Happy Thanksgiving!

Happy Thanksgiving to all of you, I hope your Turkey Day was a good one. I hope you know that I give thanks for you all. You may remember me mentioning my dislike for the way that coffee is made here in Norway. I've found something else that I give thanks for. In the main eating area that waffles are served in every Friday, a coffee machine was installed, and it wonderful. It gives you a choice of espresso shots, French or Italian lattes, mochas and hot chocolate. It makes me very happy. Here is a picture of this great machine, and you may notice the mug is a Boeing coffee cup:


I had my own Thanksgiving dinner in Trondheim with my roommates. I was at the store several days before, and saw a meal mix that you cook with water or milk to as well as cooked meat. It was called amerikansk gryte, which as far as I can determine is basically American pot/meal. It looked like nothing from the U.S. that I was familiar with, but I bought it anyways in order to have an ironic Thanksgiving dish. I also wished to have a REAL American food to share with my roommates, because I could not guarantee that the amerikansk gryte would be edible. I made proper macaroni and cheese, with three types of cheese as well as cream, and baked it in the oven. Here is the finished result:


You can see the amerikansk gryte in the pot with the spoon, which we had over rice, and the mac & cheese in the dish above it. The mac & cheese was a huge success, and even though there we were only three people, we nearly finished the huge dish between us. The amerikansk gryte, however, was met with mixed criticism. It was in no way bad, but there was nothing really that great about it. One of my roommates said it reminded him of cafeteria food in middle school, something that they put all the bits of everything that nobody want into and make a stew with. I'm tempted to agree with him. After making it and tasting it, I still am not quite sure what is American about it, the closest thing to it would be chili, but that would be a stretch.


Here are the two roommates and me. Sebastião, from Portugal, is on the left and Henning, from Germany, is on the right. Omid, the third roommate from Iran, was too busy studying to join us for dinner. All classes are done with now and everyone is studying for exams that are happening for the next few weeks.

In terms of my research, I am still playing around with calibration of the material model. I don't quite know everything that I'm doing, so there are many occasions when I'll be working on some aspect of it for a day or two, and after reaching a result, I'll show my results to Tore, my Professor. He will then tell me, no, I am incorrect and show me the proper way to do it, and I will go back and in several short hours i will have the correct result. I don't mind though, this is the way I prefer to learn and I definitely am learning. I would like be working towards some of the physical experiments that will be done, but the lab technicians are very busy, and there are delays. Hopefully in the next week or so we will start breaking things for real. My fingers are crossed.

One other thing that I have done here is look over and correct a few documents for grammar. Being a native English speaker, they wanted me to check them over and make sure everything makes sense. I do not have much input to give them, they're English is impressively good.

It's getting cold here. It's been below freezing here for the last three days, around 20 degrees F. Supposedly it will get above freezing on Wednesday for two hours or so. It snowed last night, leaving three-quarters an inch on the ground. Here is a picture of where I live covered in snow, I took it on the way to school today:

Now that we have entered the Christmas season, people have been counting down to Christmas. One fun surprise has been ths Advent wreath that the SIMLab has:


It is made from square aluminum tubes that have been crushed in an experiment. These four tubes were grouped together during the experiment, and during the impact, became stuck together as they collapsed. The hollow centers have been packed full with metal shavings to make a place for the candles to stand in. I had a grin on my face after seeing it.

Daylight is down to about five and a half hours now. The sunlight always looks like late afternoon, which is a bit disorienting. I'm getting used to the dark.

Farewell, and another update soon!

A month gone by!

I've now been here for a month! 35 days, in fact. I hope that everyone had a good Halloween, I meant to go to Nidarosdomen (Nidaros Cathedral) graveyard to take pictures to be in the theme, but I went on a hike instead that day. I went with Victor, his girlfriend Idun and their friend Magnus to a mountain called Gråkallen (explained to me as the "gray old man", where the word kallen is used to refer to hills/mountians). It's 551 meters tall and was a good hike to get to the top.

The day we went was very foggy as we left Trondheim, taking a streetcar out of town to get into the Bymarka, a wooded recreational area to the west of town. This is a big place, with an area of about 80 square kilometers. I took a picture of Trondheim as we left it, and you can see the fog hanging over the city:

We stepped off the streetcar at a small station in the wilderness and started off on a trail towards the mountain. During the winter, this trail is used for cross-country skiing. They even have street lamps lighting it in places (Narnia's Lamppost, anyone?) The scenery was beautiful, and there were little enclosed fields as we walked past. Here is one filled with fog, I liked the look of the fog hanging in the air with sun beams shining through:


The hike had hardly any snow present, but it was quite cold out so there was iced over pools of water. In some cases the pools were deep enough and the ice thick enough that you could walk on it and the ice would not crack. You could then jump up and down a little on it and have it crack little by little underneath you until water began seeping through. Ah, taunting nature. In some places, the ice froze in weird formations, like the picture below shows. This occurred several times, and the ice was not in sheets, but its a spidery web of bars of ice. There's no water below the ice either. It was weird and different, so I too a picture of it.


It was also cold enough to freeze the some of the water in the ground, so that you would be walking over frozen mud unless you would break through the iced mud-crust and sink into the soft and unfrozen mud below.

We reached the top as the day approached sunset. The morning fog had cleared away by midday. Since the daylight savings switch, its already dark here by 4:30, and the days are still getting shorter. I took a picture at the top of the mountain as the sun was setting. The day gets cooler and fog starts collecting over the fjords. The top of the mountain is over the fog layer, so you get to look down on a sea of clouds. While Trondheim may not have the same kind of fjords as the ones that are constantly photographed in the fjord country of Norway, it still is quite beautiful.



Looking East on top of the mountain, you can look down into Trondheim as the sun sets, and the moon rises in the background:


Looking South from the mountaintop, on another arm of the fjord as it's covered with fog, with mountains in the background:


This is much of the same view as the picture with me in it, but after the sun has set more. Looking North-East from the top of the mountain. I know this picture does not do the scene justice, and a HDR image would probably be much more pleasing to the eye. I don't have such abilities, so instead you get bits of the sunset and fog, and an underexposed hillside.


Just a picture of the sun setting behind mountains and obscured by clouds:


The work/research I'm part of is starting to pick up, and I'm started to do things besides reading. The tests will have a simulation built from finite elements to do some numerical modeling of the experiment, as well as to calibrate to test data after it has been generated. One of the jobs that was assigned to me was to calibrate a numerical material model of the steel that we will be testing. The goal is to have a mathematical model for the performance of the material so that once calibrated, virtual simulations can be done at much less cost than full scale laboratory testing.

I've never done something like this and am a little out of my element, but with the help of the other students as well as the Professor, I'm plowing through it (making many mistakes, of course). I'm also finding some time to work on my thesis that I owe Professor Stanton back at the UW, to keep it moving towards completion.

When not working or hiking or sleeping, I have spent a good deal of time walking or running around Trondheim, just exploring. I brought very few books with me, but I do have some audio books on my iPod that I've been listening to as I walk. While listening to Frank Herbert's Dune, I came to the conclusion that Vikings are merely Fremen who are from a harsh, cold and icy environment instead of a hot desert one. Now I am listening to Tolkien's Lord of the Rings. It's been interesting how similar many of the names in the saga seem to be Scandinavian inspired.

I'm sorry that it was so long between updates, I'll try and be more frequent with updates.

After the first full week...

Sorry for the delay in posting about what I am up to. A disclaimer about this post, it will be a long one.

I'm beginning to settle into a routine here, usually getting to school between 8 and 9 and leaving around 5. At school, I've mostly just been reading about what I'll be working on. Almost everything that I've learned before coming to Norway and the Structural Impact Laboratory here at NTNU has to do with earthquake engineering. It turns out that there are very few earthquakes in Norway, and while they focus on impacts here, I have never had to learn about impact loading of structures or the related fields. This means that I've been trying to bring myself up to speed on impacts through a crash-course (clever, no?) of reading papers and books on the subject.

I've found two books through the library that have been very helpful, and several papers through the internet, as well as from students and professors. Two of these papers happen to be written in Norwegian. I know very, very little Norwegian, but I've been trying to wade through them through the best of my ability. It turns out that Google Translate works far better than any translator I have ever used, and while it is not perfect, it helps me get 50% of the words. With the help of Google and a very basic understanding of the Norwegian language, I can sort through the papers and get the gist of them. I've made up lists of words that I could guess meanings of and then took them to the professor I am working under, Tore. He got a laugh out of my attempts to do so, but told me I was doing a good job, and encouraged me to continue. I doubt he expected me to do something like this.

I've found out a bit more on the testing that I will be a part of here in the lab. It turns out that there is very little instrumentation that is used for the tests. They use a load cell which is used to measure the force exerted on the pipe section during the tests, and they use a pair of synchronized high-speed cameras to record how the object deforms. That is all they plan on using for these tests. Professor Tore told me that I may have an opportunity to work with one of the technicians on another set of tests for him to better understand how the high-speed cameras work. The professor is very interested in blast- and impact-loading of structures, and one of his other projects involves lightweight protective structures. He is looking into how to best use lightweight materials, like aluminum, to protect things from harm. Simply put, he's shooting bullets at aluminum plates and seeing how well they perform as armor, while recording the entire test with high-speed cameras. I'm looking forward to being involved, or even just observing these tests.

While I was at the University of Washington, I met a student who was doing the reverse of what I am doing now. Victor came from NTNU to study geotechnical engineering at the University of Washington. He's now back at NTNU and he has been incredibly kind to show me around and help me better get to know the place. He's also been nice enough to let me tag along to events and meet some of his friends. Last Tuesday we went climbing at an outdoor climbing wall, which I took a picture of part of and you can see it below:

It would have been impossible to have this climbing wall if it was not covered as this one is, but that covering only protects you from direct rainfall. It doesn't keep out the 30-32 degree F chill, nor does it keep some of the holds from getting slippery due to 80% humidity. Such conditions are normal for them, so it made for an intense night of climbing. What I'm trying to say is that here in Norway, climbers and vikings are one in the same.

This year, NTNU is holding their student music festival, Uka. It happens once every two years and the goal is to raise funds for the student organization. Luckily I chose this year to come to NTNU because had I come a different year I would have missed it. They have many people performing over the span of two weeks or so, all in this giant tent that can fit about 6000 people inside:

On Friday, I went with Victor to see the band Franz Ferdinand. I find it very fitting that the first concert I go to in Norway is of a Scottish rock band. There was an opening act provided by a local Norsk band called Datarock. The tent was completely packed with people and while it was in the mid-30's outside, it must have been 70-80 degrees F inside. It was quite a shock to come out of the tent, with slightly compromised hearing and a blast of cold air. After the concert, we went to a bar in downtown Trondheim called Lille London, or "Little London". Decorations for this pub consisted mainly of statues or pictures of Winston Churchill, pictures of the Tower Bridge in London, and statues of 19th century British Jungle explorers, pith helmets and everything.

Friday also consisted of the wildest weather I have ever been exposed to. The day started off overcast and quickly moved to rain, before the sun appeared, after which it hailed. It then moved onto rain again before merely being overcast. Following this trend it then snowed, grew sunny again before gently misting and finally ending the day with a light snow. Unbelievable. The first snow stuck around for a day and I took a picture of it outside the dorm area where I'm living:

You can see one of the dorm buildings in the background. It clearly has three windows, but there are actually six floors, which confused me at first. There is a staircase that runs up the middle of the building, and the floors on either side of it are staggered. I hadn't seen anything like that before.

On Saturday, I finally managed to get bedding and pillows at Ikea, so I no longer sleep in my sleeping bag, which is a nice change. One interesting thing that I realized is that in the U.S., one of the novelties of Ikea is the Scandinavian food that you can get there. In Norway, the same novelty doesn't exist. There still is food sold there, and according to Victor, there is some novelty still because it is Swedish food sold in Norway, but I don't think its nearly the same as it would be in the U.S.

This past weekend had the finest weather I've had yet in Norway, with blue skies and sun most of the days. Because of this I wandered all over the city and took a few pictures. There is a river that runs right through the city, called Nidelva, I believe, and several photos of it are below.

This is a picture that was taken when it was overcast, and is the river bank opposite of the cathedral that I showed a picture of in a previous coast. The white building at the top of the hill is some kind of old fortification. Apparently in the summer time there are many BBQ's and other gatherings that happen in that area. It seems to be the Trondheim equivalent of Gasworks Park.

This is a picture of the back side of the houses that line Skjopmannsgata, or the "Merchant Street" that runs along the river. Most of these houses have been renovated, but originally merchants used to live in them. They used to have small cranes that protruded out from the face of the building and boats would pull up right next to them and they would unload goods.

Here is a picture of the river as it nears the fjord. Boats are anchored here, and there is an old dry dock that is just outside the bounds of the picture.

Sunday evening had a beautiful sunset that I took a picture of from my dorm window. It reminded me of the Northern Lights a bit. Apparently in winter time, you can see the Northern Lights from Trondheim, but they are rather faint because of the light pollution.

Here is the picture of one of the main buildings of NTNU, at the north side of campus. It houses several classrooms as well as the main library. I thought it looked rather nice lit up at night so I took a picture. It is one of the few beautiful buildings on campus.

The building I work in is on the south side of campus, and it is much less beautiful. It is just a cluster of buildings on the hill, and much less beautiful with modern architecture. The gray skies don't help its appearance.

There have been several more realizations I've had throughout my time in Norway so far:

- Norwegian coffee is quite different from coffee that I am used to in Seattle. I think the way the beans are roasted or the quality is different, because it doesn't taste nearly as good. Also, they have a tendency to brew a pot of coffee and then let it slowly cook on a burner for several hours, giving it a burned taste. I'm growing used to it, but I already know that when I come back to Seattle I will be in heaven.

- I've said it previously, but food is very expensive in Norway. One interesting realization I've had is that in the U.S. it is generally cheaper to eat food that is bad for you than it is to eat healthy, whereas in Norway it's just as expensive to eat unhealthily as it is to eat a healthy meal. In some cases, it's actually more expensive to eat junk food than it is to eat food that's good for you. Because of this, I've been eating healthy meals. Cheers, Norway.

- I've also been trying some different kinds of foods. Fish is very readily available here, so I've been enjoying pickled herring, as well as sardines and some other kinds of preserved fish. I bought a can of something that looked like peppered sardines, but it turned out to be a ground fish cake in the can. My first thought was that I had opened a can of cat food, because that is what it looked like to me. After double-checking to make sure it was not cat food, I discovered it tasted fine. It was just the surprise of getting something completely different than what was expected that made me wary.

- It's not just food that is expensive. Everything is expensive. A single ride on the bus is $5 USD. I just got back from the post office to buy several post cards. 12 post cards cost $20 USD, and I still have to pay for postage. Lame, Norway.

- I've discovered that I have relatively good pronunciation of Norwegian words, because Victor and others have complimented me on it. Except for one letter that for some reason, gives me incredible trouble. The Norwegian letter ø is something that I cannot properly pronounce. In talking to people, I generally have to repeat words with that letter in it several times until my meaning is understood. With Victor and his friends, it has been the source of several good laughs. Still, I feel that 28 out of 29 letters is something to be proud of.

Apologies again for the length, but I think that some of that is due to the many pictures I posted. I'll try and post more frequently so that you don't have to suffer through paragraph after paragraph of text.

Farvel!

The Sun Does Exist in Norway!

This morning, as the skies grew lighter, I saw a distinct lack of clouds. Contrary to what I thought was possible, there was an actual sunrise, with blue skies, birds chirping, and only clouds in the distance. It was beautiful. Lest you think the day is too perfect, it's still 33 degrees F. I count my blessings.

This was not actually the first time that I have seen the sun in Norway, I saw it for a brief window of 10 minutes yesterday. Then too, I thought I was imagining things. I thought the the shining object in the sky was perhaps a hallucination brought on by the stress of relocating to a far distant country. It turns out that Norway punished me for this line of thought, for thinking that I might actually deserve sun, by promptly starting to hail after the 10 minute window of sun had passed. Perhaps the mostly clear skies of today will be a prelude to an almighty blizzard. This is only what I've now been conditioned to believe.

While I talk about the sun and the lack of anything resembling good weather, it is because this is unusual for Trondheim. At least, according to someone in the building I am working in, this is the 2nd wettest September-October period Trondheim has ever recorded. That being the case, I am also realizing other things: Several times now I have been on the way to a meeting, or to school, and passed by something that I think, "I should really take a photo of that, I'll do it on th way back," only to find that on the way back it is pouring down rain and the last thing I want to do is stop for another minute outside to take a picture of something. The lesson here: if something would make an appealing picture at the time, take it then.

Sorry there are no pictures with this post, I will try and take some nice ones to share while I am out today, and post them in the next entry. I also must apologize for misleading you to think that you could all follow my other blog. It turns out that only those with a University of Washington net ID can access that page. I'll just have to share all that I am doing in the technical sense with this blog as well, and those that are uninterested will just have to bear with it. Don't worry about the other blog though, this is the good one.

Mailing Address

If you want to reach me by post, my mailing address is:

Herman Kragsvei 12-62
7050 Trondheim
Norway

It snowed yesterday on the hills nearby the city. Here is a view from my window:

First Impressions of Trondheim

I've been in Norway for almost 48 hours as I write this, and a great deal has happened so I'll try as best I can to explain all that I've done so far. I've arrived in Norway with the intended purpose of doing research at NTNU, but I'll try and keep technical discussions of what I am doing for research to a minimum. If you are interested in following what I will be researching, look at my other blog that I am doing as a requirement for the exchange program:

https://depts.washington.edu/vallelog/blog/index.php?/categories/120-Werner,-John

I wanted to look down on Norway as I flew into it, but i was so tired from lack of sleep and constant traveling that I promptly fell asleep once aboard the plane. I did wake up the last half hour of the flight but found the countryside blanketed in clouds so there was nothing to be seen. When I first got off the plane, I stepped down a set of stairs onto the tarmac took a deep breath. The air smelled fresh and clean, and it was cold out. I made it through customs with no difficulty and found the airport bus, or flybussen, that would take me into the center of Trondheim. I made my way on board and enjoyed finally sitting down with a proper amount of leg room (non-exit rows in airplanes: not comfortable).

As we drove the 30 kilometers to Trondheim, we passed through three very long tunnels. These tunnels had one lane of traffic in each direction, and the opposing traffic passed very close to my bus. The dark and narrow tunnel with lights passing very close to the bus while I was in a sleep-deprived state made for a surreal experience. I got off the bus at the train station and walked the half kilometer to my temporary housing, Bruns Botell. This may have been the longest half kilometer of my life. I had about 165 pounds of gear that I was either carrying or dragging, and I was so very tired. I guess I could have tried to find a cab but that would have been so incredibly lame. I persevered and finally made it to the place I was staying. The quality of the room was good enough, except for its smell. The entire building smelled of cigarettes and gross.

I slept for 8 hours or so, woke up and got ready for my day. I was meeting with one of the professors that I would be working under, as well as had several different places to go to and fill out/turn in paperwork. I walked to the NTNU campus and met Professor Tore Børvik, one of the lead professors at the SIMLab, the Structural Impact Laboratory that I'll be working in while in Norway.

The project that I will be involved in is related to impacts on pipelines. An Italian company produces elbow-joint fittings for pipelines that the Norwegian oil company, StatOil uses, but the Italians made a mistake in the production of these fittings. They are made from a two-alloy stainless steel that was cooled improperly, resulting in a third steel precipitate to form in the fittings. This third component, which they refer to as the "sigma phase," makes the pipe sections much more brittle. If a section of this pipe is impacted by an oil ship, it is important to deform and be somewhat flexible in order to prevent a disastrous oil spill. These more brittle fittings greatly increase the likely-hood of such an event happening. The project I will be involved with aims to better understand how different levels of this sigma phase precipitate affects the performance of the steel, specifically under impact. The bottom line: I get to be part of a project that will break a bunch of test specimens with a gigantic hydraulic hammer. This hydraulic pendulum impactor, or kicking machine, is huge. I don't know its specifications, but I know that it is used to simulate car impacts, so it is VERY powerful. A picture of it is below:


I haven't yet had a chance to tour the SIMLab, something I am very excited to do. I'll get my opportunity to do so on Monday. I have an office space to call my own, where many of the visiting scholars stay. One of these, Rafael, helped me enormously by showing me where I needed to go for the rest of the day. It has been an excellent experience so far because everyone is very helpful and welcoming here.

After a day of running around filing paperwork, getting keys and meeting people, it was time to move to my permanent residence for my stay in Norway. I'll post the address soon. I realized that I didn't want to travel the 2.5 miles from my temporary place to my dorm room with all my crap, so I took a cab. It turns out that my driver was a very colorful character that, upon finding out that I was from the not-so-united states, he climbed up on a soap box to tell me everything wrong about the U.S., as well as the European Union. The cab ride was relatively short, but angry. He wins the award for least welcoming person I've met so far.

I arrived in my room, and though it was small, it did not smell bad and was comfortable. I need to get some sheets and a pillow for my bed, currently I am using my sleeping bag and a rolled up sweatshirt. So far, I have only met two of my three roomates. We each have our own rooms but we share a common room/kitchen and a bathroom. There is Hanning, from Germany, and Omit, from Iran. I have yet to see the third roommate who is Sebastian, and I am not sure where he is from. Each of the two roommates that I have met were brief encounters and I have not seen them since. I've kept my door open for most of the day today and no one has surfaced yet. I'm hoping to at least have some interaction with them soon, because I need to figure out how certain things work in the dorms, like waste disposal, laundry, and other things like that. I also am hoping that they don't stay in their rooms all the time, and interact with me. I may try and lure them out by cooking dinner for us all. If they continue to live like hermits, I'll have to start experimenting with how to best draw them out of their rooms and closed doors.

My first impressions of Norway, specifically Trondheim, are that it is cold and wet. When I arrived it was 35 degrees F, and it has yet to go above 40 degrees F. Now, you might think, "John, why did you go to Norway to stay through MIDWINTER if you think that is cold?" Don't worry, I have appropriate clothing for the cold, it was just unexpected that it was already this cold. It is also very wet out, with constant and varying degrees of precipitation. It is very much like Seattle in this regard. One difference is the humidity. I think that it's been over 80% humidity since I've arrived. I've experienced how humidity can make it feel much hotter than a thermometer reads, but this is the first time that I've experienced humidity that makes it feel colder than it actually is. Add in the wind-chill factor, and it makes for very chilly weather indeed. Also, I have yet to see the sun, and have only once seen a patch of blue sky for a maximum of 15 minutes. At least there's daylight still. I took a picture during one of the brief pauses in rainfall, when I was on a bridge looking over the river (look for the tiny hint of the rainbow going over the cathedral):


One of the other things that I have noticed in my stay so far is that many times Norwegian announcements are followed by the same announcement in English. This makes it very nice except that while many times this is done with other languages, usually the first statement is given, a pause is taken, usually for a breath, and then the statement is again said in the other language. My experience so far is that there is no pause between the Norwegian and the English, and they are crammed together in the same breath. This means that if the person talking has a strong accent, you have to listen to every word in order to make sure you catch the entire announcement when it starts in English.

I also have realized that Norway is very expensive. There are more taxes going on, which means that they don't pay for insurance and other such things, but it increases the prices of goods. When they don't have to pay for other things, they can spend more money on the goods they buy, so I guess it works out. I know that I only really need to pay for food and lodging for myself, so I am not worried, it was more just a culture shock than anything. This morning I went out to the store to buy basic necessities, and it turned out to be $61.00 USD for about 3 days worth of food. Is America ready for this? I know that some people would object. Still while it did surprise me, I recognize that it works, and the following months will demonstrate to me how it could be beneficial.

Sorry for the length of the post, but its been a flurry of activity for me the last two days, so I wanted to make sure all the important points were covered. I'm sure they weren't but I'll continue to add things as they happen or occur to me.