Monthly Archives: August 2011

Grill Bar in Beijing

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Met up with some Swedish work colleagues after work today. Martin and Micke are working in Beijing while Christian were, like Calle and me, visiting.

Micke had made reservations on a Western style grill/bar not so far from the office. Though it was raining so we got a taxi ride there and it took 10 minutes or so, me sitting in Christian’s lap since it was 5 of us and room for only 4 passengers. It turned out we had to make a quite big detour to get there and that’s why it took 10 minutes by car, though it would have taken the same time to walk there.

We had a nice evening talking about our company and the recent events in the telecom industry and more. It was also nice to see Martin, Micke and Christian again. They have all been working in Tokyo a while back but now moved to Beijing (Martin and Micke) and back to Lund (Christian).

Afterwards Calle and I got into a taxi but he refused to drive us. It was then that we understood that we were not so far from our hotel as we thought we were. It was basically “just around the corner” 🙂 It took us 10-15 minutes to walk to the hotel, and we passed the Szechuan restaurant we visited when we arrived to Beijing.

Yunnan Restaurant

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After work today Calle and I joined with Liew and he took us to Beijing’s fashionable area. It was a bit tricky to get there because the Taxis seemed to not want to pick us up for some reason. We tried for 10-15 minutes outside our Beijing office, with several free taxis passing by without wanting to pick us up 🙁

So we walked to our hotel (15 minutes) and got rid of out bags. Then tool a taxi from the hotel instead. Once at the fashionable area we had a quick visit to a real (yes they have those too) Apple Store where I used the free Internet access 🙂



But our visit here was not for the Apple Store but for dinner. Liew had reserved a table at a Yunnan restaurant. It had a lot of awards for being the best Yunnan restaurant in the area. It was very yummy!

Work Trip to Beijing

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It’s Sunday and I am going to Beijing. I’ll be there the whole week to support the Open Source work there and to carry out Open Source training together with my work colleague Calle from Lund.

Getting to the Marriot Courtyard hotel always (well this is the second time in Beijing) proves to be tricky. This time I brought a map, but still the taxi driver seemed to not know where the hotel was located in the beginning. Though we ended up at the right place in the end.

Once at the hotel I went to their gym for a workout. First time since going on a vacation a while back. Did some running and some chest. Felt really great to workout again 🙂

In the evening I met Calle and we went for a dinner to a Szechuan restaurant about 5 minutes walk from the hotel.



The food was good and the restaurant was quite nice. It seemed to be an old restaurant with old wooden floors etc. After the dinner we went directly back to the hotel. And I went to bed.

Kobuchihama Starting to Move into Temporary Homes

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Finally the small fishing village of Kobuchihama is getting temporary homes. From August the first could start moving in to their new, but temporary, homes. However this has some complications.

From living together in group where all costs were shared to now living with only your family or alone. It also means many people need to get hold of things all of us take for granted in a home. But without any means to pay for it since they still have not got their fishing industry going. Resulting in that the only means to get an income is to go to the mainland and clean up areas that was destroyed by the tsunami. For that each person get 2000 JPY a day.

This also means the help we provide have changed. In the beginning they did not have anything. So the most urgent and important things to help out with at that time was water and food. But now they have a small income and food supplies reach the area so there is food available in grocery stores etc. Some still need help with the basic things for starting their new life in the temporary homes though.

With the help from Ishihara-san, we have shipped a few things directly to some families that recently moved into their new temporary homes. The basic need is to be able to keep it clean so they had asked for help getting vacuum cleaners, dehumidifiers, and air cleaner. You can find the details here.

Review of Piren Bar

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Helena, as we talked about when we had dinner at Mäster Anders the other day, we promised to let you know how Piren Bar was after our visit there. For short, you do not need to visit!

The food is only OK, and you would expect something more for that price. The desert, a rhubarb pie with vanilla ice cream was a real disappointment – it was a rhubarb compote topped with pieces of cardamom rusk (kardemummaskorpor). Cold. I had expected a yummy hot delicious rhubarb pie directly from the oven with melting creamy vanilla ice cream on top.

  • View: 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂
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  • Food: 🙂 🙂 🙂
  • Service: 🙂 🙂 🙂
  • Overall: 🙂 🙂 🙂

We had a visit to Mancini at Tunnelgatan as well. It is in the same price range but much better experience, if you like Italian food. The food was excellent and you could feel the personnel loved Italian food and were proud of working at Mancini, whereas at Piren Bar the service was not bad but you felt the personnel did not really care if they worked there or at any other restaurant in Stockholm.