Sunday, December 26, 2004

Tsunami The news about the huge earthquake and tsunami in Southern Asia today really shocked me. I know the affected coastal areas in Sumatra, Malaysia and Thailand quite well, and cannot imagine what has happened there. Actually I had almost been in Phuket: only 3 weeks ago we decided not to go there but instead spend Christmas in Europe. I guess we were lucky... 10:17:38 PM    comment []

Hotel We took a pre-Christmas break in Maastricht, where we stayed at the Crowne Plaza Hotel Maastricht. This hotel is rated as a five-star hotel in the Netherlands, but we were surprised to see the differences with Asian five-star hotels. When we arrived there was nobody to help us with our 3 suitcases. At the reception desk there was nobody to be seen. When finally someone came to help us we were told that there was no reservation. Of course until I showed them my fax copy when the lady suddenly found it. The room was very nice and comfortable, but the bathroom was quite standard. A bath tub that had to be used for showers as well, and no special amenities. Internet access cost an unbelievable additional EUR 22 per day. Shorter usage was not possible anymore, although the hotel manual still said that they used to have a 2-hour option. And a complimentary newspaper is still unheard of in Maastricht. The breakfast was very nice, but here I had to go to the waitress after waiting for 5 minutes to get us some coffee! Don[base ']t get me wrong, the hotel was good enough for me, and we would probably go back there. The location is great, directly on the Maas river in the middle of the city. But the differences between good hotels in Holland and Asia are striking. The main thing is probably the service: People are expensive in the Netherlands, so that[base ']s where you see a big difference. In Asia there is normally too much staff on hand, leading to over-servicing. But it's better to get coffee from 3 people at the same time, then having to look for a waitress. In China I mainly stay in 3 or 4 star hotels and I don't mind the inconveniences that sometimes come with that. But when I am on vacation and decide to spend some extra money on a good hotel, I expect a better total experience. There is still a lot to be learned from hotels in Asia. 10:09:10 PM    comment []

Christmas is a time for giving: CPU power for example Craig Mandsager from wildwebwidget.com, the company that designed the websites for China Bay and SVP wrote the following article on his website: You don[base ']t waste food, you conserve electricity, and you make sure not to leave the faucet dripping yet you may be wasting something possibly more valuable than all of these: computer processing power. There are scores of scientific projects that need heavy duty computer processing. In the past these projects had to apply for time on a supercomputer. They often got less time than they needed or no time at all. Thanks to the internet, there is now another source of computing power; your computer. (see here for whole story) 10:04:36 PM    comment []