Shanghai travel tips

280px-Pudong-Puxi.jpgThis is the blog post I never found that includes some tips what to do in Shanghai (when you go there for work and have a bit of spare time to see the city).

A technique that worked well was to have a list of about seven things to see and do in your pocket along with addresses written in Mandarin. Then, whenever I had some a slot to fill I just picked a random destination and a cab driver would take me there for two to three pounds. Cabs in Shanghai are cheap and plenty.

A definite must is YuYuan Garden which is very touristy but also very nice. There’s a market where you can buy superb tea and very cheap crap surrounding the garden. Also, there’s a touristy restaurant that does heavenly dim sum just next to the garden entrance.

I’d say the urban planning museum is also a must. In any other city or country this would be a boring dusty place. In Shanghai it’s a temple to planning and manifestation of ideas. Let the greatest car industry hub in the planet be on this piece of land by 2011. Consider it done! (US and Japan who?) Let a green suburban town with 200.000 inhabitants rise on this marshland in 5 years. Voila! Impressive as well as scary stuff.

(Quite a bit of the museum was out of order eg. one escalator and the thingie that tells you about F1 in China. How very illustrative of the fact that plans don’t always pan out the way they should…)

Then there’s the Shanghai Propaganda Poster Art Centre. Or rather a small space in an apartment block basement that feature two rooms full of the art of propaganda. It’s a bit tricky to find, just drive to the address, find the right gate and look a bit lost (it should come quite naturally at that stage). Then, the security guard will come and point you to the right direction. Once inside, you’ll find the full history of China from 1940’s to 1970’s condensed into seventy or so awesome posters. Tauno, thanks for the tip!

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If you’re into art and such you’ll also enjoy MoGanShan Road, a block of old warehouses which is now home to dozens of art galleries, workshops and studios. It’s wonderful to potter around in this 3D maze and get acquainted to the hip Chinese modern art. Take Zengguo Li, whose horse painting pictured above is now forever haunting me. Other notes to self: PEI Lian-zhi and Shi Jian and PengPeng. Highrisers are closing in on the MoGanShan area, though. Even on a Sunday, there was intense construction work going on next door. I’d be surprised if this lovely part of the city is still there in five years time.

The tourist/expat nightlife happens on the Bund. There’s plenty of nice restaurants and bars around which are all very nice but there’s not much ‘Shanghai’ there, these venues could be anywhere. There’s also Xin Tian Di area which is full of ‘international’ bars and restaurants and Heng Shan road which is less glam and more local. Except for a bar called Soho there which appears as if Apple’s Jonathan Ivy had designed it, after consuming a large quantity of LSD.

And naturally don’t forget to have a cheap good massages whenever you can, and enjoy the food. If it’s summer go eat at YongFoo Elite where the food is nothing to write home about but the 1920’s ambiance is awesome, especially in the garden terrace. A bit of like Ammende villa in Pärnu, Estonia.

Oh, and I was warned about ‘tea ceremonies’ or ‘showing exclusive art work’ at the back of a bar. Apparently a good way to part with your money, though I wasn’t offered a chance.

Lohesurfamine – mis, miks, kes, kuidas

Vahel on tore eesti keeles mõni pikem jutt valmis kirjutada, eriti kui teema on südamelähedane. Siin äsja meesteajakirjas ilmunud lugu lohetamisest.

Tümaki! sadasin peale umbes 15-meetrist õhulendu tagasi rannaliivale ja lohisesin vähemasti teist samapalju piki liiva edasi, proovides lohet kuidagi kontrolli alla saada. Luud jäid terveks, ja veidi tuikava jalaga sain kuidagi esimese “päris” sõidupäeva tehtud. Olin nüüd lohesurfar! Lohesurfar, kes pidi küll tuliuue kama viieks nädalaks karkude vastu vahetama, aga siiski lohesurfar. Pealegi selline, kes enam kunagi ei tee lohe õhkulaskmisel nii suuri vigu.

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Tänu suhteliselt suurele võimalusele millegi sama rumalaga endale viga teha on lohesurfil juures ohu, adrenaliini ja magus-valusa naudingu maitse. Võibolla just sellepärast on see vaid kümmekond aastat laiemalt levinud ala nii kiiresti populaarsust võitnud.

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Reading recommendation: 279 days to overnight success

279-days-logo-201x300.jpgI quite enjoyed reading 279 days to overnight success by Chris Guillebau. It’s a useful guide to people that want to earn their income from blogging. And if this is not your aim (as is the case with yours truly) it contains some useful ideas that apply to many fields from writing to building online businesses. Here’s a few ideabytes that I took the liberty of elaborating on:

Instead of targeting the ‘general audience’ choose a specific niche instead. Or even better – create a totally new niche.

Quantity begets quality. Chris recommends to write a thousand words a day, if writing is where you earn or want to earn your main income. If not, the same principle applies. Some successful salespeople focus on making a certain numbers calls or client visits per day, no matter what. This ‘input metric’ is a hundred percent under your control and if you reach it every day then not only do you probably reach your ‘output metric’, whatever it is, but you’ll also get closer to Malcolm Cladwell’s 10.000 hours.

Spend as much on marketing as you do on writing. Again, this is true no matter what you do. Unless you work in marketing, because you’ll probably get fired if you only work half the time.

Keeping track of my favourite wall in Shoreditch

This wonderwall near my home is a good example of immaterial benefits of living in East London. This was before.

Then one morning late last summer it had been replaced by this:
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And now it’s this:
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This clearly outweighs having to dodge armies of pissed people on weekends and streets filled with kebab wrappers, no?

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No frills, and no thanks to Ryanair

Last week I had the opportunity to experience two very different no frills concepts. First was Riders Palace, a snow hotel in Laax, Switzerland. The owners obviously know what’s important for boarders who travel without kids – a bed, a good shower, proximity to ski lifts, a lobby bar. Period. There’s no real need for a telephone, 24H room service, minibar, TV or horrible kitsch art on the walls as you’ll anyway be sleeping the whole time you’re in your room. It cost less than 160 pounds for three night including a three-day ski pass. And it’s cool, using only concrete, wood and glass as materials. Brilliant, if not no-frills chic.

I also experienced a Ryanair flight to Friedrikschafen that cost less than a hundred pound on paper and 200 pounds when including luggage, payment fee and a 10-pound online check-in fee. The total price and first two extra items are reasonable but the last is tricky to categorize under “no frills” as you just can’t board a plane without checking in. Anyway, I had forgotten to check in and had to do it at the airport. My bad, and I kind of understand I had to pay 20 pounds extra to check in at the airport without being refunded the 10 pounds I had paid for online check-in. This is according to our terms and conditions as a lady trying to get a queue of people like me organized explained to me in a bored manner. But I also lost my right to check in online for the return leg and had to pay another 20 euros extra on the way back to London. Also brilliant, but in a very different way. In a way where you think: gosh, they must have a team of lawyers and extremely creative product managers to figure out more ways to fuck your wallet in the ass, no lube. (Mom, I only use this kind of language when talking about Ryanair, I promise). What’s next after charging for using toilets? Charging for life jackets under your seat and pilots that have had their eye-sight checked in the last 24 months? Despite loving low airfares (and 200 pounds for a 2-hour flight is not that cheap, is it?) I guess I have to say no to the thrills and chills of flying Ryanair in the future. If you ever fly them, make sure you don’t forget to check in beforehand.

Obama, I know how to save your country

When over at California two weeks ago, I couldn’t help but notice what an incredible opportunity this financial crisis-ridden country has missed. The answer lies in TV, or rather geniuses whose ideas local channels so kindly mediated.

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They have these wonderful programs and books that are _guaranteed_ to work. Take the real estate program that makes anyone rich even without putting in any personal money. One doesn’t even need to leave the house. And your credit rating can be as bad as the songs of Eurovision.

Who needs a trillion dollar rescue package when you can a book for each American for 29.95? (19.95 if Obama acts right now.) Once that’s done, buy every citizen the lactose and gluten free diet program that will solve every health issue. And there’s still money left over from the trillion dollar purse for wars and foreign aid!

It’s really a shame I haven’t had a TV for eight years and I can only be enlightened when staying at hotels.

Notes from Marketing Tailormade seminar

Today I attended Marketing Tailormade, a seminar where you can choose your own program depending on your interests and needs. I love the idea and warmly recommend attending, despite one of the sessions being an absolute waste of time today (you can just pick another session if this happens, capisce?)

Random ideabytes aka notes to self:

  • Sta Travel: widgets such as Travel countdown clock, travel check list and weather widget are highly successful. Also, their RSS-feeds drive 10% of traffic to their website.
  • Ticketmaster: Content for their weekly newsletter is highly dynamic, their 6M subscribers may actually get 6M different creatives, past transaction history is the best basis for segmentation.
  • Argos: Reviews are one of the most powerful campaigns so far – users are encouraged to review a product about 10 days post purchase, information is used on site in different ways. (This ties very well with this article). Also, 80% of email revenues are coming from a relatively small number of email recipients. Does this call for email activity segmentation on top of normal segmentation?
  • John Lewis: Using RFM model for segmentation as does Ticketmaster. About to roll out programs for loyal users to reward desider behavious ie. premium shipping after purchase vs. industry norm of giving incentives to dormant users to become active again.
  • Follow-up program performing very well – sending an email to users that click through to a section on the site that don’t purchase immediately. For many categories consideration cycle is several days and one can’t expect same-session purchase.
  • Tests for skin cream category to send emails when a user has likely run out of product. Optimal follow-up time is 4 months. This is different by product and can easily be identified by testing.
  • Pure: Replies to newsletters are usually ignored if not neglected. However, this is a natural way for users to engage with email. Are marketers missing opportunities to get feedback as well as upsell?

    • Do I sound like a bloody marketer?

    Tallinn Music Week and how do we market Estonia

    Yesterday I was invited to a panel at Tallinn Music Week along with the Estonian composer Erkki-Sven Tüür, director of London Jazz Festival John Cumming and others to discuss whether it matters where a band is from or not. The discussion turned out to cover more, with topics ranging from the birth of reggae to specifics of Nordic jazz.

    I was surprised how many times the word infrastructure was mentioned when talking about something as creative as the music industry. You need to have the systems in place to grow and spot talent and promote it the home country and abroad before you can expect to see truly big stars. Anna Hildur from Iceland Music Export said Björk would probably not have made it so far so fast had Sugarcubes not woken up the Icelandic music scene first. Tallinn Music Week will definitely become part of such platform for Estonian artists. The festival rocked, even based on the little I saw of it. Kudos to the Helen and the rest of the team that made this happen, and kudos for Skype for supporting it.

    The panel briefly touched upon marketing countries, too. One thought that occurred to me only after the panel was that the concept of Estonia as a technology country is losing steam. True, we’ve had the government meeting room with very pretty computer screens, mobile parking, Skype and some other cool things going on. Is that enough to claim us to be technologically advanced or does it come across as a “one hit wonder” if I may borrow the music analogy here? We may need another technology chart topper before continuing to talk about e-stonia. If this doesn’t materialize in the next couple of years maybe we’re better off defining Estonia through events like song festivals and TMW instead. Or perhaps a compromise: the country with hi-tech folks that can sing in tune.

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    Pohmelliga ilmast ei räägita

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    Mõne nädala tagune Economist pakkus Londonile, mis veel kümmekond aastat tagasi, investeerimispankade mühinal kasvamise aegu, uhkustas hüüdnimega Manhattan upon Thames, välja uue hüüdnime. Reykjavik upon Thames, ja mõistagi ei ole selle taga mõnest pargist avastatud kuumaveegeisrid.

    Seda, et linnast on haihtunud rongide kaupa raha, tänavatel jalutades veel aru ei saa, kuigi inimesi peaks olema vähemaks jäänud. Lehed kirjutavad, et poolakad on nurka visanud köögipõlled ja ehituskiivrid ning tagasi kodumaale suunduma hakanud. Tööta jäänud City pankurid kordavad paremaid aegu oodates erinevates troopilistes randades Peeter Oja kehastatud Kreisiraadio kangelase sõnu, et nemad ei tea, kuhu 800 miljonit kadusid. Inimesi on silmnähtavalt vähem ainult ehk ostutänavatel, näiteks Oxford Street on kohati peaaegu et jalutamiskõlbulik.

    Märke keerulistest aegadest leiab igalt poolt. Ajalehte kätte võttes on ainult tutvumiskuulutuste külg selline, kus ei esine sõnapaar credit crunch. Kõikvõimalikud muud rubriigid: kokandus-, suhte-, reisi-, sisepoliitika- ja mõistagi majandusküljed muust justnagu ei kirjutakski.

    Iga päev paneb Inglismaal uksed kinni kolm-neli pubi, sest inimesed on hakanud kodus jooma. (Vähem joomine ei tule siin riigis vist kõne alla). Mõni aeg tagasi hakkas pubide kett Weatherspoons müüma 99-pennist õlut, et kliente kohale meelitada. 18-kroonist õlut ei saa baaris vist isegi mitte “odavas” Eestis.

    90. aastate keskpaigast alates muusikalis Cool Britannia üsna hästi peaosa mänginud mänginud London on nüüd pohmellis. Kümmekond aastat kestnud pidu on läbi, aftekat kuskil ei toimu ja peaparanduseks pole raha.

    Positiivne külg asja juures on, et inglastel on nüüd ka muu üle nuriseda peale halva ilma. Kui mind miski esimese Inglismaal elatud aasta jooksul tüütas, siis oli see just kliima süvaanalüüs nii neli-viis korda päevas.

    Linnale, mis on üle elanud katku ja suure tulekahju, ei tee üks pohmelus mõistagi midagi. Hea päevitusega pankurid tulevad varsti tagasi ja hakkavad uusi fonde kokku panema, poolakate poolt tühjaks jäetud korteritesse kolivad sisse rumeenlased ja pea siis ka esimesi kannusid välja ei valata. Ka tuumapohmell läheb kord üle. Küsimus on ainult selles, kui kaua see praegune veel kestab.

    Kirjutatud Ekspressile