Becoming Swedish

Winter Woolies

2012-02-02T10:44:00.001+01:00

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

2012-01-30T10:42:00.000+01:00

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

2012-01-19T10:18:00.000+01:00

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

2012-01-05T10:37:00.001+01:00

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 ?

Reading between the lines

2012-01-04T12:52:00.000+01:00

The recent cinema release of the Americanised (why can't they just leave stuff alone ?) version of one of the Stieg Larsson Millennium series books has spurred me into action. About a year ago I bought the set in a local second hand book store. I decided that I was going to start reading Swedish books like a real Swedish person, instead of weaseling my way through with books I had nicked from the childrens section of the public library in order to scrape my way through the Swedish language course requirements. So I had been wandering through the first book when I had the time and the motivation. 700 pages does take a bit of motivation when my attention and concentration maxes out at around 10 pages per session. I had probably read about half of it over a 6 month period. But now it's all hands to the pumps and I'm breaking into the final hundred pages. After all this effort there's no way in hell I'm going to see the movie until I've finished the book.

One of the things I've discovered is my newly acquired ability to quickly detect the writing habits and styles of authors. When the text is in Swedish. In a way that I have never done in English. I guess I'm focusing more on the text these days, instead of simply digesting the content, because the language is still very new to me. If I had to write about the writing style of William Shakespeare, I wouldn't have a clue really. I'd probably end up prowling around in Wikipedia looking for the answers. But I can tell you that, after 600 painstaking pages, I know all of Stieg's favourite words, phrases, sentence structures, and grammatical quirks. I had also read a Marianne Fredriksson book (a very unique and kick arse author who I thoroughly recommend) and found the same thing. Although I never consciously thought about it before now. I don't know that I could do it in English, mind. And I wonder if the average native Swedish speaker could do the same so easily when reading a Swedish book ? Maybe this is one of the few perks of learning a new language.

Another 10 pages tonight and I might almost be finished before the film ends up being sold in the bargains bin at the local video store.

The right to live

2012-01-03T11:29:00.000+01:00

As I think I've mentioned before, we're going (still) through the process of renovating our apartment kitchen. We've gone with an IKEA cabinet system because it was flexible enough to fit our needs, it's a good price, and we don't have to buy everything at once. Which suits the budget. We figure that we've probably passed the halfway point now with our purchasing. As you don't do these thing every day, we've decided to also replace all the whiteware. Everything still worked, but it was all starting to get a bit dated. A couple of weeks back we had a bit of a blip in our selection process, with a requirement (and time frame) for a new kitchen oven fan suddenly being thrust upon us by the governing board for our building body corporate.

Body corporate apartments (bostadsrätt) were a new thing for me in Sweden. It all seemed a bit strange at first but now that I've figured it all out, it all makes perfect sense. At the risk of repeating myself, here's a quick summary. Everyone who lives in an apartment in the building owns a share of the entire building. You jointly own, and are jointly responsible for, the roof, outside walls, gardens, driveways, common areas, staircases, elevators, etc. In addition, you have exclusive rights to a specific apartment within the buiding. That right is your's forever. When you sell your share in the building, you are also selling your right to the apartment. You're free to sell your share whenever you like, for whatever price you like.

Once you've bought your building share, you then pay a monthly fee to cover all the costs for operating and maintaining the building, including your apartment. The fee is generally consists of a building maintenance charge, any loans associated with constructing the building, home heating costs, hot and cold water charges, rubbish removal, building insurances, cable television supply, and local government taxes. And so on. The monthly fee for each apartment is usually based around the percentage of the building that they occupy. A larger apartment will have a higher fee than a smaller apartment.

Now, I hear people complaining about this all the time. "I buy an apartment and then I have to pay rent !". That's just ignorance speaking. If you bought a house then you would have to pay all those same monthly costs that I listed above. The only difference with a bostadsrätt is that you only pay one monthly invoice, instead of paying 7 or 8 invoices if you owned a house. But the total cost is the same. And because it's the people who live in the building who set the monthly fee level, the charges are not profit driven. As opposed to a landlord's rental fee.

Within your own apartment, you're generally free to do whatever you like. We've completely renovated one of our bathrooms, painted and papered the entire place, and are now working our way through the kitchen. There are a few restrictions, in our building at least. Things like knocking internal walls out, or significantly changing the layout of the apartment, are likely to require the approval of the board. That's really to protect the value of the building, and the other apartments. If you do something that makes your apartment tough to sell then that can have a negative flow-on effect to the selling potential of the other apartments in the building. Otherwise though, you can do what you want inside your apartment.

So, our kitchen fan. All the kitchen fans in our building are connected to the central ventilation system. Which means that what we do can affect everyone else in the building. By law, the ventilation system in every apartment building must be inspected every 3 years. It's called an Obligatoriskt Ventilationskontroll, or OVK. The OVK checks that the airflows are what they should be and highlights any faults found. Which just happened to include our (and 3 others) kitchen fan. So that now means we've had to fast track the kitchen upgrade a little. Probably not a bad thing to have a bit of pressure applied. It's been a bit of a research task as well, as we've now discovered that most kitchen fans are not approved for use in apartment buildings. Something I had never considered. Learning something all the time.

You can bank on it

2012-01-02T09:49:00.000+01:00

In the days between Christmas and New Year we took the opportunity to help our elderly mother/mother in law with some banking issues that she had. Being the sensible soul that she is, she keeps her money in the bank. As you would expect. Thing is though, that she actually keeps her money in the bank. Not in a bank account, but in a box. Seems she trusts the bank enough to look after her money, just so long as she can go and see it any time that she wants. I guess if we all thought the same way as each other then the world would be a pretty dull place.

So anyway, a few days before Christmas she received a letter from her bank saying that it was no longer allowed to keep cash in a safety deposit box. They were worried about security if people thought that there was money in the bank. Hello ? Think about what you've just said for a moment. You're a bank, for Christ sake. That's what you do. Oh well. Naturally old Mum was a bit worried about this turn of events. At our advice, she did a bit of ringing around and found out that our own bank was more than happy to hold her money in their safety deposit box vault, and at one third of the annual fee she was paying to her current bank. Problem solved.

We rolled on into the bank, the 3 of us. Being the person in the family who was taller than 1,5m I was brought along as the drug mule to carry the loot across the street from one bank to the other. Not that it was really an issue. I've discovered that the vision of 2m tall 120kg body building Vikings in Sweden is pretty much an urban legend. No doubt dreamed up by tourist operators outside of Sweden. I'm a reasonably tall person, and I've found that I'm taller than about the same number of people in Sweden as I was in NZ. So at least the 2m tall part is a myth. The 120kg might still be accurate.

I scored a free lunch for my efforts and the day was ticked off as a success. The difference between the 2 Swedish banks in this exercise got me to thinking about my experiences with banking systems. there are a lot of people who criticise Swedish banks. My advice to them is to go elsewhere first and then complain. There's a lot of positives with Swedish banks. Firstly, they seem to operate independantly of each other. What I mean by that is that there doesn't appear to be the "unofficial" price fixing agreements between banks that was so obvious in New Zealand. In NZ it really didn't matter where you banked, you got pretty much the same deal at every bank. Same fees and charges, same interest rates, same everything. In Sweden it really is worth shopping around when buying banking services or comparing interest rates. That's been a new experience for me. I've also found that Swedish banks appear to be less profit driven than NZ banks. They aren't giving their services away for free, but they do seem to set their charges to what is fair and reasonable. Rather than taking as much money as they can for their offshore owners and investors. Swedish banks seem to care about what is happening in Sweden. I like that.

When we bought our property in Sweden, we took out a mortgage with a Swedish bank. A pretty painless and straight forward process, as it had been in NZ. Cost wise, there were significant differences between the systems. We had sold our home in NZ about 6 months earlier, and paid off our mortgage. At that time we had a pretty good interest deal of around 8%. Best it had been in years (my first every mortgage had been borrowed at 24% interest). Comparing the 2 countries, I found that property prices were about the same when you converted the currencies. The average wage, however, was higher in Sweden than it was in NZ. Which made property in Sweden more affordable than in NZ. Make sense ?

My mortgage interest rate in NZ was 8%. Our rate in Sweden ? 2,4%.

Now, I'm pretty sure that Swedish banks aren't losing money. They're not a charity. Which means there was about a 5,5% "greed factor" wrapped up inside every NZ mortgage. For those of you who think that a free market is a great idea, that's what you get.

So the fees are fair. And so are the conditions, in my opinion. In NZ, one took out a mortgage for a set term. Say 20 years. The first thing the bank did was to work out how much interest you would be paying them over that entire 20 year period. And then asked you to pay that first. Which meant that, first the first 10 years of repayments, you basically only paid interest. Obviously you could choose fixed term interest rates, or variable interest rates, but you still owed the bank all the interest from day one.

Fast forward to our Swedish mortgage, six months later. As with the NZ mortgage, there is a maximum repayment period. To be honest, I don't remember the length of ours, but let's call it 20 years also. However, the mortgage also includes a "renewal" date, which you decide on at the time. We chose a 2 year period. The bank works out how much interest they are owed. Over the the coming 2 year period, not over the entire 20 year life of the loan. And that's how much interest you have to pay them each month for the next 24 months. Plus however much of the principal that you agree on at the time. There's a massive difference and savings right from the start.

You are pretty much locked into the conditions of that 2 year period (or however long you agree the part period to be). You have to pay the interest payments (obviously) and you can't really vary the principal repayments very much. Keep in mind that we only paid the interest that the bank would have received during that 2 years. This is where I start to get excited. If we had broken our NZ mortgage early (ie paid it off), we would have been forced to repay all the future interest "lost" by the bank. The exception was if you had sold your house. If we decided, after 20 months, to repay our Swedish mortgage in full, the most interest penalty we would have would be for the bank's "lost" interest only for the last 4 months of our agreed 24 month period. At 2,4%. Pocket change.

The good news doesn't end there. After 24 months, we reached our mortgage anniversary date. It is essentially a 24 month loan with an automatic renewal. You don't have to apply for a new loan every time. On that day, for one day, the clock stops. On that day, you can do anything you want. You can change the 2 year period to be a 1 years period, or a 5 year period. You can change the interest system to a fixed rate, or to a variable rate, you can make a lump sum payment without any limit or restriction. Or you can choose, as we did, to repay the entire loan in full. Only on that day. With zero fees, zero penalties, and zero charges for lost interest. Talk about respecting your customers.

I guess no bank is completely trustworthy. we treat them all with a certain degree of suspicion. But, having experienced two different systems in 2 different countries I think that Sweden has a banking system designed to work with people, for people. I'm not sure that they really appreciate quite what they have. Good job that I do.

Party Party

2011-12-13T08:57:00.000+01:00

The Christmas office party season is now in full swing around the world. Speaking a few days back with a former work mate in New Zealand, they are off to a horse racing meet for the evening. I remember those, they were great fun. It was also a clever fund raising idea by the harness racing community, which struggles a bit for funding. We got a private table for the evening, got to name a race (which usually resulted in some kind of cryptic slur against the boss), and some lucky sod got to ride in the mobile starting gate truck. A good night had by all.

Swedes also love office parties. I suppose we must have 4 official parties a year. The format is generally the same every time: dinner, music, and some kind of game or group activity. Dinner is fine, the music I can live with, but must we have stupid bloody party games every frickin time ? Have they never heard of the time honoured tradition of just falling down drunk ? Last week's party involved 10 pin bowling. For about 100 people. Heaps of fun. If you like bowling, that is. Otherwise it's as boring as shit. I admit, I'm not a bowler, and have no intentions of ever being one. Despite it being almost a national sport in Sweden. So it wasn't the high point of my evening. Especially when it spanned around 3 hours. The next night was another party, and another stupid game. Guess the song from a one half second burst of music. Turns out it was real simple if you're 18 and hang around the danceclubs every weekend. But, for the life of me, I didn't hear one single song from Wham or the Village People. So I was stuffed.

Swedes are permanently stressed that everyone should have a good time at social events. Excellent sentiments, can't fault them for that. But there is such a thing as trying too hard. What might be fun for one person might be a complete waste of time for someone else. Some times it's best just to let people do what feels right for themselves on the night.

It's interesting to compare the companies that my wife and I work for. Both are large international companies of similar size and stature. Both are also foreign owned and operate within the same industries. Yet, when it comes to social functions, my wife's company extends an invitation to the parters of employees while my company does not. Why that is, I don't know. But I do have an opinion about the decisions. I'm all in favour of partners being included. I think it's a small price to pay quite frankly. I believe it's both right and appropriate to acknowledge the contribution that our partners make to our working lives. If I didn't take care of her horse occasionally, my wife wouldn't be able to go away and generate massive profits for her company. If she didn't feed me, I'd be dead and earning no money for my company. It's a package deal and I firmly believe that it should be recognised as such. It's a big deal for me. I think it sets the tone for a company and what type of employer they are. A big black mark for my employer over that decision.

Brickbat of the week

2011-12-12T13:07:00.000+01:00

Last night my wife flew out of town here, bound for Helsinki in Finland. She's attending a work conference on..... something or other. Anyway, she was flying as far as Stockholm that evening, staying at the airport hotel, then taking the morning flight to Helsinki. Sounds simple enough. Being the good Swede that she is, she had booked the cheapest fares possible, to get the best deal for her company. If this were in NZ, the employee would have booked Business Class in order to screw the employer as much as possible. Another tick in the nice box for Sweden. So she booked the last flight of the evening to Stockholm and then the first flight in the morning out of Stockholm to Helsinki. Travelling the whole way with Norwegian Air.

Now, I've travelled with Norwegian Air a few times. And a couple of things should be noted about them. First up, they are a budget airline. Their tickets are cheap. That's a good thing. There's a market for that, especially when it comes to short haul holiday travel. They fly directly to some of the lesser known holiday destination sites which the bigger mainstream airlines don't service so well. It's good that there is a company who does that.

The aircraft operated by Norwegian Air are not especially grand. Most are a little tired, it has to be said. Not uncomfortable, but they do look a bit worn and scruffy inside. However, considering you're not on them for more than about 3 hours at a time, they are perfectly adequate for the purpose. If you want more luxury for your bum, spend more money on your ticket.

I had a quick count up and I've flown Norwegian Air about 10 times. As far as I can remember. Because they were cheap. What I do remember is that every one of those 10 flights has been late leaving it's departure airport. Every single time. You can set your watch by a Norwegian Air flight being 30 minutes late to anywhere. Someone told me once that the budget airlines pay a lesser airport fee, so they are often pushed aside to accomodate for full fee paying flights. Could well be. All I know is that their timetables are rather meaningless. This is important to remember if you're planning a trip that includes any changeover flights. An airline company will hold a connecting flight for one of it's own planes, but not for a plane operated by another company which is late. An SAS flight will wait for an SAS flight, but an SAS flight won't wait for a late Norwegian Air flight. And Norwegian Air doesn't care that you've missed your SAS flight, they have no agreement to keep to another airline's schedule. So the trick there is to try and book the whole way in the same direction with the same carrier. That way you've got some come back against the company if things go wrong. We've been caught before, that way. We split up the booking, trying to get the best deal. One flight in the middle was late, and the flight after that told us to get stuffed. So try and stay with the same company the whole way.

Which brings us to the point of my latest gripe. We arrived at the airport last night, in good time, and checked in through the automatic check-in machines. When my wife typed in her booking number, she was automatically checked in, both to Stockholm that night, and also to Helsinki the next morning. There was no option offered to check in for just the first part of the journey to Stockholm. The machine printed out 2 shiny boarding passes, and a baggage tag for the bag she was going to check in. When we went to put the tag onto her bag, we saw that there was just one tag, detailing the entire trip to Helsinki, via Stockholm. This presented a problem as she was going to be needing her suitcase that night in Stockholm. So would need to be able to pick it up. We needed some help.

So off we trundled to the manned Norwegian Air check-in desk. We explained the situation to the woman behind the counter, that we had checked in right through to Helsinki but would need the bag to be checked in only as far as Stockholm. Apparently, this simple request causes a melt down of ticketing personnel. So be warned never to ask this request again. Unable to grasp what we were saying, and repeatedly pointing us back to the ticketing machine, the situation rapidly decayed to the point where the Norwegian Air ticket person started shouting at us to shut up because she was feeling confused. It took probably about 15 minutes before she caved in, wrote a scruffy hand written tag, slapped it onto the bag, spat on it (well, you could tell she wanted to), and snarled that we would have to check in manually again the next morning in Arlanda. Which was our suggestion in the first place.

I was left with a few unanswered questions, which I dared not ask for fear of her leaping the counter and attempting to squeeze the life out of me.

Were we the first people ever to make a booking with Norwegian Air taking the last available flight for the day, and then taking another Norwegian Air flight in the following days ? Would not anyone who flew on the last flight for the day want access to their luggage that night ? Most of us don't pack our pyjamas and fluffy slippers into our handbags.

If, as it seems, the Norwegian Air automatic ticketing machines have no option but to check luggage right through to a final destination, why do they allow people to check in with the machine knowing full well that they won't have access to their luggage ? Can the machine not see that the two flights being checked in on the same booking number are on different days, stop the process, and direct people to the manual check-in desk ? Or at least come up with a warning message giving people the chance to cancel out. Followed by a warning message about the check-in staff.

I refuse to believe that we were unique in our adventure. This must happen on a regular basis and Norwegian Air have really dropped the customer services ball in not having a simple system in place for just such an event. Their front desk people are another story all together. I'm not going to refer to them as customer service because that would imply that I was viewed as a customer, and that I received some form of service.

So, budget or not, a big fat smack around the ears for Norwegian Air. Air travel is still a luxury item, and you live by the good will of your passengers. Remember that.

Let it snow

2011-12-12T09:21:00.000+01:00

Apparently one Christmas, 40 years ago, there was no snow lying on the ground on Christmas Eve up here. It had snowed earlier in the season, but then it had warmed up again before the ground could freeze. And it snowed again before New Year. But the key point is that, on Christmas Eve, there was no snow. And it's been the source of hand wringing every year since.

I hear the same thing about the temperature. "It gets to -45 deg C !". What a load of crap. About 15 years ago, it reached -45 deg. For part of one day. The next day it was back up to -25 again. (back up, he says). How about keeping things in persepctive for a change.

It's the same way that a lot of English people still rant on about the "London Blitz". Despite the fact that most of those droning on about it weren't even alive during the war and, of those who were, most didn't live in London. But I guess that every society likes to feel that they have it tough. That's human nature.

Back to the topic of snow. This year, it was starting to get a little serious up here. Two weeks to Christmas and only the occassional snow flutter to show for it. Could the sky really be going to fall ? Fear not, Norrlanders. On Friday night arrived all of November and December's snow in the space of about 6 hours. Brilliant stuff. If you haven't experienced a good snow storm then you really should try one. This wasn't at blizzard level, but it was still pretty good. A couple of year back we had half a metre fall during a working afternoon. That was impressive. I stupidly had the car with me that day and I remember picking my way gingerly back home. I did have a chuckle at the sight of several Mercedes owners lying on the gound in the middle of intersection, trying to dig their cars out of the drifts. Buy Volvo.

This year it wasn't quite as exciting. I reckon it was about 30cms of powder that arrived. We happened to be at a party that night, about 20 minutes from home. When it was time to go home, we were kindly offered a ride by another couple sort of going our way. Me, being the brains of the operation, decided that a nice romantic walk home on a crisp snowy night would be just the ticket. So, we declined the invitation for a ride and headed off ourselves. Now, there's a reason why people should never ever listen to me. It's because I generally have the worst ideas in the world. Walking home after a 30 cm deep snow dumping is wonderful. If you go after the ploughs have been through. However, if you go before the ploughs have been out, it's crap. There is not a lot of romance in hauling yourself through snow drifts, trying to figure out if you're on the road, the footpath, or someone's front lawn. A quiet 20 minute stroll turned into a one hour ascent of the North Face. I was tempted to set up a base camp for the night after 30 minutes.

Good rule of thumb: If someone suggests to do something romantic on the spur of the moment - DON'T.

2011 reportcard - part two

2011-12-07T13:33:00.000+01:00

The other big milestone for 2011, in terms of all things Swedish, was my completion of the Swedish for the Terminally Stupid programme. As with the surviving the time till citizenship eligibility, this has not always been a labour of love. Unlike the citizenship process, it's not finished. Not by a long shot. But, with the completion of Svenska B, the opportunity to formally learn Swedish has finished. Which leaves me in a bit of a language lifeboat. I can swim well enough to jump into the water, but I'm not so confident about making it all the way to the shore. Now the language is entirely up to me and that's a very frightening prospect. I've noticed that my language level is already falling away slightly. I'm going to have to force myself to read and communicate more, now that there's not the pressure of homework assignments anymore. Some years ago a former co worker of mine (who was not so nice at times) once described me as "working well when cornered like a rat". In hindsight he may have had a point. Self motivation isn't always the strongest in me.

As I mentioned before, completing the Swedish language programme was mostly a pride issue. My employer required me to complete the Swedish for Immigrants course, which I did. I could have stopped there and not been any the worse off in my employment. The problem was that I knew many of my SFI classmates were going to be continuing on to complete the other available options in the programme. If I didn't do that, and they did, then I would have to admit that they were capable of achieving something that I wasn't. And that would never do. Total arrogance, but it served it's purpose. The language levels beyond SFI probably had the most value for me. It got me to the point where I could actually converse with meaning. Nothing near fluency, but more than the static sentences one learns through SFI. Kind of feel a little more human.

In terms of formalities, the past 12 months have ticked off the whole set I think. I can drive a car in Sweden, I can go to a Swedish university if I choose (thanks to Svenska B), and no one can ever chuck me out of the country. I think I can do pretty much anything that a native born Swede can do. Hell, I think I could even do military service. Although it would be a pretty sad statement about the Swedish military if I was on their preferred candidate list.

I'm about as much Swedish as a South American built Volvo. But, like the foreign assembled car, if you stand a short distance back, dim the lights a bit, and squint a little, it's not that easy to tell the difference from the real thing. You can almost get away with it.

2011 reportcard - part one

2011-12-06T13:22:00.000+01:00

It's not quite the end of the year, yet. But it's close enough. Time for a bit of a stocktake for the year, and it's been a pretty big one. Probably the biggest event was gaining Swedish citizenship. That was always my goal. I know it doesn't mean much to Europeans, but it was important to me. One of the official definitions of Swedish citizenship says that "only Swedish citizens have the absolute right to live in Sweden". The absolute right. There are EU agreements and various bilateral arrangements currently in place, but a citizen of the country is a citizen of the country. Should the world suddenly turn to crap, I know that I'll always be able to live here. That was really important. As an added bonus, as it stands today, we could now live pretty much anywhere in Europe, in New Zealand, or in Australia. That's a fair chunk of the world open to us. To be honest, I'm not terribly fussed about the other parts.

There's been a few people close to me who have expressed surpise that I managed to live here long enough to gain citizenship. Apaprently there was money changing hands over how long I would be able to stick it out. Well, not really, but confidence in me wasn't overly high. I was surpised that they felt that way. I probably gave them just cause during that time, in my many not so "light filled" hours. I did wonder why they never said anything at the time, but I can also understand why not.

To be frank, my main motivating factor for getting through the 3 years was straight out pride and arrogance. I would have loved to have cut my losses and run. On more than one occasion. But then, I'd always know that was exactly what I had done. Taken the easy way out. There is a whole country full of people who struggled through, made it, and had a wonderful life in Sweden. Was I going to feel less than them ? Like hell. There was also no way I was going to go back to NZ and tell people "Hey, I tried, but I wasn't as good as the other people, and I wasn't as good as I thought I was". No way. So while it may be nice to say that I did it for love, the actual motivation was a lot more primitive than that. I'm also a pretty lazy and selfish person. I don't like doing something if there's not something in it for me at the end. If I had just given up and walked away, it would have all been for nothing. Three years of my life with nothing but failure to show for it. Again, as much as I might like to have noble ideals, it was arrogant pride and the fear of how people would view me, that kept me going.

The first year was hell. No two ways around that. I didn't understand anything. Everything was being done wrong, and no one seemed to be able to understand that either. If I could have buggered off during the first year, I would have.

The good thing about surviving one year, is that you can start counting down. It's no longer 3 years until citizenship, it's now 23 months and counting. That's heaps smaller. Yeah, you're only fooling yourself, but small milestones can be very effective when life is a bit of a slog.

The second year was tough. I still didn't really understand much. Stuff was still wrong, but it was more annoying than soul destroying. I only thought about leaving maybe once a month.

The third year was acceptable. I pretty much understood what was going on, and why it was. I didn't always agree, but figured that there must have been a reason and that 9 million people can't all be wrong. I started to value those things about life in Sweden that I had begrudgingly allowed myself to enjoy. I also started to see the flaws in my home country in a way that I couldn't have seen when I was living there.

Year four, as brief as it has been to date, has been more in a positive direction than not. I might have a Swedish passport, but I'm no Swede. I am, however, having a very nice time living here. Ironically it was the notion of "just hang in there to get to the 3 years" that kept me going a lot of the time. Yet, now that I've reached that point, I can't see myself living anywhere else. My Swedish wife keeps talking about moving to live somewhere else one day. I wish her luck and hope that she'll send me a postcard. Because I don't plan on going anywhere.

White Christmas is the right Christmas

2011-12-06T10:36:00.000+01:00

The months since summer holidays seem to have crawled by. Now, suddenly, it's only a couple of weeks until Christmas. God only knows how that happened. The snow has arrived, finally. No more falling on my arse for the next few months. Touch wood. It's not especially cold just yet, kind of at that annoying stage between different categories of clothing. It's a bit colder than autumn, but not cold enough for proper winter clothes. I don't have a lot of things in my wardrobe that suit this time of the year. Dressing for the cold is pretty straight forward. It's all about layers. You actually keep warmer having 3 layers of medium thickness than you do having one layer of really thick clothing. Something to do with the air warming up in between the layers. The real good thing about a proper cold winter is that the air is generally very low in humidity. So you never feel damp. I remember last year when we flew from Luleå to Stockholm. It was -20 deg C in Luleå. When we arrived in Stockholm it was -9 deg and I was absolutely frozen. Due to the fact that it was windy and there was so much moisture in the air. So humidity plays the major part in feeling warm or cool. Sounds obvious enough. The biggest problem I have when the temperature falls below -15 deg is to remember to drink enough water. I get terribly dehydrated the colder it gets. Kind of weird trying to explain that to people sometimes. But that's the way it is.

This will be my fourth Swedish Christmas, and I just love them. Growing up on the other side of the planet, Christmas was a very different experience. It was typically a fairly low keyed affair. Kind of special, but not nearly to the extent it is in Sweden. And I believe that had mostly to do with the season. In the southern hemisphere, Christmas is in the middle of summer. Obviously. And summer is holiday time. When I was in school, we would finish school around the end of November, beginning of December, and we would be on holiday until some time in February. Businesses generally closed down for 3 to 4 weeks during the same period. Somewhere, in the middle of all the fun and festivities, was Christmas. But, rather than being the high point, it was just part of it. Most families, and we were one of them, went away on holiday during the summer break. we would usually go camping. Not a particularly pleasant experience for the most part, looking back. But that's what we did. These days families tend to fly overseas for their summer holidays. Swapping packed camping parks for packed tourist resorts. Christmas Day was a bit of a rushed affair, fitting in around other things. Either we would already be at our camping spot, or we would be leaving the next morning. No real getting together of extended families, or spending time with loved ones just enjoying the company. Our last Christmas in NZ was spent in our backyard, with a barbeque, salads, and wine. Sounds perfect, but I now realise exactly what I had been missing out on.

It's taken me 40+ years, but I've finally discovered what it's like to really celebrate Christmas. An evening just sitting around talking and laughing with loved ones sounds fairly ordinary, but how often do we actually do that ? Not very often, in our case. A chance to reflect and to simply feel good about where you are in life. And maybe that was alway one of the points of the exercise.

Be happy being you

2011-11-30T09:58:00.000+01:00

I had a good chat on the phone with my sister the other day, which is something I don't do nearly often enough. My sister moved from New Zealand to Australia more than a decade ago and we lost touch for a long time. For one reason or another. Ironically it's only been since I moved from NZ to Sweden that we've started up regular contact again. That's a good thing. Anyway, one of the things we talked about was the issue of emigration and how the realities match up with the expectations. Our family is pretty well placed to examine this. Of the 3 of us surviving members, not one of us still lives in New Zealand today. One is in Australia, one in England, and of course one made the smartest choice and moved to Sweden. So we're a bit of a case study into integration/assimilation.

My sister and I agree on several points when it comes to living in a new country. First of all, we both love where we live and wouldn't change it for anything. It has all the things that are important to us, and none of the things that we left NZ to get away from. My sister could never accept the Swedish climate and I could never live in a country that behaves like it's permanently on a high school summer break. That's unique to each of us and could be a total disaster for anyone else who had different life factors as being of a greater importance. So we got lucky there.

The key point that we agree on is that we are foreigners in our new country. Obvious enough. The thing is that we will always be foreigners, and we have accepted that. Even coming from the immediate neighbouring country, having lived there for more than a decade, having gained citizenship, my sister will never be an Australian. If I stay in Sweden for the rest of my days, which I intend to do (apart from the occasional clothes shopping weekend in Milan), I will never be a Swede. I will always be a slight outsider. It's not like we get spat at out on the streets, or have to ride on a different bus, but we'll always be viewed as being different and possibly not quite as valuable as someone who was born in that country. Again, it's not a malicious thing, it's just human nature.

Both my sister and I agree that we're ok with that. We know that we're not natives to the country, that we'll always be a bit different, but that we're ok with that. We still have great lives and enjoy being New Zealanders who have made their home elsewhere. I don't think that either of us give it a second thought today.

Sadly, the third member of our family, the one who moved to England, chose a different path. One that can never work. He decided that, if one was going to be living in England, then one had to become all things English. He had to embrace everything that English born people had been raised with as though it was the only thing he had ever known and that any life he had before arriving into England no longer existed. He tried to turn himself into an Englishman. Which, of course, he wasn't and never would be. A disaster.

I've seen this play out a few times over the years. Newly arrived people immediately trying to become like everyone else. Using all the local catch phrases, adoring the local food, instantly loving all the local sports and past times. In a well intentioned attempt to fit in. Way over the top and completely wrong. All it does is to draw attention to the fact that you're from out of town which is exactly the opposite effect that you're gunning for. I used to get annoyed in NZ when my Swedish wife suddenly became a rugby football fanatic. You don't become a fan of a new sport after 6 months, or even after several years. I grew up with the sport, played it at quite a high level, and yet I knew that it was nowhere near as exciting as she was making it to be. It just highlighted that she was a Swede who was trying to be a NZer. She figured that one out in the end, and became a very happy Swede again. which I was very happy about.

The average Australian doesn't go surfing every day or have barbeques in the backyard every evening, the average English person doesn't eat Yorkshire pudding (whatever the hell that is) 3 times a day or wear a Union Jack cap to collect the post, and the average Swede doesn't scoff down a can of surstömming for dinner every night. A great way to stick out as being different and odd in a bad way.

If you want everyone to see that you're not Swedish, try to love as many Swedish things as you can all at the same time. If that's your goal. If you don't want to stick out as some kind of novelty, just be who you are. If you're a New Zealander who quite likes living in Sweden, be a New Zealander who quite likes living in Sweden. Because that's what you are, and that's what you'll always be. It's also the way that native Swedes (whom you're trying to impress) will always see you. It's not a negative thing and no one is going to hate you for it. There's nothing wrong with being a bit different. Mistakingly trying to replace a genuine heritage with a newly invented heritage is a recipe for disaster.

Some ideas are just bad

2011-11-24T09:23:00.000+01:00

I've just come back from a couple of days in Stockholm. Every two years, the department I work in for my employer has a national get together. Why, I have no idea. There are 7 or 8 of us who travel from our local office, and we spend the next 2 days sitting together listening to presentations we aren't the slightest bit interested in, eating together at meal times, and drinking together in the bar during the evening. We might as well be in the staff lunch room at home. The exact same theatre is played out amongst those groups from other offices. I hate these things. Swedes are pretty up to date with global trends, but they've missed the boat on a couple of things. One of those is the idea of "team building". It's a national sport in Sweden. You can't move without tripping over some kind of group activity designed to help us all get in touch with our feminine sides.

Bugger off.

I'm 46 years old. I already know who I like, and I know who I don't like. Do they seriously think that using some deadbeat in a dayglow orange T shirt to force me to spend 2 hours building a pyramid out of people I wouldn't normally cross the street to say hello to is going to change the way I feel about them or the way they feel about me ? Call me old fashioned, but I have this fanciful notion that one goes to work to do a job. I'm not in the least bit interested in becoming best mates with everyone I work with. I have some really good work buddies. I also work with some people who I think are a complete waste of space. That's the way people are. Why there is the need to waste 2 days of time and money on some misguided attempt to try to change the nature of mankind, I'll never understand.

Maybe I see things through different eyes. I've been working for 20 years. Long enough to know that there are other things in life besides work, and that pretty much all of those things are infinitely more important than work. I don't work because I want to, I work because I need to. If I suddenly inherited millions, they wouldn't see me for dust. So my philosophy is to get in there, get the job done, try to have a happy time in the process, and then get out of there so that I can do the things that really matter to me. I'm not in the least bit interested in building a life around my job. I already have a pretty good life. And I don't want some stranger trying to make me buddies with everyone. If I want more friends then I'm big enough and ugly enough to find them for myself thank you very much.

Sweden, you're 15 years out of date with this whole "team building" fascination. The rest of the world has figured out that people don't give a shit. Time to get with the programme. If it wasn't for the free food and the chance to get plastered in the bar at night, I'd be staging a mutiny. But instead I think I'll probably resort to throwing a sickie next time the subject comes up.

She ain't dead yet

2011-11-10T10:52:00.000+01:00

4 years ago when we finally committed to moving permanently to Sweden, we faced the dilemma of what do we take with us, and what do we leave behind. When you're talking about a straight line journey of about 17,000km, you have to start being both brutal and realistic about the value of one's worldly posessions. We did a fair bit of slash and burn, but still arrived with about 80% of what one needs to set up a house again.

One item of goods which never came into question was our animals. They were booked a seat on the plane right from day one. Ok, their tickets costs more than our own, but who leaves their children behind ? Today when I look back, I'm pretty convinced that the cat, dog, and horse, are all thankful that they could follow with us. Say what you like about Sweden, but animals have a pretty good life here. Our 3 babies certianly have it way better than they ever could have had in NZ.

Sadly our little American cocker spaniel left us last Christmas. But I like to think that she had a very happy and rather action packed life. The horse is thriving and is barely recognisable from the creature that was loaded up into a horse transport truck fom his NZ paddock. It will be a few more years before I've been to as many countries as he travelled through between Dunedin and Boden. I'm quite envious of his passport.

Which brings us to the cat. A sad little long hair tortoise shell moggie of dubious parentage, who was left to fend for herself in the forest when her family up and moved. It's hard to know exactly how old she is but, as she was an adult when we took her in, we figure that she's got to be around the 15 years mark today.

During the years she lived with us in NZ, she was primarily an outdoor cat. She would come in for a meal, but then was generally quite happy being outside day and night. It was a concern for us how she would adjust to her loss of freedom when she became a Swedish apartment cat. 3 years later, I somehow doubt that she considers it to be much of a loss. A 23 deg warm apartment, sunlight to follow from room to room, and a big soft cat bed directly under a warm radiator. No, I suspect she considers it to be anything but a loss. On the odd occassion that the apartment door is open for any length of time, she stares out with a degree of suspicion and then scuttles back to the comfort of her radiator. Last winter she even perfected the art of warming her toes directly on the radiator. It's a terrible life.

Life does start to catch up with the best of us, and so it has been for our baby. A few more trips to the vet than normal, an arthritic back, and a few more bumps and lumps on her body than there had been. The later not being helped by her managing to get her neck trapped in the bathroom door and then a wardrobe door within the space of a minute last week. Her eyesight is still reasonably good, but lately we've been starting to question her hearing. She has a rather cute party trick of always replying whenever anyone says "hej" to her. As with the horse, the cat became bi-lingual long before I ever did. Anyway, lately we've noticed that we've had to raise our voices a bit to her, in order to get a reponse out of her. Yesterday, I decided to carry out a little experiment of my own. And what I discovered, what I'm pretty damn sure of, is that she is lip reading. She knows the mouth shape of "hej", and that's what she is responding to. Now how clever is that ?

Forget about old dogs and new tricks. Cats have it all over them. Probably why dogs hate cats.

Not always as it seems

2011-11-02T12:57:00.004+01:00

I read yesterday about a case which started a couple of years back, rearing it's head again. At first glance, due to the bombardment of one-sided misinformation on various well meaning websites, it looks like a sad case of (and I quote) "a loving family being torn apart" due to unreasonable and incompetent Swedish authorities. That presumption annoyed me at the time, and it annoys me even more now. It took all of about 30 minutes of Google to get to the bottom of the reality of the situation. The supporters may not like the truth, but here's what really went down (with a touch of artistic license):

Hey, Svensson, it's the local school board here.
Hey yourself, nice of you to call.
All in the name of service. Anyway, I was ringing about your son.
Nils ? Top kid.
Wouldn't know about that. In fact, that's why I'm ringing.
How so ?
Nils hasn't come to school.
Today ?
Any day, actually.
Well, he's just a baby. Can't rush these things.
He's 8 years old, Svensson.
Serious ? Boy, doesn't time fly.
Planning on sending him to school, Svenny ?
Hadn't really thought about it. My wife has this cultural thingy.
What sort of thingy ?
She reckons 8 year olds should be at home being hugged all day.
You been sniffing those fumes again, Svenns ?
Nope, straight up. No school for our Nils.
Doesn't quite work that way.
You sure ?
Pretty sure. Now get your hippy arse out the door and get your kid to school.
What if we don't want to ?
Then we'll take him to school ourselves and you likely get a smack around the head.
Bugger. Well, in that case, we'll... we'll .... we'll...
You'll what ?
We'll homeschool him ! Ha Ha! Didn't see that one coming, did you ?
Fair cop. Ok, send in the application form and we'll have a look at it.
What do you mean application form ? I've decided that we're home schooling him.
Since when ?
Since I just thought of it now.
What if you're really crappy teachers ?
Why would you say that ?
Because I haven't seen your application form yet.
Ok, best I send one in then.
Best you do. In the mean time, get Nils on that school bus.
Sorry, didn't catch that last part. Must be a poor connection.

-----------------------------------------------------------------

Hey there, Svensson. It's your old pal from the school board here again.
Long time, no see. How's tricks ?
Mustn't grumble. How's Nils enjoying school ?
What you talkin about ? Nils is being home schooled, remember ?
Serious ?
Dead. Sent the application form away and everything.
Yup, got that form right here in front of me. Appreciated the scented stationery.
Anything to help. Was there something else ?
Kind of. Your application to homeschool has been refused.
Sorry ?
Yeah, you know that joke the other week about you both being crap teachers ?
Sure do. Cracked me up no end.
Me too. Funny thing was though, it turned out to be no joke.
For real ?
Yup, you're both rubbish.
Gee, I was kind of hoping for a better score than that.
We all were, Svensson.
What was the biggest problem, if I can ask ?
Certainly. Your wife was to be doing the schooling herself, correct ?
That's right. Bless her. One of us has to go out and work you know.
I quite understand. Your wife has quite an unusual first name.
That would be because she's Indian.
That would explain that. So, tell me, how do you two manage to communicate ?
No problem there. She's a frickin genius. Speaks English better than the Raj himself.
So you speak English then. Why don't you speak Swedish ?
That would be pretty stupid.
How so ?
Because my wife doesn't speak Swedish.
Not at all ?
Not so much as a Tack.
Ah. So you all speak English.
Yuppers.
So....., how is your Swedish born son going to learn Swedish ?
Why would he want to do that ?
Because he's living in Sweden.
Well, technically, yes. But we're all going to bugger off to India one day.
And ?
Well not many people speak Swedish there. Waste of time really.
But you're living in Sweden today, right ?
That's what the return address on the envelope says.
Then the law says that Swedish children have to be able to learn Swedish.
What a bollocks law.
Quite possibly, but still the law. Now get him off the Playstation and get him to school.
Sheesh, there's that bad connection again. Gotta go.

Shortly after being ordered to send their child to school, the family were nabbed trying to flee the country via a secondary airport. The child, as a Swedish citizen, was taken in to care by the Swedish authorities who quite rightly determined that he was being denied basic social and educational development rights under Swedish law.

Now, instead of this being a simple "you knowingly and willingly broke the law of the land", the manic support brigade have tried to turn this into a crusade about Swedish attitudes towards home schooling. The truth is that it never had anything to do with home schooling, and everything to do with obeying the law. The question of home schooling was never even raised until after the parents had been caught and threatened with prosecution for not sending their child to school. They simply introduced the notion of home school later on in order to weasel their way out of a justly deserved conviction. Had the authorities not been made aware of the situation, the child would have been receiving zero education today. But he would have been well hugged.

All's fair ?

2011-11-01T12:58:00.001+01:00

I was interested to follow an on-line discussion the other day from a woman residing in a certain southern hemisphere country who was thinking about moving to Sweden with her Swedish born husband and their children. I say thinking, but really it was rather obvious that she was looking for any and every reason not to move from where she was. As soon as she found what she was after, she was on her way again. No doubt relieved that she had managed to shoot down the rebellion and that life for her would continue merrily exactly as it always had.

Although it's quite obvious that many people from this particular country seem to have trouble living anywhere except in that country, this isn't an isolated case. I hear about it a lot. People like what they have and don't see any reason to change, or it's too much like hard work to make an effort to change.

But here's the rub: they fully expect the other person to change for them.

Since when did that become fair in a relationship ?

It annoys me to hear some of the feeble excuses getting trotted out as to why it's too hard to live in Sweden. The biggest line that offends me (and it came up in the discussion I was following) was that "we'll come for a holiday and see how it is". Geez, has anyone ever been on a holiday where, at the end of their 3 weeks, they knew exactly what it would be like to live there ? Rubbish. That's just lip service to staisfy some poor Swede who's now obviously thoroughly miserable at being away from his homeland for 10 years. Show some respect and be honest with your husband if you never have any intentions of following it through. That's just cruel.

If I had my way, I never would have left New Zealand. I was born there, went to school there, my friends, family, and 40 years of my life were there. I knew all there was to know about living there without having to raise a sweat. I was comfortable in my life. So why should I change ? I could see inside that woman's mind like it was my own. Any and every reason not to lose one's comfort zone. The weather's different, people will think I'm different, I won't understand them, they don't play the same sports, you can't get the right beer. I'll stop there, but I've got a hundred more if anyone needs them.

At the end of it, there was one reason, and one reason alone, which convinced me to move from New Zealand to Sweden. It was nothing tangible yet it was the most powerful reason of them all. It was simply that my wife had been prepared to give up everything she knew and move to New Zealand. Purely for me. Not for a holiday, not for a 12 months "I'll see if I like it", but for the rest of her life. Without ever once complaining. So when, after almost a decade of living in a strange land, she asked if I might consider us moving together to Sweden, there was only one answer which was fair and right. I should point out that I used the term "consider". Although I knew that she missed Sweden, and all that it meant to her, there was never once the notion that she would move regardless, with or without me. Maybe I just got incredibly lucky. Or maybe the world has become incredibly self centered.

Gripe of the day

2011-10-31T09:21:00.000+01:00

I went into the local sports store on Saturday. With the temperature starting to get a little cooler, I was looking for a slightly wamer training top for my outdoor jogs in the evenings. I've never liked wearing anything too warm, as I seem to be one of those people who break into a sweat looking at a flight of stairs. But it seems that even my body has it's limits.

So anyway, I wandered into town and to the store where I knew they had a sale on exactly the item I was looking for. I'd completely forgotten that today was also an expo of all things ski related. I can tell you now that every kid in Norrbotten had a brand new set of skis on Saturday and if you're on the hunt for a pair of one metre long skis today then you'll be right out of luck. Needless to say the store was quite busy. However, I found the shirt I was looking for, a slightly fleecy long sleeved Craft brand top. Perfect. Craft have excellent gear and I highly recommend them. I have found, however, that their sizing can be a bit different to other brands. So, just to be on the safe side, I grabbed two different sizes and headed off to the changing rooms.

When I arrived at the line of 3 changing rooms I could see that they were all occupied. No worries, I wasn't overly stressed for time. After 3 or 4 mintues I did start to get a little agitated. It was at that point I started taking a closer interest in the activities of the 3 occupants. Like most Swedish changing rooms, they have only those half height "saloon" type doors, making most of the occupant visible to the world in general. Modesty is a bit of strange concept in Sweden. Looking at the people in the changing cubicles I noted that all 3 were middle aged women. That was ok but what all 3 were doing, wasn't. All 3 women were, and get this, trying on winter jackets. In the frickin changing cubicles ! Not just one jacket, I might add. Oh no, they had an army of helpers running backwards and forwards with a selection of different styles and colour of rain coats.

Since when did it become necessary to use a changing room to try on a rain coat ?

After 5 minutes of waiting, and knowing full well that all 3 women had seen me standing there with my potential clothing, I'd had a gutsful of this and headed further back into the store. I met a sales assistant and asked her if those 3 changing cubicles were the only ones in the store. Yes, was the answer. Oh, said I, you mean the ones that are fully occupied by 3 women trying on rain coats ? Yes, replied she, before adding, they probably don't need to use changing rooms for that. You think ? There was a kind of awkward few seconds before I realised that the discussion was now finished and that nothing was going to come from this.

Fed up by now, I trundled back to the lower floor to put back my unproven clothing. As I approached the rack, a male assistant appeared through the door leading into the store room. Seizing the opportunity, I explained the situation and asked if I could pop into the store room for a few seconds to try on the clothing. Expecting a firm refusal, I was pleasantly shocked when he held the door open for me and gestured me in. The sight the greeted me inside the cramped store room summed up the situation perfectly. There inside a dusty store room were 5 middle aged males trying on shirts, trousers and jumpers. They turned and looked up at their new cellmate and we just all knew. This was what we had been reduced to. This was our lot in life. The wives reigned supreme in that brightly lit world above, with halogen lamps, 3 sided mirrors, and piped music. While the husbands fought for survival in the dust infested basement.

Such is the way of the world.

Love and marriage

2011-10-21T10:33:00.001+02:00

It's coming up to time for another wedding anniversary. I tried to think of a less gloomy way of saying that, because it's not intended to be gloomy at all. Does read a bit prison-ish though. But it's not. This year it will be, well, one more year than it was last year. If I've done my fingers and toes correctly, we'll have spent more of our married life in Sweden than we have in New Zealand. And that's kind of cool. Second time weddings are a bit tricky. Do you make a big deal out of it or not ? Clearly making a big deal out of the first wedding wasn't such a smart idea. In the end, I think we found the perfect mix which pretty much summed up the things that we have most in common.

Planning a trans hemisphere is pretty much impossible. If you have it in one country, you effectively shut out one side of the family. It's not fair nor reasonable to ask Aunt Maud to spend a month's salary to fly halfway around the world just so that you can have someone else admire at your flash new clothes for 5 minutes. One family ends up losing in the deal. Having both been previously married, we had moved on from the Big Fat Greek Wedding scenario. Marriage takes on a different pespective when you've spent more years than you should have being married to the reincarnation of the devil him/her self. This time around we both understood what was important about the day and, just as importantly, what wasn't important.

My wife and I are habitual ditherers. Maybe that is the attraction. It takes us forever to decide on anything. In our defense, once we do decide, it works out to be a bloody good decision. We do have to force the process, however. Once a year we plonk ourselves down in front of the computer and we're not allowed to stand up until we've booked our annual summer holidays. If we didn't do that, we'd still be pondering over travel magazines 12 months later. We organised our wedding exactly the same way. The family issue was tough. Sweden= annoying NZ family members. NZ= annoying Swedish family members. The solution was simple. Go somewhere in the middle and offend both sides of the family equally. No favourites. And so we did. We sat down on a Saturday afternoon and wrote emails to four or five hotels on various South Pacific islands who specialised in weddings. The rule was simple. Whomever replied first, got the job.

Once again the system triumphed. We found us a great resort on a little island who planned the whole thing for us. A few click of a mouse, and a 15 minute meeting once we arrived, and one wedding was planned to perfection. And all for less thean the price of a typical wedding bar tab. It was a perfect day, just the 2 of us (and a few hotel guests who happened to be wandering past on the beach at the time) in a perfect place, and I don't think we would have changed a thing. We even managed to avoid a tropical cyclone by a couple of hours.

Racking up another year is a big achievement these days. I try not to look back at how many years I have wasted, although I suspect that I'm a better person today for having that miserable life. Rather, or maybe because of that, I'm a little more thankful every day for the life that I have today. Good things can happen to bad people.

The price of pain

2011-10-10T09:34:00.001+02:00

There was a time time when I could just slap on a pair of trainers and sprint out the door for a one hour training run. Oh to be young again, and in possession of a full set of operating ligaments. These days, physical fitness is is a highly planned military operation.

On Sunday I decided to take myself off to the gym. I try to alternate between outdoors training and gym treadmill training every week. A lot of self proclaimed purists will tell me that treadmill running isn't real running. They can think that, but I'll stick to my own beliefs. I would suggest that they don't do a lot of autumn or winter running in the north of Sweden. Anyway, we're getting off the subject a bit here. I was a little pushed for time, because we had come back from tending to the horse, it was laundry day, and we had a family dinner to attend. Time to throw on the sneakers and be out the door. If only.

First up, it's 10 minutes of leg massages. I don't know if leg masages fall into the category of self abuse or not, but frankly it's more like hitting them them with the electric paddles of life. No pleasure involved, I can assure you all. After the massage, comes the application of linament. To get those softened muscles properly warmed up. Then it's on to the feet and a good powdering. Not for the delightful scent, but to prevent skin damage. At this point I should note that my shelf of bathroom "essentials" is rapidly overtaking that of my wife. Who am I kidding, I've starting spreading onto a second shelf now. Next I'm into the kitchen to prepare my electrolite replacement drinks. One to take with me, and one to leave in the fridge for when I get back. Now I'm ready to get dressed.

First item off the peg are compression training socks. I don't know if you've ever tried compression socks before, but, if you haven't, they are about as easy as trying to fit your entire lower leg into a condom. The good news is that, once you spent 5 minutes battling with them and avoiding any eye injuries, they are incredibly comfortable and do a lot to prevent injuries. After the socks comes the compression tights. This equates to trying to squeeze your condom clad legs into a slightly larger condom. By this stage your entire blood supply now only exists from the waist upwards. Then it's the shirt on. Thank god for a simple normal exercise. Well sort of. Before the shirt I have to decide if I want to wear my heart rate monitor, or if I'm going to just tough it out and hope for the best. The shirt is followed by the GPS training watch. If I'm going to the gym, I'll switch it on now so that it can match up with the little sensor in my shoe. If I'm going to be outside then I have to wait until I'm out there so that it can hunt for satellites. Forward planning and decision making needed there. And that leads on to another dilemma. If it's an outdoors day, do I want a hat, gloves, both, or neither. It's a bit tough to know for sure at the moment, 7 or 8 deg C is neither one thing nor the other. Anyway, time to strap the shoes on, making sure that my custom made insoles are sitting exactly where they should be. With the shoes in place, it's time for stretches. About 10 minutes spent on that. Then I can collect my magic potion drink, and I finally get to go outside the door.

That process typically takes around 45 mintues.

And then we train.

Coming home, it's a reverse process. 10 minutes of stretching followed by 5 minutes to remove to suction attached compression clothing. Attach the GPS watch to the computer so that it can download today's data while I'm in the shower. Good long shower taking extra care to make sure there's no stray linament left anywhere. You learn that lesson the hard way, believe me. A couple of minutes stretching after showering to free up those muscles which had decided to die whilst standing still in the shower. An ice balm goes onto my leg muscles to reduce any swelling, followed by a pair of compression recovery socks. Condoms revisted. Warm leggings next, can't have anything getting cold. Grab the replacement drink from the fridge and head off to the computer to view my efforts. A couple more stretches followed by a period of raised leg sitting and relaxing. My time is pretty much free at this point, for the next couple of hours. Before I have another session of massages and an application of anti-inflammatory gel.

So, in summary, the time I spend getting ready for, and recovering from, a training workout, is around 2 hours. Which means that at least 5 days a week, I'm spending more time organising physical activity than I spend actually doing the activity itself. In fact, I reckon that I expend so much energy during those processes, that I'm going to give up the training, and just do the before/after rituals instead. Seems a much simpler solution.

The value of seasons

2011-10-06T12:04:00.000+02:00

I've been eagerly awaiting the arrival of winter again for a while now. For some weird reason, Swedish winters and I just go together. I love the darkness. Especially in winter. Back in NZ I used to love going grocery shopping at night. Right from a kid. Don't ask me to explain, I'm sure there's a support goup out there somewhere with my name on it. There's something quite exciting about stepping out in the dark. Don't get me wrong, I'm as afraid of real pitch black as any red blooded male. But street lights bouncing off the snow is different. No monsters to be had there. It's already noticeably darker. I'm checking all the time. Right now it's dark from around 5:30pm through until about 7:30am. By the time we hit mid November it's going to be dark for around 20 hours a day. It happens that quickly up here. And I can't wait.

What I really can't wait for, is for this crappy nothing season to be over with. In my excitement for winter, I'd forgotten about the little matter of autumn. Autumn in the north of Sweden is one of the big reasons why I left NZ. Now, that sounds like autumn is an attraction, but in fact it's a near perfect copy of a New Zealand winter. And that, I don't care if I never see again in my life. Snow, I don't mind. Cold, I can cope with. Darkness, I get a weird kick out of. What I can never learn to tolerate is wind and rain. I can live with being cold, but I can't live with being wet. The past fortnight we've had more rain than I think we've had all year. I had 40+ years of living through winters of driving rains and howling winds. I've had enough of that. It's just plain depressing. Autumn has no discernible positive value and, frankly, I think there should be a law against it.

A northern Swedish winter has no rain and bugger all wind. The odd metre or two of snow, and a few nippy mornings. Paradise for a soaking wet Kiwi refugee.

A pass mark

2011-10-03T14:23:00.002+02:00

September has proven to be a milestone month in my Swedish adventure. First getting my Svenska B certificate, and then receiving my Swedish citizenship. To cap the month off I decided to apply for a Swedish passport. It's not a really big deal, it would just be a bit less hassle not having people thumb through my NZ passport to find my residency sticker. And then having to explain myself.

So at 3pm on Wednesday last week I rolled on in to the local police station here and enquired after obtaining a Swedish passport. For some reason passports are controlled by the police, and not the immigration department. Maybe it's because you're no longer an immigrant when you apply for a passport. I guess. Anyway, I went armed with all the documentation I could think of. I had my New Zealand passport, my bank ID card, my Swedish driving license, and my certificate of Swedish citizenship. I was deeply disappointed when they only thing I was asked for was my Person Number. After getting my photo taken and figerprints scanned, I had to give my height. In order to lighten the mood and to demonstrate that I was now just like a regular Swede, I laughly gave my height and announced that I was probably a bit shorter today as I'd just had my hair cut. I'd been practicing that line for a while beforehand, in anticipation of the question. So I was quite pleased with myself. A split second after the comment had poured out of my mouth, it dawned upon me that the official looking person sitting on the other side of the counter at the police station was completely bald. Needless to say the remainder of the conversation was a bit reduced from that point onwards. Fortunately the process was nearly over and I could dart out before the words Cavity Search were uttered.

So that was all well and good. Friday morning, just after 9:30am, I get an SMS on my telephone. It's from the police station, telling me that my new Swedish passport is ready to be collected. 30 minutes later I'm giving my name to a very nice lady with a full head of hair. While she wandered off to collect my passport, I dug out my driving license card to use as ID. However, when she came back she simply slid the passport across the desk to me. I asked her if I needed to sign something, or if she wanted to check my ID. She looked at me like I was confessing to a mass murder. I decided not to argue the point, thanked her very much, and left. But I think it was a litle scarey that I could just wander in and pick up a passport. I guess it would have to be a bit of a long shot to happen to know that there was a passport in a particular name waiting to be collected from a particular police station. Without actually being that person. But even so.

So that's that. Going down my list of things to do in order to become Swedish, I have cross country skiing and military service (lumpen) still to tick off. One of those I think I might just skip over. Haven't quite decided which yet.

Another tick in the box

2011-09-23T09:31:00.000+02:00

Time for another pat on the back for Migrationsverket. They need these. On the 23rd of August, I submitted my application for Swedish citizenship. Yesterday when I came home, being 22nd of September, I found a letter from Migrationsverket waiting for me, approving my application and granting me citizenship. Now that's service !

I've read horror stories recently of people waiting 18 months for a decision to be made on their citizenship application. The Migrationsverket website, and the nice lady we spoke with on the phone, advised that 5 months is the current average waiting time. So I reckon that 4 weeks deserves a round of applause and an early Friday finish.

The process I went through was pretty straight forward. It's hard to get it wrong if you read the instructions properly. First up there is an on-line application form. You don't have to complete it on-line, but they do say that it will speed up the application process. Anything to help them, I say. So we spent about 5 minutes completing the form and paying the application fee directly on-line. Then we printed the completed form out, signed it, and sent it away to Migrationsverket with my passport. Exactly as they requested. There's a very good guide that accompanies the form, and it's worth reading right through that first, as there were some parts of the form that I didn't need to concern myself with. If I have to criticise the form I would say that it's not very clear about the circumstances which require different parts of the form to be completed. You could come unstuck there quite easily. One example is a section to be filled in by one's partner. It was only when reading the guide that I found out that married couples registered in Sweden can skip that section. And that the request on the form to attached a police certificate doesn't apply if you complete the form on-line. For some reason. So a few things like that which can foul up your application if you don't do your homework first.

I thought I might have a problem with my NZ passport, which I had to send in with my application. Since arriving in Sweden, my NZ passport had expired, and I had obtained a new passport from the good people at NZ House in London. The problem now was that the passport number I was writing on my citizenship application was not the same passport number they had for me when I had applied for residency. So I expected questions and delays over that. To try and help I also included my original, but expired, passport with my posted application. No questions, so it may have helped.

So why are some people getting processed in weeks, while others are almost in years? I've heard rumours that applications coming from countries where identities etc are easier to confirm, are handled by different people to those who handle applications from other countries. Because there are typically fewer of us applying, that queue is much shorter and the processing time much quicker. I don't know if that's true or not, but if you hear of someone receiving their citizenship in a matter of weeks it tends to be coming mostly out of NZ or Australian mouths. So there might be some truth in that. While it's worked out great for me, it's not a very fair system. People should be dealt with in the order they arrive, I believe. Not many people get to choose the country they are born in, so it's not fair they should be punished for it. On the other side, I can appreciate why Sweden needs to take more time over some applications than others. It's a difficult balancing act which maybe runs a bit too close to the discrimination boundaries. If that is indeed the system.

Another factor which I'm convinced plays a significant role in processing times, is with people sending in wrong or incomplete informtion. Simply not taking the time to read and understand what is being asked of them. Assuming that because they think what they are sending in is good enough, that everyone else will think the same way. I've seen this time and time again, the world over. You can't fight beaurocracy and win. No one ever does. It's their rules if you want to play the game. Be it unfair or unjust, it's still the way that it is.

I'm a little disappointed that everything simply arrived by post. No ceremony, presentation by the mayor or singing of the national athemn like my wife enjoyed in New Zealand. I'd been practicing Sommarnatt and Öppna Landskap for ages. At least I'll be all set for New Years Eve now.

Svenska timeline

2011-09-08T14:01:00.001+02:00

Having recently finally completed the excellent (and FREE) government Swedish language programme (the official certificates arrived yesterday) I thought it might be worthwhile giving a sumamry of the task. As I found it to be.

We arrived here in late August 2008. Like 99% of immigrants I was dead certain that I'd pick up the lingo just like that, and that language classes were for other people who weren't nearly as clever as me. That fantasy lasted all of about 3 weeks and I started full time at SFI school in mid September. I was applying for work at the same time, and was lucky enough to be taken onboard in December by an extremely understanding employer. I guess they knew that I wasn't really in a position to be bargaining with them and that, once I had the language sorted out, I'd already be established with them. Either that or they figured I might be a good source of entertainment. Whatever the reason, they had a requirement that I successfully complete the SFI programme. Naturally I couldn't do that during the days, so I switched to night classes, which went for 2 hours, twice a week.

I started back with SFI in late January of 2009, this time at evening classes, and in the town where I was working. I took that option as I figured it would be easier rather than commuting back to my home town and going to school there. In hindsight it was a mistake, as the second school used a totally different set of course material than was used at my first school. Which essentially meant I had to start from scratch again with the required assignments. One would have thought it would have been standardised throughout the country, but that was not the case. So it slowed me down a lot, as obviously did the reduced classroom hours. It wasn't until February 2010 that I took and passed the final exams for the SFI programme.

All up, SFI took me about 13 months of actual class time. My colleagues who had stayed with the fulltime day classes completed the course in about 6 months.

That satisfied my employment requirements. I could have stopped there. I was tempted to. My co-worker took the SFI exam at the same time as me, and she decided not to go any further. But then, Swedish wasn't the first "extra" language she had learnt and she seemed to have the knack which I didn't. But here's the thing. Knowing that there was an additional path, and knowing I had the choice to take it and didn't, when other people had, just didn't sit right. I would always have felt like I'd taken the soft option. Other immigrants had toughed it out, maybe I wasn't quite as good as I thought I was. It would eat away at me if I didn't at least try.

The other motivating factor was to try and wrestle back some control over my life. Not mastering the language as quickly as I thought I would had hit me hard. I felt like I wasn't in control of where I was. After 40+ years of knowing everything and being able to decide when and how I did things, this was really tough. Now I was limited in what things I could or couldn't do. It was no longer me who was deciding. And that couldn't be acceptable. I needed a higher level of language skill in order to regain the control. For me, personally. So I decided to continue with the programme.

The next phase after SFI was SAS Grund. This is a big jump from SFI. More literature based and a lot more demanding with grammar. Really interesting though and my first exposure to the more well known Swedish authors. I also started learning about different types of Swedish language from different eras. Quite a lot of fun. SAS Grund didn't have a completion exam. Not at my night school at least. At the end of the summer holidays in 2010, after 4 months of SAS Grund, the teaching staff decided that I was ready to move forward into the Svenska A/B programme group.

Svenska A and B are rated as being at Swedish high school level. Supposedly. Seemed a bit short to me. But that's the theory. The course material is pretty much the same for both A and B, with the difference being the level of marking. B was pretty tough for me. With A/B there was no formal grammar lessons or testing. The tasks consisted of completing a number (about 10 for each) of written essay assignments based around Swedish history and literature. Grammatical weaknesses or faults were picked up and addresed during the marking of the assignments.

SFI taught the basics of the language with generally one word to describe an object. A cat was a cat. With Svenska A/B came the introduction of synonyms and the challenge to use alternative words or phrases to suit a particular task or communcation style. At times we had to write formal reports, other times we were to write informal magazine type articles. A large part of the marking was allocated to being about to use the appropriate language and terminology to suit the genre and audience. I found that to be quite tough, but eventually got my head around it.

A pass in Svenska B allows for entry into a Swedish university. I can't see that I would ever want to go to university again, but the point was that I could if I wanted to. All about taking the control back again. Plus, I'd come this far and I'd be really pissed with myself if I'd sweated all for nothing.

Svenska B has external written and oral exams, just like SFI. As well as the assignment requirements. From what I understand, these exams are not compulsary in adult student schools. As luck would have it, my school had decided that they would impose the exams as a requirement. Which meant a bit more stress, but at least we could say that we hadn't taken any shortcuts. Svenska A and B combined took me a full calendar year to complete. Most of the work was self study so, even though I only went one evening a week, it's probably not a lot slower than the day classes. Certainly not like the difference in the SFI timescales.

So, all up, if one is working fulltime, the entire Swedish language programme takes about 3 years to complete. Studying fulltime probably knocks a bit more than a year off that time. But it's worth remembering that the point of the exercise is to learn Swedish. It's not to gain a certificate in the shortest possible amount of time. Language is something that takes as long as it takes. Having a piece of paper isn't suddenly going to give you fluency you never had a week earlier. This is a long term process to set you up for the rest of your life.

Svenska B, Conquering Mordor.

2011-09-01T10:14:00.000+02:00

Well, it only took 2 years and 11 months. Only, he says. But I am now officially a graduate of the Swedish language programme. Svenska B is the final stage of the official language programme offered by the government for immigrants into Sweden. Supposedly it's at the same level as a graduating Swedish high school student. Must be some pretty dumb kids in Swedish high schools if their language skill is at the same level as mine. But, hey, I passed.

It was a real crash course this time. I completed Svenska A one week before the summer holidays and was given all the written assignment information for Svenska B prior to the holidays. The course had 6 written assignments to complete, 3 oral presentations, and one final written essay exam. The plan was that we would see how much work was able to be completed before the course shut down 3 weeks into the new term due to the teacher heading back to university. Then I could pick up the remaining work when the course started back up again in the new year.

The written assignments were pretty tough, I have to say. It was the same format as for Svenska A, but the marking criteria was much tougher, and I was forced to re-write every assignment after marking. I spent my holiday break doing all the research, reading frantically, and writing like the wind. Then I spent the first week back at school correcting all my mistakes. Luckily I had a wonderful teacher who was very proactive in marking work and getting them back to students.

The second week consisted of the oral exams. These involved 2 interview style discussions of around 15 minutes each about Swedish language history and about the development of language in people during various stages of their lives. Which was really interesting, but a lot to remember. Then there was a formal oral presentation to the class on a language topic which had to be submitted and approved in advance. That took quite a lot of time to sort out and rehearse.

The third and final week, with all my written assignments finally ticked off as being correct (or as good as they were likely to get), I sat the final external exam. Like SFI, there is one exam for all students throughout Sweden. For some reason it's not a requirement for students at adult schools, but my school had decided that they wanted all students to complete the same tasks as regular Swedish kids. Damn them and their mis-guided principles.

For the written exam we (there were 2 of us) were each given a reference book containing about 30 short articles on various language and cultural topics. There was more than one article covering a common theme, but they were from different angles. Then we were given a question booklet where we could choose from one of about 6 or 8 assignments. Each assignment gave a specific situation, such as writing for a teenage magazine, and a topic to be addressed. We had 5 hours to complete the assignment using the classromm computers.

As well as showing language skills (obviously), the main point of the exercise was to use language which was appropriate to the audience and the subject. That's a huge portion of the Svenska B content, learning alternative phrases and styles to describe the same things. Probably 50% of the marks went to having the appropriate approach to the situation.

With a lot of sweat I got through the formalities. It's then been a bit of a nervous wait to hear the final verdict on the combination of the assignments, vocal assessments, and written exam. But yesterday I got the call to say that I had officially passed with a VG grade. I think they were just as relieved to see the back of me as I was.

So that's that. Am I suddenly a native speaking Swede ? I wish. I guess that now the work starts. But it's kind of cool to know that I did achieve something Swedish. That doesn't happen very often for me.

Citizen Kane

2011-08-26T12:45:00.001+02:00

This week has seen a big milestone crossed off. On Monday it was 3 years since we had arrived here in Sweden. 3 years. Doesn't sound like very long in the grand scheme of life. But, when you're in the middle of it all, it seems like a lifetime. Smooth sailing, it hasn't been. Not by a long stretch. But we made it. Somehow. With that being done, I've taken the plunge and applied for Swedish citizenship. Having been married to a Swedish born citizen for 2 years prior to moving to Sweden, I am eligible to apply for citizenship after living in Sweden for 3 years. I had been given permanent residency status in Sweden before we arrived here, but that doesn't feel quite as secure as being a citizen. And being a person of non-EU origins, that sits as a little niggle in the back of my mind. I'm here only for as long as it pleases the Swedish government. I need a bit more control over my destiny than that.

The actual process of applying for citizenship is relatively simple. The key, as I see it, is to read everything thoroughly and give them exactly what they ask for. Not what you think they should have. Anyway, I completed the on-line application form in about 5 minutes and paid my 1500 SEK. I then printed out the completed application form and sent it away as a paper version, together with my passport. No police report, medical report, marriage certificate, or anything like that was needed. Giving up my passport was tough. I know I can get it back in an emergency, but I do feel slightly vunerable without it. That's different to the citizenship process in New Zealand. In NZ you retain your passport and only send it in when they contact you once they are ready to physically process your application. So you're generally only passlös for a couple of weeks at the most. Makes sense to me.

There's lots of horror stories about how long the application process takes. Stories ranging from a few weeks to nearly 2 years. I have my own theory as to why that is, but I think I should probably wait and see how long it takes for me, before I start ranting on that. First step has been completed, however. Now it's up to the Gods.

3 year report card

2011-08-22T10:11:00.000+02:00

Well, here I am. 3 years and 1 day after arriving into Sweden. Still alive: a surprise, Still in Sweden: something of a shock, and, Still married: a minor miracle. I wish I could say it's been a dream journey and it's all been just as perfect as I thought it would be. God how I wish I could say that. But, as any immigrant will tell you, the reality is considerably more sobering.

When I lived in New Zealand, people whom I knew had emmigrated out from England, told me that it took 18 months before they felt like they belonged in NZ. For me, coming to Sweden, it took me maybe a year longer than that. So I guess that extra year is the language. Or my arrogance/ignorance. Anyway, as my English friends told me, anyone who isn't going to make it, will go back home within that 18 month period. If you can make it through the 18 months, you'll probably be ok. I found myself drawing on that advice a lot of my first couple of years here, even trying to fool myself by counting down in weeks or months to that magical figure. It helped me to remember that what I was experiencing was normal and that, if other people could make it, then so could I. Even if I didn't feel it. Nothing like a bit of competitive spirit to get you through.

There's a lot of websites out there detailing the emotional stages that immigrants go through after arriving into a new country. They seem to be fairly consistant and are probably a fair portrayal. The problem is that, when you're the immigrant standing in the middle, you don't get to see which "phase" you're currently in. You can only see the here and now. Every now and then I stop and look back, and remember how it was for me.

Like everyone, I arrived bursting with energy and ready to take on any challenge that was placed in front of me. Confidence was at an alltime high. That lasted about 3 weeks, which was about the length of time it took to dawn upon me that I didn't have a clue what I was doing.

About a month after arriving I started at SFI school. I was convinced that I'd be able to simply "pick up" the language, and that a language school was for people who weren't too smart. I guess I was right about the second part, I was just wrong in my assessment of my natural abilities. Being in SFI helped me to feel a bit less like a freak. At least I could be in the company of other freaks.

Also around this time I started becoming frustrated with the fact that everything was different. It wasn't just the language, it was, well, just the way that people did things. Simply, they were doing it all wrong. Frustration led quickly to anger and resentment. How stupid could an entire country be ? Buggered if I was going to put up with that.

I also started applying for jobs. And that's where I got the biggest shock. I'm a pretty well educated and experienced person. I'm used to be taken seriously. I expect it. What I didn't expect was to be viewed as "second class". I was totally unprepared for that, and it hit me hard. Cue depression. Once I found it from employers, I started seeing it everywhere I turned. Whether it was real or not, I felt it. I had a job by this stage. Not at the same level I had been working at back in NZ, but a job nonetheless. More than most immigrants had. Even here though, the feelings of being indequate, of not being valued as highly as other people, remained very much to the fore. I regressed a lot into myself. Which is not who I was. I was changing as a person, and I didn't really like who I was becoming.

Cue further depression, and a sense of being lost. By now I had hit that 18 month marker. I understood a little of what my English friends had been saying. To an extent. Now, I no longer felt connected to NZ. That bond had been severed. Yet, for me, I didn't belong in Sweden either. It was a lovely country, I just didn't feel like I had a place here. A role. I felt a complete loss of identity. The language was a real battle, making it hard for me to express myself, and I had no physical points of historical reference in my new surroundings. I had nowhere to call home.

It would take me another year before I discovered myself thinking one day, that this was my home.

How anyone else has managed to live with me, I will never understand. I must have been (and still can be) the most miserable person on the planet. I will never understand why my wife has stood by me. I am ashamed to admit that I would not have supported the same crappy attitudes and rantings had the roles been reversed. Not for years at a time. Not with the way that she wore every frustration that I had. That either makes her a saint, or me a pretty shitty person. I suspect it's both. Whatever the description, I owe everything to her that I'm still here today. I'm not sure she'll ever fully understand the role she continues to play, but I hope that one day she does.

So 3 years. What's the status today ? I'm still no bundle of laughs, I know that. But I think, I hope, that I'm a bit more pleasant company. I've learnt a lot about acceptance and patience. They were never my strongest assests, so I think I'm a better person today in that respect. I actually think I'm more patient at times today that my wife. It's a bit sad that, as a result of 3 years of living with me in Sweden, she has gotten so used to jumping in and defending my honour, that it's become a part of her. I'm sad about that, because that's not her, and it's been caused by me. But we're trying to wean that off. I've received rather harsh lessons in humility and in the value of those things in life which truely matter. Again, those were unplanned lessons but, again, I think I've come out a better person for it.

Is Sweden really my home ? I finally think that maybe it might be. The language is still a battle. My language teacher tells me that it takes between 4 and 5 years for an adult to truely feel comfortable with a new language. But I can survive now. Overall, the things I like about Sweden are greater in quantity and hold a high status, than the things I don't like about Sweden. That's the biggest battle, not letting those demons take a larger form than they really are. I control more of my surroundings than those that control me. Maybe that's part of the definition of what it takes for a place to become a home.

Skriftlig Blues

2011-08-18T14:04:00.000+02:00

Last night at language school we had to write an essay selected from a choice of language related themes. We had to write on the school computers and then save it on a USB stick for the teacher. Which was fair enough. Although, whatever happened to writing by hand, I'll never know. But anyway, for one of the few times in my life, I caught a break when I discovered that one of the topic choices was the same topic as I had used for my oral presentation the week before. It doesn't usually work like that. Typically we have to report on a set topic in a choice of writing styles. It can be as a straight report, and investigative angle, or as a debate. I often just start writing and then figure out, about half way through, which style my text is going to be best suited to. But last night was a bit more straight forward.

It went ok, I think. The verdict comes out next week. I was a bit disappointed to discover that access had been blocked to my ever trusty on-line Swedish-English dictionary, and to Google Translate. I must confess that I do use Google Translate quite a lot. Most often just to get me started. I can fire down thoughts in English, take the Swedish translations and use them to build my text around. Instead of having to start from scratch. Now, before anyone starts crying foul, I have to say, in my defence, that I seldom leave the Google Translate text in it's original copied form. Unless it's obvious that there's only one way to write something. Early on our teacher told us that she had seen some much Google Translate text that it was dead easy to spot. And she's right. I can spot it without too much effort when a Swede has used the same programme to translate back into English. It often is a bit too literal and just doesn't hang right. Knowing that she's on the hunt for any rogue translators, I take a bit of time to move the text around to a more sensible format and to add my own touches to it. But it does give a good start.

Not having access to an on-line Swedish-English dictionary was a bit un-necessary I thought. Especially when we had hard copies of translation dictionaries in front of us to use. But there must have been some reason for it. We also had a copy of Natur och Kulturs Stora Svenska Ordbok which is, in my opinion, one of the best books a person can have when studying Swedish. As well as being a dictionary it also shows all the different ways a word can be used, giving practical examples and normal expressions for each situation. A very handy book, and I refer to it a lot.

The main stumbling block last night, was actually our teacher. I guess she had nothing else to do while we were all writing, but could she not have found something better to do than to laugh every couple of minutes at comments on her friends' Facebook pages ? To be fair, she was kind enugh to read the comments out loud to us. So that we wouldn't feel left out. Didn't really help my efforts though. To show that she really was considerate, she announced after about 20 minutes that we were all going to stop for a coffee break. Which turned out to be a 45 minute natter session in the teachers' lounge. In the end I just got up and announced I was going back to the computer suite. No one else seemed to take the hint, included the teacher, so I was alone in the room for another 15 minutes. Which was probably the most productive period of the evening.

Even fun is a science

2011-08-18T11:26:00.000+02:00

As I think I've mentioned before, I've decided to get back into some form of regular physical training after a short break of a decade or 2. There's a great T shirt slogan that goes something along the lines of "The older I get, the better I was". Which sums me up pretty well. I foolishly thought that I could just pick up where I left off as a spotty faced youngster, and that it would all just come flooding back. Big mistake, obviously. Even if it has taken me a while to finally admit it. So it's time to strip everything back and start again.

Things have changed a bit in the past 20 years. Fortunately there are now new and improved ways for me to feel like death would be a welcomed alternative. One thing that we did recently, was to purchase a GPS training watch. Something I would have scoffed at a few years back. Now I'm wondering how I ever managed without it. For anyone out there who doesn't know what these things are, and gives a damn, it's basically a wrist stopwatch that also records and displays your distance and speed if you're out walking, jogging or cycling. As I'm starting out again, I find it a great teaching aid to help me see if I'm running too fast or too slow. I'm usually out training by myself, which I quite enjoy really. It's time when I can contemplate life or even, God forbid, do a little bit of Swedish language training in my head. Counting to 100 in Swedish can help distract one from the agony of crawling up a hill. But then I'm an easily distracted person. Anyway, one feature with the watch is that you can play back a previous training session and effectively race against yourself. You need never be lonely again. I've decided to be kind to my future self if I decide to do a training session that I intend to save, and slow down a bit in the middle as a present to my future self. Yeah, I know I'm only cheating myself, but that's why cheating was invented. An added bonus with the model we purchased is the inclusion of a heart rate monitor. Which is an improvement over the stabbing chest pain and numb left arm technique I had previously been relying on. Overall, I'm really impressed with the product. We'll see how long it is before it ends up in the cupboard with the karate suit, electric guitar, and roller skates.

The second part of my extreme overhaul has been to look at the way I train. As a teenager I could just strap on a pair of trainers and just go for it. And it worked pretty well. Now, as a non-teenager, it's not quite so footloose and fancyfree. I'm getting aches and pains where I never knew one could. Creams, gels, plasters and powders are now part of my daily ritual. Sad but true. A couple of problems had been hanging around for a while and I was getting prety sick of them. Here again I decided to take advantage of the latest in technology, the Internet. I'm a bit wary of looking for medical type advice on the internet. For every person that tells you that red meat is the only way to go, there's 2 who will say that you'll most likely turn into an axe weilding maniac if you even smell red meat. So I try to treat them with a bit of caution. However, I did find enough people talking about the same issues and reaching the same conclusion, for me to at least try and give it a go.

Most of the pain niggles I've been experiencing seem to be related to the length of stride that I've been taking. According to on-line "experts". Buggered if I know anything about that, I just do what comes naturally. Which it seems has been bad for me. So I'm now trying to retrain my natural tendancies by shortening my stride. Don't know if you don't try. That was proving to be nearly impossible until I read that the solution is to increase the frequency that our feet hit the ground. If you do that, and keep the same speed (this is where the GPS clock is paying for itself), then your stride length will reduce by default. And bugger me if it didn't work. I felt better straight away, with pain completely gone from the problem areas. As as extra bonus, it seems that moving my legs faster is actually less effort than moving them slower but further. Thanks to the new trusty toy, my heart rate is about 10 beats per minute slower than it was when running at the same speed previously. Not something that I was expecting.

It's early days yet, and still very much a work in progress. But the results are enough to give me some encouragement. The big test will be how motivated I am when the snow comes. Plodding along beside the anorexic ADHD gym bunnies is not my idea of fun.

Wild West

2011-08-15T14:00:00.002+02:00

As a rule, I don't like kicking a particular country. Because there are good people living in every country, as well as a sprinkling of nutjobs. So it's unfair to tar everyone with the same brush, and I hope I'm not doing that.

A couple of days back I went on-line to read up on some exercise forums. I've been looking at the way I've been training, and thought I should see if I can do things a bit better or a bit smarter. Anyway, while scrolling through a US based jogging forum, I spotted the following thread heading:

"What is the best way to carry your gun when out jogging?"

"Back in the army barracks with all the rest of the guns" would have been the correct answer, I should have thought.

Apparently not. Far from being ridiculed (as I assumed the poster would be) replies came thick and fast from other joggers, all offering advice and their tales of pesonal experience. Digging further I then discovered manufacturers who were making gun holsters specifically for this purpose. I guess that the demand is that big.

Geez, people. Step back for a minute and look at what you are discussing. What scared me the most was that not one single poster expressed concern, dismay, or sadness, that they would be needing to carry a loaded gun with them as a matter of course when they were out jogging. It was as normal a discussion as one would expect if the question was "what type of jogging shoes should I buy?".

In what kind of decent civilised society should it ever be considered both normal and acceptable to have a loaded weapon with you 24 hours a day ? As easily as one would wear a watch. I could not imagine living in such chaos where, even in my leisure time, I would have to prepare for the possibility of killing another person. Maybe I'm the niave one here, but at what point should a society stop asking that question ? Maybe the whole "Right to Bear Arms" thing was a typo, and was supposed to have read "Requirement to Bear Arms".

I'm really struggling to believe that several hundred million people can't stand together and refuse to accept living like that. If a couple of billion million other people can leave their homes every day without having to check that their gun is loaded with anything other than paintball pellets or foam tennis balls, then it is possible. Surely there's more to life than living in fear? Is the Land of the Free really the Land of Prisoners ?

Speech Therapy

2011-08-11T10:31:00.001+02:00

Last night at my language class we had to give an oral presentation. I hate these things. Mainly because my Swedish speaking skill level is by far my weakest point. As I guess it's always the last thing to master for most immigrants. I get so frustrated at not being about to get the message out in the way it exists inside my head. It's like having one arm permanently encased in plaster. Yeah, you can still do stuff, but you know that you used to be able to do it much better. Anyway, that's how it feels to me.

The theme was language and communication. Which was no great surprise given that it is a language class. We were free to take any approach we wanted, with the only requirement being that we had to include a couple of published works from a series of articles (about 30) in a book that we had been given. A few weeks ago one of my classmates gave a really good presentation on how the ability to communicate determines much of your personality and that, once that ability is compromised, your personality can alter. I hadn't thought about that before, but it rang true to me.

There were two of us who presented our topics last night. One guy spoke about the perceived importance of a name and how that importance can vary, depending on cultural or historical traditions. I found it to be really interesting and, like any good presentation, it opened the topic up for discussion at the end of the presentation.

For me, I took a less personal approach and chose a couple of articles that discussed the value and appropriate use of cliques. I enjoyed researching the subject and coming up with my own theories on the future direction of language evolution. It was fun.

The presentation itself wasn't so much fun. We have an "approximate" time limit, and I've always struggled with that in the past. So I spent a lot of time trimming as much fat out of my speech as I could, without losing too much structure. Which wasn't easy. On the other side, I know that I tend to talk fast when I'm nervous, and the clarity of my language starts to suffer. There's a fine line between Swenglish and just plain gibberish. As that's the entire point of the exercise, I was a bit worried about it, and kept forcing myself to slow down my speech the whole time. Which meant that I got pinged a couple of points for running over time. But I got through it.

With any luck that's the last time I'll have to give an oral presentation in class. There's a lot of things hanging up in the air at the moment as to whether or not the class is going to continue. I hope they find a solution because, as much as I hate it, I need the structured class too keep me focused solely on my new language. As a first time language student it's been a real battle. More than I could ever have imagined. And will be for a few years more. I know I've said it before but I'll always be grateful to the Swedish education system. This is not something I could ever have just "picked up" on my own. Without SFI classes to give me that base language grounding, I'm almost certain that I would be back in NZ today. I must send them a Thank You card some time.

Food Failings

2011-08-09T11:18:00.003+02:00

Don't know if I've written about this before, but I've been battling a few health issues since I've been in Sweden. Not life and death stuff, just annoying. Most of it centres around some recently developed food allergies or intolerance. As luck would have it, it's limited to all the foods that I've loved for the past 40+ years. I don't know why it's suddenly become such an acute issue. Part of me thinks that there must be something in the base food ingredients used in Sweden that weren't so strong in New Zealand. And I'm not talking about surströmming. My sister, who lives now in Australia, told me once that she can't eat cream buns in Australia without feeling ill. Every time she flies back to NZ, that's the first thing that she eats. And when we had a 10 day holiday on Crete last month, I feel fine pretty much the whole time. So there might be something to the theory. I've been to a few doctors who have poked me in the stomach (at their peril), sucked in their breath a few times, and then told me that they have no idea why I'm feeling ill all the time. Thanks for that, here's your 100kr.

So I've resorted to the tried and true method of self help. As I've already figured out which foods are the big ticket killers, I've started avoiding them where possible. Remove the source, remove the problem. That's the theory. And it's probably been about 50% successful. Certainly in terms of the severity of symptoms. Unfortunately, it's pretty much impossible to avoid the base materials that make up those foods as it's in pretty much everything. As much as I try to monitor what I'm eating. I've become a bit of a dab had at reading the packaging labels on food. Something I never knew existed before now. So I end up feeling a bit lousy after every meal. Enter stage two of the home remedy treatment plan. Which is extremely unfortunate, and was discovered completely by accident.

When I feel ill after eating, the only way I can fix it, is to exercise. A lot. Which means going for a one hour run or walk after every major meal. Not as much fun as it sounds. But, for some reason, forcing blood around my system seems to get rid of the discomfort. I feel like nothing has happened. Except for the minor fact that I've logged more than 1,000km since I started this treatment plan in the middle of April. I'm not convinced that I want to stick with this regime for the rest of my life, however. Although I accept that I'll more than likely always be locked into this enforced lifestyle.

I'm at the point now where I pretty much accept that things are the way that they are. If we go out to eat, then I'll eat anything. I know that I'm going to have to go out for an hour when we get home again, but I would have had to do that in any case. So I might as well eat some good tasty food while I'm here.

I guess it's not all doom and gloom. I had a recent physical the other week. My blood pressure was the lowest it had been since I was in my mid 20s. And I'm on my 3rd pair of running shoes. So I'm obviously in better shape than I was 6 months ago. I should feel happy about that. And I am, I just wish that there was an easier way of getting there.

Svenska B

2011-06-21T10:20:00.001+02:00

Having finally, and with a great deal of perseverance on the part of my teacher, signed of on Svenska A, I'm now embarking down the road of Svenska B. The final stage of the immigrant language programme. Why am I continuing to subject myself to this torture ? I'm not exactly sure. Maybe it's because I've been doing it so long now that I don't know anything else to do. I started with SFI a few weeks after arriving in Sweden, so I guess it's just part of my life now. But there is a little method to the madness. I've spent so much of my life having the freedom to choose what I want to do. Now, I don't have that same freedom. Not to the same extent. So I'm trying to level the playing field as much as possible between myself and the native Swede. Note, I did say as much as "possible". Have to keep realism in there as well. And it's free. I still can't believe that. Go Sweden.

Having Svenska B will allow me to attend any class held at a Swedish university. I probably will never want to do that. But, the fact is that I could if I wanted. And that's important for me. Being able to choose, rather than have it chosen for me. The other side is that it feels like a job half done. Knowing that there was more to the process would eat away at me. Completing SFI was a condition of my employment. The rest, well that's just a condition for me.

First impressions of Svenska B is that it's quite a jump from Svenska A. In both level and direction. Svenska A was an introduction to extended Swedish writing, while raising the bar with regard to grammatical knowledge. Svenska B is almost entirely focused on extended writing. Lots of indepth reports to write, and opinions to express. A stronger emphasis on Swedish history and culture. Which I guess is fair enough.

Svenska B is a formal recognised qualification. There is a national exam at the end of it. As there is with SFI. Interestingly, for some unknown reason, the national exam is not compulsary for students studying through adult education centres. Such as Komvux. From a national point of view. But many learning centres, my own included, have decided that they will include the national exam as part of their course requirements. Damn them.

This might all come to nothing. Our teacher is taking a one term break from us, to find religion. Technically she's sudying a teaching religion course, but we all suspect that we know what has driven her to this. It's a bit late to apologise now, I guess. So, while I'm toiling my way through the coursework over the summer, there may not be a class for me to return to. We discussed this at some length, and I opted to continue. Regardless of whether or not there is a new class next term, my level of Swedish will have improved. And that's the whole point of the exercise, right ?

Bouquets of the Day

2011-05-31T15:05:00.007+02:00

With the summer holiday season just around the corner, I thought it timely to update my passport. Both my loving wife and I had renewed our NZ passports at the same time, and they were both coming up to expiry dates. So it was time. Anyway, being about a squillion miles away from the passport office in Wellington, our nearest passport port of call is London. Having dealt with English beaurocracy a couple of times, I was a LITTLE apprehensive about the ability of a UK based office to perform under pressure. But, we downloaded the forms, paid the price of a Bangkok purchased kidney each, and sent our applications off via super fast carrier pigeon to NZ House in London. Never expecting to hear a word from them ever again. Loe and behold, if we don't just get an email from the NZ embassy, 10 days later, to tell us that two brand spanking new passports were currently flapping their way uphill to Sweden ! I'm all for having a joke at someone else's expense, and I did admire the embassy staff for their humour and their ability to hold a straight face. Two days later and there was egg on mine, as a shiny courier package and a couple of stray feathers popped down on my desk from above. One passport, as requested. I twisted it a bit, held it up to the light, chewed on one corner. it was the real deal. You couldn't make up stuff like that.

So that was half the mission completed. Now I needed a new immigration status sticker to be stuck into my flash new passport. And that, my friends, involved a visit to the infamous Migrationsverket. On the positive side, the regional office who deals with this kind of crap, just happens to be about a 90 second gentle skip down the garden path from our home. It does share the building with the local police, so one needs to be on one's best behaviour. Coincidence ?

Migrationsverket (immigration department) gets a pretty bad rap here in Sweden. People dying of old age whilst waiting for a work permit to be issued, and all that. I didn't hold out great hopes for my visit there, if I'm to be honest. I don't want to get into it here why some groups of people appear to be unable to organise themselves for an official meeting, it's just the way it is. Anyhow, it's not possible to book a time at our local office, so I resigned myself to turning up and sitting it out for as long as it took. Some days you just have to accept the system.

So I strolled on down to Migrationsverket. New passport in one mitt, old passport in the other mitt. I thought I should probably take the old one with me in case there was an dispute over me previously being the owner of a residency pemit sticker. I took my mandetory number at the door. I noted that there were about 15 numbers in front of me, and about 45 minutes before the office shut. Looked like it could be a photo finish. For once, luck was on my side. About half of the people in the queue in front of me, must have eaten each other prior to my arrive, as they didn't show up when their number was buzzed. It was looking better for me. I saw one really confused looking guy sitting in the corner with what looked like every piece of paper that he owned in the world. I figured we should probably allow half an hour just for him. But first up was a young couple. He was clearly a Swede, and she was rather obviously from out of town. If people weren't meant to eavesdrop, then there wouldn't be a word for it. And I'm not one to waste such things. So I hear the guy ask about how one went about extending a tourist visa. The staff member asked when his "companion's" visa was due to expire. Tomorrow, was his response. You know what ? It's people like him who give Swedes a bad name. There's just no helping some people. And he was rightly told as much.

Next up was a woman enquiring abut the status of her boyfriend's application for a visa. The very pleasant staff member checked on her computer, and reported that a decision was a few months away yet. This was clearly the wrong answer, and the employee was told the error of her ways and an excuse was demanded as to why it was taking so long. How about the fact that your internet soulmate of 6 weeks is not the only person trying to scam his way into the country at the moment ? Ever consider that ? So anyway, she stormed out vowing to drag her local member of parliament out of the neighbourhood strip club and give him a piece of her mind. I suspect that wouldn't have taken very long. I wish her luck. And Jose.

Then we had the paper king. Staggering his way to the desk under enough paper to heat his home for 8 months. In his defence, he wasn't the tallest immigrant in the world. So it may have looked worse than it was. The migrationsverket lady wrestled the mountain from him, took one look at what appeared to be a letter on the top, said thank you to him, and then buzzed for the next customer. What ? Talk about an anticlimax. I felt robbed. But, no time to dwell on that, because I was up next. With a decent 3 minutes left until closing time.

Flashing my best winning smile and all set to compliment her on her latest rinse and set, I bounded forward. Presenting myself and my passports, I explained that I needed a new sticker for my new passport. Prepared for a good verbal battle, I'd been practicing my lines all morning. She took both passport, studied them intently, and then disappeared off around the corner to a hidden cubicle. Uh oh, the dreaded "supervisor". Here we go. Now worries, pal, I'm ready for you and all. She was gone a couple of mintes befor re-appearing with both passports. Without saying a word, she handed them back to me. Ok, clearly this local branch wasn't equipped to do this work. At that moment I realised that both passports were open, and I could see an identical sticker in each of them. She'd only gone and done it, bless her chubby little arms. And with about 30 seconds to spare before knocking off time.

So that's me taken care of for the next 5 years. A huge load off of my mind having a valid NZ passport again. A massive "Hell Yeah" to the staff of NZ House in London and to Migrationsverket in Boden for a commitment above and beyond. That's what medals like the Victoria Cross were invented for. Say what you like about them, they're alright in my books.

Uttal -the follow up

2011-05-20T08:56:00.004+02:00

A couple of weeks back I wrote about a vocal assessment we had in my Swedish language class. By "we", I mean myself and my equally semi-articulate Irish companion. This week we had a follow up session with the vocal tutor, together with an interesting discussion on the topic involving the entire class. Ok, there were only 4 of us who made it to class, but it was a good session just the same.

My results were about what I thought they would be. The majority of flaws picked up on were ones that I already knew as a weakness. The curse of the English language, as spoken in NZ, at least, is that it's relatively melody-less. Which puts it in direct conflict with the Swedish spoken language. It's mainly due to English generally not accentuating vowels. Particularly at the end of words, where the English trend is to fade quietly away.. Swedish, on the other hand, likes to celebrate every letter.

A couple of examples of what I mean:

Swedish: Lärare (teacher), English: Lärar.....

Swedish: Undrade (wondered), English: Undrad.....

Putting the stress on the right place in a word is the key to being understood. Even if your pronounciation isn't great, you'll most likely be understood if you've stressed the correct part of the word. That's the trick, and there's no easy solution for a lazy speaking Kiwi. It's a matter of drumming it into your head, time after time. That's where school is great, because there's someone who's sole purpose in life is to pull you up when you sound like a blithering twat.

As I said, getting the stress right is the key to being understood. Get it wrong (like me) and you be on the receiving end of blank stares and endless mocking.

Kliva på bussen.... Climb aboard the bus

Kliva PÅ bussen... Literally climb on top of the bus.

There's a few rules of thumb when it comes to stressing a word. The most common is in identifying a long or short vowel sound. As a pretty good guide, if a vowel sits in front of 2 consonants then the vowel has a short sound (vitt) and it's the 2 consonants which get stressed. If there is only one consonant after the vowel (vit), then it's the vowel which has a long sound and is stressed. That doesn't hold 100% of the time, but it's a pretty good guide.

Generally a word will have either one or 2 stresses in it. No more than 2. Most often the stress will lie with the first vowel, or with the first group of consonants immediately after the first vowel. Longer words may have a second stresser, or the stress may be moved to the second half of the word. The words which follow this rule are often words that have been borrowed from other languages. Telefon is an example, as it's obviously not an original Swedish word. Sadly it's not always easy to know if a word was came to Swedish from English, or to English from Swedish.

The trap for young players is when you come across a word that is a combination of 2 or more words. The key for pronounciation here is to break that word up into it's original words and stress them that way. Without having a pause between the words. Sounds simple, right ? If only. Of course you can only do that if your vocabulary is large enough so that you can recognise that this new word is actually a combination of several smaller words that you've met before. So a bit of a double hit there.

I know this stuff, but it's not so easy remembering to put it into practice. Not after 40+ years of speaking one way. Many English speakers, and I fall into this group, don't move their mouth much when speaking. Which makes it difficult to stress words and letters. So as well as a mental learning curve, there's also a physical learning curve for me. Not just changing the language I speak in, but changing the way that I speak. There was nothing like that in the brochure.

What's in a Song ?

2011-05-11T11:50:00.003+02:00

Following a recent rather embarassing incident at the gym involving me, my ipod on full volume, a loose headphones connection, a packed Swedish gym, and about 20 minutes of forgetability, I think it's time that I overhauled my musical interests. Looking at my current 30 hours of stored music, it's become apparent that the last time I overhauled my musical interests was around 1978. My mission now is to find modern music that sounds exactly like either the soundtrack from The Wedding Singer, or Priscilla Queen of the Desert.

They say that you can tell a lot about a person by the music they like. I guess that makes me, sad, outdated, and somewhat forgotten. Seems a fair enough assessment. But any, just out of curiosity, I checked through my playlists to see which songs I have given the most airtime to. The following list surprised me somewhat, although I'm not sure it helps my case for sympathy any:

It Aint What You Do: Banarama/Fun Boy Three
Say Goodbye: Hunters and Collectors
I Got You: Split Enz
Seven Seas: OMD
Forever Now: Cold Chisel
Leende Guldbruna Ögon: by whomever
Is This The Way To Amarillo: Tony Christie
Sound of the Suburbs: The Members
You Got Nothing I Want: Jimmy Barnes
Rise: Public Image Ltd
Open Book: The Rakes
Endicott: Kid Creole and the Coconuts
Going Underground: The Jam
Eloise: by whomever
Swear It's True: The Mockers

Let the hunt begin.

Skakespeare in Swedish

2011-05-06T10:56:00.002+02:00

Right now at Swedish language school (Yup, I'm still there) I'm working on a rather large topic regarding different forms of literature during the last 2000 years. For the moment it's just learning and reporting on the basics. While I'm presenting the work in Swedish, it's not really Sweden related.

Which takes me back to an earlier post. It's been my observation that the majority of Swedes are not terribly street smart when it comes to the practicalities of life outside of Sweden. They tend to come across as slightly confused, especially when there are not 15 different varieties of sausage to choose from, or when faced with a sandwich that has a slice of bread on the top. Quite happy tourists, just rather unsure and a little lost.

The other side of the situation is that most Swedes are very well educated in the outside world. In a theoretical manner. They know a lot about the history, geography, and current affairs of a great many countries which have little connection with Sweden. They seem to like learning about such things.

So here I am, sitting in a Swedish language class, being educated on the great English authors of the past 1,000 years. And I am embarassed to say that my Swedish language tutor knew far more about the topic than I did.

Looking back on the New Zealand education system, I am shocked to realise exactly how narrow a focus it had. We studied world events, and we studied literature. But only those events and works which had a direct bearing on NZ. 30 years later I can still recite extracts of "In Flanders Fields", and tell you the date of the signing of ANZUS treaty alliance (as much of a monumental mistake as that was). But I couldn't tell you where Portugal is. Or what language they speak in Belgium. There was an optional class in my final year of high school where one could learn about classic (non-NZ related) works of literature, but that was generally considered to be the domain of those who buttoned their school blazers on the wrong side.

Talking at school, and at home, the generally opinion seems to be the same. Swedes learn an aweful lot about the world outside of Sweden, but not so much about Sweden itself. A kind of parallel universe to the one I left behind. I'm not sure why that is. Possibly Swedes think it's a bit too boastful to be studying themselves. They can be a tad bashful. Or maybe they don't think that their country is important enough to study. I'm not suggesting that they know nothing about their own country, but the balance between national and international knowledge is rather strangely weighted. I enjoy watching the Swedish version of the TV game show "Are you smarter than a 10 years old?". Or whatever the correct name is. It's a great programme to help me with my language. Anyway, I see that the adults playing the game are way more comfortable with world history topics than they are with Swedish geography questions. Which gives strength to the conclusion.

Personally, I think they are missing out. Sweden is a very unique country, with so many special little quirks (not all of which are positive, admitedly) that it's a crime not to explore it in depth. Sweden holds a special place in world history, and has affected some many other countries along the way. Despite it's comparative isolation on the world stage. A few years ago there was an advertising campaign in New Zealand, in response to the large numbers of people emigrating to greener pastures. The catch phrase was simply "Don't Leave Town Till You've Seen The Country". Could be worth a try.

Surviving IKEA

2011-05-02T09:50:00.012+02:00

We had only been in Sweden for a few weeks when we took our first trip to IKEA. Our nearest store is up near the Finnish border, about an hour and a half driving time from home. I remember being terribly excited by the prospect, finally travelling to holy ground. How naive I was. The chaos of an IKEA experience is not something that one can prepare oneself for. Certainly nothing like a young starry eyed Kiwi boy had ever seen before. It was survival of the fittest, with steel trolleys charging from all directions. I don't know exactly how many people were at the IKEA store that day, but I'm pretty sure that it must have emptied out the best part of the North of both Sweden and Finland. The experience for me was so traumatic that, had there been a flight out of the country that evening, I would have been in a front row seat. The chaos and sheer madness was that bad.

Since that time I've become a bit more street smart when it comes to understanding the Swedish psyche. They simply do things differently. You can't explain it, you can't train for it, and you sure as Hell can't fight it. But there is one bright spot. Swedes are unique creatures of habit and conformity. More so that any other people I've met. The lack of flexibility is enough to do your head in at times. But once you figure out that you'll never ever change them, you can at least work around them. After all, you can pretty much guarantee what any Swede is going to do at any given time on any given day.

With that invaluable experience tucked away, we've now come up with the perfect IKEA battle plan. And it goes something like this:

First up, avoid weekends if you can. That's pretty obvious, and applies in every country.

If you must travel to IKEA on a weekend, avoid weekends immediately following child support payment day, and salary pay day. Pretty much everyone in Sweden gets paid on the same pay of the month. Which means that the whole country goes out to shop on the following weekend (lönehelg). The best time to go out, if you can, is a couple of weeks after pay day. When the country is broke. Child support (barn bidrag) day is generally the week before pay day. So, as a rule, avoid that fortnight when everyone is flush. Still leaves you a healthy two weeks each month to get in some shopping in realtive peace and comfort.

Now you've got the day sorted out, it's time to pin down the time. Typically, we'd spend up to about 2 hours at IKEA. Which usually included the mandatory meatballs meal in the middle. Start out on your journey mid morning and you'll be nose to tail in a giant convoy of Volvos towing rented trailers. Another good point to remember is, if you need to hire a trailer for any reason, avoid the weekends mentioned above. Or book well in advance.

Back to the time. This is where the lemming trait of your average Swede is a bonus. They all arrive at IKEA between about 10am and lunchtime. Without fail. If you follow this trend, your 2 hour browse can easily turn into a 4 hour slow shuffle. Outside, the trailers will start getting loaded up between around 2 and 4pm. If you value the shine on your car, avoid moving through the car park at all times during this period. And, if you occassionally become "slightly" stressed on the roads, you don't want to be travelling away from an IKEA store around this time.

Which leads on to the solution. We stumbled on to this by accident a couple of trips back. Now it's our Bible to a trouble free IKEA experience. First up, we leave home at around 3:30pm. Madness, I hear the Swedes out there cry. Not a car in front of us on the way up. And not a bare patch of asphalt able to be seen under the tsunami of trucks and trailers crawling home on the other side of the motorway. The 90 minute trip up the E4 gets us into the IKEA car park about 5pm. Welcome to Ghost Town Central. A car park which just 2 hours earlier had seen almost 1,000 cars and covered trailers parked on top of each other, now has about 10 scattered around. The coveted "door park" is well within your grasp.

Now we're in the store. The store shuts at 7pm every night. So we've got a cool 2 hours. At this point you realise that the number of staff in the store is double the number of customers left in the store. We're fighting them off with a pointed stick. Need to powder your nose ? No problem, take your pick of empty booths. Luxury.

With the population of Liechenstein safely removed from the store, our intended 2 hour browse suddenly became a whole lot quicker. Which was a good thing really, because the reataurant closed at 6pm. A bit of forward planning called for here. Timing it to the second, we arrived into the restaurant area at 5 minutes before 6pm. Just as the friendly serving guy was about to pack up the meatballs for the night. Not So Fast, My Fine Indian Friend. 60 seconds later and we had the entire restaurant to ourselves. Not a soul in sight. Normally we'd be fighting to be heard over screaming kids and slamming meal trolleys.

Well fed and casually winding our way through the store, we collected all the stuff on our list and headed for the checkouts. A level head and a steady nerve is needed in this part of the store. Many a lost soul has cracked under the pressure of IKEA checkout queues. But now is the time to pat oneself on the back. This is where all that planning comes together. Twenty minutes before closing time. 16 queuing aisles, and a grand total of 4 customers checking out. I shit you not. I felt tears welling up. My wife grabbed my arm as we stared in silent wonder. We didn't say a word. We didn't need to. We couldn't.

5 minutes later we were loaded up and on our way home along a now totally deserted highway. Maybe we'll never see another day like this one again. Maybe it was Sweden saying "sorry for all the shit I've put you through". Maybe that's the one good thing we were destined to have in life. If those vacant queue aisles at IKEA was it, then I reckon I've come out ahead. Today, I die happy.

The language battle continues

2011-04-28T10:08:00.001+02:00

Last night at Swedish class I had a session with a speech teacher. Poor woman. For some odd reason there was only myself and the other native English speaker (a good Irish pal of 2+ years) singled out for this. Not quite sure why that was. Must be desperate times if they've had to resort to calling in a hired gun. Anyway, the goal is to kick out our God aweful accents. Couldn't for the life of me understand this, as I'm pretty sure I don't have an accent, or brytning. Anyway, we had been given a set text of about 90 seconds long to read over the Easter break. I don't have the heart to tell the dedicated teaching staff, but I did run the text through Google Translate first. So I'd at least have a vauge notion about the sounds I was about to repeat. Then last night, we each sat in an office with the speech expert, and read the text for recording onto a computer. Presumably to end up on YouTube some time soon. Officially we wait for her to listen to our recordings, stop dying of laughter, and then come back to us with "tips" on how we can improve our spoken Swedish. I'm pretty sure that my Tip is going to be the suggestion that I consider taking up sign language. Will be interesting either way.

I'm enjoying this class, but it's certainly much tougher going. A lot more focus on obscure grammar which I had never studied for English, let alone Swedish. My vocabulary is slowly but surely increasing, and I'm making more of an effort to try out new words. Of course sometimes that means words that I've simply made up because they sound sort of Swedish. But it gets the message across. It's been quite difficult to increase my vocabulary beyond that initial learning burst, because I tend to be talking about the same things all the time at work or at home. So I'm pretty good when it comes to the parts of a horse, or how a building goes together. Not so good when it comes to remembering names for different foods. I'm going to have to be a lot more proactive with that battle. I'm quite pleased that I now know a few alternative words that mean roughly the same thing. So if I forget one, as I did last night, I can fire in a relacement which, although not quite meaning the same thing, gives me a bit of time to search back and come up with the correct term. Short term confusion for everyone, but it ends up being ok. Strengthening up my storage of synonyms is the current project for me in class. And that's kind of fun. Clearly I need to get out more.

If it walks like a Duck...

2011-04-26T11:03:00.000+02:00

This isn't a Swedish post, or even related to Sweden. But it's about a recent news report that came out of New Zealand and really pissed me off. I don't know which is worse, being taken for a fool, or having someone think I'm stupid enough to be fooled so easily. For those of you not familiar with the case, here the high/low lights as our "victim" has disclosed to the media to date:

54 year old former probation officer and former deputy head of an obscure government department housed in a broom cupboard somewhere in the backstreets of Wellington, Sharon Armstrong, met a guy on-line and then decided to fly from NZ to London to meet him. At the last minute he asked her if she wouldn't mind diverting to Argentina to pick up some papers for him that he needed in order to get a job. She flew to Argentina and stayed there for a week. While waiting to board her flight to London, her newly purchased Argentinian suitcase was searched and found to have 5kg of cocaine stashed in the base. She was also found to have a number of driving licences from different countries. She was duely locked up and is awaiting trial. After a few days of joking to the NZ media about how she had been scammed, she finally grasped the seriousness of the situation and has claimed that she knew nothing about the drugs. She's also refusing to name the person she was going to meet, fearing "reprisals" if she does. And is claiming corruption by the police for releasing the details about her extra driving licences.

So there you have it.

Where does one start ? This story has more holes than an Estonian brothel.

I'd like to believe Sharon, really I would. A 54 year old woman finally having a shot at true love and happiness. Good for her. Sadly, it's bollocks. Not the meeting someone on the internet part. I know a lot of people who have found the love of their life on-line. No worries about that. In fact, I'm in favour of it. A much better way to find out about someone without the stress of sexual obligations hanging over your head from the start. And infinitely better than waking up in a drunken stupor trying to figure out how you're going to avoid spending the next 10 years with, whateverhernameis. I suspect that there are an equal number of on-line and off-line relationship disasters out there.

Sharon was possibly in love with this guy. But she knew damned well what she was doing in Argentina. Does Argentina not have a postal service that sends documents to England ? Apparently not.

Once you get there, does it take a week to get these papers ? It would seem so. There's a British Airways flight departing from Buenos Aires to London at 1pm every frickin day of the week. I checked and I can book a vacant seat on tomorrow's flight.

Since when did a CV weigh 5kg ? My CV detailing 25 years of my working life is three A4 pieces of paper. Total weight: 15 grams. This bloke's CV must have been made up of 1,000 A4 papers. "War and Peace" has 700 sheets of paper.

A question to throw out there: If you were going to meet someone for the first time, and picked up some papers to take to him, that detailed his working career, wouldn't you want to read them ? Just out of curiosity, to learn a bit more about the love of your life. Yeah, we would all say a big fat "no", that we would respect privacy and all that. Crap. You, me, and anyone else, would read them. If she thought it was papers, she would have either opened them up to read and then discovered it was a funny white powder, or at least wondered why these "work documents" weighed more than a standard bag of potatoes. Give me a break.

She's refusing to name the man she was going to meet, for fear of reprisals. Hang on a minute, right up until the moment the Argentine police tapped her on the shoulder at the departure gate, this guy was the love of her life and she trusted him with her soul. Now, despite having zero contact with him since, he is suddenly the long lost twin brother of Pablo Escobar. Sharon, you're about to do 15 years in an Argentine prison. You'll be 70 years old before they chuck you out. Do you really have that much to lose ?

Sticking with the name issue, what about her family ? She was leaving her homeland for the rest of her life. Doesn't at least one member of her family, a friend, a work colleague, know the name of this person ? Contact details in the case of an emergency (like being locked up in Argentina). You would think that someone might have asked what his name was, or been shown a photo of him. She should have been so excited about all this. There's not a lot of reasons why you wouldn't want to tell people the name of your soulmate. One springs immediately to mind.

Hang about, what about these "papers" that she picked up. The police will have those now and they'll have his name plastered all over them, right ? Documents about a person tend to include the name of that person on them. So she won't need to name him. Problem solved, and dear Shaz no longer has to fear for her safety. Unless the name on the papers doesn't match the name she knows him by. Which begs the question as to why she then decided to carry on with the trip. More likely that those papers are as fictional as the rest of her sorry tale.

If this guy is a professional crim, then what are the odds that the very first person he has contacted, out of a squillion internet users, happened to be our Sharon. Rubbish. He would have tried and failed to convince many (smarter) women, before stumbling across lonely Sharon. Giving up his name could only strengthen her case if other women come forward with similar tales.

Why is it that her first public comment was to laugh about being scammed and being a "silly old woman" ? (That's the understatement of the year) This was the love of Sharon's life, the man she was leaving her life and moving 10,000 km to the other side of the world to be with. Why was she not in the least bit upset or heartbroken about the emotion betrayal. I can't speak for Sharon, but I might have mentioned being a bit sad over being abused by someone I had given my heart to. Maybe I'm made of different stuff.

I'll tell you why that is. There is no internet guy, Sharon. You can't name him because he doesn't exist. If it helps you any, I could start up a Hotmail email account and start sending myself letters of love to prove that I have a deep and meaningful relationship. And I could tell all my friends about a wonderful person I had met. Doesn't make it true though.

Door number two says that there is a guy. And that you and him were in this together from the start. 5kg of cocaine, or the fee for carrying it, would set you up pretty well at age 54. You can't name him, because he'd only incriminate you. Better to stay silent and hope that aliens or Global Warming will come to your rescue.

The driving licences. I'm presuming they were all in her name. Two were NZ licences. That's fair enough, but I struggle to think of a reason as to why a person would need two currently valid driving licences from the same country. A bit dodgy. Another was from the Cook Islands, which I do understand that you are required to purchase if you want to drive as a tourist. It's more of a tourist trinket that anything else. The third is an Australian licence. That one is a bit strange as you can drive perfectly legally in Australian with a valid NZ licence. You do wonder why one would decide to take all 3 to the UK, but they are probably a storm in a teacup. Where I'm confused is how the Argentine police became corrupt by releasing that information to the media. The police right around the world release information about suspects and people in custody all the time. That's how the media find out about these things in the first place. Grasping at straws there, Sharon, and a clear sign of desperation.

5 kg of drugs hidden in the base of her suitcase. On what planet would it be considered reasonable to pack up her suitcase with a lifetime change of underwear, fly to another country, completely unpack her suitcase, chuck her perfectly suitable airline approved suitcase away, buy a new suitcase, re-pack her clothes into the brand new (drug laden) suitcase which she had never seen in her life before, and try to fly on to a third country. And now she expects sympathy. Not from me. An empty suitcase that weighed near enough to 10kg ? Turn it up.

Finally, we have the cries and wails from Sharon and her cronies that she had no idea there were drugs in her suitcase. Well, naturally that must be the truth then. Because, as we all know, drug traffickers always tell the truth. If she knew she was carrying drugs, she would have said so. Like all the others before her have. So, if she said that she didn't know, then she's clearly not a drug trafficker. I'm personally offended by this attempt to avoid justice. There's such a thing has supporting your friends, but how about aiming for a shred of credibility, people.

I'm sure we'll hear more about this over the coming weeks/months. But, as it stands today, Sharon Armstrong is a 54 year old drug trafficker and deserves everything thast she gets. She's about as innocent as the stupid Australian girl who decided to take a dodgy old polystyrene "boggie board" all the way from Australia to Bali on holiday (because apparently such things don't exist in Bali) and then feigned shock when the bag weighed more than twice what it should have due to the copious amounts of pot stuffed inside it. Hey, how about trying to blame the airport baggage handlers, Sharon ? You two deserve each other.

Of course, in the interests of liability, I should point out the the views expressed above are not necessarily those of anyone. Except maybe those of anyone with half a brain.

Song and Dance

2011-04-20T10:36:00.000+02:00

Courtesy of my ever sweet and thoughtful wife, we had a rare night out on the town last weekend. What with working, commuting, horse training and language classes, unallocated time doesn't come up very often. So this was a bit of a treat. Through various forms of skullduggery, we ended up with 2 tickets to see Carola. Those Swedes out there will need no explanation of Carola or her achievements in the music industry. But, for the less Swedish of you, Carola is a Swedish icon. A local one woman Abba, but without the same impressive gay community following. At least, I don't think that she does. The public highlight of Carola's career was winning the Eurovision song contest back in 1991. Which is also probably the last year that a winning song wasn't sung in English. But that's another story.

So, back to the concert, which was held at Luleå's beautiful Kulturens Hus. For anyone passing through the region, I recommend a stop off at this venue. The name literally translates to House of Culture, and that describes it well. It's the modern equivalent of the medieval town square, where people can gather to learn, discuss, or be entertained. I think it's a great idea. The public library portion of the building is light, roomy, and really encourages a person to sit for a while and, well, read I guess. The concert was held in one of the larger theatres in the building. On the same floor as a fully catered restaurant. I'm always a bit cautious about the seating in these places, as I'm a bit on the taller side. But I was pleasantly surprised that I could sit quite happily without having my ankles behind my ears.

So what of the concert itself. Well, for starters, she sung for a full 2 hours. No pesky warmup act introduced to make you forget that you're only going to see 5 minutes of some aging superstar you paid a couple of hundred bucks to watch lipsyncing. Nope this was the real deal. Swedes are a bit like that, it doesn't occur to them to be deceptive. Poor misguided fools. And she's got a great voice. No denying that. Not many people can pull off a sentimental croon whilst on roller skates. But somehow, with Carola, it worked.

As always, there's a down side. There are some things that people simply shouldn't do in life. Some things you know can only end in disaster or disappointment.There's a reason why the TV ads say, "Kids, don't try this at home". And here's another one to add to the list: No 5 foot 1 inch tall, 45 year old, brunette haired Swedish female singer, no matter how talented and well loved they are, should attempt to touch Elvis. When you're not Elvis, and you want to be taken seriously, you just don't do it. It would have been ok, if it hadn't turned into a singalong with several hundred middle aged Swedes trying with their best English from 30 years ago to sound like, well, I'm not really sure what the desired effect was. But it wasn't pleasant, that I can promise. I guess the main thing was that they enjoyed it, and they clearly thought that they sounded pretty good. Who am I to question that.

I thought that my live concert highlight would be seeing David Bowie in 1983 (I think) on his Serious Moonlight tour. Which, for anyone interested, was also the first time I ever saw dope. Next on the list was Cold Chisel (well known Aussie band) the following year. Followed by Boney M and Manfred Man, who played regularly before our local football games. When we scored free tickets to a Tony Christie concert a few years back from a guy we met on the street outside of the theatre, I thought my life was complete. Now I've seen Carola, I can probably say that I've collected the set.

Mind over Matter

2011-04-01T13:15:00.000+02:00

I've always been keen on fitness. Right from when, as an 8 years old, I was dragged kicking and screaming to my first athletics meet. No one was more shocked than me to discover that I wasn't actually too bad at it. Over the years I bounced around a few different sports. Many were forced upon me by the constraints of an English single sex school system. It was ok, but I never really warmed to them, and turned back to athletics whenever the school elders were busy tucking into their third malt scotch for the morning. In recent years, while the spirit has been willing, the mind has been elsewhere. And my personal fitness dropped away from where it had been. Since coming to Sweden, I've resolved to change all that. In many ways it's a bit of an escape. There's not a lot of things here that I'm really in control of, but this is one thing I can do as well as I could back in NZ (I've resolved to stop referring to it as "home").

I have some specific performance goals that I want to achieve. But they are a few years away yet, so for now it's the boring grind. Some weeks are better than others. I try to keep my mileage up as much as possible, it's a training regime I grew up with, and endorse. 50km a week would be about right for me to maintain at the moment. It's not easily achieved when one is pretty much drained after 8 hours in a Swedish speaking workplace every day, and 2 hours of Swedish langauge class each week. Motivation and tiredness play a big role. But I'm forever hopeful that this will become less of an issue.

I've been very lucky with respect to sporting injuries over the years. Excluding a back injury from rugby and lower leg surgery when I was 18. Can't really count those. But I'm starting to concede that those inbetween years of laziness may have taken their toll on me. For the past 12+ months I've been battling a persistant lower leg tendon injury. Came out of nowhere and seems determined not to go away. I do like that specialist treatment from the likes of physiotherapists are regarded as normal medical expenses in Sweden. As opposed to NZ. That means that not only is the cost of a visit to a physio only about one third of what it would cost me in NZ, it also goes towards reaching the financial target for the year. After which time my medical costs are met by the state. That, I like, as this latest battle has meant quite a few visits and prescriptions already. I fear I'm not done yet. The highlight this week has been a swollen ankle that arrived unexpectedly and resulted in a late night visit to the doctor surgery to make sure I wasn't about to die of galloping blood poisoning. They haven't phoned back, so I'm assuming that the blue colour is a good thing.

So now I'm at the unusual stage where the spirit is willing, but the body is saying Sod Off. I'm not sure who is going to win this battle. I haven't given up just yet. But it's gotten close a few times.

Spring is in the air

2011-03-09T12:56:00.001+01:00

Another winter on it's way out. It's amazing how quickly the seasons change up here. I remember times visiting countries nearer to the Equator, and being rather shocked about how quickly things transformed from day to night. In NZ we had a thing called twilight, and it lasted for an hour or so. But that's beside the point. Sort of. Up here in the north of Sweden, there seems to be a lacking of seasonal twilight. One day it's winter, the next day it's spring. One Sunday morning it was -34 degrees when I got up. The next Sunday it was +2 deg. Hello springtime. Instead of being pretty much dark during the day, and definitely dark by 2pm, there's now clear signs of light already at 6am. And almost 12 hours of daylight. Now, for some macabre reason, I've always liked being out in the dark. Don't ask me why, I just do. So I'm not one of those soft southerers who grizzle and moan about having dark winters. But, there's something nice about the early morning sun as the days get warmer. The big downside to the sudden arrival of spring, is the instant thaw. Well, sort of instant. The roads are pretty much clear of snow and ice now. As are the footpaths. Says he who went arse over breakfast on the footpath outside yesterday for the first time in 2 years. But that's a story for another day. It's nice not to have the car spinning away from every intersection. Even with studded tyres. The problem is that all this ice and snow has to go somewhere. And it ain't going nowhere until the 1m deep level of frozen ground underneath it has thawed out. So I'm preparing myself for the annual spectacle of soggy lake filled paddocks for the next couple of months. Not the best time of year to come here, for those of you contemplating. I've decided that I need a new jacket before next autumn. I've got a couple of summer jackets, and my kick arse Fjäll Räven winter coat, but nothing that's really suitable between -5 and -15 deg. Which is from about late September through until Christmas. I've got a bit of a short list, so I might have to start doing a bit of scouting around in the hope for an elusive bargain.

A home for life

2011-01-14T10:37:00.000+01:00

I have, over the past 2o years, owned 5 houses. My sister has owned about 15 over the same period. She's a bit extreme, but my situation in my home country would be fairly typical. In Sweden, I'd be considered a nomad. In NZ, people largely tend to renovate to sell. You typically buy a house that has had some recent work done to it. You live in the house for a while before realising that it's not quite at the standard you want. Instead over overhauling your house, you look for a better house to buy. There's no point in investing a lot of money into a property that you only intend to live in for a couple of years. However, no one sells a house that doesn't look fresh and clean. So you frantically set about renovating and redecorating your house in order to sell it. By the time you've sold your house, it's almost as nice as the house you've just bought. There's a bit of a standing joke around English linked countries that the Queen thinks that the whole world smells of fresh paint and cut grass. Viewing houses for sale in NZ is pretty much the same. A strange setup, but there you go. Swedes, on the other hand, tend to stay in houses for longer. Generations in many cases. So they view renovations as a long term benefit to themselves. They don't really put a lot of extra effort in when selling a house, because they figure that the next person is going to want to stay there for 20 years so they'll do whatever they want themselves. And I guess that the people buying think the same way. They don't mind if the wallpaper is a bit tired. They intend to live there forever so they would plan on replacing wallpaper anyway. I was a bit shocked looking at the state of some of the houses being offered up for sale. But I didn't understand the mindset of this unique land. I have a colleague here in Sweden who bought the family home from his parents. Who in turn had bought it from their parents. His plan is that his daughter will take over the house one day. The big upside to this concept of long term ownership, is that people aren't afraid to carry out major upgrades. Things like replacing central heating systems, changing all the windows to triple glazing, a new roof, etc are big ticket items with long payback periods. I would never have considered doing that in NZ, because I'd never recover my investment. What that means is that houses in NZ never really progress in the quality of their basic shell. My last house in NZ was built in the 1950s. When I sold it, it was still a house from the 1950, but with brand new wallpaper and paint (and freshly cut grass). My colleague's house in Sweden, which is more than 100 years older than mine, is far superior to mine in it's basic services. He is investing in the upgrading of the structure of the house today, for his daughter's benefit. Just as his parents had done. There are problems for the Short Term Resident housing market. But I don't see a solution to it. It's a mental block, not a physical block. The standard of housing in NZ is poor. Ok, houses are newer, but they are of a lower standard when one assesses the core requirements of a good house. And I suspect they will always be that way. Give me a 200 year old wooden Swedish villa that's been in the same family for 4 generations any day.

Change is in the wind

2011-01-13T11:40:00.000+01:00

Post Christmas has seen a few changes in my working environment. Unlike NZ, it seems that Swedes tend not to change jobs every often. Or houses, for that matter. Over the course of my 30 year working career, I've had 9 different employers. A couple I only satayed with for a year or so, others I worked for about 5 years. That would be a pretty average sort of history in NZ. Employers don't view this as a negative thing. Every place of employment brings new experiences and perspectives that a future employer can make use of. Stay in one place for too long, and you risk the risk of developing a tunnel vision within your chosen profession. In my opinion. I've found in Sweden that employees tend to stay in one place. I guess that brings a loyalty and stability to the workplace. It also means that employees tend to become highly skilled at the task they have been assigned to do. The downside is that they soon forget how to do bugger all else. I left my first job in NZ after nearly 6 years. My rationale was that, if I stayed much longer, then I'd only ever know how to do one thing. Which would make it harder for me to gain employment elsewhere, leading to my employer owning my arse. But back to the subject in hand. I work within a small team in a large office. There are 7 of us in an office of 50. 4 out of the 7 have been working together in the same office for 20 years. An incredible collective depth of specialised knowledge. They are also a very tight group, which has made it tough for a new job (not to mention a frickin immigrant) to break in. It hasn't been easy being the new guy, even after 2 and a bit years. Now, however, 2 of the team have decided to branch out on their own. Breaking up the gang. There's still 2 lifers remaining, but now there's a more equal balance of newbies. It will be interesting to see how this plays out over the coming year. They'll either close ranks, or be a bit more welcoming to those who have less than 20 years experience with the same company. Or, they may also decide it's too great a change, and move on themselves. Whichever way, it's going to be a really interesting study in Swedish conditioned human behaviour.

So who are we really ?

2010-12-13T09:46:00.001+01:00

In light of a blog buddy's recent posting, I thought it appropriate to wade in on the perils of stereotyping people. A classmate of mine recently gave a very good group presentation about language. The key point he made, in his own stuttering way, was that we are largely defined who we are as a person by our ability to communicate. If the message we are trying to convey is not received and translated in the manner we intended, then people will preceive us in a different light to that in which we view ourselves. In a nutshell, our personality gets redefined through miscommunication. If we're not careful, we eventually become what people already think we are. Sounds all rather hypothetical, and of course people aren't like stupid. So I thought a couple of years ago. Now I think that my uneducated Arab classmate was a little smarter than I had first suspected. In fact, in writing the previous sentence, I further strengthen his argument. I have been, and continue to be, rather shocked by the accuracy of this revelation. On a daily basis I see the change in the eyes and expressions of people the moment that they realise I am not as fluent in Swedish as a native Swedish speaker. I can see that they have immediately classified me as a lesser person than themselves. Not consciously, and not maliciously. But assumptions are made. Because my speech is weak, so must the rest of my abilities be weak. And my value as a person becomes reduced. A classic example occured in our body corporate. There are about 40 apartment owners in our body corporate. Probably 90% of them are pensioners and, for the most part, friendly people. One apartment owner recently had a ventilation problem in their apartment. An email request went out to all members of the board (of which I am one) for suggestions. No worries, thought I. Time to put my university education and 25 years as a building services engineer in NZ to good use. So, loaded up with monitoring and testing equipment from work, I visited the affected apartment and tested the air flows and quality. I calculated the required figures, compared them with the actual recorded figures, and reported my findings and recommendations (in Swedish) for a simple solution back to the board. Top marks for me, and no charge to the board for my professional consultancy services. The response from the board ? A request to another apartment owner: "Hans (aged 175 yrs), you're a bit of a home handyman. Can you go and look at this apartment and see if you can figure out what is wrong ?" At first I used to blame the Swedes for this. Bunch of arrogant pricks. Just because I don't know one thing very well, doesn't mean that I don't know anything. I'm doing work today that I had moved on from almost 15 years ago. Because people think I'm not capable of understanding anything more complicated. But once the urge to smack a few heads together had subsided, I had to face the truth that I had spent much of my former life behaving in exactly the same way. We live our lives at such pace, that we tend to speed read situations. We pick out the key points and paint a picture around those points. I assumed that a lack of communication skills meant a lack of knowledge. And therefore a lack of value. It's wrong, but that's just the way things are. There's nothing like being on the receiving end of a gross injustice to realise the error of your ways. I have a good live today, and a good job. Better than many who have arrived in the same way as I have. That should be enough. But, knowing that people are not really seeing me for who I am, and yet believe that they are seeing all that there is to see, makes it not enough.

In the name of Sport

2010-11-30T10:33:00.000+01:00

Had a very nice weekend down in Stockholm the other weekend. Even if it was snowing and someone has forgotten to tell the local kommun that it is actually possible to scrape the snow off the footpaths and roads. Apparently it's much more preferable to leave it there so that it resembles the colour and texture of wet sand. Much nicer. But anyway, we had a nice time doing a bit of window shopping, a bit of proper shopping, and a bit of eating out. The main purpose, however, was to attend the Stockholm International Horse Show in the Globe Arena, neither of which I had seen before. The show was over 3 days, and we watched probably around 12 hours of various horsey type events and competitions. All very interesting and rather exciting at times. There was also a trade fair at the same venue. We were looking forward to doing some browsing there, but it became rather difficult when we realised that all 15,000 spectators would be hitting the stalls during the interval breaks just as we were doing. Difficult really means impossible. After the first day of trying to swim upstream constantly, we decided to wait until we got home and buy on-line again as usual. As most people have figured out by now, I'm a bit of a people watcher. The justice system has another name for such people, but I rather think of of the more tame variety. I do get intrigued watching how people behave in certain situations. Especially when in a new country where behaviour patterns are completely turned upside down from everything I've known in 40+ years. We've all seen those programmes on telly of the beauty pagent mums shoving their kids out on stages week after week in the hope of, well, I'm not really sure what the point is. Damned funny, and a little scarey. In NZ, it was ballet and dance competitions where the parents fought each other like cats to ensure that their child rose above all others. Sweden has decided that beauty pagents, beautiful baby competitions, and so forth, are rather demeaning towards the participants, and are generally actively discouraged. However, parents still need an outlet through which to live the lives that they wish they had. Enter horseback riding to save the day. Horseback riding is the number two most popular organised leisure activity in Sweden, second only to football. So these events are pretty well patronised. Most notably by mums and their 8 year old daughters. I don't know if you've ever tried to get between a sparkly kids jacket on sale, and a mum with daughters in tow. But it should be registered as an official health hazard. Now try to picture 5,000 ambition driven mothers with daughters in each hand, occupying a space about the same size as two normal sized houses. It brought a new meaning to the word Terror. Fortunately for me, and the half dozen other poor males caught up in this insanity, there were a couple of places of refuge. The "horse insurance" stall, who weren't giving anything away for free. We could seek shelter in there. And the toilets. Otherwise I fear that we would have been swept along in the tide, never to be heard from again. Swedes have this rather nice opinion of themselves that they don't encourage competition amongst the youth, that everyone is equal in the eyes of society, and we all love each other. Bollocks. Go anywhere in Sweden where parents have the chance to live their unfulfilled lives vicariously through their kids, and it's just the same as every other country in the world.

It's Funny because it's True

2010-11-16T13:21:00.000+01:00

Not a funny topic, but funny just the same. There is a criminal trial underway at present in New Zealand. A male is accused of mudering his partner and then leaving her body in the apartment where they both lived. Here's the line of questioning from the prosecution yesterday: " What was the plan - just wait until you were discovered?" "Something like that" . "When did you know ****** was dead?" "That was sometime after I killed her I think". Yeah. I reckon that's about when you'd know she was dead alright.

Äntligen

2010-11-08T13:39:00.000+01:00

Finally, winter has arrived. No more of that crappy driving rain and miserable grey skies. If you want that, go live in Göteborg. After a few weeks of general dithering, we finally got the first decent snow dump. Life looks brighter already, and it means I've safely negotiated through another year of icey pavements. Give me this white powdery stuff any day. Now we just need for the temperature to be right. Today it's minus 10 deg C. Which is just a plain awkward temperature. A fraction too cold for an autumn jacket, and about 5 degrees too warm for a winter jacket. I love my winter jacket, it's like never getting out of bed all day. Problem is that it's like wearing a frickin sauna if the temperature is warmer than about -12 or 13. Even more so once you get on the bus and it's like driving through the streets of Bangkok. It's such an effort to get the thing on and off every time, that I like to wait until it's really worth my while. But this is a step in the right direction. God I love winter.

Busted

2010-11-02T13:46:00.000+01:00

I'm now largely enjoying the integration process, especially today when I scored a free lunch from a supplier who I've never bought anything from and am unlikely ever to (hopefully he doesn't read English blog sites). But, I do like keeping a few things up my sleeve, for the days when the average Swede has crossed my boundaries of acceptability. Your every day, run of the mill, Swede, can understand English pretty well. But they are rather funny to listen to when they speak English. It's like listening to an entire episode of an American crime drama in about 30 seconds. But, I guess that I like to try out new cliques too, so that I think I sound more like the real thing. Bless them. The big advantage that we Colonials have is that Swedes don't understand the many variations of English around the world. Apart from American gangster rap, which they seem to have learnt as a compulsary subject in school. And, to be fair, I don't follow everything that a person from South London says either. But, as I said, it's not all negative. I have a few mutter phrases which I trot out when the locals run foul of me, carefully chosen to be well beyond the grasp of a traditionally English language educated Swede. Local dialect stuff from the Colonies. "Manus" is a good one to use, and I highly recommend you try it out. It has a hidden real advantage in that it's also a Swedish word, meaning manuscript. However, in the hands of an experienced ex-pat, it means "idiot" (or "DN spammer"). Now, a regular contributor on the street is "Bugger Off, Dopey". Which most English speakers will recognise as "Do you think that you would mind stepping aside, if it's not too much trouble". It's a standard form of greeting in NZ and Australia. English and Americans don't pick up on it straight away, and it's way over the head of a Swede. So it's perfect for the mindless weaving wandering Swede who is the scurge of the city footpaths. So anyway, I was on my way to catch the bus home. And running a bit late as per usual. Not sprinting late, but the fast paced walk that one does when one really needs to find a toilet but it's a bit to risky to attempt running. Half way along the street, a guy with a scraggy beard and wearing a backpack came wandering out of a shop and started dawdling along right in front of me. Like waving the finger at a tooting motorist, it came out of me as an involuntary action. "Bugger Off, Dopey". To my shock and horror the guy left about 2 feet up into the air and about 2 metres sideways, almost throwing himself against the shop window in order to get out of the way. Immediately looking for somewhere to hide, I shuffled past trying to look innocent and mumbling away to myself in Swedish. Like that was going to be a reassuring sight. In my defence, what were the odds that I would happen across the only backpacker from NZ or Australia, in the north of Sweden, at precisely the time I didn't need to meet one ? The only 2 countries in the world where that simple phrase would inoke such an instant reaction. And I feel for the poor ANZAC backpacker, who had spend his life savings on the overseas adventure of a lifetime, and who will now go home and tell the entire Australasian communty to stay away from the north of Sweden at all costs. Five minutes in the country and you get abused. My first international diplomatic incident for the month. Won't be my last.

Bird is the Word

2010-10-22T11:07:00.000+02:00

In the Swedish language there are often a number of alternatives when conveying the same message. We really helps us struggling English speakers. One of these is when wanting to say the English word "you". In English this is pretty simple, and usually involves pointing at the offending party. Confusion can occur when addressing a group of people. Do you mean the whole group, or just one person in particular ? Sweden has fixed that problem by having a second word "ni" when addressing two or more people. Which I think is great, but as one usually learns the singular "du" first, it can be a struggle at first for a native English speaker to remember that there's a different word for multiple persons. Of course it wouldn't be Swedish without introducing yet another set of words for the same thing. Depending on whether or not you are referring to the subject of the conversation. "You are waiting for the bus" versus "The bus is waiting for you". But that's a story for another day. Moving along. Now, that's all well and good, but I found myself noticing people using the plural "ni" when it was plainly obvious that they were only referring to one person. I thought maybe it was just laziness although, to be honest, I like the sound of "ni" better than "du". So I did a bit of digging and came up with quite a story, that can only happen in Sweden. Those of us who are, or have been, fortunate enough to experience Swedish society have noticed that class structure is largely frowned upon. Unlike the English based cultures where class structure is required in order to keep the peasants under control. Sweden, too, thought this was a pretty good system. Until the country fell on hard times when those who had less either emigrated or died. As a result of the near decimation of their country, Sweden started taking active steps to narrow the economic and social gaps between people. And that included an overhaul of language. See, the Swedish word "Ni" was used in days gone by, when addressing a person of status. Someone who was a bit finer than your peasantly self. As part of the process of stripping away the class structure, a language reform was held (du-reformen). As only Swedes would do. And so it came to pass that all persons, regardless of wealth or position, would henceforth be referred to as "du". A crushing blow for the establishment, and one up for the masses. Not convinced that it actually changed anything, but I'm sure that the locals felt a bit better as a result. The use of the word Ni was to be limited to people who's status was without equal. Namely King and Mrs King. Så var det. Not so fast, my fine peasant friends. We are now in the time of the "Ni" revolt. Ni is fighting back to regain it's rightful place. Older people have always continued to use the word Ni as a sign of respect or politeness. Those rebellious pensioners. But with the growth of international business and the ambition of many Swedish to Englishise themselves, it's now more common to hear the word Ni again. Often staff in shops, banks and restaurants will use Ni when addressing customers. So, resist the urge to look around quickly to see if there's a crowd suddenly gathered behind you. Personally, I rather miss the good old fashioned class stucture. There was comfort and security in knowing that you were firmly at the bottom of the pile. So I intend to join the Ni revolution and use the word at every opportunity. The worm has turned, and it's coming for Ni. Footnote: I only had to look up the dictionary 5 times to remember the right English words to use here. That's better than normal.

It's not you, it's me.

2010-09-15T08:55:00.000+02:00

I've read quite a bit in recent times about how many couples are struggling to adapt to a new life in Sweden. At the risk of stereotyping, this seems to involve mainly English speaking males and their Swedish born wives or partners. And, in most cases, the history appears to be of a couple living in the country of the English speaking person for some years, before emmigrating to Sweden. A category which I also fall into. The stories I hear most often are of an apparant change in personality on the part of the Swedish wife, once returning to Sweden. She's not the same person now that she's back home. And that's a fair comment. I remember back in the days when I was heavily involved in dog breeding, the discussion about the influence of environment over genetic traits in personality. While most of what we are comes from our genes, where and how we live does serve to help shape our personalities. To a lesser extent. So it would hold that, if you change a person's environment, then you will, by default, change part of their personality. Which tends to support what my English speaking comrades in arms have experienced. So the wonderful women we fell madly in love with are now not the same people now that we're all living in Sweden. Us English speaking guys, on the other hand, have remained exactly as we were when we lived in the familiar comfort of our home countries. Yeah, right. Is it not possible that we've become despressed, annoyed, and thoroughly cynical bastards in the process ? I know that I have. I'm not saying that's a deliberate process, but it's an inevitable result in being ripped out of the only environment we've ever known. Compounded by a hugely diminished ability to communicate with those around us. It's a miracle we're still alive actually. And it's a miracle that our Swedish partners have continued to tolerate us. Would I have had the patience and understanding that my wife has shown me over these past years ? No. Would any native English speaking person ? Probably not. Say what you like about Swedes and the annoying way that they just accept things. But, when you need those closest to you to accept the battle you're going through, I would have a Swede by my side any day. I've been absolute hell to live with at times since moving here. I hope that I'm a bit better today, but I know I still have my moments. The fact that my Swedish wife continues to put up with me is a constant source of wonder for me. I will always be grateful to her for supporting me while I find my feet in a strange land, and for leading the way as we build our new life together here. I don't know of anyone else who would have gone through what she has been through for me. I'll never be able to repay her, but I can hope that she knows. And that's why I love Sweden, spitters and all (djävla grisar).

I come from the Land of Slumber

2010-09-10T14:49:00.000+02:00

Definition of the day: Sweden: where the fika breaks last longer than the lunch hour.

Hate it when I'm right

2010-09-09T10:32:00.000+02:00

Last night I attended my first class for "Svenska A". And sure enough, all my colleagues from the Svenksa Som Andra Språk "Grund" course had all been "invited" to join this new higher level class. Meaning that they no longer need to hold the grund class in the evenings. Saving a bit of cash. Not that I really care, so long as it helps my language skills, but it wouldn't have hurt them to have fronted up with the real reason from the start. So, what seems to be the difference. Hard to tell from the first evening, but it does seem to follow along the same self study plan as the Grund course. It seems to be a bit more practically based, concentrating on actually using the language, rather than learning it. If that makes sense. Learning appropriate language useage for different situations and envirnoments. I need to focus more on my grammar and sentence structure, particuarly when things start getting longer and more complicated, so I'm hopeful that there will be a bit of time spent in that area. Once I've got the grammar locked in tight, then is just a matter of learning more words. Just, he says. I remember a tutor telling me that there are something like 250,000 words in the Swedish language and, of those, about 50,000 words are used on a daily basis. I figure that I'm good for about 17 of those 50k words. The good news is that, like the other Swedish language course for immigrants, there's no fee to attend these classes. The not so good news is that I'm shelling out nearly 1000 kronor for course textbooks. But I had a good look through the teacher's copies, and they look like practical language books that I really would use. Like SFI and SAS grund, Svenska A doesn't have a defined course time limit. You keep on studying until one day, God willing, the teacher decides that you've reached a satisfactory level. Then you move on to the Svenska B level coursework. In the same class. A bit like moving from course C to course D in SFI. Svenska B does have a final examination, which is taken at the same time as all Swedish high school examinations. So that was my first 2 hours of Svenska A. It was basically an introduction meeting, introducing ourselves and talking about the course. The teacher had a list of prepared questions that she asked each person in turn. The first question was which TV programme was our favourite. Unfortunately I was the first to be asked. Had I known that everyone else was going to give good adult answers such as "the news", "current affairs programmes", "wildlife documentaries", I may not have responded with "Family Guy". Way to go dumb arse on the first day. I have some homework for next week. I have to write a page about what my goal is for the course, in Swedish. I think that my goal is going to be to be capable of writinge a page about what my goal for the course is, in Swedish.

Snake Oil

2010-09-06T10:53:00.001+02:00

I received a telephone call late last week from one of my former SFI tutors in Boden. Since transferring and graduating from the SFI class in Luleå, I've been going to the next level up SAS Grund course in the evenings back in Boden. Sounds a bit messy but it was a combination of there being no evening class in Luleå and avoiding a 40 minute bus ride home at 8pm. I have to say that I had really enjoyed the SAS Grund course. It was more based around Swedish works of literature, so you could kind of get some benefits from your efforts. My vocabulary increased a lot also. Even if most of the new words came from 18th century Sweden, which nobody speaks any more. Class numbers were a bit of an issue. There were between 3 and 5 of us most weeks. Strangely enough, the other 4 people in the class seemed to be different people every week. Not quite sure what was going on there. Anyway, back to the phone call. The tutor was phoning to say that she (who hadn't actually taught me for the SAS G course) thought that I was wasting my time in the SAS G course, and that I should move on up to the Svenska A course. The Svenska A course is supposedly at upper high school level, which means no more eating Playdough for me. She felt this would be more challenging for me and that I would progress further and faster. I smell a rat here. Not that it makes a hell of a lot of difference, but I suspect that the real reason is that just can't justify a class with only 3 people in it. So they are going to shut it down. Which means they need to find a home for me, a couple of wayward Thais, and a pregnant Pole. So, while I'm mildly flattered, I'm under no illusion that it has anything to do with my outstanding linguistic qualities. Anyway, it kicks off at 5pm on Wednesday (coincidentally the exact same time, date, and place as my SAS G class) so we'll see what happens then.

Land of the Free

2010-08-23T12:46:00.000+02:00

Yeah, it's been a while. Not convinced that having this blog is going to serve the purpose that I hoped it would. But, we'll see what happens from here. Went to the south of Italy last month. Good rule of thumb: don't going somewhere where it's 38 degrees every day. Unless you like places that are 38 degrees every day. I discovered that I'm not one of those people. I'm a serial sweater. And that's not a lot of fun. So anyway, did the usually holiday routine of cramming 3 weeks worth of sightseeing into 5 days. Looked perfectly manageable on paper, I should point out. In the end I was praying to get mugged by those lovely looking guys on the Naples commuter train, just to get a nice air condtioned ambulance ride out of there. Here's a tip for all you Americans out there. I understand that it must be pretty frustrating, reading all the bad press the America gets around the world. What with saving us from ourselves on a daily basis and all that. But, if you really want to lift your image rating, get rid of all the dropkick dumb arses that keep coming here on holiday. So long as there's still one mid western, mid life crisis, terminally stupid idiot who insists that it's his God given right as the saviour of the free world to clamber over 3,000 year old fenced off Greek temples, then you're all going to get tarred with the same inbred brush. So, do a bit of housekeeping over there, for forks sake. I don't know what you can do with those twats now that the car assembly business has gone to it's grave, but could you not find a bit of Arizona desert to stick them all in. Just keep them locked up where we don't have to be subjected to their incanny ability to offend every other country on the planet. And that's all I have to say about that.

Hiatus

2010-04-18T12:53:00.000+02:00

"gap, breach, interval, discontinuity, lapse, rift, lucka, uppehåll, avbrott" "A gap or interruption in space, time, or continuity; a break" "Stund när något slutar eller stannar"

Party animals

2010-04-13T09:44:00.000+02:00

It was my mother in law's 80th birthday on Saturday. One of the reasons why we decided to move to Sweden was so that my wife could be closer to her mum, in the time that she had left. Although, I have this feeling that we've probably arrived about 10 years too early to worry about that. She'll probably end up burying me instead. Anyway, there was a bit of a party (piss up) on Saturday. Just for the family. I say JUST for the family, but not sure that was a positive thing. The "family" consisted of Mum, 2 daughters, one son, 2 son inlaws, and 6 of Mum's sisters. I swore after last New Years that I would never get caught in the family drunken debauchery trap again. How little I have learnt since then. The champagne on arrival to the front door was ok. But that was immediately followed by the compulsary group photo session. Naturally everyone had brought their camera with them. So this led to two things. First, we all had to stand in a group for about an hour while everyone took at least 3 photos with their camera. Secondly, with every photo, we had to "toast" the camera. For effect, of course. In reality, the effect was that I was halfway pissed without even getting my jacket off. After staggering to the table, we were treated to party fika. Sweden has a rather strange party food known as "smörgåstårta", which translates literally to "sandwich cake". And it's a pretty accurate description. I don't know if it's commonplace throughout other countries, but I had certainly never seen anything like it in my life before coming here. It looks like a large decorated sponge cream cake. Like one would have for a dessert. But instead of fruits, it has meat, cheese, or fish. A really odd dish, but quite nice all the same. So anyway, there were 3 smörgåstårtor to choose from. And I got stuck into those. I was also required to get stuck into the endless red wine which apparently came with the tårtor. Not that the champagne had been forgotten, as mother needed to be toasted by everyone at least once every 5 minutes. This was the second time I had met my mother in law's sisters. The last time was 5 years ago, when we travelled to Sweden for her 75th birthday party. One thing I will give her sisters is that they are very low maintenance party guests. All you need to do is to open one of their mouths, and then sit back. I have never seen a group of people talk so much for so long about so little. It is truely impressive. Apart from getting asked if I liked Sweden (and really, how was I going to answer that ?), I was left alone. Just me and my drunken brother in law slash barman. My other brother in law buggered off to the betting shop for a couple of hours midway through proceedings, and I don't think anyone even noticed he was gone. He's a bit of a classic, this fella. A really nice guy, I should point out. He's also the local Captain Mannering of the district. Sweden no longer has compulsary military service but, for those still in the system, they still have regular defence training exercises. There are a couple of million people in Sweden who are still fully armed, and trained specifically to defend their home area. Which is probably why people have been rather relucant to invade Sweden. Anyway, my brother in law arrived directly from his "manoeuvers" in the local forest, in full camouflage gear, boots, the lot. I would have been really impressed if it were not for the line up of pens and pocket calculator sticking out of his shirt pocket. Maybe he was intending to give those stinkin commies a good dose of ink poisoning. So anyway, after about 4 glasses of champagne, 3 glasses of wine, and 2 glasses of a dodgy looking liqueur which everyone "swore by", I decided I was no longer capable of holding my own against a group of seasoned pensioners on a Saturday afternoon. They have already booked their spot for my mother in law's 85th birthday in 5 years time. I'm already frightened.

På Svenska

2010-04-12T10:27:00.001+02:00

It's tough to prepare for a move to Sweden, and especially, the transition to Swedish. I wish that I had spent more time beforehand. Hindsight is a wonderful thing. We had bought a few study books in the 12 months leading up to our move. But I never really opened them in anger. Big mistake if I may say so. There are lots of "Study Guide" books out there, but these worked for me: The first we bought was called "Colloquial Swedish", and is pretty popular. It's an English language book, split into about 20 chapters. Every chapter begins with a short story in Swedish. About 10 or so lines. After the story will be a glossary of new words from that story, and their English meaning. The rest of the chapter will focus on a particular part of Swedish grammar. Each chapter gets progressively more complicated. The book came with a cassette tape, which I have to confess I lost. So never got to find out how effective that was. It's a good book, and explains things well. But can become a little heavy going and, well, boring. While still in NZ, we bought (well, my wife bought, truth be known) a set of 3 books called "På Svenska". The author's name was Ulla Görransson, from memory. Anyway, there was an English book called "studiehäfte", a blue book called "lärobok" and a green book called "övningsbok". The green book was a book full of examples on grammar and sentence structure, while the other two books took you through Swedish by way of normal daily events and situations. Like little stories. They are really good books. But, the best part of the whole thing is that they come also with 3 CDs. Two CDs followed the study books, word for word. So you can follow along quite happily, and get a feel for the spoken word as related to the written word. The third CD contained a lot more examples of the things found in the books. Like, for example, telephone conversations. There are 2 or 3 in the book, which you can listen to while reading the text. But then, there are more (maybe 10) on the CD just to listen to. They mix them up a bit too, so there will be a child speaking first, followed by a teenager, followed by an adult, followed by an older person. Unlike most language tapes, I could actually hear what these people were saying. Personally, I found the "På Svenska" book and CD series to be really good. It is light to read, with lots of pictures, and is rather informal. A good series for kids to read also. They publish the series for many languages, so you need to specify that you want the English version when ordering. I saw that quite a few of my classmates had also bought the series. Once I got here, and particularly once I started with language school, a good "Swedish/English" dictionary (lexikon) was a "must have". The schools have them for use, but you have to leave them at the school, and you have to fight the really tough kids for the use of them. So, best to get your own. The other book I bought was a straight Swedish language dictionary, called "Svensk skolordlista". That was probably one of the best books I have bought. It will give you all the different forms for verbs and nouns, which most of the translation Swedish/English dictionaries don't have. As well as opposites and synonoms. Obviously, being only in Swedish, the definitions of the words are also in Swedish. But that's good also, as a learning tool. REALLY helpful if you get asked to write the definition of a word in class. I ended up using that book instead of the translation dictionary after a couple of months. Definitely recommend investing in that book.

Påsklov

2010-04-06T09:22:00.000+02:00

Easter has come and gone for another year. Like most holidays I take, I was quite glad when it came time to go back to work again. Holidays always look so inviting from a distance. Rest, relaxation, and all that. Why is it then, that I seem to end up doing more work during a holiday period than I do during a normal working day ? Of course, it might just be that I'm a lazy arse at work. But I'm pretty sure that's not it. Påsk, in Sweden, begins officially on Friday, and ends on Monday. As in most countries. Sweden seems to have an enormous number of public holidays. One of their more endearing qualities. It doesn't even really need to be anything specifically Sweden related either, it would seem. I reckon they would have a public holiday to celebrate Venusuela Independance Day, if they thought they could get away with it. What amuses me the most, is how they deal with the day BEFORE a public holiday. Public holidays are known as Red Days, as that's the colour they are on the calendar. Simple enough. Being the socially concious people that they are, Sweden has decided that Swedes need to have a holiday BEFORE the holiday. So that they can get ready for the actual holiday day itself. Follow ? So, on the day BEFORE a Red Day, most Swedish businesses work just a 5 hour day. Closing generally at 2pm. 5 hours would actually be until 1pm, but naturally we need to stop for a one hour lunch break in the middle. And, of course, what's the point of working for just 5 hours ? Better to take the whole day off. So the Thurday before Easter is generally written off. As is the whole of the following and preceding weeks. What's the point of working for just 4 days ? The end result is that Easter in Sweden starts some time in early March, and finishes in late May. Just in time for the summer holidays.

First Day SFI jitters

2010-03-29T12:26:00.000+02:00

Thought it might be of some help if I posted a bit about what to expect from the first day at SFI. From my own experience. I had absolutely no idea what I was walking into, other than the acceptance that I was likely to be the thickest kid in class. I attended an enrolment "assessment" meeting the previous week. With 2 of the SFI teachers. I can't recall for certain, but I had a feeling that was in Swedish. Fortunately my dearly beloved Swedish wife was in attendance. The purpose of the interview was to determine which class mix I would be best suited for. There are 4 levels to SFI, A through D. And the classes are divided accordingly. Level A is for people who have had very little education in their homeland. Level B is the general start point for most people. The rules around these levels are a bit vague, and it's not always easy to know what level you are studying at. It's a subjective grading, determined by the teachers. Let's say that you and another student are studying the same piece of text. You understand it pretty well, but your classmate is struggling. You'll be regarded as working at a "C" level, while your classmate may be regarded as a "B" level student. Even though you are both doing exactly the same task. So you might need to ask every now and then about what level you're at. There's is a formal exam for people to pass to transition formally from "C" to "D". That exam rule came in after I started the course, so I was exempt from it. I was just told one day, when I asked, that I was Level D. But back to day 1. Arriving at the school I was met in the foyer by my teacher, and by 3 other equally confused "first day" students. We were taken to a private classroom where we were introduced to the basics of the course, given our textbook, and so forth. Worth pointing out here that everything, from the moment you walk in the front door, will be in Swedish. Officially. Which made the first day pretty hard work, for both us and our teacher. But the teachers are excellent and very skilled at dumbing down the language to a level where we can vaguely communicate. With a combination of gestures and sign language. They know that we haven't got a clue. By the end of the first day we had been taught the basics of how to introduce ourselves. "Jag heter Grant", "Jag kommer från Nya Zeeland". Nothing too serious. The point was that we were going to present ourselves the next day to our new classmates, and they would be doing the same back to us. The intro class lasted a day, or it might have only been a morning. Then we were taken to our new classroom, where we all spent the next half hour introducing ourselves. At that point, they largely leave you alone for a while. Letting you listen and try to figure out what's going on, without calling on you to contribute. Active participation is voluntary, but the teachers are pretty good at spotting those who are trying to avoid answering questions. I learnt a good trick early on with regard to group question times. If it was a topic I wasn't very comfortable with, I'd make a point of volunteering to answer one of the very first questions. Even if I got it wrong, I was not going to get called upon to answer any more of the questions. Talk a lot, and they soon get tired of you. They'll then start calling on the people who have been sitting back saying nothing. Worked a treat. A typical school day started at 8:30am. Some days they went through to about 2 or 2:30pm. Another day was only a half day. And it was only a 4 day per week course. But my school might have been really slack. I found the teachers to be quite sociable, and genuinely interested in us. One day each week, 4 of us used to head out for lunch with 2 of our teachers. Although I suspect that was largely due to the fact that they wanted to practice their English. One of my evening class teachers was a chronic chain smoker. I used to sit outside with her on a regular basis before class started. Solving the problems of the world while she puffed another nail in the coffin. So there's a typical SFI beginning. I'm sure that it differs somewhat, from school to school. But the basics will be the same. Pretty scarey walking through the door on the first day, but you start feeling better very quickly. Nothing like the company of fellow idiots to give you confidence and peace of mind.

Nu är det slut.

2010-03-24T20:48:00.000+01:00

Big day today. I am officially a graduate of the Svenska För Invandrare kurs, otherwise known as the Swedish For Immigrants course. Mixed feelings, to be honest. As an achievement, it's up there with getting a Swedish driving permit. I've been living in Sweden for 18 months now, and I've spent 15 of those months attending SFI. Leaving the course is leaving a major security blanket for me. I guess that I've been ready for a while. I've been going through the motions in school since Christmas. Waiting for the final exams. It's become more of a social outing, and a bit less of a learning exercise. But I guess that signifies that the school did it's job. To recap the saga, I started out attending day courses, here in Boden. Boy, was that a terrifying first day. I didn't know a word of the language. Well, not enough to be of any use. After 2 months in the class, myself and one of my cellmates were moved to an "advanced" class. While it was a bit trickier than the previous class, it was hampered by an almost complete lack of motivation by the other resident widlife. Still, I was only there for about a month before I started working fulltime in Luleå. My employer required, and rightly so, that I continue my language studies. Commuting back to Boden wasn't really an option, so I switched to evening classes in Luleå. That was a bit of a hassle as the Boden kommun had to pay the Luleå kommun to teach me. That's not a reflection on me, I should point out. At least, I think it wasn't. So I've been attending evening classes two nights a week in Luleå. For almost exactly 12 months. In some ways it was a giant leap backwards. For whatever reason, the Luleå school used a completely different assessment process to that used by the school in Boden. Which meant that my previous work records counted for noting, and I had to start as a nybörjare again. I guess it was only a waste as far as the formalities of the course went. It wasn't as though they were teaching a different language than in Boden. But it meant that, instead of being about 6 months into the official coursework, I now had 12 months of coursework to complete. It was tough some weeks, and I must confess that I was a "no show" several times. But I made the effort to attend at least on evening each week. And I formed some really good friendships, with a class full of very motivated students. Anyway, last week they held the Nationella Provning examinations. There are official exams for people at the C level (which is the second highest in the programme) and at the D level for people finishing. Both sets of exams are virtually identical. For some reason I managed to miss the "C" exams. No one has ever mentioned it. So I sat the D papers. There were two written papers, each lasting about an hour. The first was full of multi choice answers to questions taken from various texts and articles. The highlight of that paper was seeing the word "oförändrad". Didn't have a clue what it meant, but thanks to my wonderful teachers I was able to break it down and end up with "unchanged". Was mighty pleased with myself over that, I was. The second paper involved writing a letter to a newspaper voicing one's opinion. The third part of the exam involved listening to some spoken text, and answering the short questions written on the exam paper. They weren't terribly complicated. Things like "What time will their train leave the station?". The spoken text sections were each no more than about a minute long, and you got to hear each section twice. The final part of the provning was an oral assessment. I was paired up with a West African girl of dubious repute. So I knew we were going to have a fun time. We were given a topic to discuss (read "argue") together in front of three examining teachers. Then we had to front up individually and converse with the teachers on a set topic for about 5 minutes. And then we were done. Overall I have to say that the school prepared me well. The final exams were nowhere near as difficult as the tasks I had to complete as part of my required coursework. Which was very comforting. Although it was also a bit scarey as I was sure I must have been missing something. So that's me done with SFI. 12 assignments and exams in Boden, 14 assignments and exams in Luleå later. It's a huge relief, but I'm REALLY going to miss those guys. I'm only jut starting to realise how much now. I'm going to have to make the effort to keep in touch with them. I'm terrible about doing that, but this is different. I've shared a lot with them, and they with me. I want to continue with my language studies, but that's going to take some figuring out. Luleå doesn't offer the next stage as a part time evening class. So I might see if it can't be done by distance learning. There must be a way, I can't be the first who is both working and studying. A bit more of a debriefing to follow. Once it's all sunken in.

Another night with the U.N.

2010-03-16T12:56:00.000+01:00

Couldn't really be bothered going to school last night. Been feeling a bit off colour for a few days now. But, I'm glad that I did. We ended up having a combined class as one of the other teachers was away sick. Or couldn't be arsed turning up. As we were all working at different levels, the lesson plan was quickly chucked out the window. We got split up into groups for an hour of general chat in Swedish. A bit of a time waste, but I got paired up with 4 other people I hadn't met before. Turned out ok though. One of my goals here is to spent some time travelling Russia and the Ukraine. For no particular reason other than that it fascinates me. Ukraine is a bit tricky to get around, from the looks of things. Saint Petersburgh, on the other hand, is just a 90 minute flight from Stockholm. And one can ride a leg of the Trans Siberian railway to Moscow from there. I'm pretty keen on that. So, anyway. We do the standard introductions around our group, and I find out that I'll be spending the next 60 minutes with a guy from Saint Petersburg, 2 girls from Moscow, and a Ukranian grandmother. I couldn't believe my luck. And I couldn't believe that I was considering such a thing to be luck either. To sum up, 60 minutes turned into 2 hours of me quizzing them on their home country. In Swedish, of course. And gettting everything I needed from hotels to bus time tables. I now need to find a group of Egyptian students.

What's in a Name

2010-03-16T12:33:00.001+01:00

Well, it was that time again. The grand finale to the Swedish round of the Eurovision Song Contest, affectionally known as Medolifestivalen. I have to confess, I'm a sucker for these things. Dance Band Battle, Farmer Seeks a Wife, Single Mother Seeking... I'm a diehard fan. Could be worse, I could be addicted to porn. But we're moving off track here. Now, I had my favourite song and, needless to say, my hopes and dreams were crushed yet again. For another year. But there was one song in the final that cracked me up, and did so when I first heard it during the heats a few weeks earlier. For me it sums up the Swedish notion that they are all perfect English speakers. The racey raunchy sexy lyrics pop song in question is titled "Manboy". Now, a couple of Swedish song writers obviously thought they would show off their prowess of the English language, by using a little used English term. So everyone would be suitably impressed and think that they were jätte duktiga på engelska. The problem with the speakers of other languages, is that they don't consider double meanings. You learn a word, and it's meaning, and that's it. Tucked away in your memory for all time. I find this all the time with fluent English speaking Swedes making a complete mess of English contract documents. "Manboy", by definition, is an adult male who acts like a child. A bit of a lad about town. A Peter Pan figure. And that was the angle the song writers were going for when they wrote the lyrics for "Manboy" to sing to his lover. The problem comes when someone sings it and, by intention or not, puts an ever so slight pause between "Man" and "boy". As happened in this case. Consider the following lines of lyrics... "You can call me Manboy" ...and... "You can call me Man, boy". Spot the problem ? Puts a whole different perspective on a love song. Now, the song didn't win. And the Swedish business community can breathe a sigh of relief as a result. But you can bet your arse (so to speak) that "Manboy" will be making it's way into cult status as the new gay anthem in night clubs around the world. As we speak. Finally, a worthy challenger to "Macho Man". And it came all the way out of Sweden. Gå Sverige !!

Vinter kläder

2010-03-05T11:02:00.000+01:00

Well, it's official. The snow has been lying on the ground around here for 100 days. I haven't done the finger counting, but, from my memory, this latest lot started arriving in early December. So the stats are probably right. Apparently the record for the region is 156 days. Not sure why anyone really needs to know that. On the positive side, it hasn't snowed for 2 days now. And today, I think I saw the sun. I think it was the sun, anyway. Even the temperature has come to the party. It hasn't been below about minus 12 deg C all week. If this keeps it I might have to start calling it summer. Now, they've been quite clever here in the middle of town. At least, they've tried to be. Through the central shopping district, the footpath is warmed by underground heating. So that it doesn't get too icy and slippery during the autumn months. It becomes a problem in winter, however. When the snow is falling too quickly to be melted. So it builds up. And that's ok too. Snow is easy enough to walk on. Problem now is that it's become a little warmer out, and much of the snow has been cleared from the roads and footpaths. The snow that's left on the heated footpath is thawing, then freezing into ice overnight. So it's a bit of a skating rink out there. Right where most of the people are. Good intentions though, and I'm not going to knock them for that. It's tough to know what to wear out at the moment. For the past 3 months I've been happily wrapped up in my Fjäll Raven winter coat. God but I love that coat. Cost a bucket load to buy, but it's been my winter best friend. I can actually get around outside with just a T shirt on under that coat. Until it gets below minus 30. Then I wear a long sleeved T shirt under. Anyone moving up here, that's the coat to buy. Accept no substitutes. I've never once been cold in that coat. And it is as soft as. That's my favourite part about it, I reckon. The trick is to back into a seat on the bus, and let the coat melt itself into the corner of the seat. It's like falling back into a bed of feathers. At least, I imagine that's what a bed of feathers would feel like. Even the hood is soft. It's like you're resting back into a couple of soft pillows. If it weren't against God's law, I'd marry that coat. Which brings me to the worst delimma of all. Now that it's a mere minus 10 outside, I'm sweating like a, well, like someone really sweating, inside that coat. But I'm not convinced it's warm enough yet to move to an autumn jacket (jacka). (Can't believe that I have jackets named after seasons. How sad is that). I think I'll sweat it out for another week before making any firm commitment. It's good for my pores. Ditto for footwear also. I've got a great pair of walking boots that have a thermal insulation rating down to minus 25 deg. Never once been cold in those. Problem is that they don't have the best grip around. And tend to glide a bit over the snow on occasions. Something of a design flaw there. So I tend to favour my summer walking shoes with some good fleecy warm socks. A trade off, but then I'm not walking outside for an hour at a time. My toes are just starting to feel a bit cold by the time I walk the 10 minutes from the bus stop to work. Liveable. I've never been a hat person, I've always felt that was a bit trashy. That theory lasted about 5 minutes once autumn rolled in here. I don't open the door these days without my wool hat (mössa) firmly pulled over my ears. Unlike my winter coat and boots, there's nothing really special about my hat. Just a hat which a mate who worked on a NZ fishing trawler gave me a few years back. I probably should thank him some time. A final mention should go to my closest friends, the långkalsonger. Thermal underwear will never feature in the fashion mags. But they are a way of live up here. It's seems to be perfectly acceptable to wander around the house with just your thermals on. Mind you, that possibly explains why we don't get a lot of visitors. My långkalsonger are a little tired now, and I know that their time is near. But, having seen me through my first couple of winters I don't have the heart to tell them that they have become outdated. I mean, what's a few rips and holes between friends ? I'll give them Easter. They deserve that.

Time and distance

2010-03-01T11:31:00.000+01:00

Probably time for a short language update: The Swedish language has two different words for the English word "long". Annoyingly, both versions are very similar in both written and spoken forms. The first "Långt" refers to length, while the other form, "Längt", refers to time. The word Långt also covers for the English word "tall" as well. When some one asks how long (hur lång) you are, they are not referring to a potential sexual encounter. Most probably. They want to know how tall you are. It's not correct to use the Swedish word "hög" instead, which means "high". Even though it might seem to fit better than asking someone how long they are. Time can be expressed in a few different ways: När (which also means "near") means "when" Hur Dags means "what time ?". Längt, as I mentioned, refers to length, or duration, of time. Rather than a specific point in time that the other 2 refer to. Hur dags is used when asking a question. När can also be used in question form, as well as in statement form. When something is to happen right now, it's usual to say "nu är det dags" - "now it's time". Telling the time is uniquely Swedish. As you would guess. It all starts out well enough. Until you get near to the half hour. Then the counting system gets turned on it's head briefly. Here's the guts of it: 25 minutes after the hour is known as "5 minutes before the half hour"; Half an hour past the hour is known as "half an hour before the next hour"; 25 minutes before the hour is known as (hold on to your lunch) "5 minutes after half an hour before the next hour". Then it kind of becomes normal again. So 25 minutes past 4 would be referred to as "5 minutes before half 5". 4:30pm will be EITHER "half five", or 1630. Explains why I'm always an hour late everywhere.

How long is a piece of string ?

2010-03-01T09:24:00.000+01:00

Waste not, want not. That seems to be the philosophy here. Well, pretty much. Sweden is a leader in sustainability and waste minimisation. That being said, I don't think I've ever seen so much packaging in my life. Mostly due to the IKEA principle. If you want to buy a nut and a bolt, you have to buy the nut first. Which comes in it's own plastic wrapper. Then you have to buy the bolt that goes with that nut. Again, in it's own packet. I'm all for freedom of choice, but sometimes a bit of common sense wouldn't go amiss. But I'm moving offtrack a bit here. Sweden is a metric system country. So you'll pretty much recognise things, unless you're from one of the few countries still working in feet and inches. However, Sweden being Sweden, they can't just leave well alone. Nope, they've found a unit of measure almost completely unused by the rest of the civilised world, and made it their own. The metric system consits of one, tens, hundreds, and thousands. And so forth. Most metric countries use primarily ones, hundreds and thousands, as the accepted units of measure. 1 millimetre, 500 millimetres, then back to 1 metre again. Sweden, on the other hand, has embraced the decimetre. Yup, such a thing does actually exist. Just nowhere else in the world. So, no 500 millimetres in Sweden, not even one 1/2 metre. In Sweden, we say "5 decimeter". The problem with this is, while it looks perfectly reasonable on paper, us new kids immediately lose a perspective of scale. We know in our mind what 500mm should roughly look like. But 5 decimeter ??? Will that fit through the door ? Who the hell knows. When the length get a bit longer, there's a new game to be played. It's called the "Swedish mil". A lot of people think that Swedes have no sense of humour. I think that the invention of the "mil" proves othewise. The word "mil" is one letter shy of being the English "mile", which is a bit more than one and a 1/2 kilometres. And it also refers to distances. So it would not be unreasonable to link the 2 and think that it's referring to the same distance. Of course, that would also be wrong. A Swedish "mil" is a distance of 10 metric kilometres. For some reason, you'll be struck by lightning and burn forever in hell if you refer to things in kilometres. Once you get past 4km, that is. 5 km is known as "1/2 mil", 10km as "1 mil", and so forth. As with the decimetre, us newbies immediately lose a sense of scale when trying to figure out how far away somewhere is in terms of "mil". 30mil sounds like a half hour trip, not a 3 hour trip. Cars being sold are advertised by the number of "mil" they have travelled, not by the number of km. A car that has travelled 200,000km has travelled just 20,000 mil. Sounds a lot better, doeesn't it. Now, don't go thinking that you've only got to avoid units of length. If only life were that simple. The same rule applies to weights. When buying, say, food, the norm for the rest of the metric world is to buy by the gram, or by the kilogram. Sweden has decided that the correct unit of weight shall be the "hekotgram", or 100 grams. Forget asking for 500 grams of mince. What you need is 5 hektograms. Like our newly acquired friend, the decimetre, the hektogram is a fair unit of measurement, and deserves recognition. But why the hell change what works perfectly well for a couple of billion other people ? If you can find the answer to that, maybe you can convince Sweden to get rid of the bloody "deciliter" also.

On the Other Hand

2010-02-22T09:31:00.000+01:00

Marcus Heller, you're a top bloke. For those of you who missed the cross country skiing, Marcus and one of his team mates decided to sacrifice their chances of winning the olympic race, in order that another of the Swedish team might win. The two of them spent 13 of the final 15km trying to slow down the chasing bunch of skiers. allowing the leading Swede to stay out in front. And they did a bloody fantastic job of it. It was only in the last 1000m that the other skiers caught up with the leader, who had been skiing by himself for 14km. They say that good deeds are rewarded. And so it was, with Marcus ending up with the gold medal. Just reward for a truely top performance, from a truely top bloke. AND he's a Norrlander. And the poor bloke who lead for 14 and a half of the last 15 km ? Well, he wasn't forgotten, either. A mighty bronze medal for Johan. To be honest, Johan, I thought you were done for. Top marks for you. On the back of the almighty cock up by the disgrace of a human being in a New Zealand uniform, these 2 Swedish lads have restored my faith in the glory of sport. Integration suddenly got a whole lot easier for me.

The Glory of Sport

2010-02-22T09:02:00.001+01:00

Time for a real good smack around the head posting. This time, it's nothing against Sweden. It concerns a New Zealand athlete competing at the winter olympics. Now, NZ is a small country. Just 4 million hardy souls living there. And not really known for prowess in winter sports. Funding is an issue, as there's not a lot of it to go around. Standards for selection are pretty high, as a result. So I was dead chuffed to see that about a dozen or so athletes had made it to the Olympics. With that will come television coverage, and with that will come an increased interest in the various events, leading hopefully to higher performance levels. The trickle down effect. Following the 2008 summer Olympics, a NZ female marathon runner was found to have tested positive for performance enhancing drugs. She was immediately condemned and dumped by pretty much the entire country. And rightly so, in my opinion. There can never, ever, be an excuse. Not when a country has just paid for all your costs, and deprived someone else of attending. Now we have the winter olympics. And what happens ? Two days before his first event, a NZ skier, PAID FOR BY THE PEOPLE OF NZ TO ATTEND, is removed from the starting list. Because of "abnormal blood cell readings". The official word out of the NZ camp (and this is what REALLY pissed me off) was that the reading was a result of the athlete training at altitude prior to the games. And that's why his reading was the same as the reading for those who had taken performance enhancing drugs. Choosing to not start in the event meant that he avoided any official drug testing requirements. Ben Koons ! How frickin stupid do you think we are ??? Do you really expect us to believe that you deliberately went out and undertook an activity that would give the same effect, and result, as taking a performance enhancing drug ? Pull the other one. You're a bloody cheat. And I want my money back from you. Why do you think, Ben, (assuming wildly that you are perhaps telling the truth) that no other athlete was up there training with you on the top of Mount Everest ? Because they know it's cheating, you twat !!! Changing the composition of your blood is banned ! That's why they don't allow the drugs !! Sheesh, someone must have been dropped on their head as a baby. The story of the illustrious Ben Koons is not done with yet. A week after being removed from the 15km event, he starts out in the 30km event. Leads the race for the first 3 metres. Is 3oth about about 50 metres, last place shortly after, and finally lapped and disqualified after 5km. But you have to admire the eternal optimism here. The official reaction to a justly deserved arse kicking is: "we're confident of a top performance in the 50km event" Ben, buddy, HELLO !!!! You dropped out after 5km of a 30km race. What do you think it going to happen in a race nearly twice as long ? Give me strength here. Ben, you're a national disgrace, and you should probably stay in Aspen. Or where ever you're hiding out these days. We don't want you back. Unless it's to repay the money we've all spent on your holiday.

Röde Orm

2010-02-12T11:32:00.000+01:00

I had to read a book as part of my Swedish language course. Read, write a 2 page report on, and present verbally to the class. In Swedish, of course. First problem was in finding a suitable Swedish book. The problem I had was that every book that was at a suitable level for me, was only about 20 pages long. And usually included "pop up" pictures. So that was a bit of a mission. In the end I went for "Röde Orm", which is a swashbulking tale of a Swedish viking lad in the 10th century. 250 rip roaring pages of pillaging, drinking, fighting, more pillaging, and more drinking. Could have just as easily have been set in Manchester. I won't bore you with the details but the story follows the travels of our hero Orm, as he sails around the place. It details the various unique environments that he finds himself in, and how those experiences change and develop him. As I was thinking about how I was going to present this to my classmates, I began to realise how the story was so much more than a viking tale. Sure, it gave an insight into viking life. But, in many ways, Orm's tale was representative of an immigrant's life. And that's the approach I took for my presentation. Like Orm, we're constantly facing new things in the course of building our new lives here. And those things, in turn, are changing who we are. I remember an old dog breeder lady once telling me that a dog's personality is the product of 20% genetic, and 80 % environment. And I think that may apply to us also. I'm not the same person I was 2 years ago. I've changed a lot since coming to Sweden, in some pretty fundamental ways. Circumstances have meant I've had to learn patience at a higher level. Communication problems have made me more accepting of situations. Suddenly being a minority, has made me more tolerant towards others. Some other changes I'm not so happy about. But I'm sure they are only a result of being dumped out of my comfort zone. And will not be necessary traits over time. All in all, I think that every immigrant is an explorer in some way. In many ways, even with the passing of 1000 years, young Orm and I have a lot in common. Rather sobering when you think about it. I wonder how the people back in my home country would view me today. And how I would view them.

Whodunnit

2010-02-08T09:27:00.000+01:00

Well, survived another birthday intact. Pretty quiet affair, really. My brother in law and mother in law arrived round for eftermiddagens (afternoon) fika. Fika is a strange word. It literally means coffee break. But it tends to apply to any type of morning tea, afternoon tea, snack, brunch, or nibble. Any type of food intake that is not covered by breakfast, lunch, or dinner. It includes coffe, of course. And Swedes all appear to drink only black coffee. I don't know, maybe milk is an English thing. But it doesn't stop at coffee. On no. Nope, a fika break always includes several varieties of sweet cakes, bicsuits, buns, and breads. At this point it has progressed way past the point of snack. It's now an officially sanctioned meal. A good rule of thumb is, if you get wind that there may be a fika coming up, starve yourself for several days prior to the event. That night we went out for the evening. Just the 2 of us. which was nice. With work, commuting, language school and horses, we never seem to have a lot of time together apart from collapsing in front of the tv at the end of the day. So it was nice to be almost semi normal as a couple. There's a strange place just outside of our town. Officially it's a Wild West theme park. As one would expect to find in Sweden. Sweden is the home of dansband, so why not. Anyway, they have a large saloon type hall which they use for concerts, shows, corporate dinners, etc. On Saturday night it was a combined dinner and theatre evening. I've always loved live theatre, and Swedes are so enthusiastic actors. Not a lot of Oscars to be won, but they do give it their all. The show itself was a "murder/mystery" evening, played by an acting group touring from the south of Sweden. Just the 5 of them, and one lot of scenery. They played out the performance in 5 parts, stopping for 15 minutes between each part to allow for the next course of dinner to be served. During the break prior to the final act, every member of the audience was given a piece of paper and a pencil, and asked to guess who was the murderer. The true identity was revealed during the gripping final act. All rather exciting. I was really impressed with myself in that I was able to pretty much follow what was going on. Not every word, but enough to comprehend what was being said and what the significance of it was. Well enought to even have an idea about which one of the five actors was the dirty rotten evil scoundrel. Which amazed me. I think it was largely due to it being live theatre. Because actors in theatre performances tend to be a bit over the top with actions, and tend to be quite definite and crisp with the words, it was a lot easy to follow in Swedish than normal conversation. So there's a tip for all fellow new players out there. Go to a Swedish live theatre performance. Just sit there watching and listening for a couple of hours. Between over the top body actions and the slow booming dialogue, you might almost make sense out of it. It's certainly easier than trying to listen to the half dead news presenters on television.

You know you've been here too long when...

2010-02-04T22:18:00.000+01:00

I caught myself having a conversation with a workmate about the weather today. Not so unusual. Until I realised that I was knowingly agreeing with his sentiments about how nice it was, now that it was warmer. It is still minus frickin 16 degrees C, fella !! I've lived here too long when minus 16 can be viewed in any way as an improvement, over anything. It's now been snowing for 2 months and two weeks.

Another year crossed off.

2010-02-02T11:06:00.000+01:00

It's my birthday on Saturday. Another year of waving 2 fingers at the grim reaper. Better luck next year, pal. It's also my grandmother's birthday on the same day, I should add. She'd be about 150 million years old I reckon. For the non Kiwis amongst you, Saturday is also New Zealand's national day. Known locally as Waitangi Day. Given Sweden's love of public holidays, I'm surprised that they haven't picked up on that one yet. It's got to be better than their own one, which they share with D-Day. Nice timing there, folks. The high point of having your birthday on a public holiday is that you get a day off work. Or a day from school when I was a lad. The downside to that is that restaurants and the like were usually shut. The good ones anyway. KFC and gas stations are still open, thankfully. Otherwise my birthdays would have been a total write off. Relevance ? Well, in a previous life, in the dark days before my Swedish saviour spirited me away, I was married to a Kiwi girl. I recall, after we'd been dating for a couple of weeks, her mother took me aside and told me that I could do so much better than date her daughter. A shocking thing to hear at the time, but hindsight showed her to be wise beyond her years. But I'm moving off track here. Now, I wouldn't say that she was deliberately uncaring or unthoughtful. Just a bit slow out of the blocks. She would remember my birthday, every year. Like clockwork. Problem was, that she would remember about an hour after she woke up. Sometime are lunchtime on the big day. Every year I'd hear the slam of the front door, followed by the squeeling of car tyres. She was usually back again in about 10 minutes. Which was about as long as it took to drive to the gas station up the hill and back. I amassed a rather impressive collection over the years. Several bags of firewood, a garden hose, a set of six BP glasses, a sparkplug spanner, and a number of "easy listening" CDs. Dinner was a romantic trip to KFC. Dining in, not drive through. It was a special day after all. The celebration of my birthday has improved considerably over the past 8 years. Due to the change in casting. It'a a lovely day, and I look forward to it again, just as when I was a kid. It's just a bit of a pisser that I now have to go out and buy my own firewood.

Less is More

2010-02-02T10:35:00.000+01:00

I read a really good comment on another Swedish blog today. Concerning the government sponsored SFI language course. And the speed of the course. I've also read a lot of people mouthing of about how they "knocked the course off in 3 months". And I wonder how they are faring today. Maybe I'm just a bit slow when it comes to learning languages, this being my first attempt and all. But think about it for a moment: Can you REALLY learn and understand a foreign language in 3 months ? I started off with a hiss and a roar. Ripping through my assignment books and asking to sit a new exam every week. Ticking off each of the 21 levels in my course with a sense of triumph. Then it dawned on me. This isn't about getting an SFI certificate. That wasn't going to help me at all. Finishing the course meant bugger all. I wasn't going to suddenly have implanted in me a Swedish language translation chip on graduation day. The point of the exercise was for me to learn Swedish. Sufficiently well so that I could survive out there in the big cruel world. So my strategy changed. I finished the first 8 of my 21 assignment books in the first 3 months. The final 13 took me a year. And I'm bloody happy about that. A year and a bit of dedicated language study has given me so much more confidence and a much clearer understanding. I'm no Swedish language expert, I figure that's going to take a few years more yet. But what I've learnt, I've retained. And I understand it. And surely that has to be the point. I could have sat every test in 3 months also. Cramming the night before. But how much of it would I really have understood ? How much of it would I have retained after 3 months, with the intensive information overload regime. Sod all, is how much. It's not some state requirement, you don't have to go to school. So why shoot yourself in the foot by trying to get rid of it as quickly as possible ? There are no shortcuts to learning a language. Not in my experience. I needed to pull it apart, start from the ground up. Understanding fully all the whys and hows of language is vital if you intend to be more than a repeating chimp. SFI gets a bad rap around the place. But I'll wager that the negativity comes from people who saw it as a necessary evil to be tick off as quickly as possible, the "3 month" club. Rather than viewing it as a vital tool to building a new life. If you do the bare minimum required to pass a test, it won't be enough. And you'll say that SFI is rubbish. The level of education in an SFI course is limited by your own participation. We had brilliant indepth group discussions that went way beyond the scope of the course. There's no law against that. No teacher jumped in and says "stop talking like that, your Swedish is becoming too good". They loved it. You can only get to that level of confidence if you take the time. Rush it, and you're wasting your time. It's that simple. My advice: So long as you are progressing, make the most of the system and stay as long as you can. It's your life, after all. And there ain't no prizes for finishing first.

The Day After

2010-01-28T10:43:00.001+01:00

Well, here I am, still alive. The lying buggers at the Swedish weather office. It was nowhere NEAR -30 deg C yesterday. 20, maybe. But certainly not 30. Mind you, they did get the rest of it pretty well right. If that was my first true arctic blizzard, then I'll be quite happy for it to be my last. I have to confess, that I always wondered what it would be like, to experience a real winter. The last 2 have been relatively tame. In hindsight, I probably should have stuck to wondering. First mistake for the day was in driving to work. I had a few errands to run, but, if ever there was a day to take the bus, yesterday was that day. It was actually ok driving in on the motorway. A couple of dodgy areas where the wind was blasting snow across the road. But manageable. What I didn't know was that the real storm wasn't to arrive for another hour. Being the tight-wad that I am, I don't park inside parking buildings. Not at 10kr an hour. Nope, it's always been the outdoor parking place for me. 3kr an hour I can live with. Yesterday, again in hindsight, it wasn't my smartest decision. By the time I got back to the trusty Volvo at 4pm, I had to dig around in the snow drift to find the door handle. I kid you not. Now, there's a reason why everyone in Sweden owns a Volvo. And it's not for their looks. It's because they work. No matter what, they go. And keep on going. I've owned 4 wheel drive Subarus, and a Landrover. So I was pretty skeptical about the ability of a simple front wheel drive car in a climate like this. But this car starts in a flash and goes exactly where you point it. Every time. Man, I was glad of it yesterday. As I crawled through town, I passed a guy stopped in the middle of a major intersection. He was lying in the snow, frantically trying to dig his Mercedes Benz out of the snow. "Buy a Volvo", I muttered smuggly. Sure, you instantly age 20 years on the inside, the moment you sit in a Volvo. But when you're driving up the motorway at night, through 30cm deep snow, at 90kph, it's blowing and snowing like buggery outside, and it's 22 degrees inside the car, who gives a shit. It probably deserves a bath this weekend, I reckon.

Global Warming

2010-01-26T12:38:00.001+01:00

The weather forecast for tomorrow is: -30 degrees C 90kph winds 40-50cm snow You know it's not going to be a lot of fun when the northern office of the Swedish Road Administration, who doesn't stop for anyone, advises people not to drive. Remind me again. Why am I not on a tropical beach somewhere ?

Health and Happiness

2010-01-26T10:59:00.001+01:00

Had a great night at Swedish language school last night. We had been given an assignment to find a newspaper article during the week, and then to present the article to another group of students for discussion. Now, being from a small town, there's not a lot of newsworthy happenings. So our local paper is usually padded out with stories of the weird and wonderful. Which suited me just fine for this exercise. Anyway, bottom line was that 7 of us sat around for an hour, discussing the news, and life in general. There we were, Lebanese, Polish, Estonian, Chinese, Kiwi, Vietnamese, and French. A veritable gathering of the United Nations ended up having a right royal bitch session about the shortcomings of the state run pharmacutical outlet, Apoteket. For anyone not familiar with the Swedish healthcare system, prescription pharmacies, all called Apoteket, are government owned and operated. Swedes are a bit paranoid when it comes to drugs, so pretty much anything stronger than an asprin requires a trip to the doctor (läkare), and a prescription (recept). There's the odd private doctor around the place, but, for the most part, doctors are employed by the state. They mostly work out of communal medical centres, known as vårdcentral. Which centre you go to is usually determined by your post code, but they are about to loosen up on that a bit so that you can pretty much go where you want. On a bizarre side note, Apoteket is also the outlet for all animal medicine. Feels a bit odd asking the chemist for laxatives for my cat. They look at you like "sure, for the cat. We believe you. You sicko". One thing they have done well, is their electronic system. Once the doctor (or vet) has typed your prescription into the computer, you can pick it up from any Apoteket in the country. No clumsy pieces of paper. Just flash your ID, and the drugs flow like water. If they have the drugs, that is. I've lost count of the number of times that my prescribed medication has been "out of stock". But the theory's good. So that was our evening. Seven of us from the far flung corners, stumbling around with our Swedish. I really enjoy those nights. They are good, intelligent people. There's no pretence at hierarchy. We're all bollocks, and we know it. And that's kind of a nice feeling. Knowing that when you strip away any home country advantage or status, and make life a true level playing field, that we are, all of us, just the same. There's no race, religion, or cultural distractions. It's a very unique experience, quite surreal. And definitely the highlight of my experiences so far.

God Fortsättning !

2010-01-19T15:41:00.000+01:00

New Years Eve. Used to be my best (and usually only) chance of getting laid when I was a lad. Everything’s a hell of a good idea when your 18 and pissed. Funny how things are still a hell of a good idea when you’re 40 something and pissed. Difference is that I used to look forward to getting legless with the legless girl from down the street. These days I dread the aftermath. It gnaws away at me in the days leading up. I know I’m going to be found lying in the gutter somewhere. Yet I’m powerless to stop it. It’s the pure definition of watching the proverbial train wreck. Welcome to Nyårsafton !! For the second year we spent New Year’s Eve at the home of my brother in law. For 364 days of the year, the nicest guy in town. In the space of 6 hours in one evening, it all comes crashing down. At least, the bits of it that my protective brain allows me to remember. I’ll give him credit, you’d be hard pressed to find a more attentive host, this side of a brothel. A spread of food that the Queen Mum herself, God rest her, would have be proud to have rustled up. The purists would probably point out that it’s just the leftovers from Christmas, thawed out and rehashed. But I’m not going to have a bar of that. He put in the effort, and that’s alright in my books. Unfortunately, the same level of enthusiasm extends to the liquid refreshments. Which begin before the shoes come off, and finish long after the last house roof has been torched by the midnight fireworks. I had spent last year analysing the previous party. Trying to pinpoint the exact moment when things went horribly wrong. Call it a pre-emptive strike. I was fine with the pre dinner glögg. No worries with the dinner schnapps. Likewise with the dinner wine. The after dinner cognac seemed ok. Ditto for the various beers. That rather odd looking liquor that came from Hungary didn’t look the best, but seemed harmless enough. Nope, everything was fine until the champagne arrived at 1am. THAT’S when it all went a bit pear shaped. Having isolated the problem, the solution was easy. No champagne for me, thank you very much. I really don’t know what happened this year. Must have been a bad batch of Hungarian cough syrup. Going to have to rethink my strategy.

Surviving the Silly Season

2010-01-12T10:29:00.000+01:00

Survived my second Swedish Christmas. A little less traumatic than the previous year, due largely to the fact I knew what was coming. And could prepare accordingly. Christmas can be a great time in Sweden. One thing I'll give them is that they do take their festive seasons seriously. Apart from the obvious lure of pressies, Christmas was never a big deal for me growing up. Maybe that was because it was summer, rather than winter. Which meant that Christmas signalled the start of summer holidays. And got a bit overshadowed as a result. Sure, we had Chrsitmas dinner, and all that. But the day usually revolved around a strictly controlled timetable which included marching dutifully to each set of grandparents before packing up the car ready to launch forth on our annual summer vacation the next day. So not a lot of really fond festive memories there. Swedish Christmas ( and probably all northern hemisphere Christmases ) is a bit more special. And revolves around the occasion itself. Still a good old fashioned piss up, but you do feel a bit more connected to the people around you. At least, that's how it worked for me. If you happen to be working, most companies will finish work either on the 22nd, or midway through the 23rd. Some time shortly after lunch. Short, or half days, are quite common during the course of the working year in Sweden. Usually the day before a public holiday. I have to laugh about this, however. Maybe I just work with strange people, I don't know. But, in my working history, if we had a short day, everyone worked straight through until the designated finish time. Not so, it seems. if we are to finish at 2pm, everyone starts at 8am as usual. Come 11:30am, they all break for a one hour lunch. Come back for an hour and a half, and then wobble off home. Why not just work right through and then piss off home at 1pm, folks ??? Ok, so I've still got some things to learn here. But back to Christmas. Tradition plays a big part, at least in my Swedish family. The evening of the 23rd is the official time for wrapping Christmas presents. The television channels even run late night movies, especially for the occasion. Christmas itself is celebrated on the 24th, rather than the English 25th. But the day itself is a bit of a nothing day. Spent basically cooking and baking for the orgy to follow. Don't underestimate the power for the Swedish Julbord. Starve yourself for a week before Christmas, and wear your best eating pants. We gathered at around 4:30pm for battle ( that's half five in Swedish time). A cup of warm Glögg was thrust into the hand on arrival. Glögg is an ok drink. A bit sickly for me, but ok. The rest of the world calls it Mulled Wine. After the traditional welcoming shouts of God Jul, black slapping, hugging and handshaking, it's down to the business in hand. Swedish Christmas dinner (Julboard) consists of a number of courses. Pacing yourself is the key here, because they do get progressively tougher. The first course it an appetiser course, accompanied by a glass (or 3) of Schnapps. I'm not a big drinker of spirits, so this is an event I really need to prepare myself for. Somehow I always end up sitting next to the family member in charge of the alcohol distribution. No chance for rest there. Back to the battle. The first course consisted of a selection of little things. Usually small fish or fruit pies, and a strange little reindeer meat type pie in a a large glazed shell with a white sauce. Swedes are manic on fish so, if you don't like fish, well, you're basically screwed. Round two, and we're onto the cold dishes. Beer is the drink of the day for this course. Topped off with a selection of cold meats, egg slices, a variety of salads, and about 300 variations of salmon and herring. I don't mind this course too much, especially the beetroot salad, a personal favourite. Now is where the real eaters get sorted out from the amateurs. The warm food course. And the red wine appears on the table. Not that the beer has been removed of course. And the schnapps is continuously topped up by the resident drunk who takes great delight in shouting "skål" every 2 minutes. The warm course consists of freshly cooked ham, meat balls, sausages, boiled potatoes, more salads, and a rather unusual dish known affectionally as Jansonn's Temptation. Now, I don't know anything about this Jansonn bloke, but I would say that it didn't take a lot to tempt him. It's kind of a potato casserole thing, with anchovies added in. For some strange reason. Anyway, by this time you're starting to lose the will to live, so it doesn't really amtter what's getting forced down. Mercifully there is now a break from the eating torture. Of sorts. We adjourn to the lounge room (vardagsrum) and await the arrival of good old Tomten. At this point the eagle eyed amongst us will have spotted that one family member (typically the one most drunk) has disappeared. Apparently he simply HAD to duck out to buy the evening newspaper. And would you believe it, right at that moment, good old Santa arrives ! There's a Swedish custom of Tomten (Santa) arriving in person on Christmas Eve. Someone thought it was a great idea to sell a Santa type mask, which is a one piece item featuring a red hat, white beard, and a face resembling Freddy Kruger after a hard night out with the lads. Honestly, if I were a kid in Sweden, this guy would keep me in therapy for years. Anyway, for about the next 20 minutes a drunken homicidal maniac staggers around the lounge, handing out presents, and groping the kids. Fortunately everyone is so tanked up on schnapps, beer, glögg and wine, that it all appears to be perfectly normal. No rest for the wicked, and it's back to the table for dessert (efterrätt). This is a bit more recognisable for the outoftowners. Follwed up with selections of cheeses, coffees, and now brandy. By the time we staggered out the door shortly before midnight, my nerve senses had long since given up in disgust. Which made the walk home in minus 20 degrees rather pleasant. I reckon I was over the legal limit for driving until about New Years Eve. Which unfortunately is another festival to be endured. More about that disaster later.

Marketing Genius

2009-12-21T11:45:00.000+01:00

Thumbing through a Swedish industry magazine today I came across a glossy company advertisement. The headline, in brilliant gold on green lettering read "Vi är din Plan B". Which translates to "We are your Plan B". Now, ok, the company was selling and renting out diesel powered electricity generators. But, geez... Way to talk yourselves up, fellas !!!! If this was anywhere else in the world the headline might be "Use us now before it's too late !" Or something equally demanding and fear inducing. But no, this is Sweden. And in Sweden one says, " well, I guess you could always try us, if all else fails. But we're not promising anything, so it's ok if you don't want to. Honest. In fact, it's probably better if you don't use us. Really.".

Body Language

2009-12-17T09:44:00.000+01:00

They reckon that's your body is a temple. If that's the case, then I think my congregation need to start fund raising for a new roof. What I do know is that I am a walking weather station. As I've been reminded of over the past week as winter has closed in. Here's how it works for me. When the temperature hits EXACTLY -15 deg C, the hairs inside my nose start to freeze. I wasn't used to this during the first winter. The first day it happened I thought that something had flown up my nose and had gotten stuck there. I spent several days blowing my nose every time I went out, hoping to dislodge whatever gastly creature it was. It was only when I realised the thing wasn't there when I was inside, that I made the connection. I'm a bit slow that way. When the temperature gets below -18 deg C (18 itself is ok), my eyelashes start to freeze. Well, technically it's my breath that's freezing on my eyelashes. Have you ever tried blinking with rigid eyelashes ? Not as much fun as you think it's going to be. I was a bit worried at first that they might snap off if I wasn't careful, and I'd go through the rest of my life doing a very passable impression of a bullfrog. But no such worries. Once we get below -20 deg C, my ears will last about 2 minutes before screaming out in protest. I've never really been a hat person. Now I am. I'm also a thermal underwear person. I'm a thermal sock person. I understand the concept of dressing in layers. I buy shoes according to their thermal insulation rating. In my Fjäll Raven winter jacket, I've lost the ability to bend at the waist, or to rotate my head more than about 10 degrees from side to side. It's currently +24 degrees inside, and -24 degrees outside. Why the hell am I not on a beach somewhere ?

Clothes maketh the man

2009-12-10T10:01:00.001+01:00

Or so they say. I'm not sure what my clothes make me. My ex-wife would normally chime in about now with a pearl of wisdom. But anyway. Swedish fashion is pretty tough to pin down. I'm not sure if they are going for the "I'm going to grab all the items of clothing I can find on the floor, and stick them on me, in no particular order" look, or if that's just the way it ended up. It's all a bit of a mess, and doesn't seem to follow any pattern. Maybe it's different up here in the North. Maybe it starts out with good intentions but loses it's way somewhat when one looks at the winter weather. You know what it's like if you have bad heating in your house. You have a really nice duvet, which matches the sheets and pillow cases. But it's a bit cold, so you borrow the duvet from the bed in the spare room and throw that over. Still a bit nippy, so the rug from the lounge gets piled on top. Now you're really nice and comfy, but the bed looks like the sales bin at the local store. That pretty much describes fashion as I see it here. Swedes have this thing about being informal and comfortable. They don't really feel all that comfortable with hierachy. And that shows in their clothes. But it's hard to follow the rules. For me, at least. Everyone else seems to know exactly what to wear and when. Take, for example, my job. I work in a professional international consultancy firm. As I've also done in New Zealand. Dress code of the day was always semi formal. Dress shoes, shirt and pants. With a tie either worn or standing nearby at the ready. Probably a reflection of the good old Imperial England, where employment staus was ( and is) the measure of the man. Not so in Sweden. Checkered shirts, jeans and slippers are the standard office attaire. First time I've ever had to buy a pair of slippers to wear to work. No difference as you head up the office ladder. You can tell the boss, because he has a SLIGHTLY bigger office. But that's about it. So that was something new. Bit of a shock, but dressing down is easier to get used to than dressing up. Last month we were invited to attend the christening of the daughter of a friend of our's. At the local church. Being the avid churchgoers that we are, I had to look the place up on the map. Now, being the son of devoted Church of England parents, I knew exactly how this worked. So I dug out my best pants and tie, which hadn't seen light since my first day at work. And off we went. Big mistake. Standard church attaire it seems, follows office protocol. Jeans, open neck shirts, and casual footwear. At first I felt like a bit of a twat, but then I thought, "No, this is how I dress to show respect. So tough". Two weeks later we were invited to attend a birthday party for an adult friend. Same group of people. Despite my earlier stand against society, I decided to go with the flow. Nice pair of jeans, casual but trendy (for me) shirt, and good comfy shoes. Swedes do own suits and ties. Very nice ones too. Do you know when they wear those ? When they go to friends' birthday parties !!! I frickin give up. Next time I'm asked anywhere, if I'm asked anywhere, I'm wearing the duvets. All of them.

Skaffa ett jobb

2009-11-30T13:18:00.000+01:00

Unless you've reached the pinacle of life that I strive to one day reach, and are a kept man, you're going to need to find a job in Sweden. This obstacle is typically the one that stops a lot of ex-pats in their tracks. It's a major hurdle, and it's importance cannot be overstated. So many, myself include, expect to waltz into Sweden and immediately secure the same level of employment that we left behind. Forget that. It's time to rewrite your employment life. The big part about securing employment is forward planning. This might mean delaying your relocation plans for a while. Get your qualifications in order. If you don't have any qualifications, get some. Don't rely on your employment history to make up for a lack of formal training. Unless you've got Swedish experience, your work history is second rate. Choose your qualifications wisely. Don't waste your time studying for an MBA from the University of South Eastern Tennessee. Choose something that will carry some weight outside of your homeland. Which involves some research first. Writing your CV can be a bit tricky. Lots of opinions around about whether you should write in English ( if that's your first language) or in Swedish. The English argument is that writing in Swedish is implying that you've got good Swedish skills, and you'll get found out when you front up for an interview. Fair enough. The Swedish argument is that no one is going to read an English CV and, if they do, they'll think that you know no Swedish. Which may not be true. Again, fair comments. Me, I went for somewhere in between. A fence sitter, am I. I wrote my CVs in Swedish. To show that I was making an effort to integrate. Now, admitidly, my Swedish CV was pretty good. Language wise. Due to my Swedish wife writing 90% of it. So a bit of a fib there. BUT, I made sure to write in my covering letter that, while I was writing in Swedish, I was still struggling with Swedish as a spoken language. So when I finally did make it to an interview, there were no surprises for anyone. I believe that CVs should be tailored to match the specific position. Highlighting what is relevant to that job application. That's what I think. Some will say that a CV is a CV is a CV. You can choose. One thing I have noticed about Swedish CVs is that they list EVERY single qualification they have, and EVERY item of work they have ever worked on. If they have a 50m backstroke certificate from primary school, in it goes. If they worked on a project that took a day and a half and cost 250kr - in it goes. The end result is a 10 page CV that contains 9 pages of "everything I have ever worked on in my entire life". In cronological order. Personally I think that's a crap approach. No one reads everything, at least I don't. So maybe some of the really important stuff gets missed. Me, I went for an English type CV, written in Swedish. Just the major stuff, and a bit less padding. You can choose what suits best. If you are going to write about specific jobs your have previously done, remember that the Swedish employer probably doesn't have a clue about place names, people, or customer names. So you have to make it mean something to everyone. Give the task some scale, like 1,000 square metres, 500 people, or 100,000 Swedish kronor. Remember, they don't know what you know. A "new Woolworths in Timaru" gains a bit more credibility when it becomes a "new 5,000 square metre supermarket in a city of 40,000 people". Think about your audience when writing. And don't forget to say what you personally did on that project. Obviously you didn't build the whole supermarket yourself. I always write a cover letter. A lot of people say it's bad form, I say it's not. My letter is important to me. It's where I present myself as a person, not just as a work history list. I say why I'm coming to Sweden, so they get to understand me a little. I summarise my employment and qualifications. Not too much, sort of a "fools guide to". The stuff you can't really include on a CV list. The letter is also a chance to address the questions that you know they will have about you. Language, future ambitions, level of risk. A chance to shut those questions down before they arise. Be up front and say if your Swedish is crap, but you wanted to try and write in Swedish. It shows honesty, but it also show a commitment. Finally, the tone of your application. Here's the conflict. Swedes in generally are not very good and presenting themselves in a strong or assertive manner. Which is why they often struggle to survive outside of Sweden. A typical English CV which proclaims your strengths and virtues, might be viewed as being somewhat arrogant by a Swedish employer. So you might want to tone your application down a little. Not too much though, you do still want to get the job. It's a bit of a tricky balancing act, that one. So there's the formalities. No guarantee it'll work. But I've never been shut down because of my formal application. That comes later.

When in Rome...

2009-11-23T15:22:00.000+01:00

Well, not quite Rome. But near enough. Last week we took a 4 day flying trip to Milan. Initially it was to see a football game. But the significance of that event quickly became overshadowed once it was discovered that Milan was the home of the odd fashion shop. Or two. Or 10. But that's a story for another day. This was my first real trip outside of Sweden since arriving in Sweden. I don't really count our trip to Iceland, as that was just a group of Swedes hanging around together. This was just the 2 of us, in a strange new world. And a world that embraced neither English nor Swedish as a language. And here's where I discovered something really interesting about my current destination in life. I had learnt, or tried to learn, a little Italian. Prior to our trip. Nothing too complicated or technical. Just so we could hail a cab, order a pizza, or check the price on something. When I arrived to Sweden I knew a few Swedish words and phrases. But I was very very selfconcious about my shortcomings, so was reluctant to try them out with any anger. Still am to an extent, but that's slowly fading with my sense of self respect. In Milan I discovered that, when you are crap at speaking one language, and you know that you are, and you accept that you are, and you've given up being polite........ you have no problem at all about being crap in another language. So I let those poor sods in Milan have it. Both barrels of tragic Italian. It was bollocks, they never understood a frickin word, and I couldn't have cared less. I consider that to be progress along my Swedish journey.

TV, or not TV

2009-11-19T10:20:00.000+01:00

I realise that it's been a while since I've written anything constructive, or helpful. Or anything nice, come to think of it. I'll have a crack at that now, but don't go holding out for high expectations. Today, my experience with Swedish television options. That's viewing options, not buying options. Buying a TV is frickin expensive in Sweden. Twice the price of the same model in NZ. And a 42 inch flat screen TV does NOT fit into the back of a Volvo V70. Word to the wise. Anyway, if you want to watch telly in Sweden, you have a few choices to make about who you buy the service from. There are about half a dozen suppliers, all essentially offering different combinations of the same 100 (ish) TV channels. Which makes them all pretty much the same. Some suppliers also offer internet and telephone services when buying a tv package. There are some savings to be made that way, but the other suppliers generally wise up to this and adjust their prices to match. So what are the options. Generally a supplier will offer 3 packages for sale, being Small, Medium and Large. The Small package will have about a dozen channels, and the Large package about 70. The channels included within each package are chosen by the supplier, not by the customer. But you can often buy additional individual extra channels if you like. So you could buy the Small package, and then also choose to buy, say, the BBC channel. As an extra. The 3 packages are offered by each supplier, but the make up of the channels within each package can vary a little between suppliers. So that could be the defining factor that determines who you choose. If you take a Large package, you get all the Tv shows, news, kids, music, and documentary channels that are on offer. About 70 channels. Sitting outside these packages, for some reason, are the dedicated sports and movies channels. The big suppliers of these are "Canal" and "Viasat". It's those channels that show live football, and the latest movies. Without advertisement breaks. If you want either of these groups, you have to buy them as a separate package from your programme supplier. All suppliers will offer these. If you are an absolute TV nut, and you sign up for the Large package, plus the "Canal" package, plus the "Viasat" package, you have somewhere around 100 to 110 channels. If you're that way inclined. We're not done quite yet, because Canal also has a number of package options to choose from. You can buy the Movies package, or the Sports package. Or the lot, if you can't be bothered deciding. Overly complicated ? Yup. What did you expect ? So, where to start. Well, if you are renting an apartment, or you buy a apartment, it's quite likely that a basic (Small) television rental package is included in your monthly building cost. And you'll pay for that whether you use it or not. So it might make sense to stick with that supplier if you want to buy more channels. Cabling can be another determining factor. Some suppliers, such as Com Hem, have their own cable system entering the building. Which stops at a normal TV aerial wall socket. Telia, on the other hand, uses their telephone cables to transmit television. Which requires that you purchase a modem to plug into the main telephone outlet in your house. Note, it must be to the main telephone outlet in the house. It won't work if plugged in to any of the other phone outlets. You will then have to connect to your TV with the use of a modem cord. Or, as we did, through the use of a wireless transmitter. Which works well, I have to say. When I say connect to the TV, I mean the cable TV decoder box. Which sits near to your TV. Some TVs have an inbuilt cable TV decoder box. I haven't had personal experience with these but I've heard stories of people having problems trying to record television programmes using this system. So check that out. So there you have the start guide to Swedish Tv. Good to note that English programmes are generally shown in English. With Swedish subtitles to help your language training. Unlike many other European countries which choose to voice over dub everything. Oh, and ( at least, I've heard ) there's good porn on the TV. So money saved at the video shop there. You heard it here first.

Red Cross mission

2009-11-17T12:58:00.000+01:00

"I once met a man who had no shoes, and I pitied him. Until I met the man who had to carry those shoes". Something like that anyway. Works for me today. Back from a flying holiday visit to Milan. Left Sweden on Thursday morning, back again on Sunday afternoon. The official reason for the trip ? A football match. Time for a quick maths lesson first. Time spent in Milan: 76 hours. Duration of a football game: 90 minutes. Ever wondered how many pairs of Italian shoes one can buy in 74 and a half hours ? Come around to my house some time and I'll show you. You'll know it, it's the one with the mountain of empty shoe boxes blocking traffic outside the front door. Why is it that there must always be 3 additional options when buying shoes ? No matter how many you are actually planning to purchase. Looking for one pair of shoes, there's always 4 pairs lined up to be compared against. When I foolishly suggested that we really should limit ourselves to just buying 3 pairs at this shop, there were 6 lined up to choose from. And "plum" coloured shoes. Who buys plum coloured shoes ? Actually, dumb question, that one. But you don't have any plum coloured clothes !! Mind you, I knew the moment I said that, I was in trouble. An easily fixed problem. Why do I never learn ? Now, I might be the bad southern cousin of the Grinch Who Stole Christmas. But who can say no when the tears well up in those eyes, the lip quivers, and the tiny voice whispers "but look at the heel". That's why we went with 2 extra suitcases. And why I like eating beans.

Evening musing

2009-11-05T11:24:00.001+01:00

Still on the subject of school, I was back at language school last night. I must confess to having been a little derelict in my formal language study duties of late. But I had a major project to finish off at work, we'd moved house, I'd been sick. Yaddy yaddy yah. I remember one of my school masters telling me that one should never have an excuse, one should always have a "reason for". So, those were my reasons for. Anyway, I must have been away for a bit longer than I had realised. As I discovered last night, 2 of my classmates had gotten married, and 3 more were pregnant. I must have missed one hell of a party. I have missed them all, it should be said. Who would have thought, 18 months ago, that I would yearn for the company of a classroom full of people from every corner of the planet. It's rather surreal at times. The teachers are great, and that helps a lot. They treat you as an adult, and not as an idiot. Even though we all feel like idiots at times. My evening class runs twice a week. Which is obviously long enough for marriages and pregnancies. One night focuses purely on grammar. That can be a bit draining after a full day of work. But essential. The other night is spent practicing listening and spoken (uttal) skills. That's always been the hardest part for me, understanding what people are saying to me. So having 2 hours a week doing just that is invaluable. I read somewhere, that the SFI language school teaches to the equivalent level of a Swedish 6 year old. I have even heard the teaching staff say that. That's a bit of an unfair statement. What they mean is, that the number of words they teach you directly, the vocabulary, is about the same number that a 6 year old Swede knows. But we're not 6 years old. We're adults, and we've been speaking for 20+ years. Some of us more than that. So we know how to use language, how to look for the root of words, how to break apart compound words into their simple forms. I might suck at Playstation games, but I can beat a 6 year old any day at learning and applying grammatical rules. Give me a Swedish verb and I can tell you by looking at it what the other forms of that verb will be. Well, most of them. Being taught just one word, you can create another 5 from that word. So don't be fooled by that "dumbing down" of the course description. it does the staff and pupils a bit of a dis-service. Oh, and it's snowing a shitload right now. How cool is that.

Språk Schmoke

2009-11-04T15:45:00.000+01:00

Here's one for the "thanks for nothing" box. I live in the north, right. I go to language school in the north, right. So you would think they would include local dialect in the course, right. Wrong. Every now and then I hear something around town that sounds gammitically screwed up. So I tuck it away and ask my ever helpful evening class teachers. To which the reply comes out "Oh, that's local dialect. everyone up here says that". Sure, everyone except for me and the rest of us sitting here in your class, BECAUSE YOU NEVER TAUGHT US THAT. Thanks for nothing. And then, and then, they teach for the word for something. Brilliant, filled with confidence. Only to tell you a couple of months later that it's old Swedish, and no one really says that today. Thanks for nothing.

The Right Rule?

2009-11-03T09:59:00.000+01:00

I'm going to have a real good grizzle here about another dumb Swedish rule. Which, for me, typifies ( is that a word ? ) the obsession that Sweden has for reinventing everything. Whether it needs reinventing or not. Today, it's the "Right Hand Rule". This is one of the basic traffic rules which says that you have to give way to vehicles coming from your right. Sounds fair enough. I'm quite relaxed about that. The Right Hand rule co-exists alongside the "Priority Road" rule. Which says that if you are driving on a Priority Road, you don't have to give way to anyone. A Priority Road is indicated as such by a large yellow diamond shaped signpost on the side of the road. All seems simple enough. If you are driving along a road with a yellow diamond sign, you're driving on a Priority Road, and you don't have to give way to crossing traffic. If there's no yellow diamond sign, then it's not a Priority Road, and you have to give way according to the Right Hand Rule. Here's where it all gets a bit messy. The same road can change status as you drive along. Numerous times. From Right Hand to Priority, back to Right Hand, back to Priority again. And so on. Which makes the constant peering for that yellow diamond damn near a fulltime job. Maybe I missed it, maybe it was behind those tree branches back there, maybe someone has knicked it. What the frick do I do now at this intersection ? There's a road running through the middle of my town, which is maybe 20 blocks long. For around 17 of those blocks, the road is a Priority Road. No giving way needed. But for THREE of those insections ( and not 3 consecutive intersections ), the road ceases being a Priority Road, Just for that intersection, then it's back to being a Priority Road again. I may have come from a primitive culture. But when I drove on a straight road and a car came from a side road, they had to give way to me. Always. Town, country, day, night. One rule. No wonder everyone takes the bus or rides a bicycle.

King of IKEA

2009-11-02T10:05:00.000+01:00

Big day for our marriage on Sunday. Even bigger than last Sunday. Which was our wedding anniversary. Which I forgot. But was saved due to the fact that I wasn't the only one who forgot. Actually, for some reason that didn't save me. But we'll get back to that some other time. Most of you have probably seen that movie, starring Robin Williams, where the priest gives a series of tasks to a couple. To see if they are really ready to be married. Sweden has it's own version of the marriage test. It's called the "IKEA asembly" test. We needed some new furniture. No way around that. As a bare minimum was somewhere to store the 300 pairs of shoes that apparently one simply has to have. And we picked IKEA. The nearest IKEA store is in Haparanda, on the Finnish border. About an hour and a half away. It's a day trip, fighting with 17 million Finns. Or thereabouts. And the hire of a trailer for a day. If anyone ever wants to start up their own business in Sweden, hire trailers. You'll be the richest guy in town within a month. But we're moving offtrack here. So, after studying the online IKEA website ( which is pretty good, I have to say ) we discovered that some of the furniture (möbler) we wanted, was out of stock at our local branch. As a bit of a joke, we checked out what it would cost to buy the stuff online, and have it delivered. Turned out that it was actually about 200kr cheaper than going to the store. And, they had everything we needed. Ok, so I missed out on the thrill of shopping trolley wars. But one learns to live with sacrifice. 10 days later, 2 burly chaps arrived at the door of our second floor apartment, in the snow, with about 200kg of IKEA boxes. Bless their little socks. Don't know if they were looking for a tip or not, but I did give them advance warning to leg it before our senile cocker spaniel woke up. I think they appreciated the gesture. Anyway, back to Sunday. First up, we had "the talk". You know the one. "This is IKEA furniture. There's going to be moments when we think that the world as we know it is about to devour us. There's going to be times when one of us will wish the the world devours the other one of us. Just remember that, I love you. And that our wills are in the bank vault". 3 hours later we had a bedroom dresser ( byrå). It looked pretty much like the picture in the catalogue. And apart from a backwards drawer that needed pulling apart and reassembled, and a nail that got away from me ( only to be rescued by our trusty canine ), our marriage is still relatively intact. Tonight, it's wardrobes (garderober). I'm not expecting the same merciful ride. But at leat I now know where my will is.

Winter wonderland

2009-10-22T14:59:00.000+02:00

The first snow arrived the other day. About frickin time. Did I just say that ? I guess I've been here too long when I miss the snow. But it's all a matter of perspectives, I think. For the last few weeks it's been a good old fashion New Zealand winter. Cold, wet, and generally yucky. Nothing to write home about. Problem being is that it's about 10 degrees colder than in NZ. So that means ice. Every frickin where. Now, I don't know if there exists some kind of ice walking gene. But, if there is, it's clearly skipped a generation. We've all seen those cutesy videos of ducks slipping and sliding their way across the ice. It's a dream of mine to be that well co-ordinated. Nope, with me, I'm resigned to spending most of my autumn outdoor winter time steering upwards at the stars, with one leg wrapped around the back of my neck. "You can see that I can't walk on ice, stop messing with me already !!" Which is turn explains a few things about Swedes. They all look exactly the same. In Sweden. BUT, take one of those northern Swedes out of Sweden, and watch them walk. Northern Swedes walk everywhere like they are ankle deep in cow poo. Funniest thing that you every saw. Until you happen to be in the north of Sweden come the annual ice age. Then it's the cleverest thing that you ever saw. I've tried, God knows I've tried. I guess that I'm just not an ice guy. Actually, I recall my ex wife saying something very similar. Snow, snow I can do. Snow sits on the ice. It doesn't move. Usually. Snow is kind. Snow knows my limitations. Snow understands. I hope it snows tonight. Even if it ruins the moment of unbridled hilarity exhibited by my colleagues at the bus stop. I'm convinced they are all arriving early now. Just to see my duck arse slide across the road. I hate them.

Planes, Trains and Automobiles

2009-10-05T13:18:00.000+02:00

Every day for the past year I've taken the same 7:10am bus to work. A 30 minute chance to gather myself for the battle ahead. Of course I don't share in this journey alone. There are about 50 other hardy souls who trip the light fantastic with me. Come rain, shine, snow, and ice. 50 condemned souls, each with their unique quirks and traits, which I've come to know and love. First up, there's Buddha. A fitting enough description which requires no further physical discussion. Where Buddha comes from, and where he goes to, is a mystery to most of us. He's always on the bus when it arrives, and always still on it when I get off. Maybe he's just always been there. Buddha lives in the single front seat, next to the driver. Dame Edna sunglasses always in place, headphones plugged into the overhead radio socket. The only sign of life from Buddha comes as we pass the 70kph speed sign, 20 minutes into our journey. At precisely that moment, Buddha removes his headphones and stows them into his jacket pocket. Why , and why then, who could say. Aside for that ritual, it wouldn't take too much to have Buddha declared legally dead. Scalp Scratcher is an interesting character. Well, maybe not so interesting, as he has only one visible trait. Scalp scratching. What impresses me about SS is that, after a 30 minute trip, 5 days a week, 50 weeks a year, there is still no sign of any bleeding. I'm convinced that he must surely have scratched his way down to bone by now. On the positive side, SS usually has a seat all to himself. Not a lot of people choose to sit behind him either. Whatever he's selling, we're not buying. Girlfriend is the unwitting clown of the troupe. GF has possibly discovered the speed dating of the future. Bus dating. The exciting part is to try and predetermine who her next candidate will be. The victim usually tries to fight GF off for a couple of weeks, before resigning himself to his fate and either taking an earlier bus, choosing to walk the 50km to town, or leaving the country. Either way, we never see them again. We only hope that they have found peace somewhere. Chaos Woman is my absolute favourite. My bus route has 6 "pick up" stops. ( I think that's where GF's confusion stems from ) I get on at stop number 3. Chaos Woman must live upstream from me, as some days she is already seated by the time I get on. This, however, is a rarity. Like GF, CW brings the element of chance and excitement into an otherwise dull and dreary early morning. Like being part of a crowd scene role in an Indiana Jones movie. You see, CW doesn't often make it to those early stops. Some days you'll see her in the distance, glasses tilted, hair to the winds. Legging it down the street like Flo Jo. The bus straining at the seams trying to keep pace with her as the approach the bus stop. It's a photo finish, but she makes it. Just. Some days there's no CW. Then the fun begins. Money changing hands over which of the remaining 3 bus stops CW will make it to. We start keeping an eye out for that silver Saab, cornering on 2 wheels. Driven by CW's husband, who is being whipped along from the passenger's seat like a chariot horse in Ben Hur. Some days it's Stop 4, some days the car has collapsed from exhaustion beside Stop 5. Once we pass Stop 5, the game is on. That silver Saab takes on a life of it's on. Like Seabiscuit round the final bend, it slowly draws alongside of the bus. Creeping agonisingly slowly past, it's a race like no other. The first to make it to Stop 6 basks in the glory of victory. There is no second prize. Some days there's no CW. On those days we all pause for a while, and take a moment to give thanks. To give thanks that we are not a witness to the atmosphere inside that silver Saab right now. Somewhere out there there's probably a blog about a perverted, bus riding, peeping tom, Kiwi.

Driving Permit debriefing

2009-10-02T11:35:00.000+02:00

If you are one of those lucky bastards who have come to Sweden from an European Union country, then you need only to apply to have your driving permit transferred to a Swedish permit. If you're like the rest of us, you have to do the lot. You can drive on your home country permit for your first year in Sweden, so that buys you a little time. My advice is to start as soon as possible with your training. A year can fly by, and the stuff does take a while to learn. Three ways of going about this. First up, enroll with a driving school. Some merits with this, as you get everything organised from the ground up. And there's help on tap for the tricky rules that exist for Swedish roads. Of course it costs the most. Allow between 9,000 and 10,000kr for a full school experience. Alternatively, do the whole thing yourself. A bit more of a gamble, but obviously the cheapest option. I understand you can get away with about 4,000kr. The third option, which I went through, was a mix of private learning, and traffic school. This has set me back about 7,5000kr all up. Here's how it panned out for me. There are 4 parts to gaining a Swedish driving permit; 2 risk training courses (riskutbildning), a theory (kunskapsprov) test, and then the pratical (körprov) driving test. The riskutbildning courses must be completed before you can sit your theory and practical tests. You can book the tests in advance of the riskutbildning dates, which I did. There was a 3 week delay between when I booked, and the actual date of my test. It might be longer in other towns. The first riskutbildning is pure theory, and must be booked through a driving school. 3 hours of sitting in a classroom listening to an instructor, and watching videos. The topics are alcohol, drugs, medicines, stress and fatigue. Which was pretty much how I prepared myself for the course. But the point of the exercise is to understand how those factors influence driving, and the consequences thereof. Pretty common sense stuff if you're not one of the 18 year olds in the course, but I must confess that I did take some points of interest away from the day. The cost for the experience ? 650 kr. The requirement to pass this course is, basically, to turn up. There is no formal test or exam. The other riskutbildning course is skid training. That's a bucketload of fun. It's 90% practical, so wear your best fighting trousers. You don't have to book through a driving school, but I could see it would be a bit of a hassle to do it privately. My advice is to use a school. We had to travel about an hour and a half to the skid track, and then spent about 3 hours there. So it's pretty much a whole day booked out. I paid 1300kr directly to the track operators on arrival, and then another 800kr to the traffic school for the transport to and from, and also for the driving school instructor's time in helping us around the course. That helped a lot, firstly because he spoke English, and secondly because he knew us. Worth the extra money in reduced stress, in my opinion. The skid training itself involved about 25 minutes practicing straight line braking and cornering on both a dry and slippery course with a front wheel drive car. And then 25 minutes cornering on a slippery course with a rear wheeled drive car. The instructor sat up in a control tower and gave instructions over a radio. It was pretty straight forward. You can't really fail the course, but you do have to stay in the car until you get the exercise sort of right. I say "sort of", because parts of the track are designed so that you will slide out under speed. The object of the exercise is really to show how it will all go wrong if you drive too fast for the conditions. So nothing really to panic over. The final part of the skid training course was to sit in a suspended car inside a garage, and then have them flip the car upside down. The object is to learn how to get out of a car when it's upside down. No worries if you are an 18 year old, 40kg anorexic Swede who can fold themself in half, but a bit more complicated when you're a 45 year old 90+kg Kiwi attempting to navigate from the back seat to the front seat in an upturned Volvo. Personally, I think the instructor just decided to have a bit of fun. Overall, it was a good learning experience. First thing on the list for the theory section was to buy the books. No shortcuts, you need the books. There were 3 official books, sold as a package. They sell them in various languages. Even English. The book package cost 600kr. Now, here's where Swedes come into their own. No Swede is really comfortable in telling someone else what to do. So the rules are, well, they're more of a guide. Take, for example, the speed for driving past a bus. In New Zealand, it's 30kph. Nice and simple, no arguments. In Sweden it's "sufficient speed to be able to stop if necessary". What the fek is that all about ? Basically about half of the road rules are like that. Which makes learning them extremely time consuming. You have to know pretty much every line on every page. And you have to understand it completely. Questions can come from the strangest places, where it looks like no one would EVER ask a dumb question like that. Being as the rules can be somewhat open to interpretation ( god bless them ), this is where a relationship with a traffic school (trafikskola) comes in handy. I paid about 200kr as a "joining fee". I then paid another 600kr to have access to their online computer training. You can buy traffic school programmes in shops, but the one I purchased from the traffic school was almost identical to the one used in the final test. So money very well spent. I used that a lot, and it paid off. If you can answer every question on the traffic school data programme, you be able to answer every exam question. I found this to be vital, as not all the information you need is found in the books. Don't ask me why, I didn't write them. The theory exam itself takes place using a computer at a Vägverket office. There is a time limit of 50 minutes, to get at least 50 of the 70 multichoice questions correct. The cost of the exercise was 400kr. The practical side, I was pretty comfortable with. After 20 years of driving. However, I was aware that I now had 20 years of bad driving habits also. And there's a few things that Swedes are rather picky on. Like environmentally friendly driving, for example. So here I used the traffic school again. I booked 2 one hour driving sessions with them, so they could show me what the examiners are going to be looking for. One trip was around town, the other was on open roads. Well worth the 1600kr total cost, as many of the points raised came up during the practical test, and I was also familiar with the test driving route. There's a requirement for a compulsary eyesight test and health declaration prior to sitting your tests. The driving schools will also not permit you to drive with them until you have those also. So get them out of the way first. Cost me 200kr at the local optician. Ok, the practical test itself. The final hurdle. I went a few minutes early, so I could cruise the car park and check out the examination cars. I had chosen to hire one of their cars for the exam, which cost 400kr. Traffic schools hire their cars for the same cost. You can't use your car from home. The actual test cost 700kr and lasted all of about 15 minutes. A few minutes in a residential area to show that you know the right hand rule. A few minutes on an open road, to show you know how to get on and off of one. And a few minutes negotiating traffic in the middle of town. I found the time spent driving with the traffic school to be invaluable here. So there it is. Stressful as hell, and expensive to boot. But also unavoidable. The system does try and help you along the way. Somewhat. Their intention is for you to be a good driver, not to try and make you fail. Accept that it's hard work, and you'll be just fine.

Basic House Dictionary

2009-09-09T09:12:00.000+02:00

After travelling down the slippery slope of property ownership, yet again, I've decided to start jotting down a few things I've learnt about Swedish property along the way. I must admit that, sitting back in New Zealand, it all looked pretty simple on the property websites. But some of the subtle differences have caught me offguard. There are 3 major types of accomodation you can purchase as a home. The first is a villa, or enfamiljshus. This is your run of the mill, standard house. You buy the house, and the plot of land it sits on. You pay rates to the kommun for roads, rubbish collection, water use, and sometimes for heating use. The second type is a rådhus, or "row house". It's essentially the same as a villa, but your neighbours' houses join to the two sides of your house. They are also generally smaller than a villa. Again, you generally get a bit of grass. And a fence if you are lucky. The 3rd type is known as bostadsrätt. This usually applies to apartments (lägenhet), but can also include a villa or rådhus. Bostadsrätt ("right to live") properties are generally much cheaper to purchase, because you're only buying the right to live there, and not the roof, windows, front door, or gardens. You pay a fixed monthly fee to a Body Corporate who maintain the building itself and the land. These fees can vary greatly so you need to add the monthly fee to the purchase price of the apartment, to get a true price comparison. Check on what is included, or excluded, in the monthly fee. A very cheap fee might exlude heating costs. Sometimes it might be cheaper long term to buy a house. If that's your thing. Sitting outside of this group of properties is the fritidshus. This is a holiday house, or stuga, and there are bucketloads of them scattered around the Swedish countryside. As a rule, you can only live in these properties on a temporary basis. For weekends or holidays. Not full time. I say, as a rule, because, depending on the circumstances, the local kommun may grant permission for a holiday house to be used as a home. If there is infrastructure in place, and it falls in line with the council's zoning plans etc. But it's not a right to do so. This is where Sweden differs from many othe countries. In NZ, a house is a house is a house. I would be perfectly entitled to move myself, my wife, children, my mother in law, and her 3 goats, into my beach front holiday home. And live there forever. Without exception. Not so in Sweden. Many fritidshus are classified as seasonal occupation only. So check that one out thoroughly before investing.

The things we do for Love

2009-09-03T10:15:00.000+02:00

It seems like a lifetime ago now. But it was in fact just 3 years ago this November since we were married on that lovely beach in Vanuatu. In many ways I guess that was a lifetime ago. For the both of us. Both of us casting out the misery of our previous lives. The day itself was everything we had hoped for. No family around us, but that was the way of things, with everyone scattered to the corners of the globe. Our guests were people we had met a few days earlier on holiday, our witness was the local village chief. But we were there, and frankly, no one else mattered. For our first anniversary we flew to Sydney, Australia, and had a wonderful week there just exploring the sights together. The next year, being last year, was a little more difficult, having just arrived to Sweden. The date coincided with a family gathering out of town, so we called that our celebration also. This year we have decided to take ourselves off for 5 days to Milan. Because we can. Nothing to do with the potential to restock the shoe closet, I'm sure. Anyway, my dearly beloved, lord bless her, has decided to gift me ( us ) with 2 tickets to view a football match at the magnificant San Siro stadium in Milan. She really is too sweet. The tickets cost her 600 kronor, which I felt rather guilty about. 600kr works out to around 50 British pounds, 85 US dollars, 60 Euros, or 125 NZ dollars. Not a bad pressie, if I may say so myself. Now being trapped like a rat, as I was, I found myself saying "and what would you like to go and see while we are in Milan ?". Yes, know what you're all going to tell me, that was my first mistake. As it happened, the love of my life rather fancied the idea of attending a concert at La Scala theatre. I must confess that I did think it was rather cool at the time also. So, just to reinforce that I truely was the man of her dreams, and nothing was too good for my sweetness, I vowed to move heaven and earth to get us two kick arse tickets to the ballet at La Scala. On reflection, I should have known better than to challenge heaven and earth. I put this down to hormones. There's a saying that one can buy anything, for a price. I think that saying was coined in Milan. We have two tickets to the ballet at La Scala. Oh yes we do. In fact, I thnk that I may have just bought the place. Two tickets for a 2 hour performance of something I suspect I will not understand, are mine for the princely sum of 300 Euros. In real money terms, that is 3100 SEK, 430 US dollars, 260 British pounds, and 630 Kiwi bucks. I didn't pay that much for my first car !! By my reckoning, I now own those two gold plated, jewel encrusted, limited edition, theatre seats. So the first things going into the suitcase is a long handled screw driver and a pair of pliers. Those chairs are coming home with me.

Simple Minds

2009-09-02T11:20:00.001+02:00

It's funny how, when facing challenges at every corner, the smallest of victories can take on monumental proportions. Things that we took for granted as part of our every day former lives are now viewed as glittering gold stars to be fought for and won. While sitting with my rag tag band of fugitives in Swedish language school on Monday evening, it was noted that one of our merry band had, in recent days, passed his driving test. Given that we're all in our 30s and 40s, this should not have been worthy of more than a passing comment and an obligatory compliment. And then we should have all moved on. After all, we had all been driving for 20 years. So no big deal. But then the rules of our former lives no longer apply here. What this event signified to us was that one of us, one of our own, had triumphed. One of us had dared to cross that line between old and new, and he had won ! It wasn't just a victory for him, it was a victory for us all. He knew it, we knew it. At that moment, as we gazed in wonderment at his freshly procured körkort, we were one. A true band of brothers. It was a soul defining moment. Those of us left behind in his wake of triumph and euphoria dreamed together of how it would be. Of the day when we too would take that step closer to being who we once were. Amir had driven a few times with the driving school instructor, so he was rolling. I had sat through the compulsary lecture on drugs and alcohol. Although I'm thinking of asking for a refund there, as I'm none the wiser as to where one goes to buy the really good shit. But we're there, we're on our way. And we have the strength of Chong now, to inspire us and give us the strength for the treacherous road ahead.

Travel Etiquette

2009-09-01T11:16:00.000+02:00

When taking public transport, watch out for the seat hoggers. There are two varieties of these. They are a curse on society, and both are to be tormented at any and every opportunity. The first group will take the seat nearest to the aisle, placing any bag that they may have, or jacket, on the window seat. Ensuring that no one can sit next to them. They are further distinguishable by the fact that they immediately fasten their seatbelt and tighten it with such vigour that they are expecting the bus to enter light speed at any moment. They are intensely serious people, staring straight ahead, and will avoid any and all eye conctact. They know they are wrong, but you'll have to pry that empty seat from their cold dead hand. The second variety are less of a challenged, but still require an education in manners. This group also place their belongings on the spare seat, but with themselves in the window seat. They really don't want anyone sitting next to them, but they feel guilty about it as well. Generally you find them staring out the window when you arrive alongside ( or pretending to be asleep ), hoping, praying, that you'll move pass them. Don't. Not under any circumstances. Stand up to these seat bullies. One crisp, sharp "URSÄKTA" is usually enough to put the fear of their parents into them. In a sufficiently loud voice so that they know the rest of the bus is now watching them. Daring them. Even if there are other empty seats on the bus, target these leaches of society. And when you do force them into submission, be sure to take up more than your share of the seat. Just because. They obviously have learnt nothing of manners, so it's time to fight fire with fire. And you'll earn the undying adoration of your fellow passengers.

Bussing for Beginners

2009-09-01T10:35:00.000+02:00

Public transport in Sweden is very good. And, as a rule, cheaper than taking your car. Unless you've managed to wrangle free parking in town. Buses are large, relatively modern, comfortable, and so reliable that you can set your watch by them. They are nice and warm in the winter, and there's usually a good supply of morning newspapers on board to fill in the time. The drivers are generally pretty helpful. If you tell them where you want to go, they'll help you sort out the correct price. Payment is usually cash, although some routes will accept bank cards. The best way, if you intend to move around a lot, is to buy a pre paid bus card. Swipe it across the scanner then you enter, and that's it. You can buy a card from the bus driver, but that take time and tends to annoy the other passengers. Well, one particular passenger anyway. The preferred method, if you're travelling on my bus, is to purchase your card from the ticket (biljetter) office at the bus station, and not at the bus stop (bushållplats). Generally you buy a certain number of bus rides ( resor) for a specified route ( t.ex från Boden till Luleå ). I don't know how it is elsewhere, but the most I can buy at one time is 40 trips. So that's 20 round trips. What you can do is to buy another 40 before your first 40 have been used. Which is handy to know if you get wind that bus fares are about to rise next week. The scarey part about double decker booking is that your card only shows the number of rides that you have left in your current block. So if you are using your card and you have say 3 rides left, but you've just bought 40 more, your card will only show "3", and not "43". As you ride more often it will show "3", "2", "1", "0", and then "39". You have to learn to trust the system when it shows "0". And save your receipt (kvitto). Buses carry a supply of bus timetables (tidtabeller) on board. If you're not familiar with the 24 hour clock, learn it. Or ride only in the mornings. All buses have safety belts, and there are signs politely reminding you to use them for your safety. But you don't need to. You'll also see a sign saying "försätta bakåt", which basically means to continue towards the back of the bus. All common sense stuff.

Reasons to be Cheerful

2009-09-01T09:40:00.001+02:00

Ok, so this is probably about the third time this has happened in the past 2 weeks. Someone is going to get a smack shortly. Every day I take the 7am bus from my hometown to the city where I work. There are 3 buses that arrive at my bus stop at exactly the same time, every day. They all have big "can't miss" signs on the front saying where they are going to. The first to arrive says "university", the second says "hospital", and the third says " direct to city". So I'm waiting at the bus stop, with a group of people. And you know how it is, you can just tell when someone is likely to be a problem. They have this air of eagerness and excitement about them, which translates into not having a clue in the world. About anything. The 3 buses roll into view, in their usual order. The problem with my bus stop is that there's only space for 2 buses at one time. So if there is a third bus, it has to wait back. Not usually a problem because nearly everyone uses a prepaid bus card, so it doesn't take long to load and move off. Not today. I spotted these three hopefuls, gleefully lining up for the first bus. Which had a huge yellow "university" sign scrawled right across the front. They were the first 3 of about 10 people lined up for that bus. After about 2 minues, with everyone else still waiting outside, the 3 pile off the bus again. Clearly they only discovered that the bus was going to the university when they went to pay the driver. And clearly that wasn't where they wanted to go to. They wander down to the second bus, labelled "hospital". Stare at it for some time, then step away from the queue of people trying to get on. The University bus has now finally left, but the "city direct" bus is now stuck behind the university bus, and isn't going anwhere. So the rest of us just generally mill around, waiting. Finally our bus gets a spot at the kerb. The 3 wandering gypsies seize the day and spring to the kerb, ensuring they are the first to get onto the bus. I'm about 6th back in the queue. You can picture my delight when I hear the first person say to the driver, "we would all like to got to the hospital, please". "the hospital ?", "yes please", "the same hospital that the bus with HOSPITAL written all over it goes to ?", "yup, that's the one", "like the bus that's just left ?", "yes, to the hospital", "then, you'll need to take the hospital bus", "not this one ?", "no, not this one". Ah yes, there's nothing that sets the mood for the day better than enjoying a 15 minute performance of the Court Jester and the Village Idiots. Again.