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Köttbullar in Shanghai

Posted under China, Company visit, asides on Saturday, 13 March 2010
IKEA, the best furniture superstore in the world if you don't mind timeworn products and long lines. However, it's a furniture giant which logistics and operations were rich subjects while I was studying in Sweden, close to where the founder of Ikea, Ingvar Kamprad was born. Sweden has a rich culture and through the IKEA formula it reaches out...

How many men does it take to change a lightbulb?

Posted under asides on Saturday, 13 March 2010

How to Twitter to a local number with your mobile in China

Posted under China, Internet, tips on Wednesday, 10 March 2010
Setup a zuosa account (Chinese twitter clone) Verify your mobile number Sync zuosa with Twitter. Done! When I started to use Twitter in 2007, there was an option to tweet with text messages (SMS) It makes sense because a SMS is also short and it's more interesting to see tweets on the go. To keep up with Twitter's growth the...

Koreans work the most, the Dutch the least?

Posted under Internet, Korea, Netherlands on Tuesday, 9 March 2010
I'd recommend to try out Google Public data, it's great! It's the result of Google's partnerships with the World Bank and other statistics gatherers to present an array of data in visual form within Google Labs. You know I am a number freak right, this will entertain me for a while! I was checking out  the OECD fact data and found that...

Shanghai Concert Hall

Posted under China on Sunday, 28 February 2010
Attended a tribute to Beethoven in the shanghai concert hall with Pawel yesterday. I was there for two reasons: to hear the music and to see the concert hall from the inside. The western style building looks amazing from the outside. The music was good, and I was surprised with the mixed audience; a loud burp from a few seats behind me...

Who needs a music collection anyway?

Posted under Internet, New Media, thoughts on Monday, 22 February 2010
I obtained an average music collection in the past, working at vinyl, cd store's and later a music studio to fulfill my musical needs. But the days of music collections are counted, music needs to be ad-hoc; fitting to the exact moment. 2004 was a tipping point, as online music recommendation services like last.fm and Pandora started to build...

For Tiroler ski, Muju Korea is Austria’s top export project

Posted under Entrepreneurship, Korea, Netherlands, travel on Saturday, 20 February 2010
Last week we spent some time at Muju (무주) Ski resort in S-Korea. An Average area, with 25km of beginner and advanced ski slopes - aimed to host the 2010 winter Olympics, including four ski jump's, fun park and half pipe. But that wasn't what struck me most. It was the export of culture in this multi-million dollar ski resorts in the far east...

Korean Sausages Work Well as iPhone Stylus [Video]

Posted under Korea, asides on Tuesday, 16 February 2010
Phones with Multitouch displays, like iPhone and Nexus one, require gestures with fingers. Most strongly remaked by Steve Jobs, as the 'iPhone would be the end of the stylus'. He did not realize that Chinese characters are actually writen at much faster phase with a pen-like stylus. Steve, unlike me, doesn't cycle to work every day, wearing gloves...

[Video] Chinese new year, streets of Shanghai

Posted under China on Sunday, 14 February 2010
Chinese New Year's, something to look forward to, but also something to fear. As Chinese New Year's is the biggest holiday of the year in China, it's hard for a foreigner to get into the same spirit. After all, christmas and New Years are far behind us already. It's kind of fun to spectate the celebration. According to tales and legends, the...

Beer in China

Posted under asides on Saturday, 13 February 2010
China has been brewing beer-like drinks for over 9000 years, usually made with rice, honey and grapejuice, but the alcoholic beverage lost popularity during the Han dynasty. It were the Russians that made beer popular again, when they setup a brewery in the country during the 19th century. Today there is a big variety of Chinese, European,...

Expensive cars rotting away in a Shanghai Police depot

Posted under China on Thursday, 11 February 2010
These cars are obviously being put to good use. Close to Xinzha road Shanghai, there is a police depot filled with (confiscated?) cars. Whilst the particular car in the picture doesn't fit my taste, it should be quite an expensive car, but it has been there for months (obviously) and is covered by the dust by now. There are lot's of pearls...

Illegal Chinese medicine

Posted under China, travel on Wednesday, 10 February 2010
When I was walking to work this morning, I spotted some items being sold on street by a merchant. When I had a look, I noticed they were Chinese medicine. I'm not afraid to take legal Chinese medicine, perhaps to cure a sport injury or fight an upcoming fever, but these items are quite something else. Apparently, the items on the left are tiger...

Weekly groceries at a Chinese market place

Posted under China on Sunday, 7 February 2010
We visit a local market weekly, based efficiently underneath a highway. You can buy everything here, from kitchen equipment to fish. We usually buy our vegetables (biological!) and eggs here. This week I decided to take some pictures. You can find these markets everywhere across China. This particular market is developing fast. In half a year, the...

Spilgames New Year party

Posted under China on Saturday, 6 February 2010
The crew of Spilgames is growing fast, this party, we had eight round tables full with people. The dinner was accompanied with speeches from management and our Sales assistant and Sound architect being masters of ceremony. There were lot's of fun games during the dinner, for instance, I had to play a scene from a movie together with the sales...

Shopgirl Shanghai

Posted under asides on Friday, 5 February 2010
Suna and I ran into Shopgirl Shanghai, Siyan (middle) yesterday. She has an interesting blog, too bad we missed her Barbie birthday party, perhaps next...

Shanghai metro getting overcrowded

Posted under asides on Thursday, 4 February 2010
Traveling by metro today and I notice that its really crowded. I was waiting at the station and saw the train coming, but got dissapointed when I noticed that there was no space to stand. First I wanted to wait a train, but the train that had arrived just wouldn't move. I decided to try a few doors until I found an area I could cram myself...

Holding the new South Korean 50.000 KRW bank-note

Posted under asides on Thursday, 4 February 2010
The first 50,000-won notes (Today worth about 30 Euros) were released in 2009. Its yellow color may be confusing with the light brownish 5,000 won note, especially since the face figures don't feature any comma nor dot : Westerners would write 50,000 (fifty thousand) where Koreans read 5,0000 (five "man" or five "ten thousand"). The project for...

Google ad in the metro

Posted under asides on Wednesday, 3 February 2010
Google decided on new 'no cencorship' approach on China a few weeks ago. While this created a lot o buzz around the brand abroad, Google has, or commenced advertising in the Shanghai city metro. In China, google represents 30% of the search engine market. The ad features their short g.cn domain, a conveniently short domain for mobile...

Sushi

Posted under asides on Tuesday, 2 February 2010
I like sushi, especially good sushi from Japan. But I also have a craving for cheap sushi, in korea I lived next to a sushi bar where every sushi was a dollar, and here in china its even less then a dollar per dish. Japanese spit on these cheap things, but I love cheap...

wk 5: Clear days in Shanghai & Chinese new year

Posted under China on Tuesday, 2 February 2010
Clear days in Shanghai looks like it's going to be a nice clear day today. This view makes me long to the city and always get's me out of bed. Shanghai experienced some smoggy days lately, reason for me to put the data from the last 10 years in a graph. Somehow, the last two days seem clearer then ever. Perhaps the factory outside Shanghai, that...

Chinese iPad clone released three months before Apple’s

Posted under Technology on Thursday, 28 January 2010
Without stealing Apple's hard needed thunder, we'd like to point out that a Chinese hardware manufacturer made an iPad clone ... three months ago. In what may be the first case of a manufacturer trying to clone a product that doesn’t even exist yet, China company Shenzhen Dragon Brother Industrial has introduced their own 'P88' “Apple...

Photo’s from China – Hot in Shanghai, Cold in Beijing and Chinesepod

Posted under asides on Wednesday, 20 January 2010
What is this? I have settled on a simple experiment: I will capture various events with my mobile, but digest these photo’s to a weekly update. The frequency is important to me because I don’t want to broadcast a constant flow of single pictures. In sets however, I think they might be more meaninful to me. Hope you enjoy these snapshots! read...

Photo’s from China – Chinglish, Korean BBQ and Avatar queues

Posted under Quick posts on Tuesday, 12 January 2010
At ben jia korean bbq shanghai with @gamehero If you like Korean food, go to Ben Jia in the Gubei district. It's authentic and you can eat for a fair price too! When your full, you head out and you realize you are in China. Until you see the Karaoke bars across the street and the Korean vibe continues. Besides Chinese...

Shanghai fog levels going down?

Posted under China, thoughts on Wednesday, 6 January 2010
My Swedish friends like to do business in China, but often state to me that they would never want to live in such a dirty city like Shanghai. They remind me that Stockholm is so clean, they can fish for salmon in the rivers going through town! This is not possible in Shanghai obviously, the water is contaminated - although the thousands of fish...

Taking blogging to a new level – mobile!

Posted under Quick posts on Tuesday, 5 January 2010
New year and a new idea for the blog you are reading: I will share at least one blogpost a week with pictures taken with my mobile. Recently I've switched to a new mobile telephone giving me opportunity to walk around and share. Twitter's developers mentioned long time ago, something along the lines that there is not much chance that you will...

Buying a christmas tree in Shanghai (howto)

Posted under China, tips on Thursday, 17 December 2009
To get into the holiday spirit, we've ordered a tree from rosagallica.com. A tip from Marc. Whilst the trees are mentioned to cost about 200 RMB, a lady called Camille followed up on my order and notified me that they exclude the costs made for delivery. I've agreed on a price of 400 RMB, which is about 40 euro's, which is still about half the...

Ice Skating Madness at FlevOnIce in The Netherlands

Posted under Netherlands on Monday, 14 December 2009
I'm back in the Netherlands for a short business trip and it's very cold outside. Sadly, it's not cold enough to ice-skate on the lakes and rivers yet. Ice-skating is a favorite sport in the Netherlands. Not only are we proud of our famous ice skaters, when there's a cold winter all Dutch people will go crazy to go ice-skating. During a really...

Pictures of 2009 Shanghai marathon

Posted under asides on Sunday, 29 November 2009
In early August, Marc van der Chijs threw up a ball whether we wanted to run a half marathon in November. Shortly, a big deligation from Spilgames signed up and started exercising. Today was the day - now the Shanghai marathon is over, I'm looking back to a great event. Besides my father Johan Dorresteijn participating, also Peter Driessen came...

Five fun things to do in Seoul

Posted under Korea, tips on Sunday, 22 November 2009
I was talking to my friends about my life in Seoul. Our New Delhi cab driver suddenly became excited; he was flying to there the day after! In return, I spend the rest of the drive about the things to do in this marvelous city. He was so grateful for the info that he didn't want any money for our 15 dollar taxi ride. Since another friend is going...

In San Francisco bay area

Posted under Entrepreneurship, United States on Friday, 13 November 2009
I'm together with Silvia Man in San Francisco bay area for the week (My hotel is right in city center), I will be updating this post from time to time and share my experiences. Driving our rented Nissan from San Francisco to San Jose, we're crashing dinner parties, conferences and visiting companies. oh, jolly good fun! Let us know if you are in...
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