Day Three

Meet Christina at Slussen tunnelbana station at 9am. She takes me to the Tax Agency where I apply for my personnummer, or my personal identification number. Without this number, you can't open a bank account, set up a phoneline, etc. I'm told it will take a couple of weeks. Christina says, "That's quicker than the average."

Go to the Institute. Unpack one of the boxes shipped from London. Change my email address for email alert of top 5 economics journals.

The lunch bell rings. Have lunch at a restaurant by taking a 10 minute walk in the middle of nowhere to the east with Torsten, John, Harry, Christina, and two more people whose name I don't remember. Sweet chili salmon (85 krona) is not too bad. I'm asked whether my PhD thesis defense will be public. In Sweden, I'm told, the viva is conducted in public, where any participant can ask the doctorate candidate.

Come back to the Institute. When I'm about to leave around 3pm, David, a PhD student at the Institute, drops by, inviting me to a drink this evening.

Take Tunnelbana to T-Centralen. Visit Kartcentrum, a map store, and buy Pocket Street Map. In the end, there seems to be no A to Z map in Stockholm. This pocket map covers a very small area of Stockholm. But other maps in the book format covering larger areas are too big to carry around.

Then I visit Teknik Magasinet for electronic Swedish-English dictionaries, because a shop assistant at another electric appliances store told me to visit this store yesterday. It's a tiny shop where customers cannot browse products unless they ask a shop attendant at the counter who appears to be knowledgeable of all the products they sell. He introduces me to a large pen-shaped device which scans words in print and shows translation. But this one only translates from English to Swedish. He then shows me another flat device, just like all those Japanese electronic dictionaries, which translates 66,700 Swedish words and phrases into more than 10 other languages including English. But he doesn't know what dictionary this device uses. I can't decide to buy this one as reliability is doubtful...

As I'm in the city centre, my tour of Stockholm design stores begins. First Lagerhaus. They have a wide range of stationery, bathroom items, and kitchenwares.

Then Visit DesignTorget. I find this place just eclectic and selling mainly fun stuff.

Go home once, and find a card from UPS. They came to deliver my personal belongings from London today even though the web tracking yesterday said the delivery was scheduled to be tomorrow. What's worse, I don't understand what the card says (all in Swedish)...

Go shopping at ICA, the nearest grocery store. Want to buy wheat flour, but can't find one on the shelf. Today there is only one shop attendant who is busy handling customers queuing at the till. Ask a couple of other customers. Turns out that they are not Swedish and have no idea. Seems like people living in this area are mostly foreign students... Go home without flour and cook dinner.

Beef tastes better here than in London. Beef burger that I cooked yesterday was excellent. Today I simply cook a thinly sliced beef steak, and it's just juicy. Milk is also tasty here. Another relief from London.

Go to a bar David told me. Meet Katrin, a classmate of mine at LSE who also just moved to Stockholm, and several PhD students both from the School and the Institute. I ask one of them what the UPS card says. It says, "We are coming at the same time tomorrow." Great.

We then move to Tranan bar/restaurant. As I can't drink anymore but didn't have vegetables when I cooked dinner at home, I end up having an expensive goat cheese salad (120 krona, or 9 pounds), which is not too bad.

Go home around midnight.

Day Two

Go to the Institute. It's a 10 minute walk from my flat. For the first time since my primary school days, I commute by walk, something almost impossible in Tokyo and London. (I commuted to secondary school and university by taking one-hour train ride in Tokyo.)

Visit Christina. After briefing basic things at the Institute, she takes me around to see people at the Institute who are already back from holidays.

Following the lunch bell at 11:30am, have lunch with Christina, Mats, and Harry at a university restaurant. At the Institute, someone rings the bell at 11:30 to invite colleagues to lunch.

Go to the city centre by Tunnelbana (Stockholm's underground) to look for an electronic Swedish-English dictionary and a Swedish equivalenet of A to Z map to carry on. I end up finding several interesting shops for interior goods, including Bang & Olufsen for designer speakers, Village (at Kungsgatan 27) for household accessories, and Stockhome for household goods.

As several creative-type friends of mine in London told me, Stockholm appears to be an interesting city for those into design.

Day One

Move to Stockholm exactly five years after I arrived in London.

Fly with SAS from London City Airport. Unlike Ryanair, SAS allowed me to check in online smoothly. Unlike any other London airports, boarding on the aircraft at London City is very smooth. I'll definitely book a flight arriving in London City next time I come to London.

Yumiko-san kindly comes to the airport to see me off with a piece of quiche she baked. This is very helpful as having dinner on the first day of your stay in a foreign city can be very difficult. (I ended up at McDonald's five years ago.)

The airplane arrives at Stockholm Arlanda Airport on time. The passport control is easy to pass without being asked anything, after I pass my passport with the work permit page shown. My check-in luggage returns to me without any difficulty.

My apartment keys were sent to the airport bagport by Christina, the Institute's super-secretary. ("The Institute" refers to my new workplace hereafter.) After learning where it is at the information desk, I pick up my keys at the bagport by paying 30 krona (about 2 quid) in cash (I bought a large amount of Swedish krona in cash at M&S in Convent Garden, London, yesterday. With your passport shown, you can buy foreign currencies by debit card).

Now start feeling hungry. Stop by at a Seven Eleven store in the arrival lounge and order mezewrap. It's surprisingly tasty. I'm delighted by the fact that I no longer need to suffer from stupid London sandwitch shops.

Then I take a taxi to the apartment. By reading a Stockholm travel guide obtained in the SAS aircraft, I've learned Taxi Stockholm and Taxi 020 (so named because its contact number is 020 20 20 20) are the most reliable. I find a Taxi Stockholm taxi. I notice that minor taxi company cars imitate Taxi Stockholm car's appearance.

About half an hour, I arrive at the apartment building. It first looks like a London's council flat building. When I enter, it smells of smoke as there was a fire in the basement last week. My apartment is on the first floor, but I don't know whether Sweden follows the British or American convention of numbering floors. On the ground floor, there is no door indicating my name. Walking upstairs, I find my apartment. The smoke smell continues.

Opening the door, I learn what my new place to live looks like. The spacious entrance hall has got three wardrobes. On the right, the door to the compact kitchen. In front, the door to the spacious living room with a very comfy sofa. Next to the living room is a bed room with two single beds and a study desk. Between the bedroom and the kitchen lies the bathroom. At the centre of the flat is one more wardrobe.

Read through the apartment instruction provided by University Accommodation Center. Learn that while the standard voltage in Sweden is 230 volt, bathroom sockets must be 110 volt by regulation.

And this instruction tells me where the nearest grocery shop is. After eating Yumiko-san's delicious quiche, I visit the shop. Three surprises. First, when I want to buy salt, pepper, or butter, it's hard to tell which one I should buy. I can't tell the difference between different types of, say, salt as the package description is in Swedish only. Second, there is a machine accepting used cans. It appears that you will get a receipt after returning cans and get refunded. Finally, plastic shopping bags cost 1.5 krona (about 10 pence) each!

Staring a new life in a foreign country may be tough, but it's also full of stimulation for curiosity.

Beware of Ryanair's online checkin system

I booked a Ryanair flight to Italy a month ago. By paying a bit more money (4 pounds), I opted for online check-in (and priority boarding).

Two days before the departure, I got email reminding me of the online check-in.

Then I realized that the online check-in system is only available for passengers with an European passport who are NOT travelling from Italy to UK.

Well, I still enjoy the priority boarding, but I feel like I was cheated...

PhD Thesis Submitted

I submitted my PhD thesis today. In economcis, the PhD thesis is rather a formality. The effective examination of your thesis is already done during the job market process. But, I don't know why, I feel more strongly today than when I got a job offer that I have done something. Formality does have some meaning, maybe.

Joshi Puroresu Diary Launched

By the way, I have launched Joshi Puroresu Diary even though I have been supposed to be very busy writing up my PhD thesis. :-)

The aim is to organize joshi puroresu YouTube videos (which are increasingly uploaded during the past one year by presumably mad American fans of joshi puroresu) by date and wrestlers.

I believe that joshi puroresu is the last hidden gem in Japan. With help of YouTube and all those YouTube users who upload joshi puroresu videos, I can finally promote this to a wider audience.

Anyway, so far the best match is Momoe Nakanishi vs Ayako Hamada. Try watching this.

Am I an Alpha Blogger? :-)

I have found that some posts on this blog are cited by a couple of websites.

I have already mentioned that my review on Ping Pong restaurant is featured in the restaurant's own website.

My review on Menelik restaurant appears in Ethiopianrestaurant.com.

Now my review on Budapest Festival Orchestra's performance at BBC Prom last year is featured in the orchestra's own website.

What's next? :-)

Where Am I Going?

In case you still don't know where I'm going from next academic year on (especially for one reader in New Haven---I'm sorry I ignored your request until today), I'm moving to the world's 8th most livable city on 21 August.

Proof of Impossibility Theorem: Step 1

A couple of years ago, I was mad about this girl. The encounter with her made my life a lot easier. I even used a deformed version of her name as my login password for various websites.

But I didn't understand the nature of her job. She was like a fisherman. No matter how long you work, you won't earn any money on a day when there is no fish in the sea. The more you work, the more you earn on a day when there are tons of fish in the sea (assuming that the price of fish is constant no matter how much you sell them ... I apologize for my economist self). Working 8 hours everyday does not maximize your income. You need to work hard when you are lucky. You don't need to work at all when you are unlucky. Which will be the case tomorrow is uncertain, out of your control.

But I didn't understand this simple thing. I demanded a constant, steady flow of interactions with her everyday, which must have annoyed her a lot. If she reads this, I want to belatedly tell her that I'm very sorry for my immaturity.

If I'm asked, "If I met her today, then would I behave differently?" my answer is unfortunately no. To start a relationship, I need to have a sizable amount of time to stay together initially. Then we will learn about each other. Once I go through this period, then no matter how busy my partner is, I can trust this person and endure loneliness. If, from the beginning, we can't stay together at all, I can't go anywhere with this person.

Given that my life will be pretty much busy for the next six years, and given that I like a woman who is busy doing her work, this proves, at least partly, the impossibility that I will meet somebody soon.

This series "Proof of Impossibility Theorem" will continue irregularly.

Acknowledgement: This post is inspired by a blog post in Japanese on 7 July 2007 by Professor Fumio Ohtake, a labor economist at Osaka University.

D-Fix plus Takaco vs Kansai, Eagle, and Devil

I've learned that I can use YouTube to promote what I love in Japan: old-skool visual-kei rock and women's pro-wrestling. Here's an example of the latter:


Watch out for 4'10'' when Kaoru did swanton from the balcony. Also Kansai's Splash Mountain at 7'30''.

Get Addicted? Here's the last half of the match.

Enjoy another Japanese world.

Econoclasm Travel Guide vol.1: Tokyo

Last month's issue of Monocle magazine ranks Tokyo as the world's 4th most livable city (see the magazine article via International Herald Tribune's website).

American cities including New York are all out of top 20 (except for Honolulu) because crime rates are high. London is out, too, because of its infamous public transportation and due to the absence of bars after midnight.

To celebrate this, I make public my own travel guide for anyone planning (or longing) to visit Tokyo. Enjoy! (Adobe Reader required.)

S.K.I.N.

Imagine you are NOT from an Anglo-Saxon country. So rock musicians from your country are never famous world-wide.

Then two of the best rock stars for you back in school days, each the leader of a hugely popular rock band in your country, form a new group more than 10 years on, play the first gig, not in your home country but in Los Angeles, in front of screaming American fans.

How would you feel?

Well, this happened to me:


And it's not just rock music but also pianos, violin, and shamisen (a Japanese traditional guitar).

This is the final answer from Japan's rock music to the world. And here's more information on S.K.I.N. from a blog run by an American Japan's rock music fan.

In case you know the term "visualkei" by reading French Vogue or watching a German tv program, they are the best "visualkei" rock musicians.

Commix - Strictly (Metalheadz)

Commix has produced a couple of wicked tunes recently. This is one of them. His album is forthcoming from Metalheadz, Goldie's imprint. Watch this space.

This is a test post. As drum & bass tunes are of high quality these days, I should do something to let this be known to a wider audience. With the help of Blogmusik, I will start a music blog dedicated to drum & bass. If you click the above embedded music player, you will hear the tune, recorded from BBC Radio 1 programme hosted by Fabio on 23 June 2007. So it contains a couple of jingles of BBC Radio 1. This may be annoying, but this should be enough for you to appreciate the music and to buy drum & bass tracks.

A Sunny Day in London

Leave home around 10:30am, when the voice of a flatmate's girlfriend upstairs starts depressing me. Hop on a double-decker, heading for Shoreditch, the edgy area of East London. Getting off, walk towards Macondo, my favorite cafe on Hoxton Square. Find funky railings on a backstreet building on the way.



Arriving at Macondo, order seafood paella and chicken salad with mixed berries yogurt smoothie. Start reading an article on the June issue of Monocle, interviewing a Russian opposition PR woman. The smoothie comes first, which could have been colder on such a sunny day. But the paella and the chicken salad are gorgeous, a rarity in London.

Tired of reading Monocle, leave Macondo and enter Hoxton Square park. Following other Londoners, lie down on a lawn in the sun. With my iRiver MP3 player---a resistance to iPod dominance---start listening to the music London gave birth to: drum and bass.

Fabio's liquid funk mix and London's rare sunshine make me drowse a while. Waking up, notice that people keep visiting the White Cube gallery, which is usually closed on Sundays. With my headphone still on my ears, visit the gallery only to find it's the exhibition of latest works by Damien Hirst, probably the most popular contemporary artist in UK. Without being moved at all, leave the gallery and think about where to go next.

Walk down to Old Street tube. Find a graffiti of high quality beside rubbish bins.



Take the Northern Line to London Bridge. From the station, walk towards the City Hall. Realize that the City Hall has a really strange shape, with the Tower Bridge aside.



Walk along the Themes to the west, heading for the Tate Modern museum. Quite a few, but not an overwhelming number of, tourists.

Arriving at the museum, enter the Level 2 gallery, which is in my view the best gallery in Tate Modern. Like Anselm Reyle's works. Futuristic because he uses silver foil, neon colors, and mirrors. And stylish because for contemporary art works, they don't depress viewers. Wish I would have money in the future to buy his works to decorate a large, inorganic room for playing back music.

Getting out of the museum, see St Paul's dome looms across the river.



Turn back and head for Southwark tube station by following orange lamp posts. Take the Jubilee line to Green Park because there is an M&S above the station, where I can buy decent whole milk (I can't stand British milk on the usual supermarket shelf).

Then stop by at a Caffe Nero at the corner with Dover Street, ordering Frappe Latte with an extra espresso shot. Sit at a table outside, watching red double deckers and red bendy buses passing on Piccadilly, which makes me look back at the past five years of my life in London.

I could have visited Dover Street Market, Rei Kawakubo's revolutionary brand clothes store. But prefer not being reassured that any good-looking clothes in London are not affordable. Go back to Green Park tube station, taking Piccadilly and Central Lines to get home with Monocle at hand and earplugs inside my ears to silence the sound made by the clunky train carriages.

Tip for copy-and-past

I've long been grumpy about copy-and-pasting. When you want to copy and past some text on a webpage to, say, your Word file, not only letters but also the font format, which is different from your Word file text font format, is also copy-and-pasted. I finally understand how to avoid this. See this webpage.

A moving quote

"Don't discount Africa. The giant has woken up. You can feel it. I tell you because I travel in Africa a lot. You can see the pride in people's eyes. ... We are awake now. It is coming." ---Titus Naikuni, CEO of Kenya Airways (Monocle, Issue 03, May 2007, p.69)

Nigeria

During the past few weeks, the British media (ie. FT and The Economist) has produced revealing articles on Nigeria.

Andrew Jack of Financial Times reports Nigeria's war on fake drugs.

By the turn of the millennium, Nigerians had become among the world’s most frequent victims of fake drugs.

The Economist reports, two weeks in a row, how Nigerian politicians rig elections:

In Anambra state, most people could not vote at all. They turned up at the voting stations, but often INEC's officials [that is, electoral commission officials] simply did not arrive. When a polling station did open, usually about six hours late, the officials did not have enough materials, notably a register, to let voting begin. On a tour of a dozen voting stations in the state capital, Awka, on the afternoon of polling, your correspondent did not see a single vote being cast, just angry mobs of frustrated would-be voters saying they had been “disenfranchised”. Barely any polling stations were provided with a results-sheet, on which officials and party agents are supposed to record the number of votes cast for each party; presumably these were being filled in elsewhere. ("How to steal yet another election" The Economist, 21th April, 2007)

On the day of the presidential election money-politics could be seen in action in central Kano, the dusty, dilapidated industrial capital of the north. There, in the local government area of Fagge, the PDP had budgeted 35m naira for political “mobilisation” and the main opposition party, the All Nigerian Peoples' Party (ANPP), 40m naira. In one ward, Fagge A, the PDP, according to one of its operatives, had budgeted 594,000 naira ($4,650) for 21,000 registered voters and 35 ballot boxes. Thus each “independent” presiding officer at the polling station was given 3,000 naira and his clerk 2,000 naira. Each policeman was getting 1,000 naira. That left payments of about 200 naira ($1.57) per voter—whose votes, far from being secret, were inked with a thumb on the ballot in front of party agents. Multiple voters, who will have registered several times with sympathetic election officials, might vote ten times, at a reduced bulk rate of 100 naira—still picking up a tidy 1,000 naira each. The friendly officials are paid for a variety of services, one of which is not to scrutinise the register too closely. Hasia, for example, had just voted with the registration card of her mother, who had already voted herself. Hasia had the second of her mother's two cards. She has probably not even reached the legal voting age of 18. Her card clearly identified its owner as being 60 years old, but this had not proved a problem with the right official. ("Big men, big fraud and big trouble", The Economist, 28th April 2007)

But there are pockets of the bright side as well. The war on fake drugs starts paying off.

Recent studies suggest that the proportion of fake and unregistered medicines in Nigeria has dropped to less than 20 per cent over the past six years.

Foudeh Darwish, the Lebanese managing director of Afrab-Chem, a manufacturer of antibiotics and other drugs based in Lagos, ... shows me the plans for his new ₤2m factory set to open later this year in compliance with international quality manufacturing standards. "Two years ago, this would not have been possible," he says. The investment is a sign both of new demand within Nigeria for high-quality medicines, and a reduced threat that genuine regulated products will be undermined by fake alternatives.("Lethal Doses", FT Magazine, 7 April, 2007)

Cross Rivers, one of the 36 states of Nigeria, has a good state governor:

In the state capital, Calabar, the streets have no pot-holes. According to the state government, every village is connected to the national grid and everyone has access to clean water. ... Cross Rivers has no oil wealth. [State Governor Donald Duke] has achieved all this on a fraction of the money available to his neighbours. Instead, he has frozen official salaries, cleverly exploited existing resources and taken on debt. In partnership with private investors, he is also responsible for Tinapa, the largest retail and business development in west Africa. It contains several new giant studios to grab a large slice of the $200m-300m a year "Nollywood" film industry, which churns out, by some estimates, more films than either of its rivals in Los Angeles or Bombay.

You've never heard about Nollywood? The Economist already reported it last July:

IT ALL started by accident in 1992, when Kenneth Nnebue, a Nigerian trader based in Onitsha, was trying to sell a large stock of blank videocassettes he had bought from Taiwan. He decided that they would sell better with something recorded on them, so he shot a film called "Living in Bondage" about a man who achieves power and wealth by killing his wife in a ritualistic murder, only to repent later when she haunts him. The film sold more than 750,000 copies, and prompted legions of imitators. Nollywood, as Nigeria's film industry is known, now makes over 2,000 low-budget films a year, about two-thirds of them in English. ("Nollywood dreams", The Economist, 27th July 2006)

I'm rather impressed by Nigeria's potential both in the right and wrong directions.

DNB in Week 15 of 2007

Fabio's BBC Radio One show last night played several excellent stylish liquid funk tunes (artist name(s), title in quotes, and record label name in parentheses, followed by my comment):

High Contrast featuring Diane Charlemagne "If We Ever" (White) --- An old skool flava with High Contrast's upperclass sophistication.

Unknown artist "Piece Of Heaven" (Zinc Remix) (Bingo) --- This is exactly what drum & bass heads call a BAD TUNE. The bassline is really bad. It's so imcompatible with soulful, smooth female vocal that the result is a perfect match.

Calibre "Dirty Mind (VIP remix)" (Signature) --- minimalist summer cosiness.

Insight "No Love" (Progress) --- Listen to a MP3 sample provided by Juno Record.

Tidal feat Olivia "So Sexy" (White) --- A summer liquid funk featuring female vocal from a new drum & bass talent.

Total Science "Divided We Stand" (White) --- Another BAD bassline.

A.I. "Desperado" (Liquid V) --- A masterpiece. One of the tunes that established, back in 2004, the current popularity of liquid funk. Listen to a MP3 sample provided by Juno Record.

The Nature of Cell Science

Check out this music video clip by Dirk Pacholsky.

Robert Mugabe

The Economist article on the Zimbabwean President this week gives you a slightly different view on Mugabe: giving lessons to staff in the government, working punishing hours, frugal, teetotal, faithful to his wife...