china conquers the world

Yesterday I was on a flight from Hong Kong to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia again.

As China is developing more and more, its citizens start traveling around as well. I remember reading that a good number of tourguides at the Eifeltower have to learn Mandarin to service this new market for them.

More and more I find those travelers take part in interesting activities when traveling. For many of them its their first trip abroad and they are not always used to the "safety" rules and regulations on board.

On this flight there was an other group on board. We left the gate without any troubles, taxied on the run way. Suddenly I hear a loudspeaker conversation beside me. When looking left I see 3 elderly mainland ladies having a good laugh via a speaker mobile phone with one of their friends. When more people are staring at them, they realize hmmm maybe not the best thing to do. So the lady ends the conversation, unlocks her seatbelt, stands up and puts her phone away into the overhead lockers, roams through her luggage to find some things...... This is all seconds before the plane takes off :)

Recently I had a similar situation, when landing though..... always interesting :). In the newspapers was an article where a gentleman occupied the toilet for a long time. When the flight attendant checkec up.....he said he was having a bath in the little toilet room........

More to come

HK Blogging community event

Tuesday evening 18 September an event was organized for bloggers, internetpreneurs, people working and having an interest in the internet industry.

The trigger of the event was the visit of Jeremiah Owyang. Napoleon Biggs, from PALAVA Digital and organizer of the new phenomena WEB WEDNESDAY had an interview with the guest of honor. THe interview can be found here

I had a quick chat with Jeremiah, who will be entering an interesting position soon with Forrester research. My impression was that (many) people in "The Valley" dont have a good understanding on what is happening in Asia and countries like India, China and for example Malaysia and Thailand. THose are developing rapidly in many areas.

THere was a good mixture of people, from advertising, technology providers, entrepreneurs etc. Excellent vibe, and yes I had some good conversations and met some interesting people where contacts will be re-established.