Smart thinking

Being a bit of a slow weekend, I took the opportunity to thumb through the pile of the magazines, brochures, and newspapers which had been delivered to us during the week and had been gradually piling up at the back of the kitchen table. Usually I read about some sale which finished 2 days ago, so it's often a bit of a pointless exerceise. Other than keeping my level of Swedish current. Anyway, this time there was a technical newspaper which comes to one of us every month. I enjoy reading those as Sweden is pretty good at thinking outside the square when it comes to quirky solutions to problems of a technical nature. I don't know why they are so good at this stuff. Maybe they don't realise that the rest of the world likes to follow along behind each other in an orderly fashion.

One item interested me. It was centered around mobile phone applications, which continue to be the latest craze around the world. The application itself was pretty simple. It was published by Nationalföreningen för Trafiksäkerhetens Främjande which is a traffic safety organisation in Sweden who works closely with the official transportation agency, Trafikverket. Their funding comes primarily from Trafikverket. Anyway, what they have gone is to create an application which is connected to Trafikverket's database and displays in realtime the speed limit for the section of road that you're on. Hardly seems clever or necessary, but Swedish speedzones do change often. More so than I've found in my travels through other countries. It's very easy to miss a short distance speed change sign out in the country, or along a motorway, or to forget after a while what the last sign said. With this application, you'll always know the speed limit for the metre of road you're on. GPS systems do the same thing, but you have to rely on their information being up to date, and you have all the rest of the crap on a GPS screen.

The company had gone a little further with this. During their Swedish trials, they added an incentive. During the one month course of the trials, any user who had not exceeded the maximum speed was entered into a lottery to win 10 000 kronor. Donated by Trafikverket. Their plan is that vehicle insurance companies will join in on this, by offering reductions in insurance premiums for non speeding drivers.

I really like the approach behind this. Traffic safety is Sweden is proactive. I appreciate that. It's not about gaining revenue from fines as a priority. That sets Sweden apart. Yes, the "nollvision" package is not practically achieveable. But that's no reason to stop trying to get as close as possible to the target. "It can never be ethically acceptable that people are killed or seriously injured when moving within the road transport system." Other countries, such as Australia, have since been won over to this argument and are starting to follow the same principles.

As part of attaining my Swedish driving license, I had to attend a "skid training" course. A few years previously I had attended the same course back in New Zealand. There it was called an "Advanced Driver" training course. In reality we were asked to do exactly the same things. What interested me was that the approach, the aim of the course, was completely different in the two countries. In the NZ course they had you put the car into a high speed skid in order to show you how to correct the skid and keep on driving. The message was that you can fix the problem when it happens. The Swedish course went the other way. They put you into a high speed skid, but offered no instruction on what to do next. They chose to address the cause, rather than the problem. Their message was not to drive at that excessive speed in the first place. Don't get yourself into the situation where you need to know how to correct a skid. To put it in basic terms, drive to the conditions.

Both approaches were idealistic. There are going to come times when people mis-read the conditions and drive too fast. The Swedish system doesn't prepare them for what happens next. The hope is that the memory of the terror on the track of skidding out in a car will be enough to keep people aware of the potential for things to go wrong and to prepare accordingly. The New Zealand system told people that it was ok to drive faster than what was appropriate, because you could probably fix it at the last minute. The problem I have with that idea is that it relies on people recalling what they practised one time for 5 minutes, several years ago, and rembering how to implement it in a split second during a state of panic.

Like the cellphone app, Swedes do have clever ideas from time to time.

Out in the wilds

Yesterday I had to be in Kiruna for a meeting about a new project which is starting up. For anyone who isn't familiar with the town of Kiruna, it lies about 350km north of my home town of Boden. It's main (and pretty much only) claim to fame is that it is the heart of the Swedish mining industry. It has drawn some extra attention of late due to the small fact that the entire town (30+ thousand people) is being moved several kilometers in order for the mining operation to expand. I had been to Kiruna once before, during a holiday to Sweden back in 2004. I'd also passed through the town by train several times on the way to Narvik in Norway. But this was the first time I had really spent any time of substance in the area. The prospect of spending 3+ hours driving each way, in the middle of winter, didn't appeal greatly to me. I like driving, but I do tend to get bored with it rather quickly. So I decided to book the morning train instead, giving me time to have a snooze and do some last minute revising for the meeting. I needed transport to get to the mine site, where the meeting was, so I arranged to rent a car for the day in Kiruna. I was quite chuffed with myself for arranging everything all on my own.

With all that taken care of, I casually threw my eye across the noticeboard on the Swedish rail website. At that point I discovered that they had been cancelling all trains through that region for the past several days due to the sudden cold snap. It had been hanging around in the mid to high -30s for about a week. The worry was that if the trains suddenly stopped out in the middle of nowhere then it would get very cold very quickly. Which was a fair enough concern. It annoyed me a little that they were happy to take my booking for the following day when the weather forecast was exactly as it had been for the previous few days. Without so much as a word of caution when one booked.

After humming and harring, and a good bout of general dithering, I decided to unbook all my clever bookings and hire a car to drive myself the whole way there and back. To be sure that I actually would make it there when I was supposed to. I did think about taking our own car before deciding that our client who has bucket loads of cash could spring for the cost of a rental.

So off I went. It wasn't the most enjoyable road driving conditions, with a lot of snow and ice. But the route is worth a mention. Sweden is not really famed for it's architecture. There are a few nice buildings scattered around the place, the majority of which are former military officers' residences. But, on the whole, many towns look a bit like they have come out of a film about life in the Eastern Bloc. It's more about function than form. Buildings in the north have to function correctly. If they happen to look nice, then that's an unintentional bonus. So don't bother coming up here if your passion is architecture. However, the road from the coast through to Gällivare and Kiruna is spectacular. Picture postcard forest for nearly 3 hours. I came across 3 elk, and 12 reindeer on the road during the drive up. They did move off the way, but none were in any great hurry to do so. It did get a little tiring watching out for wandering wildlife the entire time, especially during the drive home in the dark. But really a small price to pay for a genuine "feel good" road trip. What I find particularly of interest is the change in the environment during the trip, which is climatic. From a fairly temperate dense forest environment as you turn in from the cost, through to the sparcely forested "Russian tundra" type landscape as you venture further up above the Arctic Circle. That's quite an experience in the space of a couple of hours. I find driving through the harsher areas a bt intimidating. You can sense that it's nature, and not you, who is really in charge at that time. If something were to go wrong, it could end up very bad. I guess it's the cold equivalent of a desert.

That was my day. A long 13 hours overall. Try to experience the drive if you can, or at least the train ride through the area. It's a unique opportunity.

How much is enough ?

I had a discussion the other day with the girl sitting at reception in our local gym with regard to employment. Not about her employment at the gym, but about her future employment prospects. She was nearing the completion of her university studies and was eyeing up potential employers in the same field as I am working in. So we did a had of a Q&A session.

One of my work colleagues is shortly to leave us. The reason ? A higher salary. There's the theory in Sweden that the only way to increase your salary is by changing jobs. That's possibly correct. Cut throat individual annual salary negotiations are not as common place in Sweden as they are in some other countries. I suspect that's more a case of employers trying to get away with paying as little as possible in those countries, whereas Swedish employers typically try to be fair and show their employees a little more respect. People coming from some countries have grown up used to fighting their employer for a fair wage, and naturally assume that it must be the same attitude from employers everywhere else including in Sweden. Once you've negotiated your starting salary, annual increases in Sweden are typically cost of living increases. That being said, I don't find that to be particularly unusual. Most of my non-Swedish employers have followed exactly that principle. Maybe Swedes have the wrong idea about how the rest of the world is actually operating.

I had a quick count up and I reckon I've changed employers  9 times during my 30 years of working. So I think I'm reasonably well placed to discuss employers and working conditions. It possibly sounds like a lot, but there was one year when I changed job 3 times. For various reasons, none of which were salary related. If I was constantly looking for more money, I would have been changing jobs every year. Because that's the only way that one gets a big jump in income. In any country, not just in Sweden. But once you've passed that initial buzz, you'd have to repeat the same process over and over again. Spot the problem ? Eventually you're going to hit the point where, no matter how often you change, your job is what your job is. And so is the salary.

So, for me, it's the package deal which counts. Of course you should be earning a fair salary. That's a given. I had no idea about salary levels when I came to Sweden. The worst thing one can do is to compare with the salary levels in one's home country. It's totally meaningless and completely irrelevant. Frankly, I was just happy to have a job. Looking around today, I think that I get paid pretty well. Maybe I could get more elsewhere. Possibly. But what would I lose, and what is that worth to me ? This is where it gets subjective. Different things have different values to different people. Depending on where they are in life.

In my current role I feel that I have good job security. Our company is large, and we're always busy. If we ever have a light period, we simply pick up the slack from one of our other offices in Sweden. And vice versa. That's one less worry. The large organisation also means more resources to ensure a good working environment. Outside of my times working for local government in NZ, I want for nothing here in my working environment. Nice chair, my own office, good food for morning tea. They make me comfortable for 40 hours a week. I haven't always had that previously. My annual gym membership is paid for by my company. That's got value to me. Not to everyone, but it does to me. Every year I receive an annual bonus equivalent to one month's salary. So, in effect, my salary level is actually about 10% higher. Plus the gym fee money. Not many companies can match that. That bonus is especially important to me. Being a new tax payer in Sweden, I don't have much in the way of retirement funds. So every year I take my annual bonus and put it straight into a Tax Free pension fund. Every year I can do that, I'll make up for 3 years of non paying. If the system can keep going then, by the time I retire, I'll have hopefully caught up with a Swedish born worker. Again, it's a personal thing. Every year my office takes a trip. To say Thank You for the previous year's hard work. I've been able to see some wonderful palces for free as a result. Things I probably wouldn't have done if I'd had to think about saving the money for myself.

So, all in all, it's the combination of rewards which determine a good employment for me. Maybe it's taken to my older years to appreciate that not all rewards are in cash. I've never lived to work, I've always worked to live. My work life needs to serve the sole purpose of ensuring that my non work life is the best that it can be. I've earnt a lot more money in the past, and been a thoroughly miserable person. These days it's more about priorities and perspectives.

Winter Woolies

A bit of a shock this week with the sudden arrival of the first serious sub -20 deg C temperatures for the winter. It seems that the coldest months of the year are becoming January and February now, instead of the Christmas period. That actually ties in with what I had experienced in New Zealand over the past 10 years. Instead of the warmest time being at Christmas, as you would expect, the real heat (such as it was) never really kicked in until the schools went back in early February. Likewise there was more snow in September than there was in June/July. The whole world seems to be a couple of months out of whack.

The 20 deg boundary brings with it a few changes. The horse gets his heavy cover for starters. It's not a lot of fun for whomever has the morning roster at the stables on a cold morning. A 400 gram winter cover must weigh around 20kg. Try throwing one of those nearly 2m up in the air over 7 horses.

I've had my winter coat out for a little while, but now it needs to work. I had bought a Fjäll Räven Eskimo shortly after we arrived into Sweden, and it's stood up well. Pretty much still looks like new, really. I've been very impressed with it. It's a little too warm to wear unless the temperature is around -10 degrees or colder. So I had to also buy a slightly lighter jacket. Especially this winter when it hasn't been so cold, relatively speaking. But the Eskimo is great right now. It's a slightly longer jacket, so all the important bits keep nice and warm. It's also got a lovely and snuggly insulated hood. Jackets hoods are often an afterthought, but this one is great. They aren't cheap, but you do need proper gear that's going to work correctly om man ska bo här uppe.

I've resisted the urge to haul out my thermal boots. They are excellent for warmth, having a supposed insulation against a -25 deg ground temperature. And they are warm, I'll give them that. However, despite having what looks like a great sole, they are terrible for grip. Again, they weren't cheap, so I'm a bit miffed about them. We bought them at the same time as the jacket, I think they are Sorel brand. Anyway, I'm still perservering with my Asics walking shoes which I bought a couple of years ago for 400 SEK. They have done the trick well and I haven't really felt like I was going to slip over. Actually, in the past 2 winters I'm only come a propper once. I was out jogging and slipped on a downhill slope whilst going past the main truck entrance into the town heating plant. The trucks going in and out had packed the snow down virtually to ice. It was like a rink. I didn't see it coming and ended up flat on my back. Not exactly dignified. But apart from that.

I'm a bit of a winter walking thermometer. At -10 deg, I feel my cheeks stiffen up a little. At -15 deg, my nose hairs start to freeze. Feels like you've sniffed up a blowfly. At -18 deg I can feel my eyelashes freezing. Like clockwork

Breathing Easy

As I've written previously, the winter months up here have limited my excercising options somewhat. During the weekdays, it's dark in the evenings, so I don't mind being at the gym. But during the weekends it's great to be able to be outdoors and see something other than the back of another sweaty T shirt. The main thing holding me back, has been the cold. Obviously enough. The other weekend I trotted out for a jog on a lovely Saturday morning when it was -15 deg C outdoors. I didn't think it would be that much of a problem, but it was. Taking in way more air than one normally would when walking around town, I ended up having some unexpected and unwanted breathing problems. First of all, I started to feel my lungs rattling quite a bit while I was running. Irritating, but not disabling. The problem started about an hour after I came home when I started having trouble catching my breath. It continued for probably 2 or 3 days afterwards before everything came back to normal again. Obviously that can't have been very good for me. I knew that there just had to be a solution to this and in the end I found that there were practical alternatives for people who liked to be active outdoors during colder tempertures.

After digging around on-line, I decided to look at at 2 options that are sold in Sweden. The first was a product called Lungplus, which basically looks like a sawn off mouth organ. It is about 5cm long and has a flared end. You place the flared end in your mouth between your teeth and lips, and off you go. The second option for me was called Airtrim, which is a nose/mouth mask with a filter. Like a normal dust filter mask, the Airtrim is held in place by an elastic strap.

Both products operate on a similar principle. When you breathe out, your breath passes through a fine honeycomb filter, warming up the walls of each honeycomb cell on the way out. When you suck in the new cold air, that air passes through the same (but now warm) honeycomb cells, warming the air up before it enters your mouth and lungs. A basic heat exchange system. The claims by the manufacturers are pretty bold. If you breathe in air while running which is minus 10 degrees Celcius cold, it will have warmed up to plus 19 degrees by the time it reaches your face. Bold claims.

Now, I have to say that neither option is particularly flattering to the eye. On one hand you can choose to look like you got half way through eating a hot dog and it got stuck in your mouth and then froze there. Or you can choose to look like a balding, middle aged, overweight Darth Vader. Either way you're likely to scare off the local wildlife and frighten small children. There is a price and availability issue, which made it a bit simpler for me. I suspect that the Airtrim is a superior product. It seems more complete and thorough. However, it costs about 100NZD and wasn't available to buy up here from a store. That was important for me, as I was worried about how comfortable it would actually be to wear. And I still had the option of going to the gym, so this was really a luxury item. The Lungplus could be bought from the local pharmacy, and cost about 30NZD. Much more affordable if it ended up being a "used it once then chucked it away" type purchase. So that made the decision for me.

Come Saturday morning it was a balmy -13 degrees outside. Another perfect day for a morning run in the woods. Another reason for me choosing the Lungplus was that I could quickly pop it into my pocket if I met anyone along the way. As if I didn't look odd enough. That idea disappeared after about 5 minutes, when I no longer cared what people thought. The Lungplus got a good work out. I was a bit worried about the effort of holding it in one's mouth. But I needn't have worried. Once it's tucked behind the lips, it kind of just hangs there. No effort needed. I was also worried about not being able to breathe normally, or get enough air into my lungs. I'm no lightweight, so I do take in quite a bit of air when I'm on the move. Here, I was quite surprised, and rather impressed. Even when running up a reasonably steep hill, when I'm sucking in several litres a second, I found that I was able to breathe just fine and got all the air I needed. So it worked well in that respect. The only downside, and it was a little annoying, was the amount of moisture that dribbled out from the open end of the filter. I found myself taking it out of my mouth and giving it a quick wipe on my trousers probably every 5 minutes or so. I gave it a good hot wash when I got home, so hopefully it'll stay reasonably bug free. While the Airtrim has replacement filters, the Lungplus is all one piece, with no moving or removeable parts. I don't know if that's an advantage or a disadvantage. It did get me to wondering how the full face mask Airtrim deals with the issue of condensation. I might dig further on that.

Of course the big test was how my lungs and airways would stand up to the cold temperature. I was wearing good thermals, so I was pretty confident that my lungs wouldn't be cold from the outside. I have to say that, from the initial one hour work out, the Lungplus came up a winner. Not a sound from my lungs while I was running, and no breathing problems in the 24 hours that followed. Obviously it's going to need a few more field trials, but so far I'm impressed for a cheap, no nonsense, product. I'll have an ask around and see if anyone has an Airtrim that I can borrow. Then we'll be able to benchmark them properly. I'm mostly pleased now about having an alternative to the gym which doesn't destroy my insides. Life finds a way.

Dealing with illness

I'm back at work today after a couple of days off sick. Oddly enough, not everyone seems to have missed me. I tend to stress a bit about work when I'm not there, which I guess defeats the purpose of being off sick in the first place. This time is wasn't really anything major. I've previously written about a stomach upset condition which has become a lot more pronounced since living in Sweden. Symptoms of nausea, bloating, and generally feeling like crap which seem to be associated with various different food groups. Despite having more tests than a NASA astronaut, no one seems to have come up with a suitable explanation nor with a workable solution. Anyway, things had been pretty good over the past few months, but I had been starting to feel a bit dodgy during the past couple of weeks. I suspect it's Julbord related and I simply have to wait until whatever it is gets flushed completely out. That's the theory anyway. I have discovered my own remedies which do work, but they take a bit of time.

Sick leave in Sweden is unlimited. There is a point during a period of absence when the employer stops paying, and insurance companies pick up the slack, but there's no limit to the number of times that you can be sick. That is different to conditions with many employers in New Zealand. In NZ I were allocated 5 days sick leave per year. I was also allocated 5 days "domestic leave", which allowed me to take up to 5 days to care for a sick child or family member. A couple of my employers allowed me to use that domestic leave as sick leave, if I had already used up my 5 days sick leave allocation.

As I said, there is no annual sick leave cap in Sweden. At least, not with my employer. I can be at home sick as often as I like. It has taken some getting used to, but I'm starting to feel a bit better about not dragging myself into the office when I'm full of the cold and infecting all my fellow workmates. Which of course ultimately ends up costing my employer more because of my misplaced bravery. So staying at home until you're properly productive again, and not a risk to other employees, isn't such a dumb idea.

The average Swedish employer isn't quite as dumb as one might think. You can take all the sick days you like, BUT. And there's a but. Every time that you are away from work sick, the first day is taken without pay. A scheme known as Karensdag. I think that's a brilliant idea. It's a pisser if you really are sick and you lose a day's pay. But it solves a couple of problems. First up, as with me, as I had already lost one day's pay, I might as well stay home until I'm properly well again. No point crawling back to work for a week, only to be sick again, and have the whole process start over. It's not totally without feeling, mind. If you come back to work after a couple of days, decide it was too soon and go home again, the first Karensdag day still applies. So you don't lose another day's pay. But the big positive, as I see it, is that it stops the Friday and Monday "illnesses". If you have drunk yourself into a stupor watching the football over the weekend, and can't face Monday morning, you lose a day's pay. If you want to sneak off early for the weekend, you lose a day's pay. Those two cases cost NZ employers so much money and lost productivity. Doesn't seem to be an issue here in Sweden.

Busted

I've just found out that I'm listed on an official government tourism website as a reference guide for would-be tourists/immigrants. They do realise that I'm just making this shit up as I go ?