Barcelona Pick Pockets

Returning from a New Years Eve concert in Barcelona, walking in the side streets towards the La Rambla tourist street with my wife and daughter, I got pick pocketed. I was somebody pretending to give away leaflets and showed some business card. He was first acting really annoying and starting to play and touch. My natural reaction is to immediately check my back pocket and yes my wallet was gone. I lept to my feet and ran after him, ready to ram him into the alley walls. He understood the situation and threw the wallet on the ground and ran. I could have run after him but I quickly checked that my cards were there, and yes all there. He probably would have removed the cash out but no luck for him, I had no cash. For a place like this full of tourists I don't think he would fight back with knife or so and the guy was smaller and weaker than me. I imagine I could have hurt him pretty badly ramming him into the walls. Safer for him to throw the wallet on the ground since most people would be happy at that point. If one out of ten would continue after him and say one of five is quick enough to figure it out and go after him, that would mean every 50th time he would be in severe trouble. I think the pick pockets most often operate in pairs, but maybe it was just way too safe and easy on this holiday.

Continuing someone else was playing the same pick pocket game. The card he showed us was exactly the same as the other guy showed us as the other guy so this was probably his regular partner in crime. I was not in the mood for a fight and did not want to cause any stir so I told him to get lost and put my hand over my back pocket to signal I recognized his game.

Barcelona is the number one pick-pocket city in Europe. A word of advice is to not use a wallet in your back pocket, which can be seen as an invitation to a pick pocket.

Visiting Chinese highlands - Part 3

Chengdu

After the visit to the highlands we enjoyed Chengdu.

Leshan Giant Buddha

The big buddha lies on the junction of  Minjiang, Dadu and Qingyi rivers. It is a massive 71m tall Buddha statue carved out of the sandstone mountain in the early 700 AD. This river junction was always plagued with big floods and people were desperate to solve the flooding issue. "Why not build a big Buddha to protect us from the floods?". For a non-believer like me it is an idiotic idea, but why the heck, it may have done wonders for all I know. Maybe the big luck was it being a big tourist attraction.

On the way up to the Buddha I photographed a nice statue of a lion, when I caught up with my wife she told me it means bad luck to photograph that statue. It was written on it in chinese of course and with my chinese reading skills it made no difference. For a non-believer like me it was a tough time playing cards later. I think my unlucky cards for the next week would be far beyond statistically possible. Of course I was the laughing stock of everyone as well, "Do you believe in the lion now?". 

Now let me pick the Buddha's nose :-)

For some people, a white guy like me was just as big of an attraction

There's more and more tourists coming to China, even platinum blonde white guys like me. less and less often it happens but sometimes I get asked to join total strangers for a picture. Chinese generally has very little body hair so they also admire my blonde furry arms.

Family photo :-)

Golden Monkeys

My call name in china has for a long time been, "Jin-Hou-si", meaning golden monkey, which is not a bad call name. The name makes sense, first of all because

Mum and her baby

I have platinum blonde hair and furry arms, secondly because I am born in the year of the monkey. Although I have been called monkey before in not nice terms, in china monkey is a good, considered the smartest of the animals of the Chinese calendar.

and I am daddy monkey..

In a very nice scenic forest along the rivers we found my animal family and for some reason they had interest in me, maybe they thought I was one of them because of my blonde furry arms. These monkeys are playful like monkeys most, but are endangered and protected with maybe around 350 of them at this park.

Tour De Force of Face Changing

perforner at the Sichuan Opera face changing show

In Chengdu I visited the Sichuan Opera. The opera is famous for the face changing technique, something that has been popular since the ancient history. Technique has changed and these guys can now change mask in a fraction of a second, up to 10 masks in 20 seconds. 

Visiting Chinese highlands - Part 2

Chengdu

Early morning after arriving Chengdu we made the flight to the Minshan mountains in Sichuan, Qinghai part of the Tibetian plateau.

We arrived at Sichuan Jiuzhai Huanglong airport, and for the first time there was no pressure on the ears while landing, actually the opposite because the cabin pressure was higher than the outdoors this being at 3448 meters altitude.

The area is plagued by earthquakes due to the platonic plates come together around  here and creates the Himalayas. We drove by the village which was the epicenter of the Wenchuan earthquake in 2008, which claimed the life of more than 12.000 people. Our guide was a local hero from that incident. Her guide bus had been thrown off the road and she and the group of tourists had been on a two day walk to get to aid stations, thanks to her most of her passengers 32 people survived.

Huanglong

The park is at 3600m altitude and the bus passes some 4000m mountain passes to get there, so it is high up.

The air here has one third of normal partial oxygen pressure. Most passengers had some or severe altitude sickness problems. The effects were fever and headache and some people had to vomit. At several stations on the way they were selling oxygen that you would sit down and inhale for a while to get over the headache. Of course I had to try, although I got my headache later when we returned to the hotel

The water gets it colors from the high mineral content and sulphuric acidity.

The water here has an exterme clarity. Because of the high mineral content very little will grow or live in the water apart from one fish specie that seems to have adapted.

Jiuzhai Valley National Park

The day after we went to Jiuzhai national park which is also high up on the Tibetian plateau. The landscape here reminds me remarkingly of the Norwegian west coast with its fjords, it's almost as if I was there. It is strange to think that this is far beyond the tree limits in Norway. It's a little Norway elevated to 2500m height 

Juizhaigou, a little Norway at 2500 m height

Almsot like home in Norway

A little Geiranger?

This is defintely not the Sunnmørs-bunad, but maybe just as nice.

Where are the skinny kids?

When I look at old pictures I cannot help to notice how skinny kids were, myself included. My childhood life was a lot of play and activities.

Overweight Chinese kids

Where I go in China there's very little poverty, I go to cities much bigger than the Norwegian capital.When I travel around in China I can't help to notice that kids are rather heavy set, even more so than in my home country.  These are kids with parents who can afford good food, and good food is important in Chinese culture. However it's probably not the good food that is responsible for the weight gain, but rather the unhealthy fast foods and snacks. Even more so to blame is the lack of exercise. In the old days it was not a problem because the kids took part in the farm work and house work, but nowadays the only form of exercise is walking, and the Chinese like others have cars and buses. The only form of organized exercise you see in China is the old people performing Tai-chi in the parks.

In China the kids are still pushed hard to perform well in school. From the first grade they start competing with classmates being ranked among their classmates, and you have to be among the best to get into the schools that means something. Corporal punishment is still normal with parents granting permission to teachers to physically punish the kids. They would even ask to punish a little extra. However parents are generally not at home because of long work hours and when they are back focus on what is most important, the homework.  On the other hand the "one-child" policy have created an "only-child" society of spoiled kids, and no surprise Chinese kids just like Norwegian kids like computer games and social networking.

Universal problem 

Having seen a lot of the world, I can safely say that obesity is no longer just an american phenomena. Statistically too, the European countries are just as bad as america and the fattest people are found in the rich middle eastern countries such as Saudi Arabia and Kuwait. The contributing factors are...

• unhealthy food taste good and is cheaper and easier
• hard physical work no longer exists, neither at the farm or at the house 
• computer games are fun
• social networking is addictive
• the bus is more comfortable than walking, the car even more so

The american dream is the suburban life-style with big houses, large yards and a pickup truck. In Europe and Asia people seems to prefer city life. In cities it's harder to get to the outdoor activities, although city people walk more because car is difficult. On the other hand the suburban life centers around the car, but they have more outdoor activity opportunities.

The caveman's curse

Its been called the caveman's curse that the human genetics have no feedback to the brain that you need to diet. For the Darwin's "survival of the fittest" it meant "survival of the fattest". The fatter the better since the caveman could be going months without anything to eat. This is a curse for the modern man who has plenty of available food.

Sacrifice comfort

How to deal with it? Generally speaking one has to sacrifice the comfort choice.

• eat healthy rather than fast and tempting
• choose the healthy foods, good for those who actually loves the vegetables
• no snacks
• get fresh ingredients and take the time to make good food
• eat less
• use any chance to get exercise, may even save time
• take the stairs instead of elevator
• walk instead of taking bus
• use bicycle for short trips
• spend time on exercise
• gym, swim, sports
• get out, travel, walk trips, hiking
• physical work, gardening, building projects

Worlds fastest airport train?

When I return from Shanghai and take the airport train from Oslo airport, Gardermo-banen, and see the claims "Verdens raskeste flytog" it always baffles me? Gardermo-banen aiport train reaches a top speed of 210 km/hour while the Shanghai airport train reached 431 km/hour when I took it, which is more than double.

However, it is true, in fact Gardermo-banen is the "world's fastest average-speed airport train on conventional rails". Somewhat like saying "being best on wooden skis" like Aftenposten puts it.

Here is Aftenposten's story in 2010.
http://www.aftenposten.no/nyheter/iriks/Skryter-av-a-vare-verdens-raskeste-5314238.html#.UWrzkbVHKSo

Visiting Chinese highlands - Part 1

China, October 2012

This is my tenth visit to China and my first time to the Tibetan plateau. My wife is Chinese and likes to go back to see her friends and family as often as she can. I tag along a few times and when I do we try to visit various places in China. This time Finnair had started a new route to Chongqing so we took advantage of the low introductory prices.

Chongqing

The city is popularly called the "Fog" city since it is foggy most the year, apart from the occasional rain. Trees and plants thrive here because of the mist and warm climate. Humans on the other hand does not appreciate the rain so much, although Chinese don't seem to not mind because they get fair skin when they're not plagued by sun. Fair, light skin is considered status in China, meaning you're a city person, not a farmer.

The city resides on the junction of the Yangtzee river and Jialing. Further down the river they built the Three Gorges dam, worlds biggest dam capable of supplying one third of China's power when it is filled up.

The official population is 40 million people, same as the taxi driver tells us, the worlds biggest city. Not, it is only around 6.5 million following the metro standard, far below Tokyo's 38 million.
This city has a beautiful monorail system connection most of the city's local transportation. Otherwise this city is mostly hillsides along the river, very beautiful and at night it is a spectacular view of lights. The governor here, Bo Xilai was very popular for how the city was prospering, bought a lot of trees which made the city look nice, but because of such spending the city also got a lot of debt. Unfortunately he was mixed up covering up his wife's murder of a British businessman and was ousted of Chinese politics.

Dazu grottoes

A Buddha sanctuary made in sandstone is amazingly well preserved considering this dates back to 650 AD. Because of it's design the rain and water would never fall onto the statues along the wall. The very little maintenance would be to carefully clear off mosses since the sandstone is fairly fragile.
I like the Chinese form of Buddha better than the Indian. In China, Buddha is fat and happy, always smiling and laughing.

Chengdu, Jiuzhai, Huanglong and Yancheng - Part 2

Then the trip went to Chengdu where we flew up to the highlands and visited the Jiuzhai and Huanglong national parks. This is for part two. Thereafter we visited my in-laws and friends in Yancheng and then returned to Chongqing for the flight back to Oslo.  

 

Flying the AR.Drone with a PS3 game controller

I am getting better at flying my drone. This time I made a little hack on my Samsung Galaxy Nexus phone so that I could fly it with the PS3 Controller's analogue joysticks. The whole project was easier than I expected and my god it works like a charm, it is so much easier to control with the wireess PS3 controller.

How does it work? I start the Freeflight application and I use the PS3 to virtually control that application. My phone connects the PS3 game controller via bluetooth and the drone via WiFi.

How to do it?

1. Root the Android phone. That was the hardest part and my hack required flashing the phone
• I used the "Restore" hack with the Nexus Root Toolkit from WugFresh
• http://www.wugfresh.com/nrt/
2. Get the Six-axis Controller application for the phone from Dancing Pixels Studio
• Pair the controller with the phone's bluetooth
• Take a screenshot of the Freeflight in Piloting mode
• Map the PS3 buttons and create the controller profile
• Left and Right analogue sticks 
• "Start" for "Takeoff" 
• "X" for camera snapshot
• "Triangle" for switch cameras
3. Fly
• Start Six-axis Controller app
• Press power on PS3 controller, wait for sync
• Insert the battery in the drone
• Connect phone WiFi to drone
• Start Freeflight 2.0 app, start piloting, start recording, recording to USB stick may add another flying minute.
• Put phone in shirt pocket
• PS3 controller
• Hit Start to fly
• Fly using sticks (Easy)
• take pictures with X