Kínverska mafían

Ég lofaði að ég myndi tjá mig við og við hér í skugga Facebook bannsins, bæði í landinu og hjá fyrirtækinu. Ég er sem sagt búinn að sitja af mér tvær vikur af þeim sex mánaða vist í Rizhao og farinn að koma mér fyrir. Stærsta vandamálið er íbúðin. Sú íbúð sem mér var “úthlutað” er því miður ekki eins fögur og sagt var frá í auglýsingunni: rakaskemmdir, myglaður ísskápur og 1 cm ryk. Ofanálagt er ekki hægt að koma fyrir þvottarvél með góðu móti. En nú á að gera við skemmdirnar og mála íbúðina upp á nýtt, splæsa í nýjan ísskáp. Vona svo að ég geti flyst inn fljótlega eftir áramót, þeirri kínversku.

1. Kosningarklúðrið í Framsókn
2. Að það þurfti lagabreyting til að þvinga Davíð frá Seðlabankanum. Reyndar pældi ég ekki í því fyrr enn Davíð varð nýr ritsjóri Morgunblaðsins.
3. Icesave frumvarpið var tekið aftur fyrir á Alþingi vegna þess að Hollendingar og Bretar höfnuðu fyrirvörunum.
4. Essasú
5. Baugur varð gjaldþrota en það kom mér þó ekki á óvart
6. Dagur B. Eggertsson varð varaformaður Samfylkingarinnar.
7. Álftarnes varð gjaldþrota.

Lykiltölur fyrir flugferðirnar mínar fyrir árið 2009 (flugstats fyrir 2008 finnst hér). Ég náði ekki að fljúga með A380 eins og ég ætlaði mér en spottaði hins vegar vélina á Charles De Gaulle í París. Flugin í ár fækkaði úr 64 í 52 og það skýrir að hluta til fækkun farþegana hjá SAS og Icelandair. Ég flaug líka miklu styttra, úr 188 Mm í 113 Mm enda fór ég hvorki til Ástralíu né til Bandaríkjanna. Nýir áfangastaðir á árinu: ZUR (Zürich, CH), LYR (Svalborða, NO), MRS (Marseile, FR), TAO (Qingdao, CN), NRT (Tokyo, JP).

Flight Distances
In Miles 70,203
In Kilometer 112,981
Earth Circumnavigation 2.82 x
Distance to the Moon 0.294 x
Distance to the Sun 0.0008 x

Flight Time:
Hours 152:09
Days 6.3
Weeks 0.9
Months 0.21
Years 0.017

Flights:
All 52
Domestic 5
Intra-Continental 34
Intercontinental 8
Other flights 5

Longest Flight (distance): 8,787 km, 10:16 h, Shanghai (Pudong) – Munich (Franz Josef Strauss), 07.04.2009
Longest Flight (duration): 10:16 h, 8,787 km, Shanghai (Pudong) – Munich (Franz Josef Strauss), 07.04.2009
Shortest Flight (distance): 250 km, 0:47 h, Akureyri – Reykjavik (Domestic), 29.07.2009
Shortest Flight (duration): 0:47 h, 250 km, Akureyri – Reykjavik (Domestic), 29.07.2009
Fastest Flight: 856 km/h, 8,721 km, 10:11 h, Copenhagen (Kastrup) – Tokyo (Narita), 06.02.2009
Slowest Flight: 319 km/h, 250 km, 0:47 h, Akureyri – Reykjavik (Domestic), 29.07.2009
Average Flight: 2,173 km, 2:56 h

Top Ten Airports
# Airport Amount %
1 ARN Stockholm 28 26.9 %
2 CPH Copenhagen 12 11.5 %
3 PEK Beijing 10 9.6 %
4 OSL Oslo 8 7.7 %
5 KEF Reykjavik 8 7.7 %
6 MUC Munich 4 3.8 %
7 NYO Stockholm 4 3.8 %
8 RNB Ronneby 4 3.8 %
9 CTU Chengdu 2 1.9 %
10 SXF Berlin 2 1.9 %

Top Ten Airlines
# Airline Amount %
1 SAS 26 50.0 %
2 Lufthansa 6 11.5 %
3 Icelandair 5 9.6 %
4 Ryanair 4 7.7 %
5 Air China 4 7.7 %
6 SWISS 2 3.8 %
7 China Eastern 1 1.9 %
8 Air Iceland 1 1.9 %
9 Iceland express 1 1.9 %
10 Malmo Aviation 1 1.9 %

Top Ten Aircraft
# Aircraft Amount %
1 Boeing 737 23 44.2 %
2 Airbus 340 6 11.5 %
3 Boeing 757 5 9.6 %
4 Airbus 320 4 7.7 %
5 Airbus 321 4 7.7 %
6 Boeing 747 2 3.8 %
7 McDonnell Douglas-80 1 1.9 %
8 McDonnell Douglas-87 1 1.9 %
9 Airbus 319 1 1.9 %
10 Fokker 50 1 1.9 %

Top Ten Routes
# FlightPath Amount %
1 ARN – CPH 4 7.7 %
2 CPH – ARN 3 5.8 %
3 KEF – ARN 3 5.8 %
4 OSL – ARN 2 3.8 %
5 ARN – KEF 2 3.8 %
6 ARN – OSL 2 3.8 %
7 ARN – RNB 2 3.8 %
8 CPH – KEF 1 1.9 %
9 LYG – PEK 1 1.9 %
10 CPH – NRT 1 1.9 %

Additional Data
Total Airports 25
Total Airlines 11
Total Aircraft type 14
Total Routes 41
Total Countries 10

Booking classes: Economy 42 Business 9 First 1
Seat: Window 18 Middle 7 Aisle 22
Flight as: Passenger 52 Crew 0 Pilot/Cockpit 0
FlightPurpose: Personal 31 Business 21 Virtual/simulator 0

I was so happy to see my iMac yesterday that I hugged him when I came home last night. It feels good to be able to log on to Facebook and to see Youtube again since these sites are blocked in China. It wasn’t hard to bypass these blocks, at least not Facebook, but my dear beloved employer, AkzoNobel (Eka), has also blocked Youtube so I can’t bypass it by using company’s proxy servers in Sweden.

And indeed, I find my company’s IT policy some time as dumb as the China’s attempt to censure the internet. I don’t like any kind of censorship, not even to same bandwidth.
–
I will soon be back to Iceland for the holidays, with a stop in Copenhagen this weekend to see some of my friends. Luckily the Copenhagen summit will be over by then and I won’t be beaten by the police.

Ástarstjörnu
yfir Hraundranga
skýla næturský.
Hló hún á himni,
hryggur þráir
sveinn í djúpum dali

…
Jónas Hallgrímsson 1807 – 1845
—
All the week I have been having classroom training for our client’s personnel, basically teaching them how to run the plant once it is ready. I have been avoiding working as an interpreter since I don’t want people to recognize me as such, but more as a serious engineer. Nevertheless, people like to bring the questions to me so I can translate them to the Swedes. I guess I have to work harder to convince them that I am capable too.

Doing these classroom training sessions aren’t so hard if you know the process well, but I still get questions that I can’t answer on myself but luckily I have my colleague with 30 years of work experience by my side. Sometime I wonder if it is better – for my appearance, not for the sake of their apprehension – that I do the whole training by myself without any back-up. But I guess sometime you have to put your own pride aside for the greater good.

I will leave Rizhao on Saturday and head back to Europe for the holidays. First I will make a short stop at my relatives in Lianyungang and then fly the same night to Beijing, probably staying at my friend’s place. Then I will fly back to Stockholm, connecting at Frankfurt. Few days there and then to Copenhagen for a weekend (pleasures only) before I fly to Iceland. Only five flights left this year!

Today 7:00 am

10 days ago at 7:00 am

Most of the days it is like this

Dear comrads!

The wheel of people’s power of great China cannot be stopped.
—
Unlike other Chinese project I have participated, this one is has a complexity above all the others. One example is the human resources: I am here along with over six other engineers from Sweden along with other several other Chinese engineers – during the early phase of the commissioning of the plant! Compared to the commission/start-up I participated in December last year, we were only 2 from Sweden and one from China. I can only say that it feels good when you get all the resources you need to do a god job. Unfortunately, I am not supposed to public the progress at site on my own blog since much of our work is confidential.
—
On Thursday, I and another colleague of mine went to Suzhou (city) for a medical check in order to obtain a working permit in the motherland. Suzhou is the second largest city of the Jiangsu province with almost 1.4 million inhabitants with the city area, after Nanjing with little over 3 million inhabitants. Suzhou has grown so fast during the past decades that it has almost grown together with Shanghai which is the metropolitan city of the region, but Shanghai city is a self-governed region. The whole Shanghai delta region, with city regions like Nantong, Ningbo, Hangzhou and Wuxi has a population about 50 – 70 million in an area equal to size Belgium (who has about 10 million inhabitants).

We drove there with our driver for almost six hours before we finally reached the destination. They journey back was even longer because we took a took the pram over the Yangtse river instead of driving over the highway bridge. It has been 14 years since last time I crossed the largest river of China by boat and it felt quite special. Then itt was in Anqing, a city 350 km upstream the river, where my father grew up. The river is much narrower than in the Suzhou so the stream there is more stronger and some time you can see big tides splashing on the banks, specially during raining seasons. The boat trip from Suzhou to Nantong took about half an hour so one can imagine how broad the river is. And since it was a smoggy day, you can’t see the other bank.

This is the ugly part of the industrialization of China.
—

I guess it’s only question of time when Saab will file bankruptcy and Volvo become Chinese. The media here does not make as much noises about Volvo becoming Chinese as the Swedish papers are whining about it every day. You might think that the end of the world is coming, notably when Volvo is currently held by an U.S. company that is not doing well on its own. Are Americans more trustworthy then Chinese?

I some find it magical how China can accumulate so much wealth by selling cheap products like toys and small electronics, often for foreign (read American) multinationals. A typical stuffed animal is maybe sold to Toy r us for 1$ per piece. You will need sell 250 millions of these to afford an B747. How does it happen?

I guess people here know how to save money. My relatives who live in quite a wealthy region in China are maybe having 1/5 of my netto income. Still they manage to save up to 60-80% of their income for future investment, namely their children. Recently I read in the Times Magazine that the similar figure in the U.S. was roughly about 7% after the credit crunch, before that the saving rate was negative. I don’t suppose that Icelanders are bette since they used to be big spenders until about a year ago. And yes, I do not think my fellow countrymen (the Icelanders) deserves much more credit (from me) than this. My friends are often surprised or even offended(!!) when I flag my opinion about how much savings people should have. I shouldn’t brag either since I’m no Scrooge myself.

To lighten people up a bit, here are some pictures from my visit to Lianyungang this weekend, where my relatives from my mother’s side live:

My hotel is located not so far from the pulp mill, about 15 minutes by car in a heavy traffic. Even during rush hours, the traffic here is far from being as bad as in the megacities such as Beijing or Shanghai in night time. However the traffic culture is different. For instance, driving lanes has little as no meaning here. People drive or walk where they please.

As you please – or 随便 – is the motto of China today. The law only applies when you get caught, and only those who doesn’t have any good contacts get caught. The rule of law only applies to them. Someone said to me years ago about the traffic hierachy: Military > police > government officials > local officials. These are the untouchables in traffic.

–

My typical work day is well scheduled: I got picked up at 7:45 and arrive at pulp mill at 8 sharp, and later I get pick-up to the hotel at 17.30. Little longer than office hours, plus we work half a day on saturdays. Lunch are brought to the office by the assistants and the food is very good, at least in my opinion. There are minorities who prefer KFC and pizzas. Shame on them.

Occassionally, the office atmosphere is touched by the infamous second city syndrome, or normally related as Gothenburg syndrome in Sweden. For those who has basic knowledge of Sweden, Gothenburg is the second largest city in Sweden, after Stockholm the capital city. The need of proofing itself to the larger city has been going on for decades and sometime you can sense the same spark at here as well. The other large office of Eka Engineering is namely placed in Bohus, nearby Gothenburg city. The Rizhao project is mainly run by them so here I am an easy target, being the only one from Stockholm.

Although Rizhao is quite a large city (by Scandinavian standards), there is not much to do after hours for an expat like me. I have limited interest getting involved with the locals and surely no interest at all in hanging around in a karoke bar singing Abba or 我爱北京天安门.

However I make my best effort not to get killed by my own boredom. For instance, I have been blogging like crazy lately. Roughly guessing I’ve already posted more this week than I have done in the entire year. It’s unlikely that I can keep this up for 20 more days but I will do my best. This evening I went out with some Chinese collegues to a restaurant – and I have to bring it up that I find Chinese much more social than Swedes as within 4 days I have been here, no one has ever suggested to do anything after work, just like in Sweden. These guys however are sales reps both from the district and other Eka’s organisations in China. We had nice chat about the profession, actually one of the few I have ever had with Chinese people (my parents and relatives (and maybe more people) have no clue what I am doing), and latest developments in China and Sweden. It’s funny how amazed Chinese people are towards Sweden.

Footnote:
1. The song 我爱北京天安门: Wikipedia, and check out the translations.