Do I still want to continue with HKU? I’m not thát sure anymore. Although it might not be bad for me and also give me a nice few projects again. (Something practical finally! I’m quite done with the theory here..)

I found the Interactive Institute here. Looks like a nice place for projects. I’ve been thinking about staying there for some time. If at all I get in here at some place. Without diploms, without the language (which is more important here than in the Netherlands).

And spiritually the Netherlands would be a very interesting place. A lot of things are happening there. So maybe we can life there for some time. Start new projects there, explore what I want on that green sphere.

I’ve started to work again, small things, but still. Yesterday I continued walking through the methods I use in projects I did. The step of yesterday was making a mindmap of everything. Quickly the paper (A4) became too small :) There is a lot that I know, a lot I’m experienced in, a bit too much maybe? At least I should structure it a bit more now. I want to describe the methods, for myself and for ‘clients’.

And when I was going through some past projects I saw Lones again.. Did anybody made those things for real? I could use them now.. Or, in two months would be ok as well ;)

“This our concept video of the Emotion Stone, that transfers warmth, emotions and gestures over long distances. This video gives an example how it could work.”

The idea is to make a portrait of a number of international students including photos from their ‘home’ “back home” and the home they created here. Their own portrait – face – as a bridge between these two environments.

Together with Nikki, I was invited to join this project as interaction designer. Yesterday we had the first meeting over a fika in the student restaurant Kåren. Apart from Hubert ans us there were four others, of which one photographer. The rest I hope to get to know better in their roles here (I know some from the hiking); for the next meeting we planned to see what we came up and to devide the (flexible) tasks based on that :)

One of the ideas from this first brainstorm was from beauty product commercials enlarging a wrinkel on a persons skin and displaying facts about that part. The idea is to encircle the wrinkels in the students faces – as experiences in their lives, moments they laughed and cried – and to link these to the photographs around.

I really like the creative mood this whole projects gets me in again. The courses mainly got me in a philosophical mood. I miss the moments with Roy (a classmate from HKU) in which we just tried weird experiments without any direct goal. I got the feeling that these moments came from all the creative projects at HKU.

It was good to be in a project again. Very different from the project at the HKU. First of all because we had a group of four ‘leaders’. But also because we had a week for the whole project and it was hard to make a good separation of the tasks. Then it becomes more of a problem that we’re all leaders, because we were for example all responsible for the documentation, all responsible for the presentation, all responsible for the research.. Good learning moments. Also I finally experimented with putting together a presentation with my knowledge from the last years of interaction design. Thinking about every step, what to do, what effect it has, what do I want this step to lead to, etc.

Since my time experiments of the last weeks I’ve been trying to slow down more. But interesting enough my frustration inside the group came from me going to fast. Though I thought that this friction with other people’s time might be the hardest, it was not the first problem I encountered. The first difficult thing was that – much more than I thought – time was enclosed in my personal culture. How this striving for being in time is in every task I preformed. Wanting to finish something instead of going for quality. Going for quality also suits me way more, but actually doing it is step two.

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Well, we thought it was less social. During the experiment we held at our presentation the observing group noted that the group with the large bags was more social because they ate less. Of course not counting for the right environment and group differences, but still.

First is Järnpojke (Järn = iron, pojke = boy). First of all because I think it was kind a cute :) He was meditating here all day for the people who worked in the iron mines.

The people that lived and worked next to this little statue took good care of Järnpojke. He always wore some clothes, a scarf or a jacket when it was really cold.

The guide told that the story goes that you’re blessed if you stroke his head, but she thought that was nonsense she immediately added. That was the reason his head was so shiny.

There were more of these kind of meditating statues in Stockholm, nice :)

When we entered the museum (Moderna Museet) we could choose for an audio tour, which I didn’t as I like watching more. But some others did so the lady explained how this worked.

There was this MP3-player-stick with infra-read. When you were in the museum there were several ‘dots’ next to art works. Here you could point the MP3-player to and it would start telling a story.

There weren’t any other controls, except for one; you could point the MP3-player down, to the ground, and it would stop the audio. This reminder me of an umbrella-controlled MP3-player I once saw. With different gestures, like opening (start) or closing (stop) the umbrella, turning (next song) and others you could control the music which was kind a neat. But that was just a concept back then, here they made a little start with an actual product :)

Further they had a quite advanced toilet system.

First of all the lock. They had an explanation (in Swedish) on how to use the handle to close the toilet.As you can see you have to move the handle up to close and down to open. From this explanation I pushed the handle upwards and let it go again. Went very well.

Then, luckily I was already ready and washing my hands, the door suddenly opened! Apparently it wasn’t locked.. After some testing it seemed that you had to move the handle up further and that it then would stay up. Too bad there was no second feedback if you did it well. No problem for Swedish speaking people though as I guess the text will explain this..

Further they had this very good ‘dyson airblade‘, no airplane, but a hand dryer. I first saw this in the museum for Beeld en Geluid (Video and Sound? Well the museum attached to the Dutch public media archives). You slide you’re hands through this and they are totaly dry afterwards, working very well. On the other hand, using a lot of power also I guess and it is no disaster to not completely dry your hands..

As a last thing they had a CCTV system in the toilets. Outside the toilets there was a TV and you could see the toilet room, the toilets, the urinates, etc. This gave a bit strange feeling as you walked in, but when inside this was explained using another work of art:

(…) Al hoewel het niet mijn bedoeling is een toeristisch reisverslag te schrijven maar mij te concentreren op (…) onderzoek (…) kan ik het toch niet nalaten dit park aan te raden!

In Dutch he says that he is going to blog about research done on Antarctica and not a writing a tourist blog, although he cannot fail to recommend this Torres del Paine park.

What is interesting is that the rest of the blog is a pleasure to read I think. It is of course about this goal they had, getting to know the research done there. But more than just ‘in between the lines’ he tells about Antarctica and what they experience there. And I’ve never been into the Dutch royal family that much, but I really liked reading it, sad it only lasted for four days / posts.

What I also noticed is that he didn’t had any pictures in the blog which I hardly could understand. But after some looking around they were in a seperate photo gallery. What was more interesting is that this seems to be maintained by other people as the captions read, i.e. ‘De Prins van Oranje kijkt door een microscoop’ (‘The Prince of Orange looks through a microscoop’) whereas the posts are signed by ‘Willem-Alexander’. I thought about the security-card system here at Mälardalen högskola, we’re not allowed in all parts of the university, only in the departments were our courses are, not in the staff corridors, etc. Which really conflicts with the general atmosphere, and in particulary the relationship between students and teachers, which is very informal.

Systems not really adapted to the people inside.

Nikki helpt with following the IKEA manuals and creating a bed, table, chairs and a closet out of the seperate parts. Now I also now a little bit more what Your van ‘t Hek (a Dutch cabaretier?) ment with getting the IKEA slatted bed base (lattenbodem) together.

The room doesn’t have that ‘I just arrived here’ look anymore. The blankets on the ground are now replaced with a real bed. I put some of the stuff from my suitcases in the closet and in boxes.

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Most -offline- reactions I get are about the blog being in English :) I do that mainly because I want to document my experiences for a broader public. Not only my Dutch friends, but also the non-Dutch and other people who stumble upon this blog. I also found another blog a few weeks ago from a Dutch guy who also went on exchange to Mälardalen university here. So I write in English to tell my experiences from the university, from the course context and from the country, to more then only my friends.

Further I hope to develop my English writing in this way. I’m also translating parts while writing in English because I don’t know them yet. And a last thing, as soon as I enter another country, I start not only to use English to speak, but also to think. Then the same applies to my writings, as I already think of things to say, in English.

A short view of my apartment:

This evening we had the welcoming diner. They divided us into groups, we had to sit at certain places, it was an awkward situation. At my table the conversation didn’t really came to life. Most of the time – after some first introduction talks – we looked away, to other things, tables. Was it my dummy on the table? That got some conversations started though. Were we all thinking of talking to that person at the other table? Or the few empty chairs at our table which created some physical gaps? Or the lagom?

There also was a Swedish fashion show, with the royal family, miss IKEA and ABBA. Speaking of which, ABBA music was played all through the dinner :) Oh, and I got to wear a kind of ‘Jewish badge’; I got a pink paper for the (student) restaurant staff stating ‘Vegetarian’.

He told a story about a Japanese exchange student at Mälardalen who went on the bus. The bus was empty except for the driver and one other person. She went to sit next to the other person and later at school described how the person next to her was rather scared of her. Just as in the Netherlands – and many other countries I guess – the Swedes will pick the chair most far away from the other people. And here it might be more a case of ‘lagom’.

A new word he learned us was ‘lagom’. Swedish don’t take too much of it, but also not to less. Just about enough. Lagom means that you don’t take the space of someone else, don’t take up too much space for yourself, don’t eat to much at a party, just enough.

Yesterday afternoon we also got our first – well, mine at least – fika. Swedish coffee with a bisquit. I gave the coffee a fair try (I never drink it actually), but quickly switched back to tea again. But the fika itself is nice as it is more than only coffee (/ tea). It is a source for new ideas one said. I compare it a bit with the ‘retreat’ I do as an (interaction) designer; when you start doing something else – take the train, walk at the beach – thén, the ideas get born. And the fika is then also about meeting people, which get your mind thinking about things you normally didn’t thought of.

The first day at the university was nice. Although the presentations were not that interesting when you had read some documents of the universities web site before. The air is rather expensive here and they have a very nice interactive story of images on the wall here, which always ends with death though.

The academic system is really like the Montessori and the system of the HKU I know; a lot of responsibility is laid at the student with max. 10 contact hours per week, the rest is self study. By the way, I saw a Montessori (high)school here yesterday!

The Swedes are on time. Actually it is really funny to notice that this is the first time ever that at a school or conference we haven’t got a delay in the schedule. Instead, we’re ahead of the schedule!

The train trip from Eskilstuna (apartment) to Västerås (university) is very nice. I’m very happy with my choise of staying in Eskilstuna while studying in Västerås. Especially as I have much extra time after the train arrives and before the course starts.