CHTV - China Public Television

CHTV - China Public Television

No, not CCTV, CHTV! The Swedish version!
This ought to be one of the more bizarre TV programs I have ever seen. It is a parody of a CCTV (China Central TV) style newsprogram praising the Swedish Social-Democratic party. The thing is, they actually do speak in correct putonghua about current Swedish events, and interview folks in China about them. Must be a pretty small clique that can appreciate that! Check it out if you know Chinese, or are slightly interested in Sweden. Just do it anyway. Crazy to see old people in some park in Beijing praise the fitness of Per Nuder.

Check out the shows!

CHTV Home Page

The games are put under the not so culturally sensitive name "Den lilla Kinesen", The little Chinese.

Back in Leuven

Sunburned, tired, hungry, and happy.

Barcelona: Sunshine!

From rain to sunshine! :)

When chatting about me going to Leuven I suggested that we meet elsewhere to celebrate her birthday. A quick visit to Ryanair's site revealed that we both could take cheap flights down to Barcelona from Stockholm resp. Brussels. A few minutes later it was set, and flights were booked. Turned out to be a beautiful sunny week, particularly since it was cold and raining in Sweden when I left.

I took a night-bus up to Nykoping, and Allan and Ding went with me to the station. Thx guys, I really appreciated that! Wen stayed over night at the Charleroi airport.

Wen's plane arrived first, but when I got out of the arrivals, there was no one there. I send a quick SMS, and she said she WAS there. It took a while to sort out the confusion. Thing was, she hadn't noticed her flight had been rerouted to the international airport and we weren't at all at the same place!

After a couple of more SMS and some trips with local transport we finally met at the Arc D'Triomf.

Since we hadn't basically prepared at all and had no guidebook with us, I think we were quite lucky about the place, St. Anna Hostel, where we stayed the whole week. It is a small place, just off Las Ramblas, run by an old woman and her family, for 40 Euros a night. We checked out a couple of other places first, and then just walked by this place, and they had a room free for us. We didn't find a better option for us during the rest of the week, so we stayed.
Funny thing was that, pretty much every day we bumped into new animals in the apartment! It was really like a little zoo, with all kinds of cute.. and not so cute.. little animals. I think our final count came up to 2 dogs, 4 cats, 2 kinds of the animal she has in her lap in the pictures, and numerous laud birds! At noon a old guy, who I suppose was the husband of the lady, took the dogs for a walk. The man really moved like in slow-motion, and when he talking he only uttered some incomprehensible whispers.
Most of our very relaxing week was spent strolling around on the streets and hanging out on the beach.

And we celebrated Wen's birthday in the harbor, trying to eat a whole cake by ourselves.
We did actually manage to see some of the main sights...

.. but I guess we were too distracted of just enjoying the weather and the city.

Central Barcelona is really a circus of tourists, beggars, street artists, thieves, freaks, old locals, and people living on the street. Very entertaining, but also quite nasty.

Next Stop: Kina?

Not quite, mr tram, but it is getting closer.

Next stop is actually Barcelona on the 28th, Brussels and Leuven the 4th. Maybe after that the next stop is China.

Sunday Walk and Lunch

Sunday we took a little walk in the village.

Outside the kindergarten where my mum sometimes work, we practiced our creative abilities...


.. and destructive sides.


All this to build up an appetite.


Then, when everything that can be done in the Swedish country-side had been experienced, it was time to head back to Göteborg and Chalmers.

Ice-Fishing

Saturday was spent on the ice! This winter has been unusual cold and the ice was more than half a meter thick. Still, it was hard to convince Tina that it wasn't dangerous. I told her that it would be possible to drive a truck on that ice, but she mostly looked at me as I just had insulted her. ;)


As everybody knows, equipment is everything when fishing on the ice. I'm of course talking about coffee, hot chocolate, blueberry soup, sandwiches, a fire, and hotdogs. A wind shelter also makes life much better. Oh, and it is also handy with some fishing equipment.


Here follows my little ice-fishing guide for the uninitiated. As a matter of fact, it is probably 10 years since I fished like this. First a hole has to be dug. Since the ice was so thick that was pretty heavy work. We used this kind of spear which is pretty effective to make a little bigger holes. For smaller it is perhaps more handy with a drill.


Next to the hole we set up this little fishing device. When the fish bites, the line will jump off and sway back and forth, triggering the gunpowder cork on the site. In the end we had prepared 19 sets. It is pretty fun fishing since there is always something happening.

Allan insert the hook and little fish in the hole. During the winter we buy the little fish in a store, while during the summer we catch them with net ourselves. The fish is actually alive and will be swimming around about a meter above the sea floor. When the fish bites, there will (or will not) be a bang, one put down the coffee cup or whatever you are doing, and run over to the hole. The fish will swim away with the bate, spit it out, and then swallow it. When it has swallowed it is time to hook it and pull it back. If this is done correctly, as Allan demonstrates below, there will be lunch on the table the following day!


This is a huge one ("Gädda") !! Biggest one we have ever got on a hook! It was actually a shock when it came out of the hole. Until the last second I actually wondered if he had anything on, since there was no fight. 9,5 kg!!


And yes, slightly bigger than the one I got. Size does matter.


6 kg! This kind ("Gös") is actually much tastier. Half of this fish was enough for us 5 people to eat ourselves completely stuffed the next day!


In the evening it was getting quite cold. My dad prepared the fish on the ice, and then we pushed our sledge back and got a well-deserved rest.

Skiing in Isaberg

Allan, Tina, Ding, and yours truly. Allan "snowman" Liu, as you can see, like to ski hard.

Allan asked me where you could ski around Göteborg, so I made couple of suggestions. One place is close to where my parents live, so I suggested that we would take the train to Värnamo, and then use the car to go to Isaberg, a small ski-resort not far away. This Friday morning we headed off 6.35 from Göteborg, came to Värnamo, took the car to Isaberg, and hit the slopes at about 13.00. We didn't return home until after 22.00!

Tina in a difficult position.

For Tina it was the first time to ski. It was probably a quite tiring experience. It usually is the first time.


Ding got the hang of it very quick.


The slope, Allan, and me. Tina took this picture, and unfortunately me and Allan got in the way. She obviously thought the slope was the main attraction :)

A beautiful day with lots of sunshine, plenty of quick runs down the slope, and spectacular crashes!

Kathy's Birthday Celebration

After playing some basketball with Allan, Rong, and David, I got invited to Kathy's birthday party.

Rong and Kathy are sitting behind Allan to the right in this picture. All in the picture are mainland Chinese studying at Chalmers.

It was really like being back in China, but still in Sweden. We ate a lot of great food, drank beer, listened to Britney Spears, made a lot of jokes, and played killer. Thx a lot Kathy and Rong for a great evening! All the best for the rest of your stay in Sweden!

So What About The Thesis?

So, I'm finally come to some sort of final decision concerning what my thesis will be about. There should perhaps be an emphasis on 'sort of'. That means that I have received an invitation letter and that I have made one application for a scholarship. So no matter what, I will go to do something at Tsinghua later on this spring.


I'm really looking forward going to Beijing again, but I'm a little bit worried of what will happen after. There are a very interesting trainee program at the company SWECO that I would like to apply for, if I get an interesting Ph.D position I might go for that (really!), but after all, I wouldn't mind start working again. My hope is that I will make a couple of connections with this thesis. I've already got a couple of connections in Beijing that could be really useful. Worst case is that I would have to find a 'normal' job. Horror, such horror.

After Exam Hotpot

David, Allan, Tina, the Swedish dude, Taiwan girl, Kathy.

Yesterday I had hotpot together with a bunch of exchangers from the university. Really a good time to have hotpot, since it is freezing fucking cold outside. Well, it was warm and spicy inside! :)

Light at the end of the tunnel

So... after some 40 exams at the university it seems like I've finished off that chapter in my life. This last Friday was a real sad, when me and a couple of other sad asses were sitting in the reading room preparing for the last day in the exam period.

Soon I will have a paper that says I'm a M.Sc in Physics Engineering. Well, after have written my thesis that is. Just wonder what I will do with it. One thing is sure, it sure doesn't get one laid. If some pretty girl ever ask me what I do, I will say that I got a degree in physics. But only because I'm already in a relationship. Otherwise I would say I was a fireman.

On to new adventures.

Blog break

Seriously no new posts until exams is what I say every day.

Did I Ever Leave??

A raging battle against MatLab...

One of the computer labs at the Physics Department. 10.36pm. The night is still young.

Want to listen to popular Chinese music?

Want to listen to popular Chinese music?

Here is a little instruction on how to download songs from Baidu, the popular Chinese search engine. If you don't know any artist or songs, you can go for the 'top 500 songs' or 'top 200 artists'.

In my instruction I will download a song of 王菲 [Wang2Fei1], a singer from HK, also known as Faye Wong.

1) Go to www.baidu.com
2) Click on 'MP3'
3) Click on "歌手TOP200".
(歌手 [ge1 shou3] means singer)
4) Find 王菲 and click on the link.
(She was ranked 18th most popular when I did this search.)
5) Choose a song to download, for example , 寓言, 将爱, 闷 or perhaps 天空.
(The size of the file should be 3-5 Mb for the quality to be alright. There are also other file formats to choose from if you want something other then MP3)
6) You know end up on a page where there is a link to the file (请点击此链接: Click on this link). Save it (by for example right click and choose "Save Link As..." or by just clicking it)

Quite often the link is not updated or the connection too slow. In that case the download will give an error or time out. If you don't succeed, just try another link. Since the connection to China is generally very slow, some patience is required. Since the songs are stored on individuals servers, there is no guarantee that the quality is good or even that it is the right song. It still works remarkably well, and I'm able to get what I want, when I want it. If I do want it, is another question.

If you are interested in learning the language it might be of interest to download the lyrics as well. Baidu is providing that service as well. Next to the song you want to download (step 5), you can find 歌词 [ge1 ci2] (lyrics). Click on it.

I think this service is a big reason that Baidu is attracting more users than Google in China. This (and all the pirated CDs) probably makes it very difficult for any artist or record company to make any money from music sales on the mainland. That might be a reason why most Chinese language artists still comes from HK, Taiwan, and Singapore.

A fun little detail is, when you get the link to the file, there's a small disclaimer underneath, for example: 百度高度重视知识产权保护. "Baidu is in a very high degree respecting the protection of intellectual property". Yeah right. But hey, who am I to complain? :)
I don't think anyone mind if a white dude use them as study material and to improve my 卡拉OK功夫. I don't think those artists count on a big sale here anyway. I wonder how long Baidu will get away with thits if they try to make a presens abroad, as they hope.

Any suggestions of Chinese songs or artists are appreciated!

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