Tag Archives: fun

Hi everyone,

I’m back again, this time delivering you an experience from Zhuhai, China (literally “Pearl Sea”, 珠海) – one of the seven tracks of the recently launched Intercontinental La Mans Cup series. As luck would have it I was invited to the race on my way to a business meeting (and didn’t regret it one bit!).

Although the Zhuhai race carries the proud Le Mans 24 name, it is more of a cover version of the real thing. It’s not that much of an endurance race – it runs for just six hours – but it still has the same teams, drivers, cars, rules etc. But not quite the same crowds of enthusiastic spectators…yet. Numbers were low, compared with both Le Mans events and with Chinese motorsports in general, but I think it’s only a matter of time before China, as it already has in many other fields, overtakes the established leaders. And this particular event has something else going for it: in Chinese there are plenty of hieroglyphs for “Le Mans” :)

More > 6 hours in 7 pictures (and a link)

今晩は (Konbanwa [good evening]) everyone!

Last week, right before going to the Monza GP, I was in Japan meeting the team at our Japanese office and launching a new generation of our personal products.

I was here last in April, and since then nothing much seems to have changed, but there was a noticeable lack of both cherry blossoms and sun, which would have been nice.

The Tokyo Sky Tree is nearly finished. The old TV tower’s spire is still bent, but wobbles less (so they say – I haven’t experienced it myself), and the worries about Fukushima seem somehow to have eased – people are much calmer than before. The flight went smoothly, helped by a viewing of Die Hard!

See more > KL Japan, Emperor’s Palace and Awa Odori …

As everyone knows, Google is not your average company. It fairly amazes and amuses with its short history of fantastic success (or instills fear and loathing – if Google happens to gobble up your market share). Its totally unexpected projects and even the design of its offices appear mad-hat, slightly odd, or uniquely original, depending on your particular view, but never just average.

Then there are the totally bizarre Googlized numbers.

Let’s start with some amusing arithmetic available from different sources.

At Google they don’t joke with the size of their figures, but do joke – big-time – with which particular figures they use: For its IPO in 2004, the price of the stake sold on the stock market should have come to 2.718281828 billion dollars, which figure is the mathematical constant e. A year later the company sold on the stock market another stake, made up of 14 159 265 shares – a fraction of pi accurate to eight decimal places.

Read more > More numbers madness and spooky comments!