghai to Guangzhou, for meetings with the management and other investors in 1bib.com. I was a bit late, but just in time to check in for my China Eastern flight at 2:10 PM. I arrived at the gate around 1:55, but they were not boarding yet. So I sat down and listened to a podcast on my new iPod Touch. After about 10 minutes there was still no movement at the gate, so I asked one of the flight attendants. She said there had been a gate change, which they had announced 20 minutes before that (when I had just checked in but had not yet arrived at the gate). OK, my fault, I should have probably checked the monitors for a gate change, but because I checked in so late I assumed that the gate was correct, and that they would announce a gate change more than once.

So I had to run to the other gate, because it was 5 minutes before scheduled departure time. I arrived at the gate, and saw that there were no other passengers there and the gate was closed. My first thought was that I had missed the flight due to the gate change, so I went up to the ladies at the gate to check if there would still be a possibility to board. Well, it turned out the flight had not boarded at all, because there had been a mechanical problem. They asked me to go to the departure hall again (so back into the public area) and get my ticket changed to a later flight.

Five minutes later I was at the China Eastern desk, where over 100 people were fighting to get to the front of the line in order to get their tickets changed. That’s one of the things I totally dislike in China, people do not have the decency (or education?) to form a line and wait for their turn. Well, I was in the back anyway, so I decided to just wait until the crowd had disappeared.

However, I was not sure if I was in the right line, and nobody could tell me that. So I went to the counter next to the busy one, but China Eastern staff just ignored me. I had to literally knock one guy on his head (softly!) in order for him to answer my question. His answer was still not friendly (just a gesture that I should be at the overcrowded counter) but at least I knew I was at the right place.

I waited for another 30 minutes, and then found out that all tickets on flights that would depart in the next 2-3 hours had been given out already to other passengers. Most flights were fully booked already due to the Guangzhou Trade Fair… The staff was extremely rude and did not want to give any other information. Very badly trained people, who do not care about the passengers, and have likely never heard the word service before.

So I had to wait several hours, if I would be lucky. I checked if any business class seats were available, but also those were sold out. I finally decided to forget about it, and cancel the trip. I was only going to Guangzhou for one day for meetings, and I did not want to spend half a day at an airport for such a short trip. A pity, because now I would not get to meet one of the German angel investors. Also I had not been to the 1bib office in quite a long time, and I would have liked to see how it has changed. The company has grown to about 40 people since I first invested early last year, quite a change since their first office in an apartment in Guangzhou.

Luckily China Eastern was willing to fully reimburse my tickets, although they sent me to 3 different counters before I got the required stamps for this. All in all not a good experience. Maybe I should just stop flying the airline, because it is not the first time this happens (see e.g. my blog posting from May 10, 2005). Problem is that most other Chinese airlines are quite similar to China Eastern. I guess you just have to cope with the fact that airlines here treat you like dirt if something goes wrong. And anyway, in the rest of the world it is not much better.

Birthday party @ Spill & Dinner at Casa 13

Yesterday I celebrated my 35th birthday. Normally I don’t really celebrate it, and I generally don’t even tell people that it’s my birthday. But thanks to social networks like Facebook, Plaxo, Hyves and Twitter a lot more people sent me messages and mails congratulating me with my birthday than in years before. I tried to send a personal message to all of them, but because I also had some work to do I might have missed some (sorry for that!).

The staff in my office had also organized a small party for me. After a slightly stressful meeting Winnie (our receptionist) came in and told me to follow her with my eyes closed. I had no idea what she was planning to do, but I suspected it would be related to me getting a year older. She took me to our recreation room, where -when I opened my eyes- lots of colleagues were waiting for me.

There was a big cake with 35 candles and many smaller cakes for the about 70 staff that Zlong and Spill Group Asia have at the moment. I could do a wish and then blew out all the candles (in two times, impossible to blow out 35 at once). Then all of them sang Happy Birthday for me. I also got a nice card and a big picture of all the staff with ‘Happy Birthday Dear Marc’ artistically written around it. Pictures see here. Thanks to all for the nice small party, it was a big surprise to me (and all my stress was gone right away 🙂

When I came back to my room 35 red roses were delivered there (from my wife!) together with a small package wrapped in Tudou.com paper. The package turned out to be a 16G iPod Touch! Very cool, and an excellent toy to play with.

At night my wife and I went to Casa 13, a new mediterranean restaurant on Huashan Lu. This was very nice as well: located in a restored old villa just off the main road (at Lane 11oo, opposite the Radisson Hotel). The food is excelllent, and not too expensive (this is their menu). The only problem was that the main course came too quickly, but that is quite normal in Shanghai (I guess it’s the US influence, where main courses tends to be served much faster after the appetizers and starters than in Europe). They also have some good wines by the glass that are reasonably priced.

The villa is very nicely decorated, in a dark, classical style with big mirrors. Inside the lights are dimmed so much that it is almost difficult to read the menu, but it adds to the atmosphere. They also have a glass covered terrace, and an outside terrace that was completely full last night. The place has valet parking for RMB 10, not unimportant in this city where it is increasingly difficult to find a parking spot at night. On Sunday’s there is brunch from 12-5 PM, and if you are into art, there is an art gallery on the second floor.

Formula One on the cheap

On Friday Thijs and I decided to watch the free practice session at the Formula One circuit in Shanghai. Problem was, we did not have tickets – not even a ticket to park my car. The one day tickets were sold out online, so we decided to just drive to the F1 circuit and take it from there.

Luckily it was not very busy, so I could drive to the circuit without being stopped by police (on race day, tomorrow, that won’t be possible). Close to the circuit there were touts selling parking tickets. We stopped to negotiate with one of them, but he demanded RMB 500 (EUR 50) just to park my car. I found that a bit steep, so decided to continue to the main entrance of the circuit. That turned out to be a smart idea, because 300 meters from there I found a dirt road leading to an old factory. There were no signs that I could not park there, so I just left my car on the side of the road.

We then walked to the stadium and talked to several black market ticket sellers. They only had the most expensive tickets and demanded RMB 1000 just for the free practice. A bit expensive we thought. We then met another tout who had VIP passes to the Grand Stand. He offered to take us in for RMB 500 in total (EUR 50 for 2 persons). I did not think that would work, but I only had to pay him when we would be on the Grand Stand, so we gave it a try. And yes, it was no problem. I think he knew the guards, because they just let us true. Once at the Grand Stand he took away the VIP passes, so if we would leave we could not go back in. But that was not a big deal, because we did not plan to stay the whole day anyway.

We watched the first free practice from the best seats in the house. Very cool, especially considering the extremely low price that we had to pay to get there. After that we watched the Porsche Carrera cup practice, which is always a bit lame after first watching the F1 cars. After an hour and a half we decided to go out again, to watch Ho-Pin Tung perform some tricks in a BMW F1 car. Very interesting to see him do this, the sound and acceleration (even on the short track) was amazing. The crowd loved it as well: afterwards there were at least 100 people waiting for his signature. We decided not to wait for him to finish, but drive to Sheshan (less than 30 minutes at speeds of 160-180 km/h, inspired by F1 🙂 to have lunch at the Le Meridien hotel.
At night we went to several parties to celebrate that F1 is in town. We started in the Blue Frog where we also met Matthijs van Basten Batenburg, a Dutch lawyer working in Shanghai. Then we went off to the Glamour Bar (where 2 red Ferrari’s were parked in front of the entrance), and later ended up on the rooftop terrace of Bar Rouge (RMB 200 entrance fee!). We met Ho-Pin there again in the early hours of the morning – drinking a cola of course, no alcohol. I also got a call from Yanik Cantieni, a good friend of mine who is CFO of DaimlerChrysler Indonesia and co-founder of 1bib.com, who flew in for the F1 with some friends. He was at a different party, but I hope to see him later this weekend. We ended the night at Park 97. It was not very busy there anymore when we arrived around 3 AM, so I decided to call it a day (night) and get some sleep.

Chinglish at the F1 track


You would expect that at the Shanghai Formula One circuit at least one person would check the signs for bad English. But no, in the middle of the Grand Stand – the most expensive seats on the track – I found this sign!

Starbucks in The Netherlands

One of the things I miss a bit about China when I am in Holland is having a coffee at Starbucks. Not that their coffee is particularly good, but it’s the only coffee that I manage to drink half a liter of, and still think about ordering another one. In summertime it’s great to pick up a frappucino, and in winter time I like to go for a Grande Hot Chocolate with whipped cream.

What is so special about it? Probably the atmosphere, every store is similar in a way. Wherever you are in the world a Starbucks coffee tastes like a Starbucks coffee, just like a McD burger is a McDonalds hamburger. Even in China. Another thing is the level of their service – you feel welcome as a customer, something other coffee chains (in both Holland and China) could learn a lot from. Plus you normally get your order within 2 minutes, not unimportant when you are in a hurry.

For some reason Starbucks never opened any stores in Holland. Their European headquarters are located in The Netherlands, but they did not roll out the concept yet. Actually, that is not completely true. There are two Starbucks stores in Holland: the first one is in Hilversum (yes, Spill Group’s HQ location) inside the Nike HQ, and the second one is in Terminal 1 at Amsterdam Schiphol airport (European departures). Problem is, if you are not a Nike employee you cannot buy a drink in Hilversum, and in order to buy a drink at Schiphol you need to have a flight ticket to a destination in Europe.

I hardly ever fly from Amsterdam to European destinations anymore, but I wanted to check out the Starbucks anyway. Normally customs does not let you through from international to European departures with an international ticket, but I told them I just wanted to get a Starbucks coffee. Because it was a quiet day they let me through. To be honest, I was not too impressed. The store is in the middle of what used to be an open area, and the staff was not trained too well (yet). The coffee was nice though, and that’s the main thing. And of course I got myself an Amsterdam Starbucks mug (I collect these and buy one in every country that I visit, I have about 40 different ones so far).

I heard that next month Starbucks will open 2 more locations on the Amsterdam airport, one in the international terminal and one in the arrivals hall before customs. That mean that from next month on everybody can have a Starbucks coffee in Holland, although you will have to drive to Schiphol to get it. Is this the beginning of the Starbucks invasion in Holland?

Comment moderation

I have turned comment moderation on on my blog. This means that from now on a comment only appears on my blog after I have approved it. The reason is that the spam comments were getting out of hand. On some days I had up to 50 spam comments, and manually deleting them cost me too much time.

It does not mean that I will only approve comments that are favorable, as long as it is not spam the comment should appear on my blog as soon as I get a chance to approve it (which is basically whenever I am online).

A new challenge: Trailwalker Hong Kong

I need challenges in my life. A life that is predictable and similar every day is something I cannot handle. My daily work is quite a challenge already, but I set myself a goal three years ago that I also want to have a real physical challenge once a year. The first year I ran the Shanghai marathon, and last year the Macau one (both within 4 hours). This year the Tibet bike trip was a major challenge, and for next year Gary and I are thinking about climbing Mt. Kilimanjaro, Africa’s highest mountain.

It looks that there might be another physical challenge ahead as well. I told Marcel Ekkel that if he would be able to secure an entry to next year’s Hong Kong Trailwalker, I would join him. I just got this Twitter message from him: http://twitter.com/marcelekkel/statuses/311121592
Cool!

In case you have not heard about the Hong Kong Trailwalker, this is an annual event in which teams have to run/walk the 100 km MacLehose Trail in Hong Kong. The trail is mainly through the hills, and in order to do it in a reasonable time you have a good preparation. Teams have 48 hours to cover the distance (all 4 team members have to reach the finish line), but of course we want to do it a lot faster than that. I look forward to this Marcel, thanks a lot!

Ho-Ping Tung in Shanghai

On Tuesday night I met the Dutch-Chinese race car driver Ho-Pin Tung while he was checking in for his flight to Shanghai. I knew he would be on the same flight with me, as I had exchanged a few mails with him the days before when I read in a press release that he would be in Shanghai during the F1 weekend. But it actually was a coincidence to meet him in the departure hall already.

Ho-Pin, the 2006 Recaro F3 champion and former Team China A1 driver, was traveling with his manager Bert Winkler, who I had met a few times before as well. We chatted a bit about the GP2 races in Valencia over the weekend, where he was in 5th position when problems during a pit stop caused him to lose several places. Bad luck… While talking Ho-Pin also met some members of the Australian A1 team who were on their way to London. Earlier this year Ho-Pin competed in the A1 for China, before he managed to get a seat in the GP2 series.

Ho-Pin will be at the Shanghai F1 track from today until Sunday, where he will show off his skills in a BMW Sauber Formula 1 car in the pit lane park. Not sure if I will be able to make it to the track in the next days, but if you do, make sure you don’t miss him.

Airplane maintenance

Every now and then I wonder how safe planes actually are? I mean, they do not fall out of the sky often, and departing/landing accidents are also quite uncommon, but I often see small problems on board, that I wonder how many bigger problems passengers do not know about.

Yesterday evening I flew from Amsterdam to Shanghai with KLM and so I had some time to think about this. KLM should be a relatively reliable airline, with planes that are maintained well. But is that really the case? A summary of some minor things that I noticed yesterday. First of all, when I entered the plane it was incredibly warm on board. I was quite late, and people were using newspapers and magazines to fan some cool air in their faces. I asked a flight attendant about it, and she told me that there was a problem with the cooling system in the air conditioning. But they were fixing it. They did indeed, but it took at least another 1o minutes.

When I sat down, I noticed that the plastic inside cover of the window was loose (see picture). Not only at my window, but also on several windows behind me. This has no effect on the plane, but it makes me wonder if KLM does not maintain its planes regularly.

I put my chair back a bit, but when I tried to put it back up again it was stuck. I had to pull it up in order to get it back in the upright position. I know that the seats were old, and that this was probably an older plane, but I still feel this cannot happen. Maybe the cabin staff does not know about it, so they cannot repair it (I also did not tell them actually), but it still should not happen.

Then I noticed that of the two toilets on the upper deck one was locked for usage, because it was not working (note: this was before take-off, while we were still at Amsterdam airport). Why do they not repair this? The other toilet had a problem with the water tap. You had to pull it up otherwise the water would keep running. The crew had actually already put a post-it note on it. But why was it not repaired before take-off? I have the feeling that planes are used too intensively, and there is no time for basic maintenance. Not good.

When the plane was supposed to leave, we taxied to the runway. There we waited a while, and then the captain came on the intercom. There was a problem with the brakes and we had to go back to the gate to get it repaired. I am glad they did that of course, but I do not understand that this can happen. We only taxied for maybe 100 or 200 meters, can they not see that earlier? Or do they not test all their instruments and engines (incl. the brakes) before leaving the gate. I find it all a bit scary, especially in combination with all the other problems that I noticed on the plane.

Don’t get me wrong, I am not afraid to fly at all. I have experienced more dangerous flights, for example when I flew on an old Air Koryo plane (a Russian one, forgot the brand, probably an Antonov or so) from Pyongyang in North-Korea to Beijing. There were not enough seats for all passengers so some had to stand during the flight, and some of the luggage fell down during take-off because the overhead luggage compartments could not be closed. Or when flying a small Merpati plane from Lombok to Bali, when halfway the flight the stewardess ran out of the cockpit and right after that the plane nose-dived for a few seconds. I still don’t know what happened, but I vowed that this would be the last time I would ever fly Merpati.

KLM is probably among the best airlines in the world. But if their planes already have these problems, what issues do smaller, less profitable airlines have? I think I don’t want to know. But I assume that the last thing they try to save on is engine maintenance, so probably flying is never really unsafe. It just feels a bit like that sometimes.