Per Johan Groland's page

About me

I hail from the ice-cold country of Norway (generally associated with fjords and vikings). I was born in the year 1977 (in which the King died and Star Wars was born), which means that I have already passed 30 by a good margin, and will stop counting years pretty soon.

I currently live in the earthquake capital of the world, Tokyo. There, I work for Opera Software's Japan office as an application developer. I am involved mostly in porting Opera to various mobile phones and embedded platforms.

Before coming to Japan, I spent two years studying Mandarin Chinese at Fudan University in Shanghai. During my stay in China, I met my wife Risa. She just happened to be Japanese, so I soon realized that I had to start learning yet another oriental language.

All the time from birth to just before going to China in 2003 has been spent living in the icy domain of Norway. I studied computer science in Oslo, the capital. I completed my master degree in 2002 (prospective employers are advised to check my CV for further information.) After completing my master degree, I spent a year doing "sivil service," which is what Norwegian boys that don't want to go to the military have to waste 14 months of their life doing.

My work

I work as an application developer in Opera's Japan office. I'm mostly involved in porting Opera to various mobile phone and embedded platforms. Recently I worked on the Nintendo DSi browser.