We’re in SHanghai for a nice weekend just together. It’s great to escape from it all for a weekend - especially for Nadine!

The hotel we’re in is fantastic and gives a great view of Pudong and the neon show happening there. We went to XinTianDi today and walked around the old French concession area.

Last time I was here is 3 years ago already - in just 3 years the city again has developed in terms of becoming even more cosmopolitan - and easy to get around in. Another thing is that we seem to find more people speaking English around town.

It’s right on its way to become that booming center town of Asia it’s been in the 20s and 30s - it’s going to be a trend setting town for China and the region.

Off to have some Shanghainese diner now in Jing’An.

I’m in New York at the moment and taking the chance to visit the Museum of Modern Art.

Great museum and a beautifully designed building. It’s easy to go around and I can recommend you “eavesdrop” on one of the many guided tours that are going around. The guides really give you a good perspective on cubism, impressionism etc!

My key learnings was that Mondriaan (yes the Dutch artist) actually moved to New York when the Second World War started in 1940. And New York ended up to be his last place to live as he died in that city in 1944. While in Manhattan, his famous “Red Blue and Yellow” abstract paintings become a bit livelier and the below piece is a great example of it.

It’s called Manhattan Boogie Woogie and it really looks like a map of Manhattan.

Some other MOMA pieces I liked:

My flight from London - Berlin showed me a great view of London!

This is the first hotel I’ve stayed at that has an indoor Golf course in the basement. I’m in Seoul, Korea, and golf is ‘a way of life’ here.

Dit staat hier in Singapore overal in de plaatselijke winkels tussen het bier aanbod… In Nederland nog nooit gezien?

I’m writing this from a taxi-ing 777-200, on the Chek Lap Kok tarmac. This week I’m in Singapore, I look forward to the heat and humidity actually, hong kong is getting cold!

I had the pleasure of being in Macau last week, for a few days of planning for next year as well as spending some offline time with colleagues.

As you may know, the city of Macau currently is the world’s largest gambling center - and recently it beat Las Vegas to this rank position.

The number of hotels going up in this town is simply mind boggling. And although recent financial crisis and recessionary climate has put some stops to the immediate growth, there seems to be no doubt that this place will continue to attract the up and coming middle class mainland Chinese to come and gamble their hard earned cash. With a hinterland of over a billion people it is indeed unsurprising that a city like Las Vegas now has to play second trumpet.

Anyway - back to my trip here. I stayed in “the Venitian” which is a monster of a hotel. So big in fact - that the walk from reception to my room was a good 15 minutes. The below picture is taken in Bellini, which is a lounge bar with live band, and it literally sits smack in the middle of the Venitian’s casino floor.

We used this bar as our base camp while some of us ventured into the casino to wager some bets.

Unfortunately the drinking bills equalled or exceeded any gambling profits so financially this seems to be a zero sum game…

This Xmas tree is outside Raffles city since 10 November. A little early??

Something really cool is going on in a park near Robertson Quay in Singapore every night. A bunch of enthusiasts play with remote controlled motorized kites. The kites have colorful lights built in to them which makes for an interesting display against the black night sky.

I noticed this from far away while I walked towards Clark Quay and saw different colors of light move around in the sky. Coming closer these Unidentified Flying Objects turned out to be these RC kites.

It’s an interesting concept - the kites make hardly any noise and they seem to ‘magically’ fly around. They can do flips, inverts, rolls, etc - all quite spectacular.