Home sweet home

I’m back in Hornstull, Stockholm, Sweden. At my favorite cafe Copacabana (and yes, my home Internet is broken again, but another reason to enjoy coffe at copacabana).

Some photos:

Carl Fredrik Reutersvärd's sculpture outside United Nation

The sculpture obve is called Non Violence and can be seen here and there in Sweden as well, by my grandmothers train station in Täby Centrum for example.

New Yorks largest voxel

New York was even better than I thought. It was fresh air and easy to walk around (very good with the numbered discrete-stepped long streets for someone with bad “local sense” as me…). I spent much time at the museum at Ellis island, the island where 14 million new Americans aoolied to enter the new world. I strongly recommend anyone visiting NY to go there (included in Statue of Liberty ferry for 12$).

I changed flight in Iceland. They have funny swedish/icelandic words:

Snyrtingar

Kaffitår!

Coffe or Café is Kaffitår in Icelandic. I like! We sometimes use that or similar word in Swedish. In “påtår” as coffe refill and Kaffi as gotlandic version of Kaffe.

Big Apple

Boarding about right now, so I better hurry up

Mighty Institute Techmekka

Harvard

Liberty Enlighting the World and me

some California

Oscar and me by a red bridge

Tasting wine in Napa, almost like the movie Sideways

In a bay area

Guess where?

Beijing

Here is some photos from Beijing, the huge city with both tasty and very weird (no i did not try the scorpions-on-stick) food, with old culture and many police officers of different kinds. One thing they dont have is lockers for your luggage at tourist sites – so i brought my world trip luggage up THE wall.

Mao

Flower art and typical guard (btw I took the supposily world's fastet public train 330km/h to Beijing from Tianjin)

Scorpions on stick mmmmm

Panda!

Die Mauer

Malaysia

I’m back in a free country, in particular San Francisco, California, US, where I can both read and post to this blog. Yes, that was not possible in the country of great firewall. Anyway here are some photos from lazy days in Malaysia. I stayed two nights in Penang, and three in Langkawi, both islands. The last day was Hari Raya, end of Ramadam and the family who owned the beachside motel I stayed at invited it’s guests to traditional lunch. Everyone of all sexes and ages wore beautiful dresses and were happy.

World Heritage harbour village in Georgetown, Penang

Harbour

Langkawi restaurant

Small beach visit from motorsail trip

The "Stardust" sailing crew 2009. Not so much of sail but very nice trip

This (big eremite crab) woke me up by making noice walking around behind the curtains

Salam Hari Raya!

First class

Nah I am not actually in first class, but I had the luck of having three seats for myself.
Sleeping some pi-angeled, finishing a book and have some soda for a euro. It’s great. I wish I had a usb-charger for my laptop and a bunch of movies, they have a usb outlet new inflight system now has a chat channel – something i have thought could be a good idea. Not so convenient to write on a touchscreen though. And respons on whole system is slow, looks like its web-based.

If I owned an airline it would by called GeekAir and have netbook power outlet, network cables, open source inflight system (with networked games), local wikipedia and wikitravel copy and even Internet at self-cost (whatever that is for an airplane). There will be no check-in (whats the point?) and you bring your non-carry-on luggage (if any) to the gate. If you really have to carry something sharp you pay for having that item transported. And we will not have announcements and trying to sell crap all the time either. But I would probably run a slow-travel business before I run airlines. I read the other day a guide of how to go from London to Singapore on railway. That would be a real travel experince!

Antarctic journeys

Btw I should not say much about enviromental friendly travelling, when I am flying 50 000 km myself but 14 hour sightseeing jumbo jet flight over antarctic? Come on, use a baloon like swedish engineers

Melbourne, Ballarat and Perth

Australia is a young nation and well you can read yourself on wikipedia. Perth was growing the most during the gold rush era around mid 1800 and one gold site was village of Ballarat. I went there with a new friend from Melbourne university and we walked around in the “wild west” eh wild south east? theme park village trying to find gold (picture). We also attended the museum. I really like the settlers romantic, and if I lived 100-200 years ago I would probably be one of the swedes leaving the country for new opportunities. However I would prefer selling spades than digging for gold. It was however interesting to see the beautiful littographs of mining company prospects with lists of “sleeping” and “working” shareholders.

Wild Down Under (Ballarat theme park)

Mauro searching for gold

Prospect for investment in gold mine company

Also a bit romantic but I wish sometimes stock market could be more of the old style of funding a project (trade ship to far east or a gold mine) by spliting risks and by investors who belived in the outcome rather than selling stocks over lunch to be liquid and have better apetite. I actually belive the market would benefit of having a small Tubin tax, effectively damping day/hour/second speculation but still keeping the ability of trade of shares and derivatives.

Freemantle town hall

Citizenship cermony

Back to settlers. The idea of building a new society, set up shops and see the progress all around really fits me, and the free and even subsiderized immigration is also so right. But one day Australia and America stopped immigration. What happened with that really? Yesterday I walked by the town hall of Freemantle (coastal city next to Perth, founded by some guy named Freemantle by riseing the Union Jack in early 1800), and there was a new citizenship welcoming cermony. I was welcomed to have a look and it was a very charming event. Few speeches and a local acapella quaire sang the national anthem, which was without god or war references but for freedom and happiness. I saw a man proudly posing with his certificate of citizenship, photographed buy his relatives and it was a moving sight. I have thought much about if Sweden could have free immigration and how it would affect job market etc but the conclusion in my heart really is – yes.

Kangaroo land

I had a great time visiting the universities in Melbourne and Perth. Engineers and surgeons are always easy to be with. We shared scientific experiences (read: played) in the lab and they brought be to a wonderful zoo around the wine yards, were we saw the kangaroos (the grey red kangaroo females and the redish grey kangaroo and the smaller wallabies). And adorable koala holding a kid. No sight of the Tasmanian Devil tough, but in aquarium the weird duck-headed mammal that lays egg (but do breed and have fur, as all mammals do according to Bamse’s school).
In Perth there was nice swedish summer-like weather and I had a tourist boat trip downriver to Freemantle and from the boat we could sometimes see dolphines! See the spot in photo?

Dolphin (small spot in the sea) in Swan River, Perth

Down Under

AirAsia is cheap but flying for 8 hours starting 11 pm with no tilting of chair whatsoever is not that comfortable… Well well I arrived on Monday morning and the pilot announced that it is 8 degrees Celsius, followed by the whole plane having a deep sigh. It’s spring here and it feels like home in March. City provides great coffee and I hope to explore more of the country and report the following week!