Posted by amyjiangsu on October 24th, 2007 — Posted in journals
On the train to Rome I found I was sharing a compartment with 2 old Italian gentleman. “This is so unattractively inconvenient.” I said to myself but decided to put up with what I have got from fate. By the time I had just found the 2 gentlemen has quite pleasant manners on helping me placed my luggage and giving me directions about lavatory, the conductor showed up. His hair was so heavily creamed that it made him easily look like a Hollywood star in 30s or a model on any famous hair cream brand’s poster. He checked my ticket quickly and said to me in a very heavy Italian accent: “Madam, 5 minutes, wait for me”. He then disappeared into the corridor, left me confused and wishful.
I waited a whole 20 minutes before he passed by again, obviously on way to some important and urgent matter. “Why should I wait?” I grabbed the blinking moment before he vanishes popping up my question. “I will get a new compartment for you. Wait for me, Madam, 5 minutes.”
I was relieved by the answer, and started to wait with renewed faith and wishes. The 5 minutes was actually half an hour. The Hollywood conductor came back and brought me to a new compartment - all to myself! This is the ultimate luxury I have had in my whole trip. Grateful words ran like a river out of my mouth to this guy, he retreated back to the corridor with a manner of leaving a queen.
That’s the first impression I had about Rome, before arriving there.
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Posted by amyjiangsu on October 21st, 2007 — Posted in journals
Astrid is so beautiful. I met her in the Open Mic event in Bookworm early this year, her beaming seemed having brightened the room. Everyone wanted to talk to her, she is a graphical designer from Spain, on her one month trip to visit 18 cities in China, Beijing was actually her first and last stop, she would be leaving on the second day.
That’s how briefly we met. We talked for barely 15 minutes, and she gave me her email address: “Call me when you ever come over to Barcelona.” I emailed her about my trip and called her after arrived Barcelona, she responded immediately and warmly. We met up and she took me visiting museums & art exhibitions, dining in her favorite (now my favorite) spanish restaurant, watching Flamenco show, introduced me to her friends and brought me to private parties… we talked uncessively while walking down the narrow streets of Barcelona, and had ice creams sitting on the huge stone steps of church.
I learned she is actually a cultural designer and has just got a new job to design the cultural program for a big education organization in Spain. We share many common interests and I am delighted to have got a cool friend like her so easily.
Let me write about my Barcelona trip from the beginning:
It took one and half days to travel from Amsterdam to Barcelona by train. I should transit twice, first in Brussel, then in Paris. Following the manner of fashion there was a French strike, which killed my train from Brussel to Paris, I finally caught on the second available train but it was overwhelmingly packed. Carrying all my luggage and growing feeble after a whole day’s trip, I walked down the train corridor hoping to find an available seat. To my surprise, a gentlemen raised from his seat and invited me to sit with him and his friend. I accepted the invitation delightedly, feeling curious and pleasantly flattered. They are actually from South Africa! I was wearing a Ubuntu jacket on the day, and they recognized the logo on my back, that’s why I was invited. Unevitably we talked about Mark Shuttleworth and my work with Canonical, the 2 hours journey felt like 15 minutes.
Transiting in Paris involved in changing train stations. Unless the other cities I have been, there are up to 7 train stations in Paris. I arrived in Gare du Nord, and need to catch the train departing from Gare d’Austerlitz. I was amazed to see how crowdy the metro station is! Took a picture here, and conceived that the world is definitely having a problem of over populated homo sapiens.
For the reason that I have yet to find out, Spain is the strongest supporter of Open Source software in Europe. After checked into the hostel, my first priority is always to sit in front of the hostel computer to use internet, only this time I found all computers were loaded with Ubuntu 7.04. I recognized the fact that Ubuntu was selected as the official computer platform in 17 out of 18 provinces in Spain. We are huge here! I was feeling incredibly proud and pleasant to work on a Ubuntu computer in Internet Cafe, for the first time during my trip.
Barcelona is the capital of Catalonia, and has a long history since founded in 230 BC. Anyhow, the city has expanded to much bigger area than it used to be, and the newer part of the city was built in what I call a “chessboard design” of their streets - see the map in above. I was half fascinated and half confused on seeing the map of Barcelona, it’s much bigger than I expected, exploring by oneself seems an intimidating task.
The first observation I got from walking down the street in city center is the number of people on street. It’s a city of 1.6 million population but felt almost as populated as Beijing, must because the size of the city is much smaller hence higher the density. The second observation? Spanish are sexy looking people. The typical Spanish look has black thick curly hair, black watery eyes, rosebud lips, and full-blown, flexuous figure. Some of them are fairer than others though I didn’t see many of them. All young boys and girls look gorgeous, unbelievably good looking and healthy. Old people tends to looks a bit overweighted and also dressed more conservatively.
I believe I could explain the reason behind the overweight problem of aged people in Barcelona - it must be the food. I fell crazily in love with Spanish food after the first meal here. Try Trobador if you ever come to Barcelona. Astrid and me barely the last two seats before it was full for next 2 hours. The cuisine was unbelievable. It’s a melody of all rich and harmonious taste put together. One special dish we ordered is Jabugo - it’s the ham of a special kind of black pig only available in Jabugo, Spain. Spanish proudly claim it is the best ham in the world.
Barcelona people run a day like this: Coffee before going to work at around 8am, breakfast at 11am, then lunch at 2 or 3 pm, dinner at 9pm, going out to parties or bars at midnight (usually during weekend). No wonder the street was just start getting busy when I finished the dinner at 10.
After dinner Astrid took me to watch Flamenco show. I remember I had an argument with a Spanish girl about the meaning of Flamenco dance not long ago. I said it’s about death, she said it’s about love. Both wrong. The word Flamenco has several interpretations according to historians, but in general it means “gypsy” or “expelled peasants”. It’s the art of low class Andalusia Gypsy (also had influence from Moors, Jews, and Gitanos) which themed on desperation, struggle, hope and pride.
The show was so good! There were 2 senior performers in their 40s, and their performance showed that they were the master of the art. Most other performers were in their 20s, obviously they were passionate about this traditional art form and dedicated to keep it live and prosper. The music and the dance had my blood racing and my heart almost miss its beat, I gawked the whole show without even blinking my eye. I wish I could be dancing like that, I am dying for it!
It’s approaching midnight when the show finished, but I was feeling so alive and the night indeed had just started for Barcelonians! We then went to Astrid’s friend’s house to meet her friends and planned to go out later from there.
There were a dozen people in the apartment, finishing dinner and chatting over drinks and deserts. They were a friendly group. Astrid introduced me to her friend Tony, who is a short, energetic and good looking guy. I was impressed by his cute looking dreadlocks. He joined us to go a private party together, I was quite pleased to have his company.
The private party was held in a British guy’s apartment. We walked to a door which is exactly identical to any doors on the street, knocked 3 times, then the door went ajar, a hand intruded out, we put 5 euros (each) in it, immediately the door opened a bit wider to allow up to squeeze in, then closed behind us. I was intrigued by the disguised manner of this party. Inside there were already about 15 people, standing in a room of no more than 30 square meters. Some dim lights projected on limited old furnitures, the place looked rather gloomy, but it seemed nobody cared about this and everyone was enjoying themselves. I soon found that they offer strong drinks and REALLY good music. Tony started to make comments on the guys around us, especially on their looks and their bodies. None of them were specifically good looking to me, I half-heartedly gave my comments and thought how pleasant it is to discuss such things with a guy (usually it’s a among-girls-only topic).
I finally come to my sense when Astrid said: It’s fun and annoying to hang out with Tony, because both of us are interested in guys only. AH that’s what it is. I was so dumb. This is a gay party and suddenly everything made sense to me.
The second day I went around the city with some other friends I met in hostel. There are so many things to see in this city. Musee de Miro is so far the best individual art museum I had visited and I absolutely love his work. I had a small orgasm on seeing Gaudi’s La Sagarad Familia - it defines the term genius, you have to see it to understand what I mean. I also spent some time walking along the beautiful beach of Barcelona.
My visit to Barcelona was too short to have it all, but none the less I had a taste of its exquisite cuisine, passionate and beautiful people, unique music and dance, various and charming sceneries and world class museums & architects. This is an amazing city. I hugged Astrid goodbye and promised I will be back soon.
I am no kidding. I will be back for sure. Wait for me, my friend, I am always missing you and it won’t be long before we see each other next time.
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Posted by amyjiangsu on October 16th, 2007 — Posted in journals
Amsterdam is international in all senses. I have never seen this mixed crowd on street except in New York. Netherlands is said the country with highest population density of Europe, Amsterdam must be the citywith highest population density of Europe. It felt like half of the city are tourists, and half of them are walking on Kalverstraat during day time!
I didn’t see much of the sterotype of Netherlands in Amsterdam. I saw no windmill in the city, but plenty of cranes and construction sites. Wooden shoes are only available in souvenir shop; Tulips are rarely seen in October; Everyone speaks perfect English so it’s hard to tell real Dutch from real foreigners… and after wandered on streets for several days and saw at least several thousands people passed by, I still couldn’t generalize what a typical Dutch people should look like.
As a tourist I found Amsterdam stands out by itself. A net of canals running across the city, weaved like blood vessels of a beatiful woman’s body. I took a Canal bus (you can think it as a real bus which can take you to every corner of the city) sailing along the canal in a sunny afternoon, the river beamed quietly under the sun, while the breeze was soft and gentle, I couldn’t resist to fall asleep on the boat for an half hour, feeling wonderfully relaxed and peaceful.
I have loved the moment to come to a new city during this trip, just to find each city has its own beat and rythom and lyrics, like a flavor of music. The North European cities I have been are more like classical music to my ears, while Amsterdam is Jazz. This city is full of energy and surprises. Unlike those spotless North European countries, it’s not difficult to see littered rubbish on street. Tourists made the city messy, but I also take these rubbish as signs of real human lived here. Life is passionate, impulsive, and a bit messy matter after all. Amsterdam people expressed their love of life by running a massive amount of small shops along the streets, including flower shops, cheese shops, cafe, donut shop, FEBO, HEMA, post office… which made living here as convenient and styled as it could be. In warm weather, most of the cafes/food stores would open their windows when running business, hence the streets are filled with smells of flower, coffee, bread, cheese and human sweat, what could make people feeling more live than this?
It’s a city of bicycles! I have never seen so many bicycles in a city outside of China. Amsterdam people owns 1.5 bicycles per person. It’s absolutely the best way to get around the city, and most environmental friendly. My coworker Steve told me that riding bicycle saves 11 (ELEVEN) trees a year, I become an advocate too and would like to add to his argument that riding bicycle also extend people’s life by making them healthier.
Amsterdam is a famous easy-to-get-lost city but I had hardly got lost while I was there, simply because most days were sunny. I can find my way by referring to Sun and shadows, but I can’t pronounce or memorize the street names here. Steve taught me to learn them with the help of some dutch words: straat means street, gracht means canal, wag means path, kerk means church. It helped a bit but not much, I still find street names like Ceintuurban, Wijde Heisteeg incomprehensible.
Not only dutch words, I was confused about some English words here too. Coffeeshop means Dope Cafe so one should never say having breakfast in coffeeshop (I finally learned this after Steve corrected several times). Pants means panties, so I’d better refer my pants as trousers to be clear.
Steve has got me onto a local radio stations ¨English Breakfast” program on Oct. 16th. The program ran a short interview with me and it was broadcasted on local time 7am - 8am. The recording is here:
http://englishbreakfast.podbean.com/2007/10/16/english-breakfast-oct-16th-2007/
It was the coolest experience I had in this trip so far! I still find it’s hard to believe this really happened till this moment. More introduction about the radio program is here: http://www.englishbreakfast.nl/
On the last day Steve and me traveled to Rotterdam for an Audio Object Test Lab demonstration in V2. I was excited to see another city of Netherlands. We met up with Kit and Julian (who are Steve’s friends also works in software industry too). We took a short walk to the dinner place. I was fascinated to see several pieces of art installations on the city square we passed by. A fountain which is hidden under the square may surprise people by a sudden spray of waters, and a wind sculpture (picture here) made me amazed by the mechanic miracle created by the artists. The 2 big thick metal board on picture will rotate/roll with any slight breeze in air. In the beginning I thought the artwork has kept a perfect balance of these 2 metal board, that any small amount of wind will take it off balance, hence moves them. But after thinking more about it, I believe it’s all about fraction. In theory if there is no fraction in the roller which connects the 2 mental boards to the supporting stick, the metql boards should be rolling forever under any small amount of external power (like a blow of wind). The mechanical miracle of this artwork is its almost zero-fraction roller.
During the dinner I had opportunity to talk a bit more with Kit and Julian, and we had a discussion about my observation on Europe’s technology development. They mentioned specifically about RFID development, obviously it is considered an important technology which Europe has taken the leading position in world.
The V2 exhibition was inspiring. Michel Waisvisz’s presentation has converged all elements (fun, creativity, playful, curiosity, sound theory, prototypes, lots of photos, humor, energy, coolness) which brings out the passion about science among audience. Part of the show ran in Secondworld at the same time, I was feeling extremely lucky for being brought to the exhibition on the day.
Lucky has been my middle name these days. I found my coworker Steve has got plenty of good advises and some interesting connections, that everything he brought me into or suggested me to do turned out to be something super cool. Because of him I did many things that other tourists wouldn’t have done in Amsterdam, like the radio show and V2 exhibition. I even find a GO player among his friends and played GO one night, which is a game I so much enjoyed that I have decided to play more after back to China.
After all I am a tourist and I insisted to do tourist things: I asked Steve’s accompany to try famous dope cafes in Amsterdam. I was completely happy after visited one of them, only because I could say that I have been one of them to my friends now, but the experience itself is not much interesting or special. I just couldn’t get high with hash after many tries.
I went shopping in nine streets in Amsterdam and went crazy. It’s a dangerous place to get broke. I have done my best to be self disciplined but I dare not to check my expense records after went shopping there.
I also had a taste of bad luck here. I went downstairs on Thursday morning and found my bicycle seat was stolen: http://www.flickr.com/photos/amyjiang/1651758863/in/set-72157602452952974/. I had to walk it to the Mac bike place where I rented the bicycle to get a new seat. I had surely entertained many people who saw my seatless bicycle along the way, one even offered to take a picture of me and my seatless bicycle: http://www.flickr.com/photos/amyjiang/1651768487/in/set-72157602452952974/. The walk was not very long and very easily I got a new seat for the bicycle to ride on road again, so I don’t mind the incident at all.
I love Amsterdam.
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Posted by amyjiangsu on October 12th, 2007 — Posted in journals
Just arrived late last night and cozily settled down in my coworker Fabio’s house. I am having fun time with Fabio the Second at the moment, who is a super friendly and cool looking young guy. We talked a lot, in fact I tried to help him to figure out how human language suppose to sound like, and he taught me some vital words in his baby language, like “I am hungry” or “Hug please”.
The above is his picture and he says hello to the world here - 1 $ $Wsq1 22≤≤“
Copenhagen has been treating me well. The weather is much sunnier and milder than Stockholm, hence I took plenty of pictures. I am somewhere just halfway through the trip but has uploaded 579 pictures to my flickr site up to now. It’s very likely that the whole trip will make about 1000 pictures at the end. While traveling, there is no time or appropriate tools to do much photo editing on this amount of pictures, hence I simply uploaded the pictures without editing. This forced me to be more precise on composition/exposure at the point of taking pictures, I have benefited a lot from this practice. In fact, I explictly have taken these not-so-professional looking pictures as a digital record of the world in my eyes, so I will share my feelings & experiences with friends through sharing my pictures.
I was swept away by the beauty of Copenhagen castles and gardens, and it’s all in my pictures.
Travel has taught me many skills. Among them I have learned to find directions using the Sun. When it’s noon time my shadow shall point to the direction of North (hence I become an effective human compass). In the morning North is to the right of my shadow and in the afternoon it is to the left. This works fantastically for me, I have never get lost since I used this method, applying the sun is present. Copenhagen has been Sunny, so I had enjoyed exploring the city with ease and confidence. My friend Darren used to teach me how to orient using stars at night, unfortunately I have forgotten what he taught me, otherwise it would become quite handy to find directions after dark, applying the stars are present.
Fabio and Ulla drove me out of the city on the last day (Sunday), and I was awed to see the TomTom service that Fabio used on his Nokia E62 phone. It’s a great technology to lead people’s way. Fabio let the phone know where he is going, then it told us the way to go. We left the phone by the front seat. In astonishing precision, it told us where to turn 200 meters in advance and right at the turning point again. It’s hilarious that Fabio set the voice of the phone to Yoda’s voice, so the instruction goes like: ‘In next 200 meters to the right you must turn!’ Our small journey felt like an adventure led by the Jedi master. The service also extends to bicyclers, and support voice address input. After checking its website, I found it is available in Europe, North America and Australia/New Zealand.
Till Copenhagen I have been to 3 North European countries - Finland, Sweden and Denmark. They are similar in some ways but not in some other ways. A good example would be the alphabet they are using. All 3 countries are using 29 letters alphabet based on the 26 letter Latin alphabet. Both Finland and Sweden has 3 extra vowels which are: A with a cirle on top of it; A with 2 dots on top of it, O with 2 dots on top of it. I found they look very much fun. Denmark has the same alphabet with Norway, and the 3 extra letters in their alphabet are: A with a cirle on top of it, A with E aside of it; O with a line crossed from top right to bottom left. They are slightly different but the usage of the extra letters are basically the same.
But I am fairly annoyed by the different keyboard standards in 3 countries. As a heavy computer user, my productivity on typing means I could save more time to do fun tourist things. It happened several times when I was yarning to go out to play under the sun while just couldn’t figure out how to type the letter “@” using the local standard keyboard, which pissed me off royally.
Internet cafe is fairly easy to find in Copenhagen. I borrowed Fabio’s laptop so I didn’t seriously search for them this time, but just by coincidence I found a big one right next to the Central train station and took some pictures there.
On the train from Copenhagen to Amsterdam, I met a Dannish lady who shared the compartment with me. We had a conversation about our experiences and view points of the world’s problem today. She is a typically well educated North European lady and is curious about where I am from. I explained it to her: Just think if the world is a village of 1000 people, there will be barely one is Dannish, but there will be 250 Chinese, and 200 Indians, so Chinese and Indians alone take about half of world’s population. She is obviously impressed with the statistics I offered. Then She said she felt a bit concerned that she had no knowledge about half of the people in this village since all her life (she is at least 45 since she has a son of 24) she has not related to any Chinese or Indian at all. I brought up my question about what had make the difference between the two world, and expressed my sincere wish that people in developing countries could have a middle class population like North European countries. She looked at me kindly, and said with plain frankness and honesty: but, you know, the world resource will not support such a big middle class population, it is just not possible to do.
We talked a lot more, but I was not at all convinced by her answer. There maybe a better answer, and I will keep looking for it in coming years.
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Posted by amyjiangsu on October 9th, 2007 — Posted in journals
I am a lady and I am going to blog about shopping.
More specifically, I am a lady from China who had never in her whole life seen so many beautiful and luxurious things shown and sold in one place. My feelings and thoughts are mixed.
First, of course, I am awed about what I saw in the department store here (especially in Nordiska Kompaniet). I don’t know why I never went to Harrods when I was in London or Macy’s when I was in New York, so I have never seen department store like this before. The fact that there are people who will purchase these things and use them as commodities in their daily life made me realize how different Europeans live their lives. It’s a life style. If I can afford I may own anything I want in the department store, but I don’t live a life like typical wealthy Europeans, hence most things I bought here will be something luxurious my life and will always be on exhibition to my peers, pretentiously. Europeans live a rich life, rich not only in the sense of money, but also in culture wise.
Then is my admiration to the creators of this incredibly rich collection of goods. The picture above was taken in Helsinki’s Stockman department store, while in Stockholm’s NK I saw a similar department dedicated on selling clothes buttons too. I remember seeing the button department in Chinese department store when I was a kid, but not any more. The department store in my country considered buttons brought in too small profit margin comparing to clothes and electronics, hence they removed the buttons department and created somewhat a huge inconvenience to their customers. Of course I am aware that the Chinese customers’ standards are not high either, so we put up with whatever the shop got to offer. I admire the high standard being set by the department store here, and their pride of doing things right, on top of making money.
At last, I have a question to ask, and I wonder if anyone before me who had similar experience would have asked the same question and would have already found the answer: Why the difference? I strongly suggest Chinese government set up a special research fund to answer this question, in serious academic manner. I believe the answer to my question is hidden in the history. In fact if we could have set our attitudes towards our history straight, then we won’t be afraid to face who we are today now. As I browsed through the European museums, I have learned about Europe’s greedy robbery of world’s wealth in just few hundred years ago. It’s ugly but do we also admit that Europeans created most of their wealths in their own lands? When shall we have our own renaissance, and what it takes to happen? Do we deserve to be honest about ourselves, and understanding exactly where we were, we are and we will be? These are some basic questions unanswered by my whole nation - or there are actually many answers but they have never been discussed openly.
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Posted by amyjiangsu on October 9th, 2007 — Posted in journals
The ferry from Helsinki to Stockholm is famous for over night partying and drinking. I had my own experience of running into groups of young people gathered in hallway, each holding a bottle of beer in their hands, talking and laughing loudly. Very soon I found they were not violently dangerous, but having some fun time. With renewed sense of security, I went straight to Sauna on the ferry, and fell asleep in my private cabin after having listened some of my favorite music that I have brought in iPhone.
The first thing I noticed after arrival is that there are many more foreigners on street than in Helsinki. Not as many as London or New York, but quite a lot here. A friend told me Swedish people are famously good looking, it’s hardly true cause there are all sorts of good looking by different standards, but I did see much more blondes people here than any other cities I have been. In my opinion it’s not about look, it’s the class. Like this Swedish lady who sit next to me on the train to Copenhagen, she is more than stunning. I can only vaguely recall she dressed in spotless, sleek-cutting gray-blue suit, wearing no jewlery and least make up, with a short haircut. Gathered from her dress I think she is a minimalist with a delicate low profile taste. She spoke softly yet clearly, obviously very well educated. It’s almost delightful to see how precise and graceful she moves and gestures, while I realized I have no clue what it takes to make a person like her, and the life she is having. She has the sort of class which awed me more than people’s good looking in Stockholm. In fact, the waitress in a coffee shop I went to is a perfectly good looking blonde, but her manner is nasty and I don’t think she is classy at all.
Stockholm has class in spades. The city has been rich in last several hundreds years, and matured in all its social infrastructures including education, welfare etc. It’s admirable to know the majority of Swedish are wealthy middle class, and there are few billionaires and almost no poverty. The confidence in the society’s stability and prosperity shown in all perspectives of people’s life, including their attitudes towards life.
It’s October and days are getting shorter in this part of the world. I had experience in Tampere where I stayed out for several hours under the gray sky, and got depressed for the rest of the day. Hence I knew darkness is much harder to handle than the cold weather. Stockholm is lit by artificial light at night. Walking in the downtown after dark is like walking in a crystal palace, where every street is lit by the beautiful lights in shop windows, in restaurants, and along the streets. The city must be paying a huge electricity bill for lighting, while it also explained why most people I met here are fairly happy despite the short daylight.
Travel is all about meeting people. I stayed in the City Backpackers’ Hostel and here I met many interesting people from different parts of the world.
I was a bit shy to start conversation with westeners, so I always look for Chinese speaking people in the hostel. I am especially interested in getting to know them because communication is easier and I believe their experience is more relevant to mine hence we should have a lot to share. The first Asian girl I talked to turned out to be a Japanese, her name is Hiromi. She is a graphic designer from Toyko on vacation here. I suggested to have breakfast together and she agreed. Soon I found her accompany very pleasant… she was agreeable to everything I said and she obviously loved hanging out. The second day a Korean girl moved into the lady dormitry, who is passionate, straight forward and very talkative. Then a Taiwan girl moved in on the same day, everyone stared at her for a while at some point cause she is very beautiful. I tried to talk to her in Chinese, she understood what I said and obviously also spoke good Chinese but insisted on talking me back in English - so we had the conversation in 2 languages for a while. Finally a Chinese girl moved in, she is originally from ShiJiaZhuang but has studied in France in last 4 years. I was curious to see how the oversea life changed her after 4 years… but I didn’t see much. After talked to her for a while I began like her a lot and felt more connected to her than the Taiwanese girl. She hasn’t developed much confidence on herself yet but she is not pretentious at all.
There was one guy wearing only a towel on his hips, and ran around to check with every girl in house where the shower room is. Obviously he was proud about his body and wanted to share it with as many ladies as he could. In hostel one see all sorts of interesting people.
As in such a well developed country, I was surprised to find how little people are dependent to their computers. Very rarely I would see people working on their laptops in cafes, neither did I find many wireless networks available in the center of the city. It’s also very hard to find internet cafe, like in Helsinki, but free internet computers are available in many places like my hostel, public libraries, and culture house. My intepretation is that Sweden as old economy doesn’t need to adapt new technologies to stimulate economic growth, while Finland is a new economy which has many reasons to invest in the development of new technologies.
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Posted by amyjiangsu on October 6th, 2007 — Posted in journals
Journal wrote using iPhone:
I am writing this post on my iPhone… This is a struggle. I will have to upload the picture later since the computer in eurohostel doesn’t allow USB uploading.
As I stayed one day longer than planned in Tampere and the ferry ticket to Stockholm can’t be changed, I can only stay two and half days here. There are a lot to do here, but very little time.
I came by train with Stephe - this is much fun cause the weather was great and we had a lot to talk about during the trip. I had a first class ticket with my EU rail pass while Stephe only got a second class, he kept teasing me about it which made me feeling quite vain about myself.
Helsinki is very metropolitan comparing to Tampere, sitting in Stockman’s open air cafe I found people watching is much more fun and interesting. Finnish girls could be stunning, and they dress in a cool style. I went shopping after a cup of coffee, and found the shop assistants’ manner are not overly enthusiastic, but all polite and professional - I actually quite like it a lot. I am also very pleased with the hostel I am staying, which is clean, cozy, convenient and full of energy.
My experience with iPhone: I have been excited about this new toy and immediately I set very high expectations of what it should allow me to do. So far I am most satisfied with its music, address book, and internet browsing experience (long life the interactive designer of the iPhone!), the phone and camera features worked fine for me, and I like the SMS interface very much. The only thing I found painful to do on iPhone is to use it as a real internet browser to tasks like composing email or blog entries. My fingers are never small enough (though I have fairly small fingers even for Chinese ladies) for the keyboard of iPhone, and why on earth it doesn’t allow me to copy and paste?!
Here comes the journal, wrote on a 586 desktop computer:
My days in Helsinki were full and exciting. Here I hang out with some old and new friends as shown in the picture above (from left to right: Stephe, Harri, Manna, Ari). The first night started with drinks in the Torni Tower, then headed to Russian restaurant for some exotic bear meat. To be honest I have never imagined that bear meat could taste so good, but by then I was feeling high after some beer and 2 glasses of hot rum, so I am not sure the great taste should be counted to the meat itself, the chef, or simply my strong appetite after alcohol? The night ended at 4 in the morning in Kaarle night club, where is the routing destination of Harri’s classical night out.
My other first time experience besides bear meat for the night: I noticed that Ari was using Snus rather than tobbacco in the Irish pub we went to. I asked one from him, it has a wonderful smell, but soon I felt a bit dizzy after putting it in my mouth - it’s actually quite strong, as Ari advised.
It’s not hard to imagine why I had a hangover on the second day and got up fairly late. I went shopping with Manna, visited art museums and had dinner in Harri & Manna’s place. They are a lovely couple, and by the time I had dinner in their house, I also found I have grown like Finnish people a lot.
There was a Herring Festival in the fish market of Helsinki on Sunday, on the day I was leaving to Stockholm. I took plenty of pictures there. Harri insisted to introduce me his favorite bread of Finland which is made from flour mixed with blood - it suppose to taste sweet. I believe it’s called svartbrod.
Technology is wisely developed and used to serve for people’s need in Finland, mostly under the name of Nokia. Because this is a loosely populated country, getting a taxi is not as easy as standing by the street and wave your hand, hence an advanced automatic taxi booking system is developed here. In the EuroHostel I stayed, the receptionist just need to press several keys on her telephone to place an order in taxi queue, which will be picked up by any of the taxi in the neighbourhood. When we were having drinks in Torni Tower, Ari placed a taxi order through sms in cell phone, and almost immediately we received confirmation that a taxi is already waiting downstairs. I was royally impressed.
As far as the advanced techonology goes, it’s surprisingly hard to find an internet cafe in Helsinki. After queried several friends/people, it all pointed to the M-Bar next to train station, obviously this is the only internet cafe known to most people.
The one thing almost killed me here is post office. I spent 2 hours in post office to send some of my belongings and shopped items back home, and it costed me 100 Euros! The post office assistants’ manner were great, patient, warm, but not efficient at all, and their price really kills.
Before leaving I know I will miss this country and longing to come back some day. So long, Helsinki.
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Posted by amyjiangsu on October 2nd, 2007 — Posted in Technology
Hosted by COSS in Tampere, the OpenMind conference is the biggest open source conference in Baltic area. In 2007 the fourth Openmind conference address the topics including:
- Linux interoperability and standardisation
- Dynamics in open source business alliances and partnerships
- Mobile Linux
- Open innovation practices
- Deployment of open systems in the public sector
- Sustainability of open source communities
I was surprised to find there are about 500 people showed up during the conference, and many come from other countries. With a large international audience and speakers, multiple tracks of speeches and lunch/dinner/party sessions running for 3 days, everything ran smoothly. I am very impressed by the effortless manner that has demonstrated during this big organization job done by COSS.
It’s a pleasure to meet up with old friends like Mikko (in the above picture), who is one of the partners of COSS. He told me that because Finnish government is funding open source companies in the region, so many Finnish started their own open source businesses to take benefit of the goverment policy. During the dinner and social session I met many entrepreneus who owns a small open source business of 2-3 people, and found what Mikko told me is quite true.
I am half excited and half nervous to find my name listed as one of the speakers on the OpenMind event page of COSS: http://www.coss.fi/web/openmind. Mostly nervous, to be honest… especially after hearing some other speakers’ speech, they are all excellent. Many people I met yesterday told me that they will come to my session, I am pleased to have people’s interest but the pressure is on.
Updated Oct. 3rd 7:30am: The speech went well yesterday (pictures to be uploaded soon cause I must ask them from organizers and friends). I brought the badges of Ubuntu China community logo from China and distributed them in the end of my speech. It became popular with audiences, many people wore it during the party last night, to show support to Ubuntu China community. : )
My personal holiday officially starts after I finished the speech. There will be a receiption in Tampere City Hall tonight - a gesture made by Tampere government to welcome foreigners coming to their city. I decided to stay for an extra day in Tampere since there seems many interesting activities going on - including joining a friend to drive around the city (I don’t drive) this morning. I am excited.
Updated Oct. 4th 7:30am: Thanks to Stephen Walli, who took great pictures for me and other friends, here they are:
- making presentation on OpenMind
- Socializing with other geeks
- me and Mikko
I am excited to read about “The Next Leap for Linux” on NY times yesterday, which is supportive to Linux and Ubuntu. Jim Zemblin, who was quoted in the article, is in Tampere for OpenMind too. We had an extended discussion about open source development in China, from which I have learned a thing or two from him. : )
I am leaving Tampere to Helsinki today. My luggage is heavier since I came - bought a book in Moomin Valley yesterday (yes I made it!) and received another Open Source book from Henri as a gift the other day.
About COSS: the Finnish Centre for Open Source Solutions - is a national development agency for open source business ecosystem. COSS promotes the development and adoption of managed and sustainable open source solutions in various industries.
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Posted by amyjiangsu on October 1st, 2007 — Posted in journals
It is the window of Tampere airport terminal. I tried put the yellow bar in the position of gold portion (0.618) while cropping the picture, but can only do this approximately with internet tools - missing my photoshop this time.
It’s been raining this whole morning so I took the opportunity to upload pictures and writing journals. So far I have liked everything here, the chilly weather, fresh air (!), people’s friendly smile, and free internet cafe in the hotel. I wrote a postcard last night and when I gave it to the hotel receiption desk this morning I found it’s free! Immediately I want to write more postcards to friends and send from here. : )
Today is the 228th birthday of this small city, I am checking to see what I could do today - usually all museums take dayoff on Monday, plus today is kind of like a festival. I need to explore the city to get some fresh air after the rain, guess I have to try my luck.
Update 19:03 - Just back from the city, all museums are closed today but I enjoyed the stralk very much.
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Posted by amyjiangsu on September 30th, 2007 — Posted in journals
The above pictures were taken while packing. I was not at all as happy as the picture shows. I have been wearing myself out in the compulsive cycle of packing and repacking in last 2 days, bearing a weird feeling in my stomach that I must have forgotten something. I made a check list of all the items I should have brought, made sure each item was in the bag, then started to prepare a backup plan for everything - this means extra pants, extra socks, extra copy of files in USB flash disk, and printed copies of all travel info (if there is no computer or internet available in Europe, I can still find my way to hotels and train stations, relying on the printing technology which is invented not so long ago and still not outdated)… then try to reduce the weight of my luggage…
Thanks god there is an end of this organization nightmare, which is the date I depart. I can never be 100% ready even give me another month. : )
So here runs the list of all the gadgets I have brought on my trip:
- Sony H3: This is the new camera I bought 2 weeks ago. It has a Carl Zeiss lense, 10X zoom, and is as light as 380g! As I don’t intend to bring an expensive camera while travelling, its USD250 price assured me that I won’t cry over the spilled milk even it’s stolen (cheap milk!).
- Aigo travelmate P8100: This is a 80G portable harddisk which offers interface to CF/MD/SD/MMC/MS flash disks. I can easily download all pictures taken during the trip and back them up here, then upload them onto computer whenever I found an internet cafe. Price: RMB2100 (a bit less than USD300)
- Iphone!: I will write a seperate journal about my iphone, it’s the way a cell phone should be. It’s also an Ipod so I have been enjoying the music on my Itunes while on the way, the volume and quality of its sound without external speaker is amazingly good. Fantastic.
Last but not least, a Fujifilm international converter (you may have seen them in duty free shop, they are all green) and chargers of all sorts. also 2 spare USB flash disks in case anything broken or lost. Erhh, no space for another laptop, but why should I need one?
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