Yesterday around 6 PM I was having a MSN chat with my wife when she mentioned that her colleagues in the Tudou office were going to watch the first episode of Tudou TV together. I had totally forgotten that the first program would be on air, and had to run out of the Spill Group office to drive home in order to watch the program (there is no cable connection for our office TV). I made it just in time, and was even able to find the right channel before the program started.

It was cool to see the Tudou name and logo’s all over the TV screen, it’s still a different experience to be on TV – even in this internet age when less and less people watch TV. The whole episode only lasted 5 minutes (it is a daily 5-minute program), and this one featured just one funny (and quite long) clip. The TV presenter explained what Tudou was (he even used the English word couch potato!), and then introduced the clip. Other episodes will normally feature 2-3 clips. If you want to watch it, go to South-East Satellite (a blue logo with a f-like letter in it, and the Chinese name next to it starts with Dong Nan – even Chinese beginners should be able to read that). The program starts at 6:18 PM and can be viewed all over China on cable networks.

By coincidence we ended up at this HK restaurant on Saturday night (all other fancy restaurants that we called were fully booked for a 8:30 PM dinner slot), but it turned out to be a gem. Directly on the harbour, located on Fenwick Pier. It was not very busy, and we managed to get a table right on the water! Great seafood, good wine and reasonable prices, what more do you want? Service was a bit too quick (getting the main course while still enjoying the appetizers), but the owner apologized for her over-eager staff. I actually wonder why it was not so busy, as far as I know there are not many restaurants where you can literally sit on the harbour front. Maybe it’s not very easy to find? I will come back here!

Address: The Quarterdeck Club, 1 Lung King Rd, Fleet Arcade Fenwick Pier, Wanchai, Hong Kong

This weekend my wife and I went to Hong Kong, I had some business to take care of and it was a good opportunity to meet with friends and do some shopping (for Qi) and sports (for me). On Saturday I had planned to go for an off-road mountain bike ride with Marcel Ekkel on Lantau Island. But because I first had an appointment in Central in the morning there was not sufficient time to catch the 9:30 fast ferry, and the next one would be a slow one at 10:30. Therefore Marcel proposed to go for a run / hike in the mountains on Hong Kong Island around lunch time. A great idea, because also on Hong Kong Island nature is beautiful and there are some spectacular trails. Most people don’t realize how beautiful Hong Kong is, and it amazes me that you only meet a few people on the trails close to the city.

So I took the MTR to North Point where we met up. North Point is a good starting point for many trails, and it’s very easy to reach from the city. We decided to take a taxi to Parkview first, and then start with a trail that is shared by the Hong Kong Trail (stage 5) and the Wilson Trail (section 2). According to HK’s country and marine parks authority this section is ‘very difficult’, but it was not too bad. A bit steep at times, but even though parts of the trail were a bit slippery it would not call it difficult. We started off slowly, but after Jardine’s lookout I decided to try to run up the next hill. I underestimated the height though, and halfway I had to get back into an easier pace in order to catch my breath.
The trail here was great, even though it was quite windy and we were hiking in the clouds most of the time. Without the clouds the views are fantastic (for some pictures of this section on a sunny day, see here). At the top of Mount Butler we had a drink and then continued down to a picnic area. This was the end of stage 5, but we had only hiked for 45-50 minutes or so, so we decided to hike another trail. This one had some great views over Hong Kong and Victoria Harbour (despite the foggy weather). After about 2 hours we decided that it was time for a coffee and we jogged down the mountain back to North Point. A great work-out, thanks Marcel! I actually have quite some muscle ache now, but ex-marine Marcel is in much better shape because he did not feel a thing the next morning…

While writing this down, I realize once again that this is something I really miss in Shanghai. There is just no way to get out of this city without first driving for hours. I love outdoor sports, but in this urban jungle the only thing that comes close is running up the Sheshan hill – where you need to pay RMB 50 just to run up for a couple of minutes. So there is probably only one solution (next to moving, which I do not intend to do), and that is flying to Hong Kong more often on the weekend. It’s only a 2 hour flight, but including the rides to and from the airport and the waiting for the plane to leave it is a 6-hour trip door-to-door. That makes 12-hours of travelling in one weekend, actually a bit too much to justify for just a good hike…

Yesterday we bought a Nintendo Wii. Since working with Spill Group I could already argue that I need to play games as part of work, but now I can even say that I do it to loose weight!

On November 25, a farmer in Jiangxi province was carrying RMB 10,000 (a huge sum of money for a farmer in this remote area) with him while waiting for a train in Guixi. Suddenly he noticed that several men were following him, and he thought they might be planning to rob him. So he ran away to avoid them. While running a police car drove by and stopped it to ask the police men for help. They took him to the police station, where the farmer was still so afraid that he did not want to let go of one of the three officers.

So what do you do then? Simple, you send the farmer to a mental institution, and leave him there without an address or contact number. His money was put into the a patient account to pay for the cost of treating the ‘patient’. Likely because he was upset of being put in an asylum, the farmer refused to take any medicine or food during the first days. But after 10 days he gave up and he started to receive treatment. But the farmer got angry often, because he knew he did not belong here. The staff did not listen to him, however, and gave him an injection each time he complained, so he would fall asleep. Finally last week the farmer managed to bribe a nurse to call his relatives, who came to free him right away. The paper version of the Shanghai Daily that reported this story does not mention anything about the patient getting his money back, or the police being reprimanded. Likely this happens more often, and the farmer was actually lucky to get out.

I was reading an article in the Dutch press just now about a new form of advertising through bluetooth, where people can receive a short video about a product (in this case the product was a TV program) when they are within 15 meters of a billboard. This was seen as a new idea, but this is kind of advertising has been around for at least a year in China. The Shanghai based company Pioco is doing this, and is even taking it to a much higher level.

Last week Thursday I was invited to the opening of a creative advertising festival in the new Shanghai Stadium subway stadium. This event, organized by JC Decaux and JWT, showcases some of the latest ideas in outdoor advertising in China. Pioco was involved in two of the ads here. One relatively simple one, for the clothing brand Metersbonwe, where people who pass by a billboard can receive pictures of the clothes that are shown on the billboard through bluetooth (just by standing within a certain range of the billboard).

The second one is a much more advanced way of advertising for the Ford Focus. Here a Ford Focus is projected on a wall, and next to it is a small camera. If you stand in front of this camera, the image is projected onto the screen, so it looks as if you are driving the car. What happens then, is that a picture is taken of you in the car, and sent to your phone by bluetooth. A very cool idea, and one that works well because Pioco has developed a technique so that only the person standing in the spot where the picture was taken does receive the photo (see the picture below for the result).

During the event I talked to Pioco’s CEO, Steve Chao, and he told me that his company has exclusive deals in China with several multinationals (among others JC Decaux, Coca-Cola and Nike) on new advertising concepts through bluetooth. Among others they developed a technique to broadcast through bluetooth over distances up to 300 meters (imagine what you can do in a sports stadium with bluetooth), and they have designed their own trendy looking and weather-resistant servers. During recent events up to 70% of all people within the bluetooth range downloaded commercial video’s. Sure, not everybody uses bluetooth yet, and you will have to ask people to turn it on, but I think we could hear a lot more from this company in the near future. And not only in China!

The new Chinese New Year that starts on February 18 will be the Year of the Pig. And this year will be a special one, the Year of the Golden Pig, that only happens every 60 years (there are 12 animal signs and 5 different cycles of these signs). According to Chinese tradition, babies born in the Year of the Golden Pig will have an especially happy and fortunate life. Therefore a baby boom is expected this year, and related to that also a maternity leave boom.

One of China’s biggest job hunting sites, ChinaHR.com, did a survey among HR managers in China about the consequences of this boom. The Shanghai Daily reports about this today, and writes that almost half of the HR managers are worried about a shortage of personnel because of the maternity boom. In China women get a minimum of 90 days off around the time the baby is born, and they are not allowed to do overtime work or night shifts during the pregnancy. Extra personnel will have to be hired, which will increase the companies’ cost.

But will there really be such a big impact on companies? I personally doubt it. I remember that the year I got married was not a good year to tie the knot according to Chinese tradition. But wedding venues and wedding planners were booked out months in advance anyway, and I did not have the feeling people were postponing their wedding because of this. Maybe the countryside is different, but in the cities (where the maternity leave effect will be the biggest) I feel people are paying less attention to this kind of traditions than before, especially young people with good educations. And taking into account that planning the birth date of a baby is more difficult than planning a wedding date, the effect there will likely be even smaller. Of course media like to write about a baby boom, but I am not so sure if there will really be a big impact.

A couple of weeks ago I was interviewed by Shanghaiexpat, the podcast site with the interesting tag line ‘the foolish chatter while the wise listen. U’d better start listening!’. In the podcast I talk about my career and my life in China. I noticed that the podcast is up now, and the direct link can be found here.

The website has a lot of interesting podcasts with (mainly) foreigners working in Shanghai. Right now the site is very slow in China, but that’s likely still because of the earthquake, so outside China things should be better.