From March 8-12 I will be in San Francisco for the Game Developers Conference 2010. If you would like to meet me for a coffee at the Moscone Center, or somewhere around there for breakfast, lunch or dinner, let me know at marcvanderchijs (at) gmail (dot) com. I am especially interested to meet with online game companies (incl. social game companies) that are considering to set up their business in China, and in VC’s looking at the China online game or Internet market. But of course I also enjoy talking to entrepreneurs or people working for start-ups in or around SF.

Last year I planned so many meetings that I missed most of the GDC sessions, this year I hope I won’t make the same mistake. But I still feel that meeting people is the best way to learn new things about what’s happening in the Bay area in general and in game development in particular.

Also, if you are organizing a GDC party that week, feel free to invite me ;). So far I only confirmed the Accel Partners cocktail on Tuesday, all other nights are still open for parties… I am looking forward to a busy but also fun week!

In my time as a consultant about 7-8 years ago I visited many factories along China’s East coast. Always an interesting experience, especially compared to the clean and efficient factories that I was used to while working for Mercedes-Benz (where I worked until 2002). One of the things you always notice in Chinese factories is that workers do not seem to care about safety: their attitude is often one of ‘why should I wear safety glasses or safety shoes, it’s just a nuisance and I’m not afraid’.

Tonight I came across a good article on the blog of Hong Kong photographer Alex Hofford (h/t Danwei). He took a series of pictures in an ‘investment casting’ factory near Ningbo (a 2 hour drive south of Shanghai). The blog post shows the whole factory process in detailed pictures, with short comments explaining the process while also pointing out the health and safety issues. If you’ve never seen a typical Chinese factory on the inside or just want to understand how many industrial parts are still being produced, you should check out his blog post.

Picture credit (Creative Commons): Mavericyard

On Twitter my friends outside China are all happy that it’s Friday and almost weekend, but here in China everybody is getting ready for one of the “only-in-China” 7-day working weeks that will start tomorrow. I don’t mind too much actually, there are a lot of things I want to do the next days, but working 7 days in a row instead of 5 is not something many people look forward to. The Chinese press always talks about the one week off that everybody gets for Chinese New Year, but by substituting days off for extra working days on the weekend it’s actually only 3 days.

The last day of my holiday I spent mainly with Scott. We went for a long walk this morning (more than one hour), Scott on his tricycle, me walking in front/next to/behind him. Scott wanted to stop every 10 meters because he discovered something new, I am always surprised by all the things he finds along the way. After that we had lunch at the Green Apple where Scott played for a while in the sun. The weather was very nice and the next days will be even nicer. Pity I will have to  spend them inside in my office.

Elaine is not doing so well, she had a high fever for the past two days, so early this evening we went to the hospital for a quick check. Nothing serious, but with small babies you don’t want to take any risks. She is such an adorable little girl, I feel bad for her knowing that she is not feeling well, but not being able to do much. Hope she’ll be fine soon.

The only good thing about the end of the holiday is that our cooking ayi and nannies will (hopefully) come back soon from their hometowns to help with cooking, cleaning and the kids. We managed well without them during the past week (eating out a lot!), but it’s much more convenient having them around.

On the Tudou Intranet there is a feed of my blog, but it shows only the titles of the posts. If you click on the title you get the full text. What I did not realize is that because I started using  feedproxy.google.com (Feedburner) for the content of my posts and this seems to be blocked in China, nobody could read the full post anymore at Tudou. Because my RSS feed contains the full feed, other readers in China without a VPN could still see the whole post. But if they would click on the link to see the post itself or to comment they would get an error message.

I now added an additional RSS feed for everybody in China using Feedsky at http://feed.feedsky.com/Shanghaied. So if you are behind the Great Firewall and use RSS to read this blog, it’s probably better to change the feed. On the top right corner of this blog you will see the two RSS feeds, the original one at http://feeds.feedburner.com/shanghaied and the China one at http://feed.feedsky.com/Shanghaied.

This week the whole of China closes down for a week and so Spil Games Asia also closed its doors for a few days (we will be back in the office on Saturday morning, because this weekend will be a working weekend in China). This year we decided not to go to Beijing nor to the beaches of South-East Asia but to stay at home. Main reason is because of the kids, traveling with two young kids is quite stressful.

I actually enjoy spending a couple of days at home. I read some books (latest was Under the Banner of Heaven by Jon Krakauer, about the LDS church – very interesting read), played some games (just bough Plants vs Zombies on my iPhone, very addictive game), did some sports (ran almost every 5-10 km to keep in shape), and of course had lots and lots of good food and wine.

Two days ago we even hired two chefs to cook us a good meal. Quite an experience to have real chefs at home! Our regular cook went home for Chinese New Year, so this was a good opportunity to get some high end chefs to cook some special Chinese dishes for us. In total they prepared 12 appetizers and 12 main courses for us, I think I gained quite some weight that night.

Other days we cooked ourselves or we went out to restaurants in the neighborhood. Last night for example we went to Spanish restaurant Las Tapas where we tried lots of nice tapas and had some paella and noodle dishes. Excellent, especially in combination with cold San Miguel beer and pitchers of sangria. Because we started our dinner quite early (the kids also joined us) we ordered our drinks still during the happy hour, so we got double the number of drinks that we had planned to order. No big problem, we finished it all.

Of course I also played a lot with the kids. It’s fun to be around them the whole day and interact more with them. Scott is such a busy boy, amazing how he can keep on running around the house for hours. No wonder he eats so much, he probably burns more calories during a day than I do during a 10 km run. Elaine is much more quiet, but she can also scream out loud if she wants attention! She is a real sweet girl, it’s very interesting to see how different our kids are.

Next to all fun and relaxing activities I am also doing a bit of work. There are not many mails coming in, but I still had a large number of emails that I didn’t get to answer yet, and I am trying to get most of them away this week. I am also studying Chinese characters for about 2 hours every day, mainly reviewing them. I want to increase my reading skills and the only way to do that is by reading more and memorizing the characters that I don’t know. Doing this for 2 hours or more per day leads to immediate progress, it’s better than just 15-30 minutes per day. Too bad I don’t have so much time during normal working weeks.

The next two days will be more of the same. I am enjoying this holiday, it’s good to be away from the office and get my mind off of all work related problems. The past couple of months have been quite intensive and I needed this break. A few days at home may not be enough to complete recharge my batteries (I probably need to get away from Shanghai to do that), but I feel much more relaxed now than just a few days ago.

Even after living in China for over 10 years I still spot unexpected cultural differences every now and then, especially since we have kids. There are of course a lot of issues related to how to educate your kids, but my wife and I pretty much have the same opinion on that, so that’s not a big issue.

But Scott also goes to kindergarten and we recently had an interesting discussion there. The Chinese teacher told us that Scott was leading the class to behave naughtily. She told us this so that we would be were aware of it, sort of implying that she considered it a bad thing.

Although I did not say it, I see that a bit different. Scott is one of the younger toddlers in his class and he is already able to lead a group to do something that the teachers actually do not allow? I think that’s great, I am even a bit proud of him for showing leadership skills at such a young age already. And I also don’t mind that he is being a bit naughty, I actually like a personality where he does not follow all the rules right away and where he is not afraid to test the limits of the rules. The little boy just turned 2 years old, he will have enough rules to follow when he gets a bit older!

Another example, about two weeks ago I had dinner in a Chinese restaurant with some friends and I also took my family to the dinner. We had a lot of dim sum dishes and also ordered many kinds of vegetables. Scott loved the vegetables, he was especially fond of the mushrooms, the asparagus and the broccoli. The friend sitting next to me is a Belgian psychologist specialized in kids and he was surprised to see Scott eating so many vegetables. He told me that most European kids are not big fans of vegetables and prefer to eat less healthy kinds of food. It must be a cultural thing, because at home our cooking ayi prepares several vegetable dishes every day, so Scott is used to eating vegetables and rice for lunch and dinner. And although kids can be picky eaters sometimes, he is generally very happy with the choice of food that we serve him.

That reminds me that during last weekend my wife and I took Scott to Cafe Montmartre (a French bistro restaurant) where we had some salad and french fries as side dishes. And guess what Scott wanted to have? The salad! Of course he also enjoys French fries every now and then -so he knows very well what it tastes like- but he still went for the salad. I can’t imagine that as a kid I would have made the same choice. Maybe his eating habits will change when he gets a bit older, or is it really a cultural difference because he gets so many vegetables every day?

On Friday evening Spil Games Asia had its annual dinner for all employees, my 5th dinner with this company already. Like most companies in China we always organize a dinner in the last days before Chinese New Year, and during the dinner there are speeches, a lot of drinking, and people play games.

In my speech I talked about the changes at Spil Games Asia over the past year, both the good things and the bad. Some key people left last year, but that allowed us to finally build a top management team that is ready to reach some ambitious targets (the targets for January were already met, so we’re off to a good start). I also talked about the future of games and the impact that the iPad may have on the game industry. The industry has changed a lot over the past years, and I think also this year will see some big changes.

At the end of the dinner there was a lucky draw and I was asked to draw the grand prize. And believe it or not, but I managed to draw my own name! Of course I tore up my ticket and drew another number. A colleague said that this is a sign of good luck for the company (getting my own number, not tearing it up and drawing another one), always good to know!

After dinner a group of colleagues went to a karaoke bar where we sang a lot of songs, played some dice and drank more beer. It was a lot of fun and a good way to get to know my colleagues in a different setting. There is also a post with some more pictures of the party on Joop Dorresteijn’s blog.

Now that Scott is over 2 years old and Elaine is 8 months old it gets nice and nicer to interact with them. Scott really started talking now, he switches without any problems from Chinese to Dutch, and even occasionally says some thing in English. Chinese he learns at home from my wife and the nannies, Dutch from me and my parents when they are visiting, and English from the teachers and kids in school. Because his pronunciation is not yet perfect we sometimes have to guess what language he is speaking, or he mixes two languages (e.g. sometimes he says “??? kijken”, a mix of Chinese and Dutch which means “I want to watch the tractor” – a reference to his favorite TV series Tractor Tom).

Elaine also started to talk a lot, her favorite word is still baba. When I come into her room in the morning she is always very happy to see me and she immediately says “baba” to me while waving her hand to greet me. So sweet! It makes me very happy to be a dad. Elaine learns new skills almost every day now. A few days ago she managed to stand on her own for the first time, but of course she fell over after a few seconds. She now also manages to clap her hands, and she has a huge smile while doing that.

Their personalities are completely different. Scott is loud, loves to takes risks (climbing on the couch or table and jumping off) and has a high pain tolerance (on more than one occasion he hit his head against mine, which hurt pretty much but he didn’t even cry). He also loves everything related to cars. If he refuses to do something and you tell him we may go for a car ride later he will immediately follow what you ask him to do.

Elaine on the other hand is a real little lady. She is much more silent, but she can also cry and scream loudly if she is in the mood for that. Generally she just sits and observes the world around her, smiling at the people surrounding her or just completely ignoring them. At times she seems to look straight through me as if I’m not there. If you look her in the eyes, she does not look away but keeps looking at you without blinking. I can’t do that! Compared to Scott she is easily scared, for example when I am driving and suddenly need to brake she will immediately start crying. Also when watching TV she can suddenly start crying because she is afraid. But if you hold her she calms down right away and even keeps on watching the program.

We sometimes take videos of our kids and a couple of them are on Tudou. Below 3 videos that we shot with a simple point-and-shoot camera over the past weeks. The first one shows Scott and Elaine while playing in their playroom. Elaine’s nanny holds Elaine who keeps on laughing. In the middle of the video Scott takes a picture of Elaine with his baby camera, he is good at that already.

The second one shows Elaine on the couch in the living room. My wife is trying to teach Elaine to say mama, but of course she prefers to reply with baba 🙂 It’s quite funny actually to hear her saying baba the whole time. The last seconds of the clips show an article in a Chinese mother magazine about my wife. She was interviewed because they consider her a successful business woman who manages to combine an extremely busy job with raising two kids.

The last one was taken at Scott’s ??? (pre-school / kindergarten) where the class is singing and dancing. I never see Scott interact with other kids because I am always in the office during day time, so I liked it a lot that I could see him here. Scott it the boy in the red coat with a white collar. At 6:10 there is a small accident in which Scott falls pretty hard. But also here he does not cry, stands up right away and keeps on dancing with the group. I am a proud father!