On Sunday afternoon a new restaurant/brasserie/bar/lounge officially opened its doors in Shanghai: Hugo, located on Weihai Lu opposite Shanghai Television. During the soft opening I already had lunch here twice, and had enjoyed the food and the atmosphere very much. The place is owned by a Dutch Chinese couple, and serves mainly French and Dutch food. Dutch food? Yes, that exists. Among others pannekoeken (pancakes) and vleeskroketten (meat croquettes) can be found on its menu.

The restaurant is a combination of a brasserie, a cafe and an upscale restaurant. It can also be used for private functions, and the place even has meeting rooms with beamers. Several clubs, including the Dutch club in Shanghai, have made it their meeting place for monthly drinks already. Rumour has it that a former chef of a Dutch Michelin star-rated restaurant (De Hoefslag) is cooking here now, and that the manager hails from Amsterdam’s top hotel the Amstel Hotel. The food is excellent, and the guests could taste some of it during the opening reception.

This party was quite busy, and most people seemed to be from the Netherlands. Even the new Dutch consul could be seen walking around. The finger food was great, and also the drinks on offer were very nice. The waiters served among others champagne, good red and white wines, wodka mixes and of course Heineken beer. Interesting was that at the party a couple asked me whether I was Marc van der Chijs. I said yes, and they told me that they are regular readers of my blog and had recognized me. It happened several times that I met people who turned out to be readers of this blog, but being recognized from my pictures is a new experience 🙂 The couple was Dutch, and have been living as expats outside Holland for Philips for the past 17 years (in China for 2 years now). The husband is general manager for Philips, and is setting up a factory here for automotive playback modules (CD/DVD etc.). Different from my line of business, but facing similar problems as we do.

I think Hugo is a great addition to the restaurant scene in Shanghai. It has top-quality food, but next to that they can also serve simple lunches (kroketten with bread, one of the very few places in China!), and it’s a nice place to unwind with a beer in the evening (on one of the three terraces, or inside in the bar). I did not have dinner here yet, but plan to do this very soon!

This morning I went for a 15 kilometer run in the gym. I like to do that early on Sunday morning: after the run a big breakfast tastes great, and you still have a whole day ahead of you. The first machine I stepped on turned out to be set to French and was measuring the distance in miles instead of kilometers, so I took the one next to it.

About 30 minutes later someone else wanted to use the ‘French’ treadmill. He stepped on it, pressed ‘quick start’ and at that moment the machine immediately sped up to run at 10 mph (16 kmh). The guy fell down, but managed to hold on to the bar on the machine. He tried to stand up, but because the machine ran so fast he was not able to do it. He finally let go and was launched off the machine, hitting his head on the machine while falling.

At first I thought it was funny, but when I looked at the guy I realized he was hurt pretty bad. His whole face was covered in blood, and his arms and legs were also not looking too nice. None of the gym’s staff had noticed it, and other people had to alarm them. Not sure what happened to the guy, but I guess he had to go to hospital. The whole thing happened within 6 seconds, very scary.

Afterwards the gym put an ‘out of order’ sign on the machine. One of the staff looked into the treadmill’s computer, but had no clue what she was doing because it was set to French (which she clearly did not speak). Maybe I should have helped her, but I did not want to interrupt my run just because a staff member is incapable to change the language to English.

But I still think it’s scary that a top running machine (a Life Fitness treadmill) can suddenly get out of control. Especially when you just start your run this is extremely dangerous. I am glad I had not used the machine myself, and will watch out the next time I run on one of these machines.

During 1988-1989 I lived one year in the US, for my junior year in high school. The first 6 months I spent with the Sapp family in Quitman, Georgia, a small town not far from the Florida border, and the last 6 months with another host family in Valdosta, a city also located in south Georgia (on I-95). The second host family (Herman & Teresa Story, and their kids Jil and John Lee) were fans of Air Supply. I did not know the band at that time, but because I often heard the music there, I started to like it. Over the past years I bought some of their CD’s, and I still listen to it sometimes late at night.

Tonight Air Supply had a concert in the Shanghai Grand Stage, and so I decided to go there with my wife. Concerts in the Grand Stage are always convenient for us, because it’s just a 15 minute walk from our home. Many good performances seem to take place here, because this year I watched the Rolling Stones and Robin Gibb from the Bee Gees here as well. Marketing for the concert was not very good, I heard about the event a couple of months ago but totally forgot about it until a post on Shanghaiist last week reminded me. But although the place was not sold out, it was reasonably full. As usual all the most expensive seats were taken (I guess these tickets are bought by sponsors?), and the cheaper areas were about half full tonight.

Air Supply’s Russel and Graham have gotten quite old. I knew them mainly from pictures on their albums, and had not seen them live before. But when they entered the stage, I was surprised to see how they had aged, especially Russel. It reminded me a bit of the Rolling Stones actually. Also during the concert you could see that they were not in the best of shapes anymore. But the singing was still fantastic! Russel’s voice is great, and the moment he started the opening song I knew it would be a great concert.

I brought my binoculars (I bought an excellent pair for almost nothing just before the Xiangyang market shut down earlier this year), and that was a good decision: they were so good that I could even clearly see the tattoos on Russel’s hands (not that that was a great sight, but you catch my drift). Without them you could see and hear them play, but you miss some of the details. We had good seats (right behind the VIP table for government officials, that was almost empty), but were still at least 50 meters from the stage. One thing I noted, for example, was that Graham’s guitar was not working properly during the first song. He was gesturing to his technicians, and was not looking too happy. Kind of funny to being able observe these things that you otherwise would miss.

The songs the duo played were all their famous ballads from the 70’s and 80’s. During Russel’s tea break, Graham also sang a new song (called First Time?) for the audience. According to him it was the first time ever that he performed this song, and it will be released shortly. The rest was a nice combination of well-known songs, from The One that I Love, to Every Woman in the World, and of course at the end Here I Am. The mainly Chinese audience knew all the songs, but not the text: when Russel asked the audience to sing the lyrics only a handful of people was able to do so. The show lasted for about two hours, and we had a great evening here.

A well-known urban legend is that the Chevrolet Nova had very bad sales in Spanish speaking countries, because of its name Nova (no va = doesn’t go). Although this is not correct, the example is used in many marketing textbooks to emphasize that marketeers should first do research on the meaning of the products name, before launching it.

Something similar happened yesterday in Shanghai, where Shanghai Automotive Industrial Corporation launched its latest model, the Roewe 750, a car based on the Rover 75. Nothing wrong with that name of course, but wait until you hear the name that will be used in China (where the car will mainly be sold): Rong Wei. Which expat or English-speaking Chinese would want to drive in a car that is called “Wrong Way”?

(Source: Shanghaiist)

It is quite common for Chinese business men or government officials to have an “er nai” (a mistress), even though this is officially not allowed. The mistresses are often young girls from poor families who have no idea about their rights. According to the paper version of the Shanghai Daily a Beijing lawyer, Mr. Zheng Baichun, decided to set up a website in June to offer legal advice to mistresses. Until now he has helped over 100 mistresses, but currently he seems to need some help himself. His wife was not too happy with his actions, and has filed for divorce! Whether he was having a mistress himself that aided the break-up, the article did not mention.

About a year ago I lost all the mails I had saved in my Hotmail account, because according to the site I had not logged in during at least 90 days. At that time I was sure it was not true, because I had checked my mail right before my wedding (which was about a month ago at that time), but could not do anything about it. I then decided not to use Hotmail anymore, except for signing up to websites that I did not fully trust. I am glad I did so.

Today I logged into Hotmail again, and I get the message “congratulations, an account has been reserved for you”. Huh? I click on continue and read that I have not logged in for 30 days (not 90 days as before) so all my emails have been deleted – again. I understand that hotmail does not like clients that only occasionally use their services, but is 30 days not a bit short? I normally check my mails there once a week, but because of a busy schedule, october holidays and a business trip I postponed doing that to (apparently) just over 30 days. And as a result I not only loose my old mails again, but also don’t know what mails I received over the past 30 days.

Hotmail is plain arrogant as well. Other mail services that I use send at least a reminder to another email address if you did not log in for a certain period. Hotmail just deletes your messages without a warning. And not only that, they even congratulate you that an account has been reserved for you. Amazing that they can get away with this.

Independent of this Hotmail action, I had already decided not to rely too much on free email accounts anymore. I used to use my Gmail account a lot for business as well, but because the mailbox is only about 2.8 GB I constantly had to delete mail in order not to get ‘mailbox full’ messages. Furthermore, Gmail was sometimes unavailable in China, which is annoying. But I have now switched to my Spill Group address for most business mails, and only use Gmail for private mails. All my email is safely stored on our own servers, and it automatically synchronizes the mail on all my computers (and even on my phone!). I should have done this much earlier already, but never wanted to invest the few hours that it takes to set it all up.

The Shanghai Daily reported this morning that Shanghai plans to set up a citywide wireless network. However, the project is still in the planning phase and should only be finished in about 3 years… But even though that’s still a long time ahead it’s a good initiative, and Shanghai will be the first city in China with wifi access everywhere.

Whether the network will be for free has not been determined yet. If it is I am sure it will be a huge boost for online activities in this metropole, both for business and entertainment purposes. But if there will be a fee, cost-conscious Shanghainese might not adapt to it quickly. I am looking forward to it, because I am tired of always looking for available hotspots with my laptop. Although with my E61 I can now (finally) also read and write mails without the availability of broadband, so likely my hotspot searches will be less and less.

Yesterday afternoon we arrived in Shanghai, where it was still a very nice 26 degrees when we landed. When we arrived home an hour later it was very hot inside, similar to temperatures during summer when you don’t put the airco on. We wondered what happened, but figured it out quickly: someone had put our floor heating on while we were away. The thermostat was set at 30.5 degrees Celcius, which explained why the whole apartment felt like a sauna. The stone floor in the bathroom was so hot that you could not even walk barefoot on it!

We asked our maid this morning, but she said she had no idea why it was turned on, nor did she know when it was turned on. Actually, she did not even know that we have heating in our apartment (most apartments in Shanghai do not have this ‘luxurious’ feature, even though it can get down to zero degrees in winter), so I suppose she turned it on by mistake. But I hope the heating was not on for too much time. We will find out next month when the gas bill arrives…