恭喜发财!

Happy Chinese New Year of the Dog!

This is our year baby! It's going to be a great one! 汪汪!!

Google's New Service: Censorship

I was testing Google.cn, Google's new portal with servers in China. Searches, such after "the communist party" or, perhaps not so surprising, "faluñ goñg", will turn up a little message at the bottom of the page:

据当地法律法规和政策，部分搜索结果未予显示。
In accordance with local laws and policy a part of the search result is omitted

Censorship in practice. In China though, just letting people know that the information is being censored is a kind of progress. "Don't do evil", sort of.

Update:
Unfortunately searching 芙蓉姐姐 does NOT turn up any disclaimer. I mean, WHERE is the censorship when you really need it!! She seems to have gotten pretty desperate recently. Maybe it is because of the competition for internet fame. For those of you who don't know this very famous blog (atleast last spring it was...), go check it out! Keep the Sister Hibiscus hype alive!

Update2:
That link ('desperate') to pictures of the half naked hibiscus is not working anymore... Maybe the censorship actually do work.

More Serious Math Errors

Our hero.

Quote from today's math lecture and our Russian professor Grigori. He speaks with this strong Russian accent and looks generally pretty mad, which enhance the impression that he is really cool. ;-)

"You siiiold pay attiientijon to these specjial condiiitions, because if you do not, tsings like... Tjiiernobyl can happen. Sometime maybe I will tiiell you more about Tiiiernobyl... "
Stops talking for a while... then mutters for himself:
"I was involved in that. "

My university goes to far lengths to recruit the professors only with the very best credentials. We learn from the best!

UPDATE 20060210:
Today a paper was passed around for students to give comments on the class. Among comments about the lecture and the content, an almost unanimous class requested that the lecturer revealed more details about his involvement of that unfortunate nuclear plant! I thought I was the only one that noticed when he said that. :-)

UPDATE 20060303:
We just had our last lecture, (perhaps my last lecture at this university!), and finally Grigori got asked about Tjernobyl.
Grigori and Tjernobyl:
Grigori had been working in a very specialized group studying vibrations in the Soviet Union in 1986. There were two of these groups in the country, and one of the groups got assigned to study the experiments that was to take place in Tjernobyl.
Crash-course in Tjernobyl-style nuclear powerplants :
The reactor in these plants heat up water. The produced steam drives generators that produce electricity. The reactor need a very strong flow of water to be cooled. If the water stops, the reactor will overheat and explode. The water is pumped with the power generated by the reactor. If the generator stops, the generators won't produce electricity, the pumps will stop, and the reactor can't be cooled by water.

Instead of making tedious theoretical modeling, the leadership determined to make a practical experiment. The experiment described to some detail by Grigory, was to determine if the reserve diesel-powered generators would have time to turn on in case of an emergency. The answer: they didn't.

The vibration team was to take the opportunity and study the vibrations of the generators during the experiment. A last minute decision determined that the other team would take care of the measurements. They all died during that night. All of them colleagues and friends of his. Perhaps not so funny.

The New Grand Plan

This is the grand new plan:
Since my last two exams are coming up in March I will take the opportunity to follow the regular lectures in those two subjects and then finish them off. Will be quite a relief to be able to graduate after finishing the thesis.

I've had my first chat with my new supervisor John Holmberg at the department of Physical Resource Theory. I will do an investigation of the building sector in China, with a focus on energy efficiency in buildings. There is a lot of stuff happening in this sector at the moment here in Sweden and in Europe, so I'm quite pleased with the subject. We still haven't gotten it confirmed from the professor at Tsinghua, but I will start my preparations here in Sweden first. The plan is to head to Beijing after the exams.

After graduating I will automatically become a famous actor/TV-presenter/media-celebrity and get invited to all hip parties and pose in glossy magazines. That was of course the goal all along.

Wemmel-Ljung family

One of the reasons of going to Göteborg was to finally get to meet up with my god daughter Saga, her sister Mira, and my good friends Stefan and Toba.


Me and my buddy.


I was drawing some portraits together with Saga. Guess who it is in the drawing. Well, I guess she was able to figure it out herself.


A little after-dinner, before-glögg walk in the cold and clear weather. Saga almost immediately fell asleep despite the cold.

(glögg is a warm sweet drink, similar to glühwine)

Värnamo -> Göteborg

I'm right now in Göteborg, living together with Wen in my sister Johanna's apartment. We will try to stay in Göteborg to atleast the 12th when Wen fly back to Belgium.

Some things that needs to be done:
Meet the Ljung-Wemmel family
Discuss a potential project at Tsinghua with my professor