Sweden: (Modules)

Here are the modules that I took:

EE2001 (6): Project (4f1141 Mechatronics)
EE3001 (4): Project (4d1521 Ideation)
EE2007 (4): Microprocessor (2b1446 Embedded System)
EE2011 (3): Engineering Electromagnetics (2d1274 Computational EM)
EE3204 (3): Computer Communications Networks (6b2940 Computer networks)


Jesper who so kindly taught Henry & I only even though the course wasn't available

KTH has a limited number of English courses. Such courses in Sweden are usu for Master's students, so the courses we took were for Master's students, except ideation and computer networks.

In addition, I also took one very interesting course "Swedish Society, Culture & Industry in a Historical Perspective" which basically gives me a overview of Sweden including aspects of political history, economic history and history of technology and architecture.

Besides lectures, we got excusions to skansen, suburbs(Vällingby, Alby), Pythagoras factory in Norrtälje, Nobel Museum...

pythagoras factory

Moreover, during some lectures, we could have fika(sandwich & drink) and watch Swedish movies, eg House of Angels, Show me love(Fucking Åmål) and Wild Strawberries. I feel that most of the films have a strong portrayal of the swedish society. Their characters are memorable and their stories are usu heart-warming, meaningful and has subtle humour in them.

Of course, we dealt with the famous Swedish model. Here are a few links: 1(a good one), 2, 3, 4

The course compendium even includes a section that compares Singapore to Stockholm!

-"Societies that suddenly start feeling rich, but in which a majority still feel themselves living poorly, will tend to support high egalitarian social policies, which redistribute income and provide a basic decent minimum for all; later on, as most find themselves exceeding the minimum, the consensus will fall apart. In this sense, perhaps the Swedish miracle was just an extreme example of a general phenomenon in the evolution of capitalism."

-"nations of South-East Asia enjoyed their econmic miracles a little later than those of western Europ; but to an even more extreme degree, they launched themselves from abject poverty into real affluence within the span of one generation."

-"...in Singapore, some faithful reflections of the Stockholm model. At least in the physical manifestations: the same uniform, well-designed but finally monotonous apartment blocks, developed on government-owned land; the same impeccably efficient subway system that links them; the same rebuilt high-rise city centre; the same emphasis on extraordinarily high standards of public design and public order. And underlying the superficial physical manifestations, many of the same political features: a party that identifies its own ideology with that of the nation, indeed which claims to embody the spirit of the nation; a party that remains in
power for 3 decades; a party with the same emphasis on social harmony; a party that stays in power through delivering economic performance and rapidly rising standards of living."

-"may seem at first sight an outlandish comparison...Singaporean polity has never claimed descent from the liberal tradition, on the contrary, rejecting many of its features as examples of western corruption; or the fact that in 1994, Sweden and Singapore stood at opposite poles in the percentage of GDP taken for public spending, 68 against 20 percent."

-"..further point of difference: Singapore, so far, has experienced no real crisis, no fundamental break in its remarkable economic progress...At some stage, Sweden tripped and fell; Singapore seems determined to avoid that fate....."


KTH