Saturday night I went to the NANC (the Netherlands Alumni Network in China) annual event, because I had been nominated for (and actually also won) an ‘outstanding young alumni award’. The NANC was set up in early 2005 and, according to director Jacques van Vliet, currently has about 2500 members. To be honest, I had not heard of the organization before they contacted me after my nomination, but that’s probably because it’s a relatively new organization and most members are fairly recent graduates.

The event itself was quite interesting and I was honored to win an award. The Dutch ambassador to China, Mr. Bekink, performed the award ceremony and I received among others a good digital camera and a photo printer. Pretty cool, this kind of printer is actually one of the few gadgets that I did not have yet, but that I had been considering to buy. After the awards ceremony there was a buffet dinner followed by drinks and networking and (in good Chinese tradition) a lucky draw.

The lucky draw had a twist though: if your number was drawn you had to answer a question first. And not the easiest ones for non-Dutch people, such as “What is the Dutch national color and why this color?”. And for a Dutch person who won a prize the question was what animal sign next year will have according to the Chinese calendar. Several people missed their prizes because they did not know the answers to their question.

I met quite some interesting people during the event, such as Mr. Zhu Dantao (who gained a PhD in Holland and now has a research position for China’s State Council), Ms. Michelle Yu (a young ambitious headhunter in Beijing, who also studied in my alma mater Maastricht University), and Ms. Lingxiao Qu (an internal auditor for a Dutch financial company who studied in Tilburg, and who at age 26 already achieved more than many people when they retire: among others she wrote a book and she was a liaison between the Dutch delegation and the Chinese organization during the 2008 Olympics). Also NANC organizer Selano Li impressed me, and I did not realize she speaks Dutch fluently until I met her in person (we had been in contact a couple of times before the award ceremony). I unexpectedly also met Dutch journalist Anne Meijdam here, we bump into each other about once a year or so.

Thanks to the NANC team for organizing a great event – and thanks for the award of course!

Scott was very happy to see me again after I came back from Beijing early this afternoon. I traveled a bit too much lately but likely I will not leave Shanghai anymore the rest of this year. To compensate Scott for my absence I spent most of the afternoon with him, we played in the garden, went for a walk around the compound, and I taught him how to jump on my bed. Great bonding, but because he was so excited he refused to go to sleep tonight…

I am going to spend more time with him over the next weeks, I miss too much of his development because I only see him less than 1 hour per day (in the morning before I’m off to work and when I come home at night). My little boy really makes me happy!

This morning I made walk through the neighborhood before my first meeting of the day. It was a beautiful morning in Beijing, a clear blue sky and quite cold (at least if you’re used to Shanghai temperatures). Of course I had my camera with me and I took some pictures during the walk.

I like to have a fast-paced life full of hard work and fun. But sometimes I also need a quiet day on my own in a silent place far away from the busy world. Some people find this in a cabin in the mountains or a remote villa on a tropical island, but for me that place is in the hutongs of Beijing.

Tudou has a courtyard here that’s perfect to be away from it all. I flew into Beijing earlier tonight and the moment I entered the courtyard I immediately felt relaxed. It’s so quiet here, when you stand in the garden (in the center of the building, the courtyard is built around it) you don’t hear anything – even though it’s just a stone’s throw from the bar area of Houhai. Outside it’s freezing cold (-8 Celsius tonight), but inside it comfortably warm.

Tonight I decided to stay in, enjoy a nice bottle of red wine, listen to classical music and read a good book. I found a review copy of Jeff Jarvis upcoming book “What Would Google Do?” (to be published on Jan. 27, 2009) laying around, exactly the book that fits to this setting. My first meeting is at 10:30 AM tomorrow, so I can read and enjoy the wine for at least a couple of more hours.

Life is good.

In the past the Chinese government used to announce the dates of its public holidays just a few weeks in advance, but yesterday the schedule for the whole of 2009 was published already. Good for people who want to start making vacation plans ahead of time.

Next year there will be a Golden Week during Spring Festival (from Jan. 25-31), but people will have to work the weekend before that to compensate for the holiday. Labor day will be just a one-day holiday this year (officially 3 days, but 2 fall on Saturday and Sunday) on May 1. And the National Day Holiday will be combined with the mid-Autumn Festival giving people time off from Oct. 1-8 (of course also here people have to compensate by working during the weekend before the holiday). Other holidays are on Jan 1-2 (New Year), April 6 (Qingming Festival) and May 28 (Dragon Boat Festival). No Christmas holidays in China of course.

Yesterday I arrived back in Shanghai after a busy week in Holland, without even enough time to write some blog posts… Lots of business appointments at Spil Games, a visit to the Dutch university of arts (HKU), a couple of media interviews, and a weekend visit to my parents. For some more details see my Tweets from last week, although I did not put everything on Twitter.

I was in Holland with 3 Chinese colleagues, who seemed to have enjoyed the trip. Business-wise it was certainly good to have had them in our Hilversum office for a few days, so they understand more about what Spil Games is doing in Holland and for the Spil Games people to see what we are up to in China. Of course we also had lots of beers together, among others in Spil Games office bar in Hilversum. We should do this at least once a year, especially now that Spil Games is growing so fast worldwide.

Now I am back in my office in Shanghai (yesterday already actually, the best way to fight a jet lag is to start working right away) catching up on work. As usual there is quite a back log of work when you are away for a few days. And tomorrow night I am off to Beijing again for a 1.5-day business trip. If you want to meet me, Saturday afternoon I have no meetings yet between 12:30-4 PM, so feel free to get in touch (marcvanderchijs (at) gmail (dot) com). I will be staying close to Houhai.

There are still some good people in this world. Last night my colleague Guo Haibin left his MacBook Pro laptop in a taxi, but we did not have the name of the taxi company nor the license plate number (see my blog post from this morning). Today a Spil Games secretary called all taxi companies in and around Hilversum and after about 15 companies she found the one that drove my colleagues to their hotel. At first they did not realize they had the bag, but they called the company back an hour later that they found it! They even brought it to our office (of course we paid for the taxi fee, plus a nice tip). After last night I honestly did not expect we would still be able to trace the laptop, but I am very happy to see that the taxi driver was honest and returned the computer.

November 2008 was not really my month. It started with getting a cold early in the month and a few days after that my failure to finish the 100 km Trailwalker race. Then I got really sick for about two weeks, with a bad cold that turned into a double ear infection because I kept on working and even went running on Tianmashan before I was healthy again. I am still taking medicine for that actually, especially because flying is not the best thing to do while having an ear infection. Last Friday’s scare with my wife’s pregnancy was also not something that I would like to go through again. And last night when I arrived in Amsterdam it seemed the bad luck spree had not stopped yet.

The flight itself was delayed but uneventful. I had an interesting neighbor who had set up and run factories for Xerox in India and China for over 25 years, and now helped setting up factories for other Dutch firms. Because he just turned 65 he decided to focus on other things from now on and he was on his way back to Holland after his final project in China. He knew Shanghai from the old days (the 1980’s) and had some interesting stories to tell. When I told him who I was he recognized me from a Dutch TV talk show where I participated, I am always amazed how many people have seen that show.

Upon arrival in Amsterdam I went through the passport check with my Chinese colleagues, and the passport guys were quite unfriendly. I already observed how they treated the Chinese in front of us, talking to them like they are potential criminals, wanting to see their documents and double-checking them. I really wonder if that is necessary, people have already been scrutinized when they applied for their visa’s, right? That visa process is another story by the way (my neighbor on the plane also had some bad visa experiences with his Chinese colleagues at the Dutch consulate), but it seems the Dutch consulate in Shanghai is actively working to improve it. Anyway, we got the same treatment from the passport guy, asking my colleague all kinds of questions. When I stepped in the public servant looked at me as if I was a piece of dirt. I looked back at him in the same way, the only thing you can do in such a situation, and then he let us through. Welcome to Holland 🙁

At the luggage belt the suitcases of my 3 Chinese colleagues arrived quickly, but not mine. I did not worry about it at first, but when the belt stopped I realized my luggage probably got lost somewhere. Great… So I went to lost luggage where they told me my suitcase should be in Amsterdam. They called some people at the luggage department and told me to wait for another 15 minutes. If the suitcase would not be there I would have to file a missing luggage report. We were all tired, but there was nothing we could do but wait. And that paid off: after exactly 15 minutes the luggage belt started moving again and my suitcase came out!

We went out into the arrivals hall where a taxi should be waiting to take us to Hilversum. We looked everywhere, but nobody with a Spil Games sign in sight. Sigh… I called someone at Spil Games and it turned out there had been a mix-up and there was no taxi for us. We then decided to take a train to Hilversum, which should be quite fast (too bad we ended up on the slow train, which took us another 45 minutes). Around 8:30 we arrived at the train station, where we took two taxis, because we were staying in two hotels (the hotel we all planned to stay in only had 2 rooms left). Ying Hao and me went to the other hotel, but when we checked in they could not find our reservations. Another call to Spil Games learned me that they reserved another hotel for us. So we had to call another taxi (waiting time 15 minutes) and finally managed to get to our hotel. By now it was 9 PM, we were jetlagged and we did not even have dinner yet. I jogged over to the hotel where Demi and Guo Haibin were staying to pick them up for a quick meal.

But upon arriving there I learned that Guo Haibin had left his laptop in the taxi. The taxi receipt did not have a number or name on it, so we decided to go back to the train station to see if we could find the taxi. To make a long story short, after spending 45 minutes in the rain at the cold train station we had seen about 20 taxi’s but not the one we were looking for. We then went over to the police station to inform them about the missing laptop, but they told us to come back during working hours. Jeez, what a good service in Holland.

We then went to a cafe to get a small meal, but were told the kitchen had closed already. Luckily there is a McDonalds in Hilversum, but when we arrived there it had also closed (it was past 10 PM already). We finally ended up in a Turkish snack bar where we ordered some pizza and cheese snack for me. The pizza arrived quickly, but my cheese snack did not. After 10 minutes I checked with them what was happening, and it turned out they had forgotten about it. By now it was completely burned so they had to make me a new one. It seems that everything that could go wrong did go wrong tonight, I hope the rest of the trip here will be better.