It’s also time for me to almost say goodbye to KTH and Stockholm after considering this town my “home” for four seasons (see why I chose this tagline in my blog header!? ). I have just finished my online exam today and am practically finished with my studies at KTH although I want to try non-mandatory re-exams for improving my grade. As the part of my Erasmus Mundus program, I will continue my study in Italy for the next 2 semesters. I will definitely explore the southern part of Europe, so make sure to follow my other blog from now at http://natanaelmakarios.blogspot.com/. I will definitely miss all my friends that I have made here, the well organized society, high tech infrastructure, studying at KTH, but will also miss this beautiful city.

It’s now “Time to say goodbye”, but I’ll leave you with 1 video clip. It’s a video clip from a few of my explorations during my stay here in Stockholm. Please check it out at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8s7RxN3LLjw This was my story…. And it can be yours! I would like to thank KTH and Familjen team for giving me this great opportunity and supported me with their professional advice. Thank you to you too my dear readers for following and reading my blogs. Wish u all the best my dear readers and hopefully you’ll share your stories too when you get here.

 “Time to say goodbye, Paesi che non ho mai, veduto e vissuto con te, adesso sì li vivrò.”

Warm regards,

Natanael Makarios

http://natanaelmakarios.blogspot.com/

twitterID: @nmakarios

• Until 1523: Sweden, Norway and Denmark were united via Kalmar Union, mainly dominated by Denmark.
• 6 June 1523: Gustav Vasa declared its independence from Denmark-Norway and became a new independent country.
• 16^th-17^th century: Sweden went in expansion via wars until the Baltic areas. At the same time it continued its expansion to the North which was used by the nomadic Sami’s. Mines were found such as silver mine in 1634 and iron mines. Kiruna is one of the iron mine towns which many people visit in the Arctic Circle (including me, although just passing through ).
• 1809: Finland previously a part of Sweden became independent.
• 1814:  Sweden gained Norway due to an agreement with Denmark to support in the Napoleonic Wars. It was in this time that the Bernadottes also reigned over Sweden until now.
• 1870’s: Industrial revolution came to Sweden from the agricultural society, thus people started to move to cities.

That’s it. Hopefully I didn’t forget any important facts here. Now you know the Swedish history in short which is good if you want to come here.

My second exam is for the other course I was telling you a few weeks ago called Networked Systems Security. This has also been a really interesting course for me with lots of good discussions and insights about how to secure your network. There were quite a lot of PhD and final year master students taking this course and when this happens, you definitely know you’re doing some serious matters here Hopefully the exams will not be too difficult…

A week later, the re-exams period will be held. Students who failed the regular exams have the opportunity for a re-exam here at KTH. I am taking another 2 re-exams in order to attempt to improve my grades, which is also something that you can do at the re-exams. The good thing is, the best grade counts, so we don’t lose anything by trying! (At least that was what they said…) Again, both of the exams are just a few hours from each other and these exams are really hard! Hopefully I’ll succeed!

Now… Back to study again!

I myself prefer to have advertisement, especially the supermarket ads. From the advertisements we can see what the weeks’ bargain is and compare it one store to the other. There are really some good bargains at one store at one time and a really good bargain at another store at another time. The good thing is that I have been provided an accommodation from KTH that is close to a lot of supermarkets so it’s evenly convenient to shop in different supermarkets.

Here are a few good ads that I got:

-          Frozen chicken 900 grams = 15 SEK

-          Grapes = 10 SEK/500 grams (regular price around 15-20ish SEK)

-          Apples/pears = 10 SEK/kg (regular price around 18-20 SEK/kg)

-          Banana’s = 10 SEK/kg (regular price 19.90 SEK/kg)

-          Juice = 10 SEK for 1.75 liter pack (regular price around 17-20ish SEK/pack)

So, for me it’s “Reklam – Ja tack!” (Note: the picture above is not my apartment entrance!) :D

Do you still remember my interview to Kristoffer from Ericsson? If not, see the video on the right bar of this blog. There are a lot of interesting things he said about the opportunity to work for Ericsson and in Sweden, just after you graduate. Wait… That’s not the only option. You can also apply for a PhD position. One of my friends told me that he did his master degree here at KTH, completed it, and got offered for a PhD position.

So, this might be only my first year, but I can tell you, you have a lot of options in your second year here at KTH or even after you graduate. Too bad, I have to leave this campus at the end of this semester

As in the snow (http://www.kth.se/blogs/makarios/2012/02/frozen-lakes-a-place-for-everyone/), people can do many things here in the park. They can take their dog out for a walk, play Frisbee, do some soccer or just hang out with your friends. Many people were also cycling and jogging while enjoying the park just along the side of the lake. You can even ride your horse on the park! The main thing is just to get out and enjoy the sunny weather that starts to set as late as 10 pm.

We did some barbequing ourselves with a simple barbeque set, which were easy to set up and ideal to carry around. We also had a lot of fun talking and laughing together. It’s a great way to know each other better and build our friendship and community. You’d better bring some games too to the park to keep you busy, as one of us brought a Swedish game called Kubb, a game which involves team work and throwing off the opponents’ bricks with your stick from a distance. Wanna know the engineers’ way of playing Kubb, look here http://natanaelmakarios.blogspot.com/2012/05/engineers-way-of-kubb.html. This will be my private blog after my wonderful blogging time at KTH comes to an end.

Going to the park is definitely an enjoyable moment for you to go out with your friends and hang out enjoying the beautiful nature, just in the heart of Stockholm.

The boat trip is definitely something that you should not miss while being here in Stockholm, the city called as Venice of the North. The ferry is called Djurgården ferry and serves the route between Slussen, Skeppsholmen and Djugården (look at google maps to see where they are ). We can sit inside the ferry and wait until it reaches the destination, but it is much better to go to the front deck or the back in the open to see the beautiful view from the sea part of Stockholm. Usually I take the ferry from Slussen to Djugården. It takes us around 10 minutes and we can see the view to Södermalm, Gamla Stan, Skeppsholmen, Kastellholmen and the final destination Djugården.

Here are a view pictures that I made during the short trip:

Skeppsholmen with the famous Af Chapman ship

 Kastellholmen (just at the end of Skepssholmen)

The famous Gamla Stan

Djugården with Gröna Lund on the front and Skansen Open Air Museum on the back

So make sure to try it at least one time, or try it many times… Who cares, it’s included anyways in the monthly fee

At the main page we are able to see the schedule for our course on the same day or following day (depends on when you access it). This tool is quite handy if you don’t have your agenda with you. Also we can see the status of each course we took or are taking and the credits of it. On the settings page, we can set whether we want to forward the emails from our official email address xxx@kth.se to our own email address. Also, we can set our postal address and phone there. Make sure to fill in your postal address when you get here, since your student ID card will be sent to that location, else you will never get it.

We can also see our courses in detail on the courses page such as the pass/fail of the assignments/projects and the grade of your exam. Also, we can generate the transcript by our own in the transcripts section of my pages. Another part on the bottom is the examination page, where we can register for the exam by ourselves.

The MSDN AA account at the very bottom of the side tab is used to get free windows and some other software according to the MSDN agreement that KTH has with Microsoft. I will probably talk more about it when I’ve tried it, so stay in touch

A few days ago I attended a performance from KTH student choir called “Osqstämman”, which is one of the choirs of KTH. This is another activity that you can join as an international student here at KTH, because I saw a few of my friends (international students) joining that choir besides the other one that I’ve posted before about KTH Orchestra. According to a friend of mine who joins this choir, this choir practices 1 time a week and is less intensive than the other official choir from KTH (Kongl. Teknologkören).

The choir sang a number of songs in English and also in Swedish. I would say that the songs were quite good songs with a good grade of difficulty and was enjoyable to hear although some songs were slightly out of pitch. The performance was rather shorter than I expected to be, but managed to still get some pictures

So, if your hobby is singing, you might consider the option to try out for their audition which according to their website http://osqstamman.for.ths.kth.se/ is done at the beginning of each semester. It reminds myself of my years in the choir, so to close this post, here as a link of a song we did by Eric Whitacre called “Hope, faith, life, love” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j9cwtypIF4A. This song was also the song that was performed during the private prayer service the morning before Obama was inaugurated as the president of USA… Can you see where I stood?

Take for example LTE (Long Term Evolution), known as the 4G technology. We got this technology explained by Dr. Stefan Parkfall, the principal researcher of Ericsson research. Got it? Not just a guy, but THE GUY, the PRINCIPAL of Ericsson’s research; the exclusivity that can probably happen only if you’re studying at KTH. What better way is there than to have the technology explained from the leader of this project himself? He explained the ideas behind 4G, how it was developed, the challenges behind it, and even one step further, talking about LTE Advanced which is supposed to be even better that LTE.

Do you know the term “base station hotel”? We were explained what it was and how it works to provide connectivity to the people attending London 2012 by Axell Wireless, the company that designed it. What about Volvo? What does that have to do with telecommunication? They explained us how Vehicular Ad Hoc Networks (communication between cars) is currently developed and the future of it and the challenges. See this video where KTH together with Scania participated in a coordinated driving challenge http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0JNqHhSxlng.

It was really a privilege to get these invited guest lecturers to speak in front of us and to hear “state of the art” technologies being presented to us. So, if you study here at KTH, make sure to hear at least one of the experts sharing their knowledge. After all, knowledge is power!

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