In asses we unite...

Another victory!!

Photo: Glimt.no

BOOOYAAA, my superteam Bodø/Glimt did it again, and won a comfortable 4-1 yesterday! I watched the game on the web, where it skips and buffers all the time. I actually didn't know glimt had scored, until the commentator said "Wow, that could easily be 2-0" ;D Anyway, they won, scored a lot of goals. 3 by this guy, Thiago Martins...


Okay, that's all for now! :) Hope you're all having a smashing time!

Bodø/Glimt - Skeid this Saturday

Another match this Saturday, and this one is also shown on TV. Which means I'll be sitting in front of my computer, streaming the Norwegian tv-channel where I can see 20 sec of match, and 15 seconds of buffering:)

Oh, and one last message to Skeid...

Photo: Thomas Nygård

Trip to Beijing

2 weeks ago, Daggi and I went to Beijing on a "business trip". Maybe not exactly business, but we went to have 5 interviews with pulp&paper-people (for our thesis), and visit Norske Skogs factory in Hubei. And of course, since we were there, we had to take a trip to the Great Wall! :)

2007-04-10 Beijing

The first night we arrived we ended up with being a little disappointed with our hotel. We're not picky of any kind, and had only chosen the hotel on the basis of location, as it was close to the interviews we had the next morning. Anyway, to put it short; it isn't appropriate by a 5-star hotel to put business cards for "massage" under your door 3 times a day! And if case you wondered if it maybe was just some innocent massage, I wouldn't think so. I've never seen the "young russian lady"-massage on the massage menu at Dragonfly Shanghai, at least...

Linda, me and Marrie

The next day we had two interviews that went quite well, althou we were kind of shocked that the first one was with a lady. I had greeted her as "Mr Dong" in all the mails I'd sent her, but she didn't mention it, so neither did I ;) Later that day we had two interpreters arriving from Weifang. Daggi have really good guanxi with the GM at the factory he bought some gensets from, so he gladly lent us two girls to help us do interviews with Chinese people. They had never been to Beijing before, and didn't say no to a paid "vacation" =)

Daggi, Marrie and Linde on the train

Tuesday night we took the train to Shijiazhuang, a 2,5 hour trip from Beijing, to visit Norske Skogs factory. The train trip itself was surprisingly nice! It smelled a little funky, but what can you really expect! We were situated in bunk beds, 6 in each "booth". It was rather quiet, the other Chinese people were either sleeping or behaving, and they sold beer:) Quite nice!

Small piece of Norway

The factory visit at Norske Skog was great! None of us had ever seen a paper mill before, and it was some quite amazing machinery! The factory area was huge...600 x 600 meters, and big enough for 2 factories, actually. I was quite amazed, after seeing some fish factories in Vietnam, that the whole process was automatic! From the waste paper came in till the rolls were finished and ready to shipped out. In Norway it's how you have to do it since the labour cost is so high. But in China I would expect at least a little more people carrying stuff around :p The factory is actually China's 3rd largest newsprintmill, and still has only 300 people working there, and that is including sales teams and other office rats!

Tired of waiting, are we??!

The same night we thought we had a train ticket for 17.30, but as it turned out our Chinese helpers had bought tickets for 5.30! Now, I think it's quite amazing that they managed that, since they speak Chinese. I mean, if it was me, it would be like a 50/50 chance that I'd get it right. But on the other hand, it is quite amazing that the lady who sold the tickets, didn't think it was strange that people arriving at 23.00 at night, wanted tickets back 6 and a half hours later... Well, that's China for ya!! For us it ment we had to sitt 2 hours in a nice Chinese-train-station-waiting-room-smell, as well as a 3,5 hour traintrip back (since the train on the way back wants to stop on EVERY station!). Nice trip, anyhow :) And when we came back to Beijing, we had a hotel booked by one of the interviewees, so it was qualityassured;)

2007-04-12 Great Wall

The next day we booked a trip to the Great Wall. But as most of these tourist trips are, we had to stop on several of places where you get 5 min of explanation of what this is so Chinese and great, and 30 minutes to walk around and buy stuff. In this case; some old green stones, or some really expensive herbal medicine. Finished with that, and some tomb of some old emperor, it was set for the Great Wall! (See pictures in the album above).

That is one amazing wall!

And have no doubt; the wall really is amazing! Even if they built it today, it would be incredible!

Yeah, a funny thing about the emperor tombs! There are 13 of them, but they don't know how to open them. Because all emperors where burried with all their valuables (gold, silver and stuff) and sealed in a air-proof tomb, they set a huge fire before they closed the door, and created a vacuum in all the tombs. So if they open it know (they tried with one), everything gets destroyed because of oxidation (or something...). I think that's kind of cool :p

2007-04-14 Tianjin

The following weekend I took another train trip, and this time to Tianjin to have my IELTS test. The train trip this time was a little worse, as I sat upstairs in a two-story train, and it was sooooo hooooot! 30 degrees, at least!! Tianjin was not a very exciting city, but as with most small Chinese cities, it's a lot cooler to be a foreigner there :) Just finding a taxi made 10 Chinese people stand next to me and stare at me ;D The hotel standard did also decrease, as I had to pay for myself now. This one was so filthy that they called me at the room, twice each night, to ask if I wanted "Massage? She very beautiful." :) And at the breakfast, there weren't one single bit of food that could vaguely remind you about a Western breakfast. And I had to pay 5 kuai ekstra for coffee, which happened to be lukewarm Nestle instant coffee.

The IELTS is an English languagetest Emerson requires all international students to take. For most Norwegians it is a formality, but nevertheless it has to be done! The test consists of a listening part, reading part, writing part and a 15-minutes oral test. Personally I think everything was dead easy, but the Chinese students (I was the only foreigner) seemd to take it a little harder.

Anyway, with all the tests out of the picture, my application to Emerson is pretty much ready to be mailed :) Exciting!!

Work-out

Cat Refuses To Exercise - Click Here for more great videos and pictures!


You see? I'm not the only one hating the treadmill! Althou this guy might not justify it, it sure does help me not working out for another day ;)

HamKam 2 - Bodø/Glimt 3!

Oh yeah baby!! My dear Bodø/Glimt hit those Hamar bastards so hard today that they still don't know what happened! :D It's a magnificent feeling to beat a team on their own field, where they're favourite after winning their two first matches of the season. For both teams, this was the first match against some real competition, and we showed the rest of football-Norway who's going to be the champions this year!!

Damn, you people who doesn't like soccer must have a poor life ;D

Wo ai ni, coffee

Haha, my room smells like an office (read: coffee) :D Our 3 litre bucket of Instant coffee is my friend when I have to write to many pages in to little time ;)

YIPPIKAYFUCKINGYEY!!

OH YEAH,BABY!! I FINALLY NAILED THE GMAT!!

It feels so incredibly good, and the smile on my face when the score popped up today got to be the biggest one seen at Pearsons Shanghai! :D

Now, the reason for this unusual happyness over a quite normal GMAT-score is the fact that I've taken it before. And did insaaaanely bad. I'm not giving the score away here, but it was way below my expectations. What's even worse is that I studied for it more or less 4 weeks, and did worse than before I started reading for it! How's that for motivation?!

Anyway, in mid-January, when I figured out that I want to study in the US next year, I said to myself that no matter what happends, I'm gonna apply to Emerson, and it's gonna be a good application! It was this sort of "Britney-Spears-you-can-do-everything-if-you-set-your-mind-to-it" kind of thing, but it nevertheless was a promise I made to myself. Getting that first GMAT-score pissed me of big-time, and really demotivated me for some time.

But I stuck to my plan, since I knew that I could do better!! I booked a new GMAT-date, and started studying again! And what happends?? Well, I saw no progress....at all! I bought GMAT-tests from websites, took them, and did just as bad. Everytime. Even yesterday, and this very morning before my 2nd GMAT-test,I did just as bad!

"So how on earth did you, Jørgen Nøvik, manage to get a good score then?", you might ask. Well, here's what I did. And listen good, cause this might be the solution to get a good GMAT-score when you're unprepared (or just doesn't get it):

I took the metro downtown to the testcenter, sat down at Coffee Bean for a yacky iced coffee, and said:

"Man, if you fuck up ones more you're screwed. You'll never gonna get in with two below-50%-scores, hey, you're not even gonna be reviewed. Have you really spent this much money and time and traveled to another city for a language test, just to be screwed by the GMAT?? Are you really not better than the average person taking this test??"

I didn't answer myself on that question, but rather picked up my bag, turned on my mp3-player on top volume. And which song? That's right, MY WAY, with Frankie-boy! I stepped into that GMAT-office and said

"Hey you GMAT-test-girl!! Yea, that's right, I was here a month ago and did like shit, but guess what! This time is the last time you'll see my sexy ass walking out that little door of yours, cause with the score I'll get today you will never see me needing to take the GMAT again!!"

Okay, I didn't actually say that, but I had it in my mind! And I went in, started taking the test and thought "geez, this is not going better than last time at all!". I did lots of uncertain guesses, I thought, and was nearly giving up. So when I was finished and my puls was getting higher, I nearly flipped out by the score! It was actually 100 points better!! Most people say that taking the test a 2nd time without studing a shitload is a waste of time, but HAH! Prooved you wrong!!

For those who are unfamiliar with the GMAT, I can say that it is a test where you score between 0 and 800. Those scoring 800 are like...1 out of 200 000 or something. Getting above 700 is about 2-3% of the test-takers, I guess. I'm not applying to Harvard, so I'm not one of those who yearn for scores above 700. Average is about 530, or something, so me now getting 100 points better might say more about my first score than my last :) Anyway, I'm now amongst the top 24%, which is in good range of what Emerson requires! =)

So, now I have the joy of writing 20 pages for the thesis before Sunday afternoon at 6 pm! THAT will be another challenge, but a lot easier to take on now as the GMAT-burden is of my shoulders:)

I'll never understand the Japanese

You know, I was thinking that I'm finally starting to get the Chinese. After 8 months I think I sort of understand most of their actions. So naturally I started thinking that I might figure out the Japanese people one day, too. Untill I saw this movie...

Japanese Air Sex - Click Here for more great videos and pictures!

A visit from mom and sis :)

My mother, Bente, and sister, Gøril

A couple of weeks ago I had my dear mom and sister visiting for 8 days. They'd never been to Shanghai before, althou my mom visited Beijing last year. Their overall impression of the city seemed to be good, and I didn't here any negative comments about anything! Guess I showed them the right places then ;)

Dining at a BBQ-place, opposite of the Nanjing Lu fake-market

Not to brag, but I'm quite satisfied with my guideing the week they were here =) We started of by visiting the new shopping area nearby Fudan. As the prices there are a little stiff (compared to Qi Pu Lu, heh..), and we all had a short nights sleep behind us, a lot of shopping didn't exactly find place.

The mandatory Teppanyaki dinner :)

The next day we went to the silk market to get some clothes tailored. I had to push them around for a couple of hours before they actually got some suites made, and they were quite happy with the results :) My sister is in the convenient situation of fitting just about everything that is already made in the market, so she didn't have to get everything specially tailored.

Chinese supermarket (or WalMart...)

The rest of the days we did 3 fake markets, Qi Pu Lu (the huge clothes market), Teppanyaki dining, arabic (or tuskish, or something...) dining, Yu Yuan garden, walking in poorer districts and so on. For more selected photos from their visit, just click the picture below.

2007-04-07 Besøk av mamma & Gøril

Oh, and Stian...NO, you're not getting my sister's e-mail adress!

Movie of the Day

Feeling down or bored? Have a look at this little fella! Wish it was this easy to cheer up :)

Giggling Baby is Comedians Dream Audience - Click Here for more great videos and pictures!