China

I must admit that I have totally embraced the use of communities on the net. It is not that I am particularly exhibitionistic or for that matter seeking contact with everybody about everything. No, what really has attracted me is all the knowledge you can find in the different communities. Today, whenever I want to know more about a subject or going to buy something more expensive I first check if there is a good community somewhere on the Net to learn more from.

It all really started in my passion for photography. About 5 years ago it was time to upgrade to a digital SLR (DSLR) and when you are about to shell out a couple of thousand dollars of your hard taxed savings, you really want to get the most out of it. So I started to lurking around on www.dpreview.com, probably the largest community on the net for photo buffs. I was quite amazed about the activity going on in the different forums at DPReview as well as how much I learned about the different cameras that were available on the market at the time. It took some effort though before I got the grip of the language used. Why did so many of the posts contained the abbreviation IMHO and why did some of the posts started with ”BTW”. And what was this LOL combined with a big smiley :-D? But over time I figured it all out.... IMHO - ”in my humble opinion”, BTW - ”by the way” and this LOL meant ”laughing out loud”. It made me feel I really was in line with the times, LOL .

After only been reading without participating in the discussions I took a deep breath and started my first question. Quite scary at the moment - how was my English? Was my question ”stupid”? Would the readers post nasty remarks regarding my question? Surprisingly it all went very well. I not only got an answer, I got several. And this is how it works in a forum - different people have different views and above all experiences. In the community you get to know them all which sometimes get you somewhat confused, but that’s how it is and IMHO it just gives you a better position to form your own opinion.

Today I have progressed even further by having my own web site, www.hakanaldrin.com, where I post my pictures for everybody to see and above all give feedback on. I also write some short reviews now and then of photo equipment I use for anyone interested to read (not many are but still....). And I just recently discovered Twitter, sort of a micro blog, where you can follow people as well as companies and news magazines like the Financial Times (www.twitter.com/hakanaldrin) . Of course I am also keeping up with all of my friends around the world by using Facebook.

Hmmm, maybe I am a bit exhibitionistic after all...

Hakan

I have to say that these days I really think about what I eat. But it is not due to Beach 2009 project or anything like that. No, it is more related to if the food contians something it should not contain. It is of course the melanin scandal here in China that has made me think like this. According to official figures four children died and 53.000 other had to get medical care due to melanin in milk and milk powder. And now they are fnding it in fish and eggs, so what else can there be in the food?

I also wonder of the the companies selling the melanin ever had any second thoughts on what it should be used for:

"Hi, it's from the milk central. Could you please deliver four tons of melanin till next Monday?"
"Sure no problems"

Me and my family have during the years here in China only been drinking imported long life milk. The reason for this was not that we suspected melanin in the milk, but stories about cows eating grass, and whatever else a cow is eating, which conatined a lot of hormones. As a consequence the milk would then also have a lot of hormones. I have to admit though that I realy did not believed in this. It maybe was hormones in the milk back in in time but not now. And talking to some neighbours working in industries close to the dairy industry also made me quite sure that it was quite safe to drink the milk.

So considering the price for a liter of imported long life milk from France and also that the taste is not as good as regular milk, I suggested to my wife more then one time that we should try out the regular milk. Quite happy now that she did not pay very much attention to my suggestions.

Today it is very difficult to find imported milk in the stores. If someone hears that somebody have found milk at the X store, everyone in the compound rush out to get hold of a couple of liters. Most of the time though shelves are empty when you arrive.

But, as in so many other cases in China there are solutions to be found although they are maybe not the most obvious ones. In our case the milk problem is actually taken care of. Our local wine dealer has just added a very, very white wine from New Zeeland to his wine list. And this very, very white wine can actually also be stored for very long time. So we are good.

Hakan

So how is it to live and work in Shanghai? Well, as with most things, there are some things that are good and other things that are less good.

On the minus side there is of course the pollution. Shanghai is an extremly big city with 20 million people and growing fast, specifically in respect of the cars. When writing this I am sitting on the 31st floor on Huaihai Road which is right in the middle of the city. It is a wonderful day with sunshine, blue sky and 20 degrees (quite an unusal day acyually). However, looking out through the window I can see Pearl Tower and a bit further the away the yellowish air. It do not look so healthy, but it is quite far away and wherever you are the yellow air seems to be in the other end of the city .

As has already been mentioned Shanghai is a BIG city, with a lot of people and a fast growing numbers of cars and trucks. In other words it is not very convenient to move around in the city. Whenever I now go back to Stockholm and travel from the northern suburbs in to the city centre it is amazingly quick. On the other hand the whole of Stockholm is not more than a suburb in Shanghai (and Iceland is not more then a block).

You can of course chose to live in the city but then you will most likely have to stay in an apartment. Easy access to resturants etc but very urban. Me and my family chose to stay on the eastern side of the river Pu, PuDong. It is maybe a bit greener than the western side - PuXi - but it could in no way be described as the "country side". But living on the "almost country side" means that you are always a bit hesitant to go in to the city during the weekends. It takes hours in the car and time is to valuable to be spent in a car.

Not really sure if this can be related to Shanghai,but the schools here are just darn fantastic. In the beginning we had a bit of a different view though. When we came here three years ago my son was six years old and my daugther eleven. There are no Swedish schools in Shanghai (there is one in Beijing though), so classes are held in English. Miranda could speak a bit of English so she was quite OK, but for Theo it was a battle. So the first three months were not without its problems. Lots of tears were shed and the school did not allow my wife to be in school and support Theo. One and a half day only and after that he had to be on his own. He was not all to happy about that but what could you do. However, after three months, quite suddenly actually, he started to speak English. Fantastic! After this we have learnt how extremly professional and dedicated the teachers are, so there are no hard feelingd. I actually think that the school might be the thing we will miss the most going back to Sweden.

The best part of being here though is that you are taking part of economic history in the making (a micro part, but still ..). To live and work in this ever changing environment is to some extent frustrating, but also extremely interesting. If not every day so almost every week there is a surprise waiting for you when coming to the office (or on Saturday morning since most big changes/regulations are presented in the Saturday newspapers). Whenever I go back to Scandinavia for a business trip it is quite nice, but coming from the buzzing Shanghai, Stockholm feels not only small but also quite slow.

So in short, if you ever get a chance to work and live in Shanghai, I can highly recommend it. You will not regret the years you spend here.

Gotta go now, there is a Bingo Night at the school with great prizes and I feel lucky tonight

Have a nice weekend!

Hakan

Living in China or for that matter if you are just traveling in China, it is highly recommendable to learn some Chinese words. As for example; hello – ni hao, thank you – xie xie, good by - zai jian, cold – bing, beer – pi jiu, all of them very useful words moving around in the Chinese society. You will also most often be greeted by a big smile and told that your Chinese is fantastic. Very good for the ego.

However, you will also be sitting in a bar telling the waiter that you want a bing pijiu and the bartender will look at you as if you are crazy. So you try again and again by repeating bing pijiu, BING pijiu, bing PIJIU, but nothing helps. Then after the fifth time the waiter shines up and says bing pijiu!? and you get what you want.

All foreigners in China can tell the same story about how they have said a word like, bing (cold), shui (water) or any other word and no one have understood them at first. However, after a while someone suddenly repeat exactly what you just said and now understands what you want.

So what is going on here? Two things; Chinese words are differentiated by tones (in Mandarin most words can be pronounced with four tones, having four different meanings) and one word is one character. In English there are no tones and words are written with letters.

So when a foreigner is ordering a cold bear and pronounces the word for cold (or actually iced) in Chinese, he puts the letters b-i-n-g together and pronounces the word as a combination of these letters that is “bing”. However, the Chinese bartender hears something totally different. He hears a sound, almost like a musical tone, and sees a character in front of him, not the letters b-i-n-g. In this case the foreigner is using the fourth tone, meaning that he wants a sick bear. And when the bartender looks very puzzled, the foreigner repeats over and over again “sick bear, I want a sick bear”. After a while though the bartender realizes that the foreigner is not asking for some strange foreign special beer, but is just trying to say that he wants bing beer (bing with the first tone). Now the bartender says “aaaah, bing pi jiu” and the foreigner sighs and says “that is just what I said”, but actually he had persistently been asking for a sick beer.

So next time you are in a similar situation try to say the key word four times, each time with a different tone – straight, up, up/down and down. Good luck!

Hakan

It is really nice to be back in the old home country, even though it is a bit cold, dark and rainy. But it is fresh and the food is very nice. The best part of coming here though is actually that internet is FAST!! You know I just click on links to see how fast a web page is loading, no matter what page it is. Or downloading music from iTunes just to be able to watch how the download bar is moving fast from left to right. Weird I know but it is soooo nice to see that bar move.

As you can gather Internet in China is not fast. Or more specific, if you go to sites outside of China it is not fast. Sites located inside of China is really fast, just like here in Sweden, but that is not much of a help for a foreigner.

The reason for the slow speed is partly the so called Great Firewall of China and I also believe capacity problems.

The Great Firewall is the most extensive firewall in the world keeping track of which sites Internet users in China are visiting. In the compound where I live many of us are quite frustrated of the lack of speed (you pay for a 2 Mbit line and it work at times as if using a dial-up modem), so a meeting was set up some time ago with China Telecom to discuss the problem. In that meeting we were told that it really doesn’t matter what speed we have subscribed to if we are surfing on sites outside of China. The signal requesting to see a particularly page would be fast, but the signal coming back with the content on the web page would be slow. The reason being that China Telecom reduces the speed so the Great Firewall will be able to scan the content of the web page. So not much to do about that.

The other reason though is capacity problems. The number of Internet users in China is growing very rapidly and of course they are also not only surfing on sites inside of China. You can really notice this capacity problem on weekends, especially in the afternoon/evening when the speed dramatically goes down because so many are on the Internet at the same time.

Now this speed issue also creates problem for companies. In most cases they need to connect to internal systems with servers located outside of China and to their intranet. If you do not want to pay for a dedicated line to your home country (expensive) they have a problem in not being able to use their internal systems as they would like to. I am actually quite often contacted by companies asking how we as a bank have solved this problem. Well, because of the nature of our business we have had to pay the money it costs for a high speed dedicated line, but the price tag for such a service is often a bit to high for most companies.

A tip though is to check out a dedicated line to Hong Kong. The price for this service is very reasonable and from Hong Kong you will have direct access to the Internet without anything slowing the signal down. It might not be a speed demon line, but in most cases it seems to be sufficient.

Hakan