Saturday’s Toodou party (to avoid confusion I stopped using the name Tudou -with u instead of oo- until the site officially changes its name) was a huge success. Several hundred people came to take a look at the new office, to enjoy the BBQ and to drink free beers. And of course to show their painting talents on the walls (and even on some of the floors…). Most people started on the ground floor that is not in use yet, but soon they moved on to the second floor that had been completely renovated already. And they only stopped when the paint ran out! The office was completely transformed in less than 3 hours, amazing.

It was an enjoyable night, even though I did not get to paint. Luckily the wind and showers from the typhoon had stopped in time for the party, so even the roof terraces could be used. Because the office is so big, some people told me they did not even make it to the roof, because they could not find the entrance. Many of my friends and colleagues showed up, and it was good to meet lots people that I had not seen in a while. Film director David Verbeek was there (I only seem to meet him at the Toodou parties), Rolf Becker from the Shanghai Jazz Orchestra, and even Lei showed up (he was recruited away from Toodou by McKinsey – not a smart move, but that’s his decision).

I also met many new people, among others two Dutch guys living and working in Shanghai. One of them studied in Maastricht just like me, and he is behind the weblog China Snippets. Also the marketing director for Wall’s ice cream was among the guests, he came with Kenny Bloom (who set up Warner Music in China, and is now running Asiavision). Of course the guys from Shanghaiist were present, and as I read on their blog they discovered a new beer at the party.

Pictures of the party can be found here, or do a search on the tag Toodou on www.flickr.com, where you’ll find pictures from other people as well.

Over the past couple of weeks the outside walls of the Spill Group Asia office building have been painted. No clue why that’s taking so long, in China they normally build a whole building in this timeframe, but that’s a different story.

This morning I parked the car at the office, when one of the guards told me I should not park there because they would paint the wall right above my car. I thanked him for letting me know, and he directed me to a safer parking space.

I did not think about it anymore until this afternoon when I was talking on the phone and looked out of the window. To my horror I noticed that a painter had just painted the wall right above my car… Because of the call I forgot about it, but when I returned to my car tonight I inspected it and noticed all kinds of small paint drops on the hood. I immediately notified the guards, who told me I can easily peel or wash it off. He tried it with one spot, that he managed to peel off, but the next was not as easy. Tomorrow during daylight I will give it another try. Lesson learned: from now on I won’t park next to the building anymore.

Dutch public broadcaster TROS is planning to produce many programs in China over the next couple of months. In December there will be a China week on Dutch TV in which all these programs will air. Last night I was invited by Sierk Vojacek (whose company SVP is the local producer of these programs) to join them for dinner at M on the Bund.

It was a nice evening, as is usual when going to this great restaurant. We had a big table on the balcony overlooking the river (we were in total 12 people), and the Dutch TROS team enjoyed the view from there a lot. For all of them it was their first time in Shanghai, and then the skyline is indeed amazing. I still remember my first time in Shanghai many years ago. I stayed at the Hua Ting Hotel (on Cao Xi Bei Lu) and had walked all the way from there to the Bund (at least a two hour walk). I arrived there when it was dark already, and when I walked up the stairs to the river front I remember I could hardly believe how fantastic the view was. And this was many years ago when the skyline consisted of just the Oriental Pearl Tower, the Jinmao Tower and the original Shangri-La Hotel (plus a huge Philips billboard)!

The food at M on the Bund was fabulous, and I had some interesting conversations with the TROS people and some of the SVP staff. Several of the programs they will produce will be really cool to watch (e.g. regular Dutch formats in a Chinese setting). And one will likely be about Tudou. Maybe I should go back to Holland during the broadcasting week (likely around December 15) to watch all of them there.

This weekend we moved to a new apartment. The lease on our old apartment ran out, so that was a good reason to look for something new. In the former apartment we lived for 2 years, which is quite long for me. I just calculated that I moved 28 times in my life already (I am 33 years old), and this is my 7th apartment in China (in 6.5 years).

The new place is a high-end apartment in Xujiahui, and you would expect that everything therefore would work flawlessly. Well, that was not the case. Some of the things that we found during the past 3 days:
– Out of six airconditioners two did not work, one did not even have the liquid in it that produces the cold air (I am not an expert, but this is what I was told). Note that these were brand new appliances!
– No hot water. It was repaired the first day, and it worked fine after that. But this morning I wanted to take a shower, and again there was only cold water.
– The water in the shower would not flow away, because the drain seemed to be blocked.
– Satellite TV only available in black and white. According to the satellite guys this was a proble of our TV. But all the normal channels are in color, I replied. Well, they said, that is true, but it is still a problem of the TV. Let’s wait what the TV repair man says…
– Internet: I won’t write the whole story here (Shanghai Telecom might block my IP address), but the fact is that I still don’t have internet at home. I can tell you that that’s not easy if you almost live and work on the internet.
– The lock in our front door almost fell out of the door when we opened it.
– About 10 light bulbs did not work. They were supposedly all brand new!

Most things are repaired or solved by now (thanks to my wife who spend 2 days on the phone and discussing with workers – she even missed one day of work because of this), but I still cannot believe that so many things were not working in a new apartment. Is this normal or was this just bad luck?

As many of you know Toodou means potato in Chinese. However, in pinyin this is normally written as Tudou. We have always wanted the Tudou.com domain name. Quite a significant number of first-time visitors thought that our domain name was Tudou.com instead of Toodou.com. When we first launched the site we had to settle with Toodou.com because Tudou.com had long been taken by another website. However, that web site did not do as well as Toodou.com (they actually shut down their operations), and we had the possibility to buy the domain name.

We plan to switch over to Tudou.com in the very near future. Toodou.com will be automatically redirected to Tudou.com. The switch over will be completely invisible and will require little communication even for offline Chinese media, as most of our users know our brand simply as
?? or ???. For foreign media it might be easier as well, because it happens quite often that Toodou is misspelled as Toudoo (For example I just noticed an unlinkable -I had to pay to read it!- article in the Dutch Financieel Dagblad where this was the case). So from now I’ll refer to Toodou as Tudou!

During my last trip to Holland, I bought a Senseo coffee machine for the Spill Group Asia office in Shanghai. Senseo machines make one or two cups of coffee, with a small layer of creamy foam on top. It basically gives people the possibility to make a cup of coffee at home, like they would get in a restaurant. It’s easy and quick, but the product was not for sale in China, so I had to import one in my suitcase for the office.

Because Senseo machines are priced quite low, they penetrated the market quickly in Holland (they were introduced there five years ago). The machines, produced by Philips together with coffee brand DE, are now being sold in many European countries, and even in the US and Australia. And the next country on the list is China, according to the daily email bulletin that I get from Radio Nederland Wereldomroep. And even better, the first city they will start selling the products is Shanghai! This means that I do not have to rely on Senseo pad shipments from Spill Group in Holland, but we can buy our own supplies.

Will the product be successful in China? I think it could be (Fons Tuinstra seems to disagree I just read). The timing is right: many young people in cities drink coffee nowadays, that has quickly changed over the past couple of years. Starbucks has surely made coffee more popular, in the beginning because of the status it gives you to go there (it’s as expensive as the rest of the world, so if you can afford to go there it implies you must be ‘rich’), but now also because people like coffee. But most people only drink one or two cups at home or in the office, not more than that. For that purpose the Senseo is a good product.

I think Philips should focus on the Chinese corporate market first for this product. Let white collar workers try out the product in the office, then they might also buy one for use at home. But I hope the price of the pads will be adjusted to Chinese standards. Not sure if a Chinese is willing to pay so much money for a cup of coffee, without other people seeing that they spend this money (like at Starbucks).

The China Daily had a funny story today. A guy named Hu from Jiangxi province was riding a train when he dropped his mobile phone out of the window (it was not explained how this could happen by the way). Because the phone contained pictures of his girlfriend, he immediately asked a train attendant to make an emergency stop. Of course this was refused, and so the guy decided to jump out of the train to retrieve his phone. Although other passengers tried to stop him, he leaped out of the window anyway. The result: a broken hand and leg – and because of that still no phone! It makes me wonder what kind of pictures he had on his mobile 🙂