The Shanghai government’s campaign to stop jaywalking has given the bureaucrats a very creative idea. After putting a young woman in jail for 10 days because of jaywalking (she first got a fine, and got a bit violent after that, so ended up in the slammer), undercover police have now started to take pictures of jaywalkers.

The creative part is that these pictures are not used as evidence to fine these people, but that they are put up in the office buildings where these people work. And, as the Shanghai Daily explains, also foreigners are at risk to be publicly exposed as lawbreakers. The first picture of ‘two foreigners wearing a blue and a red t-shirt’ is already on display in their office, to ‘enhance education’. I suspect that some of the expat foreigners that I know will set up a competition soon on who will be the first person to have its picture on the office wall!

I hope the undercovers have enough film or digital storage available on their cameras. Sometimes it seems there are more jaywalkers than people who wait for a red light, so they can keep on taking pictures!

It had been in the air for a few months already, but yesterday Shanghai finally decided to increase its taxi fares. And in typical Shanghainese fashion (=fast) it will be implemented not next year or next month, but starting today. The only problem is that all the taxi meters need to be adjusted first, and that will take a few weeks. So when I took a cab earlier this morning the rate was still 10 RMB for the first 3 km (new rate is 11 RMB, and a 5% increase for all subsequent kilometers).

Over the past week Qi and I had a great time in Tuscany and Monaco. We rented a convertible (307 CC) in Nice and drove most of the 1500 km with the roof down. It reminded me of the time that I drove a Fiat Barchetta while living in Germany. China is not a good country to drive open, but the Tuscan hills and French Riviera certainly are.

What did we do? We saw all the major cities, such as Lucca, Pisa, San Gimignano, Volterra and of course Firenze (Florence). We stayed at nice places in the countryside, and had good meals with local wines every day. As every vacation I got pretty much sun burned (I fell asleep at the pool one day, and found out that the Italian sun is already pretty strong in May). And as every vacation I got sick in the beginning, probably as a reaction of working (too) hard.

On the way back from Tuscany we drove along the Italian Riviera. Viareggio was a favourite for Qi because of the combination of a nice beach with lots of upscale clothing and shoe stores. We also passed by Genova (Genua), which is a much nicer city than I imagined.

The last day was spent in Monaco, where we found a hotel room with a balcony right on the Monte Carlo harbour front. One of the nicest views you can imagine, with the harbour full of expensive boats beneath us, the Mediterranean on the left and the Monaco palace on the hill on the right. The fact that they were preparing the F1 circuit already made it even more interesting.

We are back in Shanghai now, ready to get back to work with many new ideas to implement!

I am on my way to Schiphol Airport right now to pick up Qi. Tomorrow morning we will fly to Tuscany for a few days of vacation. We plan to stay at country houses and castles, so there is a good chance that I won’t be online everyday. Expect lighter postings in the next couple of days. Arriverdeci!

Gmail’s motto is “Never delete another message anymore” – and that was one of the reason’s why I started to use their service last year. I forward all my private and corporate email accounts to this service, so I have access to all my mails from every computer in the world.

But it seems I will very soon need to start deleting old emails, because my Gmail box is almost full. This morning I am using 2629 MB (97%) of my 2719 MB. This is without the on average 100 spam mails that I get per day, and that I always delete. I hoped Google would come up with additional storage once I would pass 90% or 95%, but that does not seem to be the case. Even the addition of Google Calendar two weeks ago brought no storage capacity relief.

A Google search learned me that I am not the only person with this problem. There seems to be no solution, and it once again shows the limits of using a free service. You cannot contact anyone at Google when there are problems, and you cannot pay for it. I would not mind paying USD 100/year to them for more storage, but it’s impossible. And I don’t want to switch to another email address again. So today I will spend some time deleting old mails…

Today is Queens Day in the Netherlands. Officially it is the 30th of April (the birthday of former Queen Juliana), but because that’s a Sunday the festivities have been moved to the 29th. A bit strange considering that most of the Dutch people have no connection anymore with the religious concept that Sunday is a day to rest.

I decided not to spend the weekend in Amsterdam (the Queens Night is a huge party!), but to go to my parents house. A relaxed weekend, catching up on some sleep and overdue emails. And my sister Sonja is also visiting, nice to see her again.

The weather was supposed to be cloudy and rainy, but for now I am looking at a clear blue sky. But it’s too cold to sit in the garden, with only 10 degrees… As a comparison, Shanghai’s mercury reaches 30 degrees today.

This morning I started the day with a run along the Amstel River. Because in Shanghai I don’t have many opportunities to run outside, let alone in nature, I try to use the opportunity to run as much as possible when travelling.

There is a small gravel path next to the Amstel river, so I did not have to run on the main road. I ran to the village of Ouderkerk aan de Amstel, and it was beautiful. The sun was just rising on the horizon, and there was some fog over the river that slowly disappeared. It was very quiet, even though this is supposed to be one of the busiest parts of Holland. Far away I could hear the traffic of Amsterdam’s ring road, but the main sound were some birds singing.

At a windmill a bus full of (presumably) Malaysians were taking pictures of each other and the windmill. A runner also seemed to be something special, because when I ran by the camera’s were suddenly pointed at me. I wonder what time these tourists start their tours, because I encountered them around 6:30 AM!

Being able to run from a city into nature in just 10 minutes is something you cannot do in most cities in the world. But amazingly I only encountered two other runners during the one hour that I was running. People living in Amsterdam probably take for granted that they have nature just around the corner. But for me this was the best start of the day that I can imagine!

I am in Amsterdam for a few days, it’s always nice to be back in my home country and breathe some fresh air! Today I went to the Blognomics seminar in the RAI in Amsterdam. A fantastic seminar with some great speakers. I got many new ideas and took lots of notes. I hope to find some time to write about it this weekend.

Just went through all my mails and uploaded another blog post that I wrote on the plane. Now I am planning to get some sleep. I just calculated that since Monday morning I only got a total of 13 hours of sleep, not enough with my current busy schedule. I plan to get up around 5:30 AM tomorrow to go running along the Amstel river, so I better shut down my laptop now!