Jakob Montrasio’s Net.

How Sinico S.p.A. and a chinese friend cheated me.

// July 21st, 2008 // 5 Comments » // People's Republic of China, Photography - Shanghai

I was comfortable moving to Shanghai in 2005 because I knew I had work there. Selling machines from Europe to China. Eventually, in 2006, we build up a partnership with the italian company Sinico S.p.A. - they produce tube processing automation machines. Machines, that cut long tubes in small parts and make them ready for use with operations such as facing and chamfering. These machines are great for the chinese market, since they replace manual labor, and manual labor has horrible accuracy and speed.

So, in the first year, we spend most of the time searching for potential customers, as it is normal. We collected all the customers, we traveled to them and introduced our machine, we spend a lot of time and money for Sinico. We, that was my colleague Nick Zhang (张红军), and myself. Nick was already working for my father’s company when I moved to Shanghai. Before joining my fathers company, he was teaching english in schools. Originally he is from the Henan province, but he moved around China before settling down in Shanghai.

Anyway, in September 2007, we finally signed the first contract. A big customer in the north decided to buy one of Sinicos machines. What a relief that day was! Even Sinicos big boss, Alessandro Sinico himself, flew in to China to sign the contract with the customer directly. Or so it seemed. Little did I know back then…

Actually, Mister Sinico flew to China to discuss with Mister Zhang how to get rid of us. Cut out the middle man. Mister Sinico pursued Mister Zhang to quit working for us and to work directly for Sinico. Back then, I was good friends with Mister Zhang. Hell, I even went to his daughters birthday once or twice. I never thought that someone so close would ever cheat on me.

But he did. And Sinico did. Nick quit his job all of a sudden, left our company with a one week warning - hey, this is China I thought, what can you do - and started working for Sinico. So, Nick stabbed us in the back. We paid that guy over two years a salary that was probably four or five times higher than his teaching job, we taught him about machines, we gave his family food and he slowly became part of our family company. And then, ice cold, he turns his back on us. Horrible.

And Sinico! They used up over half of our daily time for over a year - we didn’t get a salary from them, we worked on our own cost for them, as agents. And until today, July 21st 2008, they still haven’t paid us our commission for our very first sale. Unbelievable. We also invested over 3.000 Euro into catalogues. They kept them, and promised us to pay this money back. How much did we get back until now, almost a year later? None! They suck out our time and money, then we actually open the market for them, and now they don’t even have the decency to pay us at least the commission we earned with hard work. What is wrong with these people?

Last week we learned from a customer, that Mister Zhang is now even traveling around China and telling everyone how bad we are and that nobody should buy machines from us. This is really weird. It’s not enough to cheat us with money and partnerships, but now they also try to make us look bad in front of customers. Great.

Business is tough and full of bad apples. But sometimes I wonder how these people can sleep at night. How can they get up in the morning, smile at their wife’s and children and look at themselves in the mirror?

Nin Jiom Pei Pa Koa.

// July 7th, 2008 // 6 Comments » // People's Republic of China

I’ve got a little cold from all the heat, to be more precise: From all the air conditioners standing everywhere. It’s not really healthy to have sudden temperature changes from over 20 degrees, but some people simply ignore this fact. Example: When I enter our office building, the temperature changes from 38° Celsius to 20° Celsius. Is that nuts or what?

Anyway, so when I got a cold, my wife was so sweet and went to buy me some chinese medicine. She came back with a bottle containing dark fluid, the name of the medicine was the same as this title’s post: Nin Jiom Pei Pa Koa.

It tastes damn good, and my eyes went big when I read through the ingredients.

Here’s what’s in this medicine:

• Tendrilleaf Fritillary Bulb
• Loquat Leaf
• Fourleaf Ladybell Root
• Indian Bread
• Pummelo Peel
• Platycodon Root
• Prepared Pinellia Tuber
• Chinese Magnoliavine Fruit
• Snakegourd Seed
• Common Coltsfoot Flower
• Thinleaf Milkwort Root
• Bitter Apricot Seed
• Fresh Ginger
• Liquorice Root
• Almond Extract
• Menthol
• Honey
• Maltose
• Syrup

I thought of the beginning scene from END OF DAYS, where big hero Arnie mixes whatever he finds laying around his apartment together in a mixer for breakfast… Yummy!

Seriously though, this medicine tastes good and calms my throat down like nothing I tried before.

Recommended!

SEO Tip: There’s not only english (and America)!

// March 23rd, 2008 // No Comments » // Internet, People's Republic of China

While looking through some older posts of mine, I realized that even some chinese people wrote comments. Why? Because I live in Shanghai and sometimes I write something in chinese characters, just for fun of it mostly. So I just realized, in order to gain a broader audience, why not add more chinese in future posts? Thanks to UTF-8 the encoding of different language characters is no problem at all. And with sites like Wikipedia or the Google Language Tools, it’s easier than ever to have keywords or names translated to a foreign language (please write a WordPress blog on-site plugin, anyone?)…

But there’s more to it than just translating key words or phrases. In other countries, other cultures, other things are considered as important and discussed. This is where Googles Zeitgeist comes into play. I mean, it’s actually so easy to write posts that get many visitors… You just need to check out what people find interesting!

Let’s use the Google Zeitgeist of February 2008 as an example from now on. This post is not going to be a SEO Tip entry only, no, I will keep an eye especially on the visitors of this entry and report later on what kind of audience it found. I hope to attract readers from all over the world!

To attract readers from Afghanistan, you should have written about ako, which sounds like some music band? Or about Afghanistan itself, which is of course written فغانستان in arabic characters. They write from right to left, did you know that? They also like poetry a lot, which is why فال حافظ is another search term that seems important. And love, of course! عشق is the word for that. Poetry and love, that’s already a lot to write about.

Australia on the other hand seems like a bored country. They search for terms like grace kelly, optimus prime, pikachu or james dean. So bored, only watching movies all the time? I guess I am an Australian after all. Timekiller is a word many Australians searched for. Funny! They also care about israel, oakley and nrl sharks. So many topics to get their attention!

In Brazil, the people seem to love celebrities. This is why they search a lot for danni carlos, marco feliciano, caetano veloso and… gwen stefani?! Okay. So open yet another celebrity site and get their attention. Or you write about topics such as lua cheia (full moon), favela (slums), resumo das novelas (soap opera summaries) or ciclismo (cycling). Cycling? Isn’t it too hot for that there? Anyway, many unwritten stories to gain a brazilian audience…

Cold Canada dances itself warm, searching a lot for disco. They’re also interested in craigslist calgary and Bleach, which is a famous Anime if I recall correctly. Canadians also care a lot about the toronto stock exchange, infinity, adecco, viking and footlocker. Well, okay, maybe not the most interesting stuff. Then again, Canada is not that big. Which leads us to…

China! That’s my thing. Looking at the Zeitgeist China list, I have to admit though that me myself is not doing everything right. There are so many topics that seem to interest the chinese people, yet the only thing I wrote about was the Edison Chen sex-scandal. Shame on me! I should have focused more on this stuff: 郭德刚 (a famous crosstalker), 成都小游戏 （small games of Chengdu）, 楚留香传奇 (a TV program), 音乐在线 (music website), 旗袍 （Chinese traditional female dress, qipao）, 安以轩 （actress）, 英超 (premiership), 花样少男少女 (a TV program), CCTV5节目表 (program list of CCTV5), 同济大学 (Tongji University), 化妆品批发 (cosmetics wholesale), 花与蛇 (a movie) or 爱转角 (TV program). Another thing that seems to interest many chinese people is the stock market, as many people searched for the stock codes 600839 and 000532. China is one of the biggest, if not the biggest country in the world, and you should care about getting people from there to visit your website.

Not that interesting or important is Chile, but here’s what you should’ve written about to attract readers from that country: barra los cruzados (Soccer fan club), shangay (huh??!), melipilla (Chilean town), huevos cartoon (cartoons), celulitis (cellulite), radio romance (local radio station), iori yagami (video game character??!), DIARIO LA CUARTA (local newspaper), el exorcista (the exorcist), el tabo (Chilean town), ENAMORADOS (in love) or mu magdalena (online game). Okay. Wow.

No, Cocaine is NOT in the Zeitgeist list from Colombia. Instead, Columbians googled up the following stuff in February: distrital, GRAFFITIS, carolina, espectador (Colombian newspaper), camion (truck), balon (ball), musica clasica (classic music), angeles (angels), modernismo (modernism) and presupuesto (budget). What is also interesting is that Brad Pitt seems to be written with one t only in Colombia, brad pit. So, run a culture blog and the Columbians are yours…

As for Costa Rica and the Czech Republic, they search a lot for music, actors and video games. No need to feature them here big time. Nothing spectacular…

People from Denmark must be real stylish, as the top search term was evisu (Japanese designer brand). Other important things for the Danes: rd (Danish mortgage company), papillon, dolphin olympic (wtf?), ingeniøren (The Engineer, Danish weekly engineering paper), wozniacki (Danish tennisplayer), krone (the Danish currency, DKK), fredericia kommune (Danish municipality), morten andersen (multiple record-breaking Danish NFL kicker) and det moderne gennembrud (Nordic literature in the late 19th century, Georg Brandes). Jesus, these searches seem pretty focused on their own country! It’s gotta be pretty difficult and tough to gain a big danish audience on your blog if you are not danish yourself or live there.

Finland… Well, they like big asses, which is why ‘kim kardashian’ is their number 1 search phrase in February 2008, right? But that’s about it with celebrities. Maybe Kim’s sex tape arrived there late. The other 14 search phrases seem rather random: rockabilly, gilmore girls, kansallismuseo (national museum), hernekeitto (pea soup), bob dylan, julisteet (posters), talent, rap, dementia, puola (Poland), sähkön hintavertailu (comparison of the price of electricity), disco ensemble (Finnish rock band), madrid and Mona Lisa. Gee, that must be the most random and unfocused country… yet. Let’s see if any other country is even weirder than Finland.

Baguette, Crossaint, France. The french seem to be into money and brands, as the Zeitgeist tells us: suivi colissimo (French equivalent of UPS), eastpak (backpack brand), VIDEOPOSTE (banking online service), resultat du loto (national lottery results), deblocage participation (company bonus information), jsl (local newspaper), cnas (national committee of social action), astro, joker, supinfo (engineer school), yu-gi-oh (manga (and anime, dear Google)), fifa, gerardmer (international movie festival) and shopping. The french seem a bit self centered, as the only person who made it to the list is Heath Ledger. Looks a lot like Denmark, France’s search phrases are pretty national. Difficult market…

Now to my roots, ze Germanz. Germany has some pretty weird searches, too: nail art? brandenburger tor? biene maja (German cartoon bee)? borussia mönchengladbach (German soccer club)? bbl (German basketball league)? vw käfer (vw beetle)? Man, am I happy to be an expatriate… On the other side, they also searched a lot for playstation, pink floyd, liv tyler and dwayne johnson aka The Rock. Now that’s something anyone can write about.

The roads in Greece must still be shitty, this is why the top search query there was ’smart roadster’. They also like bentley. The other stuff is in greek characters: χαρταετός (kite), Αθήνα (Athens), εστιατορια (restaurants), φιλία (kisses), Μιχαλης Χατζηγιαννης (Greek Singer), δασος (forest) and κυπρος (Cyprus). Well, Greece is more an cultural country, so interpret these searches in whatever way you think is right.

Okay, writing this takes a lot more time then I thought in the beginning. I’ll skip the following countries but write their top search term behind them, as they are small and more or less unimportant: Guatemala (sagastume (SMS site from MoviStar)); Hungary (játékok (games)); Indonesia (akatsuki (manga character), sasuke (manga character), samurai x (Japanese anime), naruto shippuden (Japanese anime), one piece (Japanese manga)); Iraq (صو (pictures), العاب (toys), كاظم الساهر (singer Kathim al Saher), حسام الرسام (Hussam al Rasam), ابراج (horoscopes)); Peru (moderato (Mexican rock band), hermione (Harry Potter character), quimica suiza (local company)); Poland (walentynki (Valentines), plemiona (online game), jozin z bazin (viral video), pity 2008 (tax forms 2008)); Puerto Rico (clasificados el nuevo dia (classified ads site), vertebrados (vertebrates), amor de Dios (God’s love)); Serbia (mts mondo (portal), mojenagrade (Coca-Cola’s sweepstakes), leto 2008 (summer 2008)); Turkey (fulldizi (online tv series site), burç uyumu (horoscope harmony), sarışın kızlar (blond girls), panik atak (panic attack)); Ukraine (грузовик (lorry), подростки (teenagers), загранпаспорт (international passport), тернопільський чат (Ternopil chat), Гаррі Поттер (Harry Potter), художественная ковка (art iron work)). Now let’s go back to bigger countries.

Hong Kong, officially belonging to China but with their own Google, searched for: 陸詩韻 (celebrity name), 中信嘉華銀行 (Bank), 民族服裝 (fashion), 全盒 (festival item) and 世界上最大建築物 (the biggest building in the world) as well as 天空之城 (Sky City). They are into skyscrapers, hmm? How about an architecture blog in cantonese?

India is pretty important, as they have over a billion people! So make sure to blog about something that they find interesting, such as: filmfare awards 2008, budget highlights, aishwarya (actress), concept cars, dhoom2 (Hindi movie), causes of global warming, peta (People for Ethical Treatment of Animals), gladiator, punjab university, italy, travel guru, dehradun (a hill town in northern India), reliance industries, cricketnext, nauheed cyrusi (actress)… Ah, just start a Bollywood blog and you’ll be rich in no time.

The war in Israel doesn’t stop them from googling: פורים קטן (Small Purim), ברכות לבת מצווה (Bat-Mitzvah greetings), אזרחות (citizenship), איגוד הטניס (tennis association), מכבי חיפה (Macabi Haifa – soccer team), משפטים מצחיקים (funny sentences), משחקים לגיל הרך (games for young children), וינוגרד (Vinograd – National Investigation Committee), עשרת הדיברות (Ten Commandments), רפואה משלימה (alternative medicine). Boy these characters look cool. You’ll get them to your blog if you write about religion, it seems to me.

O Google mio… Italy is in search of amore, on the 2nd place. Number one is san valentino (Valentine’s day), because that’s always hard to remember. Other things the italian people care about: scusa ma ti chiamo amore (italian movie), caravaggio, i cesaroni (Italian sitcom), marco carta (Italian singer), partito democratico (italian democratic party), carnevale (carnival), sanremo 2008 (TV music festival)… Culture and politics, that’s how to find a way to the italian audience.

Kso sounds funny and means shit in Japan. That’s one of the 10 words I remember from my trip there. The japanese people searched almost only for people - so the next time you blog a star, make sure to include his japanese name somewhere in the post! Here are the people they googled up: 新垣結衣 (Yui Aragaki, actress, model, and singer), 倖田來未 (Kumi Koda, singer), 芋洗坂係長 (Imoaraizaka-kakaricho, comedian), 藤井彩子 (Ayako Fujii, broadcaster), 長谷川静香 (Shizuka Hasegawa, voice actress), 一色紗英 (Sae Issiki, actress), 岡村靖幸 (Yasuyuki Okamura, singer), 真木よう子 (Yoko Maki, actress), ロバート・メイプルソープ (Robert Mapplethorpe, photographer), 柳美里 (Yu Miri, writer). Besides people they google up tourist attractions, I think: 南大門 (national treasure in Korea) and 平壌の凱旋門 (gate in North Korea). I recommend a celebrity blog for japanese readers.

Korea makes quite good movies in the last time and their search queries show that they care a lot about entertainment: 조인성 (Korean actor), 퍼펙트케이오 (computer game), 미스코리아 김주연 (miss korea), 이화선 (Korean actress), 장백지 (Hong Kong actress), 프리즌브레이크 (drama, Prison Break), 박진희 (Korean actress)… Okay, let’s just say that a multi-language celibrity blog for the asian market would be a bomb, really.

Let’s finish the list and this experimental entry with Taiwan - once again I seem to be right with my celeb idea: 陳冠希 (Hong Kong celebrity), 張柏芝 (Hong Kong celebrity), 楊永晴 (Hong Kong celebrity), 阿嬌 (Hong Kong celebrity), 陳文媛 (Hong Kong celebrity), 顏穎思 (celebrity) and 長江七號 (CJ7, a new Chinese movie).

Okay. I think there is no other blog featuring so many different languages in a single entry. Anyway, I’ll update this post in some days or weeks and report how the visits were. Be sure to subscribe to my feed, then you wont miss the update.

And here’s something else: Zeitgeist 2007. It’s also very interesting, as it shows last years most used search phrases - and also the ones that are not interesting anymore. So blogging about one of these topics in 2007 should’ve brought you a lot of visitors: Apple iPhone, badoo, facebook, dailymotion, webkinz, youtube, ebuddy, secondlife, hi5, club penguin, tmz, transformers, myspace and Anna Nicole Smith.

Not that interesting are now: The world cup, of course, it only lasts one year always… Mozart, fifa, rebelde, kazaa, xanga, webdetente, sudoku, shakira and - mp3? Wow, mp3? Really? Good to know. Hope you had fun with this article and found some inspiration.

8GB iPhone in China much cheaper!

// March 10th, 2008 // No Comments » // People's Republic of China, Technology

Quite a surprise, the price of the 8 gigabyte model of Apple’s iPhone dropped a whopping 125 dollars since the last time we asked! Back in December we were running around in that big electronics store at the Hong Kong plaza and back then the price was almost 650 dollars. Now the 16 GB version is available for 690 dollar and thus the 8 GB version dropped down to 530 dollars.

That’s quite a jump for just three months. The iPhones I’m talking about are unlocked and running the newest version, 1.1.4 if I’m not mistaken. One of the sellers said though, that ‘within 6 months you will be able to buy legal iPhones from China Mobile’. I wonder if he is just kidding around or if he really has inside information. As far is I know, Apple is in negotiations with China Mobile but wants too much?

Well, let’s see how things are in September 2008, when the 32 GB iPhone or even 64 GB iPhone is available…

Falling, Falling Down.

// March 10th, 2008 // 1 Comment » // People's Republic of China

No Country For Old Men was this year’s winner at the academy awards, telling the story of an aged cop in a Texas that is getting more and more violent and out of control. Of course, it showed again the mistakes of normal people and how these mistakes can cost them their lives, as featured before in Fargo. The Coens really like to show us how stupid we are sometimes.

If I had to make a movie similar to No Country For Old Men in Shanghai, I would change the title to No Country For Weak Men. What happened yesterday explains this:

After shopping around a bit on Huahai road with beautiful sunshine and a nice dinner at a low-budget italian restaurant keychain, my wife and I headed home to Pudong by subway in the evening. We had just changed to line 2 at people square and were in a pretty empty wagon, when a guy all of a sudden lost his consciousness and fell down on the ground, hitting his head on my wife’s back during that fall. What happened then really made me sad and angry.

Nobody, nobody at all moved or did anything. Everyone sat or stand around, of course looking staring at that poor guy, but doing nothing. We went on our knees and tried to wake that guy, shaking him a bit and talking to him. He didn’t react at all. Finally, finally one person got down to the ground with us and helped us to put that dude back on his feet, trying to bring him back.

Then things got stranger - the guy, obviously overtired or sick or whatever, was unable to stand. He wouldn’t have fallen down on the ground if he was okay, right? So you would expect that somebody would get up and give his damn seat to him so that he could get better. Nobody, nobody stood up.

At least not for half a minute, which is is quite a long time, considered you are trying to keep a 60 kilograms heavy person on his feet. Finally, finally a young woman stood up and told us to put him in his seat. Everyone in the wagon was watching that guy and us lifting him, and nobody gave their seat to us, except a woman. There were like 5 guys in their 20’s sitting around on their seats staring at the event. So, so sad.

I’ve experienced a fair amount of bullshit in and around Shanghai in the last years, but never ever had I experienced something this bitter before.

iPhone Wallpaper: My Contribution.

// February 28th, 2008 // 4 Comments » // Photography, Technology

I took personal favorites out of my 200 most popular flickr pictures and converted them into the iPhone accepted wallpaper size of 320 to 480 pixels.

Feel free to modify them or whatever, they are all with a creative commons license.

Enjoy these free iPhone wallpapers:

That’s it for now. If I can ever afford an iPhone myself, I’ll probably make more.

I can’t even test them… *cry*

John Rabe - Little Report, With Video!

// February 27th, 2008 // No Comments » // People's Republic of China, Photography - Shanghai, Videography

When Ben commented to my last post about the pictures from the movie John Rabe, I just headed over to YouTube to see if anything had been released there - officially or not. Sadly, I found no trailer - but a little report! DW, Deutsche Welle, was on the set reporting and seemed to have been allowed to capture some stuff with their cameras.

Now the bad side: The video is almost half an hour long and over 60 megabyte big.

But I watched through it and the John Rabe part is right at the beginning! So just watch it until the report of John Rabe is finished, the rest has nothing to with it anymore.

Here we go:

Edison Chen’s sex scandal reaches the Beijing Olympics 2008?

// February 26th, 2008 // No Comments » // People's Republic of China

And just when you thought it was over a new story hits the internet!

So one of the girls Edison Chen (陈冠希) bedded, Gillian Chung, has been banned from the Beijing Olympics 2008.

Gillian Chung was supposed to perform during the the opening ceremony of the big show. Now she has been kicked out due to the scandal…

Too bad!

That reminds me, when do the pictures of Maggie Q (李美琪) finally show up? Har har har.

In case you have no idea what this post is all about, read my post ‘The Edison Chan “Sexgate”‘.

Shanghaiist reported some new stuff, too:

Three pictures of 19 year old Vincy Yeung (杨永晴), Edison Chen’s current girlfriend, have also been released by the mystery man “Kira”, and here’s where it gets a lot juicier. Vincy is the daughter of Ricky Yeung (楊超成), brother of tycoon Albert Yeung (楊受成), the boss of Emperor Entertainment Group who is said to have numerous triad affiliations.

Read that here: Jolin Tsai, Maggie Q, Vincey Yeung sucked into Edison Chen scandal; Gillian Chung admits involvement .

Official John Rabe(约翰拉贝) pictures.

// February 26th, 2008 // 3 Comments » // People's Republic of China, Photography, Videography

Most of my friends know what I’ve been doing during the last three months: working with the VFX team on the german movie John Rabe. Sadly, no trailer has been officially released yet so I don’t really have anything to show. But! ‘Majestic Film Verleih’, the company who will bring the movie to german cinemas this year (or so I hope) released 8 official press pictures.

So here you go, a little something to feed your appetite in regards to this movie. 8 pictures!

Dr. Georg Rosen (Daniel Brühl), employee of the german embassy, tries to handle the threat in regard of the chinese civilians in diplomatic ways.
(Picture: Majestic / Ruggero Rossi)

Dr. Robert Wilson (Steve Buscemi), leader of Nanjing’s hospital, fights tireless for the survival of the people.
(Picture: Majestic / Tomoko Kikuchi)

Valérie Dupres (Anne Consigny), leader of the International Girls College, can’t enjoy the festivities - she’s worried about her students.
(Picture: Majestic / Tomoko Kikuchi)

Nazi Werner Fließ (Mathias Herrmann, 3.v.l.) is supposed to take John Rabe’s (Ulrich Tukur, 5.v.l.) place as the leader of the Siemens branch in Nanking.
(Picture: Majestic / Ruggero Rossi)

John Rabe (Ulrich Tukur) is desperate, the uncertain future worries him.
(Picture: Majestic / Jörg Gruber)

The members of the international committee for creating a safety zone (Ulrich Tukur, Anne Consigny, Steve Buscemi, Christian Rodska, Daniel Brühl, Shaun Lawton) don’t know how to handle the rush of 250.000 people at once.
(Picture: Majestic / Ruggero Rossi)

Dora Rabe (Dagmar Manzel) tries to convince her husband John (Ulrich Tukur) to leave Nanking.
(Picture: Majestic / Jörg Gruber)

Schoolgirl Langshu (Zhang Jingchu, 张静初), a student of Valérie Dupres, takes pictures of the japanese war crimes in Nanjing.
(Picture: Majestic / Tomoko Kikuchi)

Well, that’s it. As soon as Majestic releases more pictures and / or a trailer, I’ll post it.

Shanghai Transformers Police?

// February 21st, 2008 // 2 Comments » // People's Republic of China, Photography

When we drove back from Wuzhen to Shanghai in January, we encountered the above posted police car. The first time it passed us by, I was like ‘wtf?’, that can’t really be a police car. But then I noticed the siren on top of the car as well as the white licence plate - and got really angry that I didn’t take a picture. But our cool driver wanted to get back home quickly or something and passed them a minute later. I was hoping that this would happen and had my camera ready this time.

‘Police 1865′ it says together with the Transformers logo. I wonder if these guys are just big fans or if their unit really uses that famous symbol as their logo?

Maybe they are trying to catch Edison Chen…