Sauna, Crayfish & Uni

Hey there again, It's week 4 of uni here in Sweden. Even though I have 2 assessments every week at the moment, I have managed to get in a couple of cool events in the last week. The (compulsory) student union in Chalmers owns a cute little property by a lake 45mins from Göteborg. This includes the biggest woodfired sauna in Scandinavia, seating 50people! 

Above is the smaller half of the sauna. After 15mins of 80degrees it is time to walk 3metres outside and jump in the lake

In winter the lake freezes over, and they dig a hole in the ice for 'cooling down'.

The Lake is definitely needed when it gets very steamy up the top from wetting the stones.

This night also included some Swedish songs, Swedish food and games.

I also went to a crayfish dinner organised for the civil engineers, in the on-campus party room (aka. a hollowed out train carriage). As expected it involved eating crayfish. It is a tradditional celebration for the ending of Summer.

So some might be wondering what uni is like over here? Well not that different to back home, except that the timetable is messed up and you can resit exams! Like back home there are some really good teachers and some average ones. 

My project management teacher is very funny, and great at getting his messages across. After we submit our assessment task each week for PM, we come together as a class and have a seminar regarding the case study. It is really interesting to see all the different interpretations and considerations from classmates, and is a VERY effective tool in learning project management skills including communicating your ideas and active listening.

My other subject is Wastewater engineering. To relate what we where learning in class to real scale, we got to visit the local wastewater treatment plant. What really struck me was the architectural and artistic design of the facility. I think investing in a nice workplace and taking pride in your work is such an import thing. I think if people like where they work they are more likely to drive process improvements.

This is where waste sludge is anaerobically digested at 36degrees for many days, producing biogas.

This is a trickling filter used for nitrification of wastewater. The packing material is special plastic with high surface are to allow many microorganisms to attach and process the nitrogen. The problem with ammonia and nitrates in water bodies is that it can lead to eutrification (rapid growth of algae which removes the oxygen needed for plants and animals).

Getting Goteborg

It has been a month now since I first arrived. The first couple of days a summer cultural festival was held with free concerts, museum admission and a street parade. Just to get it out of the way- the weather here is terrible, windy+wet, and it is only going to get colder! Somehow the weather was perfect when a friend of a friend took us on an adventure to the islands. I must've eaten at least 5punnets worth of blackberries.

David & Uwe from Germany and David & Manuel from Spain

During orientation week we were put into groups to do activities run by some very nice current students.

Crossing the fountain with our group.

Many parties ( a months worth of an activity almost every day) were organised by the international reception committee and (compulsory) student union. One of the best nights was FestU where around 7bars, 7dance floors, a jumping castle, movie room, ball pit and swimming pool all were open in the enormous student union building.

FestU!

Quick Boring Facts:

# I hate IKEA, too crazy and busy when I went

# Alcohol is bought from government store, same price as OZ, but instead of buying a case, you buy individual cans for the equivalent unit price= good for trying out different types

# There is so many food stores on campus, but there are also many public kitchens with fridges and microwaves

# Public transport is good, but finding the small number of places to buy your passes is hard

# Exams can often be resat

1st place in Young Engineers Project- World Engineering Convention WEC2011

Earlier this year I received an mass email from Engineers Australia about applying to do a project for WEC2011. Somehow my night-before only-1-page CV application hit the right notes, and I was selected for the project "Thermal Energy Storage Systems Using Packed Rock Beds". Note that the photo I included on my application was of me wearing full hi-vis PPE my coach who selected me thought I was male. This made me feel confident that I hadn't been selected as a token female!

Primarily this task involved research and modelling.  Although our original scope was not completed, the models came together in the end and were technically sound. In one day our present team members (5 total) worked hard and finished the model, prepared a poster and developed a power point presentation. The next day we presented our work infront of a dury of about 10 middle aged men. Luckily for us the judges where very technical and serious, which was advantageous to the format of our presentation as suggested by our coach. Also two of our team members had excellent knowledge in this field and were able to confidently answer the judges left field questions. Although the experience itself was so amazing, the icing on the cake came when our team was placed first out of the 15 multinational teams.

 The team working hard preparing our model, poster and presentation.

Nervous photo before facing the judges. 

The team very excited after coming first out of 15 Young Engineering Teams, WEC2011.

The conference opening session with many representatives from Kuwait sponsors.

Swiss friend managed to get us into an WEC event at a nearby university for free. This building is seriously amazing.

 The food at this event probably cost more than my entire months food budget. Met the president of KFEO (Korean Federation of Engineering Organisation). He was a Civil Engineer, we ended up talking about Civil engineering applications in space! Dreams do come true right?

 I really like the design of these bins

The city of Geneva hosted the WEC2011 convention. After having visited the rich, business like, clean and historic city of Zurich,  Geneva did not even seem related. As pointed out by a team member all buildings in the city center were the same height of about 7 stories, making navigation hard at times. When standing at the train station we saw about 3+ very public drug dealers, with one of them doing business with 2-3 customers per minute! The highest denomination of coins in Switzerland is approximately $7AUD so it was very entertaining to see people buying a hit with only a few coins.

I was very lucky to have a friend show me some of the "underground" style clubs in the area. The Swiss really know how to hide there best places from the tourists. Truly amazing experience. The first one we visited was in what looked like an abandoned building. Features- ping pong table, very cool random art. The second one had a courtyard that looked like it was from a fairytale.

Behind these walls lye amazing little night spots.

 The red light district here is huge. This is where you find the cheap food.

This is one of the buildings at the United Nations- Geneva

 The famous water jet of Lake Geneva

Geneva is like the product of shaking the world around and seeing what people get mixed together. So many differnet cultures and faces. At times walking the street of Geneva felt like walking in some messed up time warp. People where dressed in clothes from all decades in this last century. One small example of this made me realise why burquas are cool-  they can hold your mobile phone to your ear, so you have two hands free.

Very unique city where sometimes you don't know which way is up.

Dreaming over Denmark.