I've been back at work now after my paternity leave for about three weeks now,and I'm really feeling the grind. The feeling is compounded by being the new guy, the non-native Swedish speaker and still being a a bit rusty.

It hasn't helped being given some real turds of projects. The first proper one I got wasn't possible unless we changed major parts of the application (ironically, it was a tool to make using that part of the system more usable). The second a small piece of work also uncovered a reasonably large flaw in their site navigation (oops!).

All of this has left me feeling a bit exposed. It's also been compounded by a feeling that my ability to speak Swedish is deteriorating. Out of frustration at my own vocabulary and a need to get my actual work done, at the moment I have to communicate mostly in English. This feels like a bit of a failure, and I can't help feeling that when our technical lead explains things I get the slight feeling of being talked down to. Perhaps it's just paranoia, or him wanted me to feel at ease, either way it's slightly unsettling.

There are lots of positive aspects of my job, for example: everyone is very pleasant, the working conditions are relaxed: one of my colleagues brings her dog in everyday. Unfortunately her dog spends a large part of the day licking his large and very prominent ball bag directly in my line of sight. Yes, you might think, but do you have to look at him doing it? Well, the meaty slapping of a canine tongue (think soggy towel swung at wall) against scrotal sack is quite hard to tune out some days. I'll try and get a picture, but I can't get over how pink they are and how they are totally at odds with his dark brown coat. I also feel I'm learning lots and reactivating the part of my brain that used to be good at writing code.

From a linguistic perspective I quickly realized that up to now I had learnt many words for different social situations and day to day interactions, to the extent where I feel happy making small talk, but asking questions about work uncovered large gaping holes in my knowledge. I've therefore taken to keeping a browser open at work with two tabs open. One is a online Swedish to English dictionary, the other is the site which my flashcards are on. So when I hear a new word, I can quickly look it up, and add it to my new work vocabulary list which I study each morning on the way to work. I've also been involved a lot of exchanges like this:

Me: "What's the swedish for modify?"
Colleague: "modifierar"
Me: "*sigh"

Still slowly but surely I'm getting

Lots, to report, not much time, So this may be short and badly written and even more badly constructed.

The big news is that our daughter was born at 0223 on Friday morning. After being woken at four am Thursday and told that my partner was definitely going into labour, we were disappointed and bemused when the contractions stopped around ten later that morning. It transpired that perhaps it was an 'eye of the hurricane' type situation as after a visit to our midwife in Lund (Malmö was totally swamped with a baby boom earlier this year) later that day, the contractions started up again. At just after six in the evening we drove to Malmö hospital. About seven hours later, although the time passed very quickly for me, a perception not shared by my girlfriend, our daughter Ida was born.

Without sounding clichéd, it was a wonderful, and at times quite surreal experience. Apart from the wonder of seeing your child emerge into the world, after spending nine months speculating what she'll look like and daydreaming who she'll be and how her personality will develop. There were lots of little typically Swedish cultural touches which made me chuckle. An example was the celebratory birth fika at four in the morning, I'll attach pictures when I get the camera back) complete with mini Swedish flag, glasses of apple juice (in place of champagne). Medical staff constantly congratulating when they meet you or speak to you for the first time as new parents is also amusing and a nice touch. The patient hotel concept, where the new family can bond whilst spending a few nights under medical supervision, is also a typically well thought through service.

It also means that I'm on a two week paternity leave break from my new job. Sweden has great parent leave entitlement for fathers. If you've worked at a company longer than six months you're entitled to take up to six months paid paternity leave. Sadly, this won't be available for me, and even if it was, I'd be wary of taking it, especially as I've just back into employment.

A friend of mine put this year into perspective for me on a short facebook comment, and made me realize how much of an adventure this year has been:

1. Moved countries
2. Learnt a new language (Ok, it's not quite mastered yet, but it's a work in progress)
3. Got a new job working in a company where English is not the office language
4. Brought a car, acquired driving as a new life skill
5. Started a family.

Shit, how am I going to top that next year?

Back at the code face

I've been very busy the last two weeks, it's been a flurry of interviews for different companies and then I began a two week trial period at a small software house. I mentioned in a previous post that I'd had the epiphany of working at a lower level and going back to being a code monkey.

The company makes software solutions for large retail chains and franchises. It's not a sector I know much about, but then again I didn't know much about public healthcare provision, but ended building software for a government agency for over seven years. I also think it's interesting to see what challenges other sectors face.

The company language is Swedish, the interview questions were in Swedish, with me answering in English. So far, I've spoken a mix of both. I mainly speak English when I have to talk about technical stuff, as I'm still building up my vocabulary for software development. I'm actively writing down words I don't know and have to look up, so I feel it'll be extremely useful having Swedish in my ears every working day, and should really help my language skills. I'm really looking forward to the time when I can easily express myself at a reasonable level at work.

Yesterday I was offered a full time job after successfully passing the two week trial. It's a huge relief, and the opportunity arrived just at the right time. Now my partner and I can focus on the impending birth of our daughter, who could arrive any minute now.

Cause for careful optimism

I've had a good week: I've attended three interviews, one with a company, two with recruitment consultants and have another lined up this week with an IT consultancy. Switching back to software development seems to have been the correct decision.

The momentum started when my Job coach passed my CV on to two of her colleagues, who recruit for permanent and contract IT staff respectively. I met them last Friday and seemed to make a good impression. I carried out the interview in a mix of Swedish and English. I began in Swedish and switched to answering in English when my vocabulary began to handicap me. My interviewers carried on asking questions in Swedish, and I had no problem understanding what they were asking me. At the end of a very general 'getting to know you' type interview where they asked about my career history, my education and my personality, I was invited to interview for a small software house in Lund.

The job itself wasn't exactly perfect, it was working with a a less interesting part of the software development toolset and language I'm familiar with. The interview itself went reasonably, I started answering in Swedish, but after a while the interviewers wanted me to answer in English so I was more comfortable and they continued to ask questions and comment in Swedish. I understood everything they asked, which will give me a lot of confidence for future interviews.

Sadly, on Friday I found out that I didn't get the job (apparently the choice was between me and someone else, and the other candidate had directly relevant experience). Although it was disappointing, it seemed a nice friendly place to work, I thought it was a bit of a long shot, given I didn't have direct experience of windows forms as I've mainly worked on the web side of things.

I also interviewed with another recruitment consultant for a more interesting position on Friday, again the interview was mostly conducted in Swedish with me falling back to English when my vocabulary failed me. By now I'd begun to notice a trend in the interviews, and the following reoccurring questions were asked:

What are your main strengths?
What are your weaknesses?
Why did you do geography and university and not computer science?
How would your former colleagues describe you?

Of course, the interview cliché question came up every time: "so, where do you see yourself in (insert number) years?" Resisting the temptation to beat my head on the table at the inanity of the question when asked is very difficult. We both know I'm not going to answer honestly, so why bother?

I was a bit wary when the recruitment consultant started asking about salary expectations, and seemed surprised when I knew the market rate for a software developer in the area. She also began to visibly squirm when she admitted the job was under the market rate. Incidentally, this handy website will tell you.

Personally, I find it very strange to go to an interview without knowing how much the job pays, but I guess you have to accept the cultural differences in the labour market. We then proceeded to play a game where we both pretended that the salary wouldn't matter and that even if I got the job I'd stay there when a better paid position was offered elsewhere. It was an interesting experience, but I feel quite wary about the position (comes complete with two week audition like period), and indeed the recruitment consultant, who seemed to want a lot from me just to put me forward.

I have noticed when dealing with recruitment companies proving you can speak Swedish is imperative. If you can cobble together a covering letter or email, I think it will really make a difference. Although the Swedes pride themselves on their ability to speak English, they seem very reticent to employ someone who can't at least understand Swedish.

I also got a letter confirming that I'll be started SAS (Svenska som andra språk) next week, which at least will fill in the time until I find work.

Happy Anniversary

Here it is, one year of living in Sweden. Put on your ridiculously small party hats and fire those party poppers.

It's crept up after being a long way off. As the tone of a few recent posts have been a bit negative and whiny and dare I say, self pitying. So in order to mark the passing of the year, I thought I'd list the positives of my year here so far:

1. Our Daughter will be born at the end of October.

2. My Swedish has improved drastically. Sure it needs a hell of a lot of work, but I think I'm through the hard bit of learning the language. My written Swedish needs plenty of work, but that just takes time, and access to full time education. The proof of my progress, for me was that I sat through four hours of parent's education and another two of father's education at Lund hospital this week. I'm not going to claim I understood everything, but I think I got about 75 to 85% of what was being discussed. I can now also happily eavesdrop on people's telephone conversations on the bus now too. I'm sure I'll get sick of this quickly as it is a bane of modern life normally, but it's a nice indication of your language skills.

3. Necessity has made me realize that actually I really disliked being a project manager, and I am now actively seeking a return to the code face as a software developer again. Being responsible for other people in the work place is like herding cats, and therefore best avoided.

4. The day to day challenges have forced me to do things I would typically avoid or procrastinate over.

Empty Apartments

There's nothing like a short break back in England to remind you of why you're struggling on over here in Sweden. On Tuesday I flew back to London to get my apartment ready for the Estate Agency who are handling the sale. They need to photograph my apartment and make it look desirable and inviting before advertising my property on their website.

My friend who has been renting my apartment assured me earlier in the week he'd moved out and had given the place a moving day clean. Great, I thought, this should be easy, I just have to clear some of the junk that I had left for him (mainly kitchen things and the odd bit of furniture).

Once I'd met my friend, we dropped a spare set of keys with the Estate Agency, and walked the short distance to my apartment. I was horrified when we got into my flat. Not only was 90% of my friends possessions still there (including large leather sofa), but the guy who had rented the spare room had also left a large double bed. I fired questions at my friend: didn't you tell me you'd moved out, I thought you cleaned the place? No, no he answered (somewhat disingenuously) I didn't say that at all. Now I've know this friend a long time, and foolishly perhaps, I thought having a contract for the rent would be overkill, as he was so trustworthy. But to have someone attempt to contradict himself so obviously was insulting to my intelligence. To cut a long story short, apparently the reason for not having moved his stuff out was, unbelievably:

1. the place he's moved to is only five minutes walk up the road and he was too cheap to hire a taxi to help him move, and was carrying the small amounts by hand to his new apartment. In fact, when I mentioned that perhaps this might be a better strategy, he admitted it hadn't occurred to him.

2. He decided rather than shift his stuff and clean and make sure the place was in a suitable state, he'd go mountain biking in Wales instead.

Rather than explode and rant and rave, I decided clear honest communication was the way forward. I told my friend I felt very let down and he'd been quite dishonest. I tried not to sound too patronizing as I patiently explained (as one might do with a small child) that it is normal that when you move out of an apartment you spend several days thoroughly cleaning the place. It's easy to do as by that stage you've already moved your possessions out.

I've decided to accept that it was a lesson in life, and that trusting people (even if they are friends who've you known for years) to rent your apartment without a contract is a bad idea. Having a contract although it seems very formal just means that everyone knows where they stand. I guess you learn these things by making those mistakes. I don't hold it against my friend, he's still a reasonable guy, it's just he has a tendency to make the most out of a favour.

There were some positives of the trip: I realized why I'm so glad to get out of London. My flat is in a crappy depressing area (bizarrely in a convenient location though),and in contrast my flat here over looks the sea and Öresund bridge. The air is clean and I'm not assailed by putrid aromas wafting up from the neighbours kitchen's (I swear one neighbour was cooking a combination of dog boiled in stale cabbage water).

This Friday is the anniversary of my arrival in Sweden. It's been a year of positives and negatives, as you would expect from anyone living as an immigrant in a new country and trying to learn a new language. Five years ago, working and living in London, I felt like I was in stasis, trapped in routines of convenience I'd created over the years: my job, my apartment, my friends, my interests, patterns of behaviour, nothing seem to change. Over here, everything is a struggle, but so far it hasn't been routine.

Ok, so I don't have a job yet, but I do feel like this place is home now.

During our summer break up in Hälsingland (where my sambo is from) we brought a car. It's nothing fancy, nothing flash, but with our daughter arriving at the end of October, we thought it was no longer a luxury, but something we wouldn't be able to do without. So after looking in every car dealership in Bollnäs we finally found something nice on blockett (a ebay type site). The following day we brought what we now call the gherkin (it's metalic green), and at the end of the holiday, we drove down to Malmö over two days.

It was exciting as I am not an experienced driver, although I passed my test almost two years ago I've haven't had much opportunity to drive. I have only had access to a car when we've been staying up at my sambo's parent's. Having lived in London for many years, there really was no need to have a car. Sure, there were plenty of occasions where it would have been very useful, but it's very expensive to run / insure and park a vehicle in London.

Now we are mobile, we're able to leave our apartment easily, we've been getting out and about and seeing a little of Skåne. A couple of weekends ago we decided we'd get out into nature, and took a trip with friends to Torup, a forest just to the east of Malmö. We decided to repeat the trip last weekend (I've been slacking finishing this post), and in warm autumnal sunshine we walked under the canopies of tall larch and oak trees. We followed the three kilometre circuit (seven and a half month pregnant ladies can't march that far), and only saw the occasional joggers or walkers, despite it being Skogan dag in the the forest.

We had hoped that we'd be able to fill several old ice cream boxes with wild blackberries as we'd seen plenty of bushes that needed a week or two to ripen. Apparently lots of other people had the same idea, and we only really found a couple of bushes. We ended up with about half a box of berries, not enough to make jam, still it was a very pleasant day out and a great way to shake off a touch of cabin fever.

Let's start with a confession: this week, I'm feeling pretty negative and deeply frustrated with my ongoing job hunt here in Sweden. It all feels very difficult, and at the moment I'm struggling to see how I can catch a break. I also have a fear that I'm going to end up working in a mcJob waiting tables, washing up, or that sort of thing. Quite a dent to the ego really.

My last visit with the Jobcoach was a big struggle for me, I felt I was biting my tongue for most of the session. Pretty much all of the advice that I was given seemed pretty facile and betrayed how little I feel my coach actually knows about the industry I work in. At least she picked up how irritated and frustrated I felt in the session. Then again I have always been terrible at hiding my body language and emotions.

Yes, I said, I know being frustrated and negative isn't helpful, but it is a fairly common part of the unemployment experience. It's easy to give advice like that from the comfort of a full time position. Had she ever been through being out of work?

Her next great plan for me to find work is to fire my CV at 'international' companies in Malmö / Lund and in Copenhagen. I struggled not to groan at the suggestion (see I had already adopted a positive attitude!) straight out of a 'how to find a job in ten easy steps' book.

Yes, it could work, but frankly it's highly unlikely as the labour market just doesn't, sadly, work that way any more. Surely working for a recruitment agency, those despicable middlemen and labour market pimps, she'd know that? But how do I know this, well I used to hire staff and have worked in quite a few companies over the years. Companies by and large hire based on having a vacancy. At that point they'll advertise (normally on job websites) and / or use a recruitment company to produce a short-list of suitable candidates. That short list (including internal candidates) is then passed on the person who has a vacancy in their team. The other problem is that most large 'international' companies also allow you to log your CV on an HR database. At what point a search for matches against suitable positions is done (if at all) is anyone's guess. The days of being able to make sure your CV lands on the desk of Mr. John Smith (or perhaps in this case Jan Johansson) are long gone.

So it seems like an exercise in utter futility to me. But wait, you may counter, surely there's nothing to be lost? Well, yes, if you're an optimist, but then again I'm a pessimist and regrettably a cynic too. At least a rejection from an actual job is some indication that you were at least considered.

In other news I've applied for a SAS (Svenska som andra språk) course. It starts in October, and I pray I get a place on it. At least being a student gives you the feeling your achieving something and some structure to your existence.

Swedish CVs

This clearly isn't the sexiest of topics, but perhaps it'll help some other poor soul struggling in the Swedish labour market as a poor downtrodden invandare.

I thought I'd list some of the advice given to me by my job coach so far:

1. Your CV must be short, and no more than three sides of A4. Apparently the details of what you've done, where, and what useful experience you've had is all teased out at interview.
2. It should start with your name and contact information aligned on the left hand side.
3. It is common for Swedish CVs to include a picture of the person. This is usually opposite the personal information
4. You should have a personal / professional summary paragraph which should be between 4-8 sentences long. It should summarize your approach to work and your most noteworthy personal attributes.
5. List any professional qualifications
6. List technical skills and rate your experience or ability
7. Next list your employment history from your most recent position. For each job:

• state the length of time you were employed there (as month year e.g. October 2004 - March 2008),
  
• your job title
• the city or location of the job
• a summary of your job's key responsibilities

8. Add details of your education:

• Institution
• Course name
• length of course
• Grade

9. List languages spoken and grade your ability

If you've been working a few years, you'll find you feel that you've maimed your CV and it seems devoid of any substantial information. I've been told not to include details of any projects I work on (standard practice for both technical and project management CVs back in the UK), which makes me wonder how anyone could judge suitability for a position based solely on the rough description of what you did in each role?

The trials and tribulations of finding a job in Sweden

Back in England I worked in IT, I was a software developer, but ended being promoted up the management food chain in the highly dysfunctional organisation I used to work for. Whilst my sambo and I were discussing moving over to Sweden, we both assumed, perhaps pretty naively, that it wouldn't be that hard for me to find work. After all, most Swedes, we reasoned speak excellent English and I worked in a career where English is the lingua franca. In fact, we chose Malmö as a migration beachhead, as the area supposedly has a thriving IT industry, and Copenhagen was just over the bridge. So that being the case we thought even with little or no Swedish I could continue to work in my career over here.How wrong we both were.

I suppose I should also admit that I have had quite a bit of experience interviewing and recruiting staff over the last 13 or so years of my career, so I had some preconceptions of how to approach job hunting over here. But again, it turns out I was wrong. Here for the benefit of anyone that's interested is what I've found out so far.

The first and obvious challenge you face when searching for a job in Sweden is that at least 90% of the jobs are, of course, advertised in Swedish. So to even understand the advert you need a reasonable grasp of the language. A selection of sites I trawl for jobs are:

monster
Arbetsförmedlingan
JobIndex (Danish)
JobSafari


Oh, and then if it's a Danish site, you have the complication of little Danish language differences, or just copy and paste into googletranslate.

Ok, so you found a job you think sounds interesting, the next step is responding. Now whilst the usual covering letter and CV are used, there are some subtleties. According to all the advice I've had so far (partner, partner's brother, Job coach at Arbetsförmedlingan) your covering letter must be less formal than in the UK / US and your CV must only be three pages. So once you've taken a chainsaw to your CV (if you've been working at least a decade you'll have plenty of information you want to explain about previous jobs), you're left with something that seems...well quite basic. Almost so you wonder how anyone would get excited by the lack of information and how they'd draw any meaningful information about your suitability for interview.

So once you've fired off your nice concise letter and CV you wait...and wait...and wait. One of the cultural differences that has really annoyed me is the lack of feedback. It's often not uncommon for you to receive absolutely no feedback. So perhaps the company / organization you applied for didn't feel you were suitable for the job, how about a quick email thanking you for your interest in the role? Nope not in Sweden it seems.

Recently, I bit the bullet and went in and spoke to someone at the Arbetsförmedlingen. I'd read (mainly the embittered postings on the thelocal.se forums) about how useful they normally are, but I decided to see what they could do for me. Once I'd been sent to the correct office (again each sector seems to have it's own office), I was told before anyone would speak to me I'd have to register on their website. So I went home and did just that....twice, as it seems there's two systems, one which signs you in, mainly it seems for those claiming A kassa (unemployment benefit), and another which is a bit more like your traditional job posting / cv posting site. Once that was completed I went in to the office and met with a staff member. Perhaps I had the wrong idea, but I thought they would actually be a bit more focused in terms of directing me to jobs or opportunities, but the meeting itself just really seemed about telling me the jobcoach programme.

As little else seemed on offer, and the way it was described to me was that they'd help me with my CV (perhaps it needed Swedifying?, and likewise my covering letter). I was also told they may even help me find jobs using their industry contacts. So once I'd agreed, I went home, battled through the labyrinthine Arbetsförmedlingen website and found the list of jobcoaches in Malmö, I picked one. A couple of weeks later we arranged to meet after my summer vacation (you see even the unemployed need to get away now and again).

My experience of the jobcoach hasn't been hugely impressive so far. I've had two meetings with my coach, the first consisted of agreeing what we'd work on (CV, covering letter, interview stuff, how to look for jobs). One thing I haven't been overly impressed with is that I chose the coach based on their knowledge of the IT sector. Sadly my coach seems to know next to nothing about the IT sector. I can only guess that the agency itself (the job coaching is all outsourced) deals with IT, but not her. Although my coach is very pleasant, it does feel like simply polishing a CV is pissing in the ocean somewhat.

A rambling post, but really the point I wanted to make is, if you're reading this and thinking of moving here, my advice is make sure you have some savings behind you. Don't expect to find work as an english speaker quickly, unless you have a highly sought after skill or you can transfer to a large multinational. In the smaller cities you'll need Swedish language skills, which means passing SFI D at the very least. The reason I mention this is that's the first question the Arbetsförmedlingen will ask you when you meet with them.

Sweden loves documentation too, make sure you have details of your education / professional certification, again they'll ask for it.

Swedish Summer Tans

As the summer continues, I've begun to notice that everyone is bronzed. Men, woman, children, the elderly, everyone has taken on a rich mahogany colour. The weather in July so far has been pretty glorious, the sun has shone and Sweden has basked in 25 - 30c temperatures. I've never seen anything like it, it seems everyone in this nation is a sun lover.

I must admit I'm not someone who actively goes out to sit in the sunshine. A combination of growing up in the middle east, where my father worked as an engineer when the oil money poured in during the early eighties, and an inability to sit still too long, means this isn't an activity I'm too bothered about doing. Even so, I have managed to get quite a tan (for me anyway) during the last month. This is however nothing to most of the people I observe out and about in town. It's also in stark contrast to the UK, where we get a few scattered days here and there of nice summer weather. During this time you normally see two colours: pale and pasty, or parboiled lobster red.

Interestingly, despite this rampant sun worshipping, the rate of skin cancer isn't that high, but it is rising. Unsurprisingly, there are more reported cases down south than in the north of the country, and Skåne has the most reported cases in the data collected from 1970 to 2005.

Sweden's holiday shutdown

One of the major things you notice about summer in Sweden is the country pretty much grinds to a halt in the month of July. This is because July is holiday month here in Sweden, and most companies and public facilities run on a skeleton staffing. The buses into town are less regular, opening times shorten, in smaller towns cinemas close. When I first started coming to Sweden I was a bit baffled by the holiday month phenomenon. This was because I was working in central London and the British corporate working culture, although not as terrible as the US, doesn't have much consideration that an employee has priorities outside of the workplace. In the UK, people take holiday from the beginning of June through to mid September but there's no real point where employees down tools and relax at the same time. It would also be unthinkable for them to take three glorious consecutive weeks of holiday in the way they do here.

In the companies I've worked for, there's always been this need to make sure that the service you provide is always available. Personally, I've always found that a strange idea. I didn't work in the high availability part of IT, building systems isn't like being responsible for server uptime or making sure John Smith can send email to his boss to pretend he's doing something productive. It was mainly project based work and as such ebbed and flowed throughout the year. As there was no common holiday period, you'd just be faced with losing someone working on a project for a week or two and you'd limp through working on the task. If you were sensible, you'd just admit that the sun is shining, motivation is zero, so why not take the time off?

So July is here, and so are holidays, sunshine and warm weather. Here in Malmö, I've enjoyed being able to cycle to a beach in 15 minutes, and having a nice cooling breeze blow in from the Öresund. The other noticeable thing is how important simply being outdoors is during the summer. Practically every apartment has a balcony. The balcony becomes the most important part of the dwelling, the sun is worshipped, bodies tanned, meals are eaten. If you have a house, it's practically a law here that you must possess a barbecue, something like this at the very least:



If you're really serious you have something monstrous lurking under a protective plastic sheeting growling for pre-marinated cuts of meat and korv.You'll also notice that everyone here has developed a deep bronzed tan. There's no sign of the British steamed lobster look here.

Right, the beach calls, where's my flip flops?

Haunted by the Duke of Västergötland

Yesterday, after what feels like a media frenzy that has lasted an eternity, the Swedish royal wedding took place. The marriage was notable as the princess chose to marry her former personal trainer.

The Swedish tabloid press have been relentless the last couple of weeks and it's seemed that every time I've seen a front page I've been greeted with the same picture of the now Prince Daniel: hair slicked back, curiously weedy, and wearing a pair of glasses that would put Clark Kent to shame. In every picture he appears almost frozen, his mouth fixed in a thin smile, his eyes scream "what have I got myself into", and his wardrobe looks like the aristocracy are trying to assimilate him. After all, who else other than the upper class wear a blazer with jeans? Well, at least they weren't red.

So now the circus has finally finished, I hope that I will get a few days respite. I've found it strange that in a country so committed to equality that the wedding took place without that much critical debate in the press. Although the King graciously announced he would foot half the bill (mainly for the reception), the Swedish tax payer still stumped up for the rest. This meant in excess of 80 million kronor spent on renovating the cathedral, hosting the international media and security for the event. The Swedish monarchy were stripped of any meaningful power back in 1970, and now they seem to operate largely as cheerleaders or boosters for Sweden.

Royalists have suggested that the wedding is / was great PR for Sweden, and it would boost both tourism and interest in Swedish brands. This however was debunked pretty quickly, there was plenty of empty hotel rooms in Stockholm over the weekend. They're also trying to spin the difference in social status between the couple of as an example of how in touch the Swedish monarchy are with the common person. Republicans have pointed out that marrying outside of the aristocracy was the only way to bring in some new blood into the line as rumour has it, the male side of the family aren't the sharpest tools in the box.

I can't help but suggest this: If public money was used to finance some other schmuck from Ocklebo's wedding wouldn't this be a gross misuse of public money and probably punishable with a custodial sentence?

End of the SFI Road

I picked up my the result of my D course exam just before the weekend, and I've very happy to report that I passed. I scored VG's on everything except the written paper. I wasn't too surprised, as I knew that I had some weaknesses in my grammar. I'd loved to have scored a VG overall, but that was the price of taking the exam earlier than originally planned.

Reflecting on the five months that have passed since I started the C course in January, I've enjoyed most of the experience and learnt a hell of a lot. I think later in the week I'll try and formulate those into a more coherent summary of what I thought worked, didn't work and hopefully a bit of advice for anyone who's learning a language or wants to know about the course in general.

Passing the exam now means I'm back stuck at home most days, which is pretty dull. Other than trying to find employment (hopefully I'll now have a better chance now my CV lists I have passed SFI and now have some quantifiable ability to speak Swedish) and resharpen my programming skills, there won't be an awful lot to keep me occupied. Still, I'll also have plenty of time now to get my apartment sold in London. It also means I'm going to have to battle through to the dreaded Arbetsförmedlingen and see if they can give me any help to find a job.

D test / Cheating Classmates

Yesterday I sat the SFI D course exam. Whilst it was a step up in difficulty from the C course exam it was manageable. The reading comprehension had an article on Kiruna in northern Sweden. Kiruna is famous for being a mining town (mostly iron I think) and the fact that they're going to have to shift the whole centre of town due to massive subsidence. There were also questions about newspaper headlines and which part of a paper they belonged to and some dealing with synonyms.

The listening exercise went much better than I expected, this is probably due to the fact that I've been listening to Klartext (News in simple Swedish) and a few full length documentaries.

The written paper involved sending in a comment to a newspaper about mobile phone use and expressing your opinion on the pros and cons and whether or not it would be possible to ban their use in certain places.

Reflecting on the exam, I was shocked at the sheer quantity and brazenness of cheating at the end of the listening paper. A large number of people were talking and asking each other for answers they didn't have. A guy from my course, who sat behind me, tried to get me to tell him a couple, but I pretended not to hear or understand.

I find it difficult to express my incredulity at both the invigilators and those students who were shamelessly trying to cheat. I was pretty angry with my class mate, for me he showed his true colours and demonstrated that he is an utter idiot. As the exam started we were given a stern warning that anyone who was believed to be cheating would have their paper torn up and they would fail the exam. This threat soon proved empty, partly due to the sheer volume of students exchanging answers. Couldn't they have ripped up at least one person's paper to discourage it?

I have always disliked people who lie or try and cheat their way to things they haven't worked for so this really offended my sensibilities. Sure, they might get a piece of paper that states they have passed a basic proficiency in a language, but is that really going to help them in the long run, when they actually have to use it? Perhaps I'm viewing this idealistically, but I've encountered plenty of people in my professional career who have made up skills and experiences. They normally ended up hopelessly out of their depth, and those of us who have the correct skills and knowledge normally end up working twice as hard to clean up all the mistakes they make. This happened plenty of times to me as a software developer and latterly as a project manager.

One particular colleague was so inept, I'll be able to tell stories about him for the rest of my working life. His chutzpah was simply staggering. A friend of mine, our email sys admin at the company I worked for, found his CV in the dead mail queue of one of our servers. Somehow, it got circulated around the IT department and became the stuff of legend. This person shamelessly claimed that they'd been running an implementation of a major enterprise application that cost the company in excess of six million pounds. In reality, however, this person's role was make sure a particular department (a small one at that) adopted the new software without any problems.

So whilst I hope that cheats never prosper, unfortunately the world is full of optimists, realists always end up carrying the can.

R&R

I'm heading back to old blighty for a few days tonight. The main reason is to see the Pixies play. They're playing in an old bingo hall which seems to be trying to reinvent itself as "London's most versatile venue" apparently. It's a short walk up the road from my apartment in town, so that's very handy. It'll also be great to catch up with some friends.

The break is also a welcome opportunity to sort out some of my UK affairs. I've decided to sell my house this summer, so I need to get a couple of valuations done. The first one I received seemed ridiculously high, given that Shadwell, is a rather shabby part of town.

It still feels weird calling where I used to live London, for as anyone who's lived there and who has thought about the geography of the place, it is a sprawl of distinct urban areas. There isn't, I believe any coherent urban identity. Places like Shadwell and Kensington have so little in common, in fact they are polar opposites. Most of the urban areas are just that, towns which have been swallowed up by the sprawl of the old walled city. Shadwell is just that, originally a town built on the marshy banks of the Thames. It really grew when the docks arrived. The random nature of urbanisation in the city probably hasn't helped either, there's been little or no protection of urban areas. This is very obvious in working class parts of the city, little of the terraced housing remains, most has been replaced by sixties and seventies style modernist public housing.

My apartment is in a convenient place though, one underground stop from London's banking district and three from Canary Wharf, another major office / finance hub. Although Shadwell has begun to be gentrified (the last time I was there was on the way back from Vegas) and a cafe has opened by the docklands lightrail station, the area remains predominantly an immigrant area. Treat yourself to a look around the place using google streetview and you'll see that it's a bit run down. Still it was home for a good thirteen years, so selling it will feel like a major milestone, and the end of a segment of my life.

D day beckons

The språkverket course I'm studying on is organised into separate thematic sections. This is, I believe for two reasons: firstly to allow your base group teacher to gauge your progress and secondly to assess the relative strengths and weakness of your Swedish. At the end of each theme, you submit the folder which contains your work for the past four or five weeks. This work typically covers grammar, written assignments, reading comprehension and listening exercises.

The following week you meet with your base group teacher and discuss: your folder, your perception of how the course is going for you, and agree upon a plan for the next theme.

When I'd initially spoken to my teacher informally during a self study period, we agreed that I'd sit the final SFI D exam in September. Last week she changed her mind having reviewed what I'd submitted. She suggested that I sit the exam on the 9th of June, as I had nothing to lose, and as is always the case, everything to gain. This is because if you don't pass an SFI exam you have to wait a month before you are able to resit the exam. Given that my course will break up for the Swedish holidays (typically the country runs at half to quarter capacity during July), I'd have to wait another three months before I could sit the exam.

So I've decided to have a try, and I hope I can cram some grammar and in particular master the tricky art of bistatser (clauses) and plurals before the 9th. I feel confident that my reading comprehension is more than up to the task, and I'm pretty sure I can muddle through the listening exercise too. This just leaves the hopefully trivial diagrams and tables part (bizarrely easy on the C test) and the written exercise.

It would be great to finish the SFI experience as I've definitely hit a learning plateau, but I also feel somewhat concerned at how I'll fill my time if I do. I am by profession a software developer and project manager and have been looking for work over here since I arrived in seven months ago.

Despite every Swedish person I knew (including at least three who work in the IT industry) assuring me language wouldn't be a problem, unsurprisingly it has proved a major stumbling block. I've fired off my CV and covering letter to apply for around thirty jobs. I've had one interview in that time, which I didn't get. Of course it seems blindingly obvious in hindsight, but the majority of offices and companies speak Swedish, and not unreasonably, expect you to do so too. If you're thinking of moving here, I'd offer this advice: don't expect to walk into a job just because you speak English, or consider that being a native English speaker will make you an attractive or sought after labour market commodity. After all, most Swedish university graduates speak fluent English, probably spent longer at university, and have had the benefit of a more rigorous education than you did. So with that in mind, really you'll have to be good at what you do, or seek out a international company.

So before the tone of this post gets too maudlin, as you can imagine I'll certainly miss having somewhere to go, to be able to socialize with people in a similar situation, and using my brain again. There is also the overwhelming fear that without a purpose and structure (read full time employment / education) perhaps I'll turn feral and end up mired in my own filth shouting obscenities at poor unfortunate people who walk past my apartment.

Weird Offal

Every country has peculiar elements of cusine. The other day whilst carrying out my usual post workout shop I discovered two cracking examples of bizarre meat products:
The first was grisknorr:



Although they look quite phallic, they are (I'm assured by the gf) in fact pigs tails. Note the very reasonable price, approximately 95p for anyone from the UK. Once I'd got over my initial revulsion I tried to inconspiciously snap a picture. I then continued to browse the meat section desperately trying to think of a suitably bland meal that would satisfy my pregnant girlfriend who is still suffering from morning sickness.

As I journeyed past the border of the pork cuts, I happened across this wonderfully named beef product:

Elefantöra or elephant ears seems to be some sort of large beef steak cut, and I trust not anything to do with actual ears. Needless to say neither appealed.



I also found this exciting retail opportunity, a wonderfully kitsch box of chocolates, decorated with a picture of Sweden's princess victoria and her fiance Daniel, who are due to be married next month.

Over half the cost of their lavish wedding (estimated at 2.6 million dollars) will be paid for by the Swedish tax payer. The king has nobley stepped in and picked up the other half.

I find it amusing that although Sweden is very keen to portray itself as an extremely modern nation state where equality is vital principal, the presence of a monarch seems somewhat of an anacronism. Princess Victoria's fiance is apparently an ex-personal trainer, perhaps that's the advertisement for the open society. Still he's married well hasn't he?

On the study front, as you can tell from this rambling post, we had most of last week off. This was because of a combination of public holidays and one of our teachers taking a few days off to entertain her mother. We've also reached the end of our current theme (the world of books), and we had to submit our folder containing everything we'd worked on for the past five weeks. This week is also shorter than usual because we each have a meeting with our homegroup teacher to review our progress, identify our weaknesses and to set some targets for the next study theme. I'm pretty sure I'm going to sit the D course exam in June, so I expect to be told I'm going to have to work hard on my grammar for a few weeks.

Radio resources for listening practice

I thought I'd share the URL of a great site for helping you practice listening to swedish. It's Sverige Radio's archive. There's pretty much everything here from arts and culture to music and sport.

My girlfriend and I have become fairly addicted to listening to the documentaries which cover subjects as diverse as the first death in Sweden of a football fan caused by the english disease to mudslides in Göteborg in the seventies.

Of particular interest to those with a more basic grasp of Swedish and therefore to me, is the klartext news. This short ten minute programme summarises the day's news in simple swedish and is aimed at students studying the language. It also helps that the presenters also speak slightly more slowly than normal.

You can subscribe to each programme through iTunes (Yes, I know it's a horrible piece of software...) so when they publish a new programme it'll automatically be downloaded for you.

You can also stream channels radio from the site, but I have no idea if they are restricted to computers with a Swedish IP address.

A Night At the Theatre

In keeping with the unspoken laws of language teaching, my homegroup teacher at the Språkverket is somewhat flamboyant and extremely theatrical. It's fairly common for questions to be answered with either song, cod English accents or exaggerated gestures. A particular favourites of hers is singing the "No no, no no no no" bit from the now defunct dutch music combo 2 Unlimited's one and only hit and renditions from musicals.

Given our teacher's obvious thespianism, there are plenty of opportunities to take advantage of free trips to the theatre, paid for by the SFI programme and ultimately the Swedish tax payer. Not wishing to pass up the opportunity of free entertainment and a break from my usual evening routine, I decided I'd take full advantage of this programme and signed myself up. On Monday night, the hardy souls who were interested (I think there were about 8 of us including two staff members), met at the Bryggteatern in down town Malmö. The site is a restored chocolate factory, which now houses an arts centre for music, dance and theatre. I arrived early, you can never tell what time you'll arrive at your destination with the local bus service, and watched an American and a German dressed in track suits perform a rather strange work out on a nearby set of benches. My theatrically inclined teacher arrived on her bicycle and we exchanged small talk in Swedish about the book I was currently reading and had in my hand.

A few minutes later they opened the door and we went into the theatre and waited for my fellow course mates to arrive. The theatre reception area was lovingly restored from its former use but quite minimalist. The space was divided into a coffee bar and reception desk, and an area of tables and sofas. As the reception area filled up and my fellow SFI course students arrived, we chatted amongst ourselves. Our teacher explained the play we were going to see was about a wedding reception and that it would be about two hours long. Shortly after this brief synopsis, the doors to the theatre opened.

It was a small theatre, with a capacity of about 100 people. We sat in the centre of the seating about halfway up and had an excellent view of the stage. In front of us, was a long table which was under-lit, and a sparse set consisting of a mountain of potatoes and four hot plates on pedestals. On top of each of the hot plates was a pot of gently boiling water.

The play itself, was called "Här och Nu" as was written by a German playwright with the impossibly Teutonic moniker of Roland Schimmelpfennig. It would be performed by a cast chosen from Lund's university theatre studies programme, and was part of their final examination piece.

The play itself was baffling, not principally because of the language, as I found I could follow most of what was being said, but mainly because it had no sequential plot and was highly surreal. In short it was, in my mind, a very experimental and more than a little pretentious piece of work. At the time it all seemed quite deliberately absurd in parts, the cast are all apparently drunk and slightly insane. Although it was strange, I enjoyed the acting and it was entertaining. I imagine the cast had a lot of fun performing it too, and it seemed the perfect fodder for a group of slightly pretentious theatre studies students' final examination.

After the play finished we all concurred we hadn't understood what it was about. Apparently it was just as impenetrable to native Swedish speakers, and confirmed what I'd suspected that although it was well acted (excluding some classic shouty crackers drama student moments), the experimental nature of what we'd seen was confusing.

After I got home from the theatre I googled the playwright and found this summary of the play on the Goethe Institutes' website. It confirmed that the play is experimental and has a deliberately fragmented set of events which may have happened in the past, present or future.

On reflection, although I didn't think much of the play itself, exposure to a language in any form is, in my opinion, an excellent learning exercise. I particularly enjoyed listening to the actors project their voices, and how they ennuicated their lines. I also found it interesting to try and listen for traces of accents. Interestingly, I couldn't hear any Skånsk and they were all very easy to understand.

Making bricks without straw

After three full weeks on the SFI Språkverket programme, I thought it was time to reflect on my initial experiences and opinions as well as summarize how it works. I thought initially I'd describe how the programme is designed.

The programme is largely a lecture based syllabus that contains students studying for both the C and D exams. Each student is allocated to a base group teacher who is responsible for making sure you have a plan for your studies and who meets with you every month to review your progress. When you arrive on a Monday morning the first thing you have to do is to plan your week's study, Typically one chooses from:

• Grammar lectures
• Comprehension exercises
• Listening exercises
• Speaking activities
• Conversation Practice with a Swedish Senior
• Lectures about famous Swedish cultural figures / aspects of Swedish life
• Self Study
  

In addition to the title, the activities also state which level they belong to, either C or D. The lectures also fit into a theme. Themes normally last for around a month and enable the teaching staff to review a trench of your work and give them to the opportunity to evaluate your progress. Our current theme is literature.

Every Monday morning my base group teacher painfully reiterates that we should all carefully and rationally review our progress and use our judgement to pick activities that will develop our weaknesses rather than just picking lectures and activities that sound interesting or that we're good at.

Herein lies, in my opinion, the fundamental ideological problem of the course. This supposition assumes that you can make an informed, astute judgement about your needs when you are little more than a novice. How can you make those choices when you don't know what you don't know?

It's also seems a classic modern teaching approach, probably with the intention of “empowering the student” or some such pseudo bizspeak nonsense. In theory, yes it could work, but it's spoilt by most people's tendency towards laziness. The other problem is that you can't make informed choices about what to study based on your strengths and weaknesses if you don't know the totality of the syllabus. How am I able to make sure if choose one lecture or activity over another that it won't hinder me in the future? What grammatical principals should I know, and at what point in the syllabus will knowing those principals really be useful? Surely these are only questions that a trained professional with an overview of the entire subject will have?

I was told that we'd meet with our base group teacher and set out a plan of what I need to study and this simple plan would inform the direction of my studies. So far there hasn't been the slightest threat of this occurring, so therefore I've decided that it's up to me to try and make sense of the syllabus and arrange to talk to the teaching staff next week.

Volcano!

I stepped out the house this morning and smelt the distinct odor of bad eggs on the wind. It was, no doubt, caused by sulphur from the volcanic eruption of Eyjafjallajokull, over in Iceland.

The eruption has caused plenty of chaos over here. Swedish airspace was closed at 1800 last night. The latest news suggests that the earliest that southern Sweden's (including the country's largest airport, Arlanda near Stockholm) airspace would be open is tomorrow. Airports to the north of Gävle, i.e. Norrlands are open for emergency traffic only. I take this to mean air ambulances etc. It apparently all depends on the wind direction and if a new eruption occurs. According to our local press, it should reach us tonight, with ash particles in the air, the authorities are advising people who have respiratory problems (well known for being out and about of Friday nights...) to stay indoors.

Every Friday morning in class we're expected to have read and produced a short summary on a news article that interested us. This morning I chose this article. I was surprised how easily I understood it and didn't have to look any words up. I think I summarized the article poorly (it was only the second time I've done this exercise), as once we'd discussed each other's stories, we worked together on how to create an easy and comprehensible example. The key point was to try to explain the key points of the story with words suitable to your vocabulary.

Reading a newspaper is a great way of developing your vocabulary. I normally read the local free commuter paper on my bus journey home but it doesn't have the greatest range of stories and seems to concentrate on local crime stories. It's a useful exercise, but after a while you get a bit bored of stories about assault or speeding. Occasionally Malmö gets a shooting, there's a lot of organised crime in the city apparently. I find this a bit bizzare, as size wise it's just a bit larger than the town where my mother lives near, Swindon. Despite it's celebrated status as one of Britain's crapest towns, I'm pretty sure it doesn't have many gangland slayings or bombings (Malmö has had a spate of bombs targetting nightclubs and restaurants recently). I may have to make some sort of comparitive study at some stage to satisfy my curiosity.

Once I've read a story, I underline any words I don't understand and look them up on the dictionary on my iphone. When I get home I add them to my weekly vocabulary flashcards.

In local Bunkeflostrand news, it seems our neighbourhood nazi is still being hounded by his anti-fascist detractors. Once again they've spray-painted his house near our local supermarket with graffiti accusing the occupants of being racists / nazis. Previously the message was fairly comical, and read: "Welcome home nazi swines". What amused me was imagining the anti-fascists as slightly conflicted once they'd finished the message, realizing they'd expressed a warm sentiment which could be misinterpreted as having genuinely missed him or her whilst they'd been away on vacation. This time the anti-fascists have opted for a safer and less confused message in which they name and shame the resident. Disappointingly, the person's name didn't throw up any hits on google.

Interview washup / post mortum

I was invited to interview at a consultancy company in nearby Lund before I went away for my brother's wedding, as I'd begun to suspect, they informed me they can't offer me a position at the moment.

Yesterday I rang my interviewer to find out if they were still interested, or if they weren't, to see if they would offer me some feedback. During the telephone call my interviewer told me three or four times how interesting my CV was and how they wanted to keep my details in case an appropriate project came up. Now this may be just letting me down gently, but I think the interviewer was being candid.

I have decided to be upbeat about both the interview and the experience and avoid my usual cynical and negative outlook and have taken the following positives:

1. I managed to conduct a proportion of the interview in Swedish, I understood everything my interviewer asked and only really had to switch to English when I answered questions about the technical nature of software development projects I'd worked on over the last few years.

2. I think I've found a target market for my services: large IT consultancies. I seem to have a nice mix of skills (coding, requirements gathering, systems analysis, team management, project management) and just the sort of service they like to pimp out to companies who don't have those readily available to them.

3. It was my first interview in Sweden so I had no idea what to expect. It was very informal and much more along the lines of an informal chat about my career history and I guess to see if my personality would fit in with the people they have working there already.

I described the situation to a friend at my SFI course today, and she put it into perspective for me. She simply said how sometimes certain things are meant to be, and others aren't. Maybe it wasn't the right opportunity for me and a better one would come along soon. I've decided my friend's positive outlook is the best approach.

On the language front, I really felt on top of things today, lots of flowing Swedish and good conversations, and the synapse were firing today. I also got lots of compliments on the progress I've made so far which I really appreciated and built me up a bit.

Ten days off and a fried active vocabulary

I'm back from my brother's wedding in Las Vegas, and although I had a great time, my Swedish feels rusty. My comprehension is still working, but my active vocabulary feels like the linguistic equivalent of lungs gasping for air after the first run after a long lay off.

I headed in today for my second språkverket day. I chose all D course lessons today, one comprehension, the other a listening exercise. I found the comprehension to be fairly easy, it was an article about a belly dancing journalist, so my word of the day is magdansös (belly dancer). The hearing exercise was harder, partly as it seems all of the material used for these exercises seems to have been recorded on really poor quality microphones, so you have lots of background noise. I followed most of it, but missed a few subtleties. The second listening exercise was worse, it was the classic "announcements in a train station". Train stations are noisy, echo prone places, combine that with dodgy recording equipment, you're really up against it. Every language I've studied so far I've ended up straining to hear what time a train departs against an aural soup of echoes, foot steps, and garbled announcements.

We've also been given an assignment which involves reading a book and then discussing it with others who've read it too, a lätt bokpratargrupp apparently. I chose 'Dracula', mainly because I've read the original and was curious how they'd shorten the story as a easy reading book, and partly because the other titles sounded pretty dire. I've just about recovered from reading three really terrible easy reading books on the C course which were written by teachers at my school. I think it's safe to say the booker prize won't be heading to komvux Södervarn.

I was also struggling for motivation today, I had an interview before I went away, and I hoped that they'd let me know just after I arrived back from vacation. I'm going to interpret the lack of communication as an omen of impending disappointment. Frankly, I'd really like to have the peace of mind of a regular pay check. The six months off has been nice and I've enjoyed learning Swedish so far, but there's nothing like work to help you assimilate properly.

Språkverket / Vegas here we come

Last Friday we had a part wake, part celebration on our SFI course. During our normal break at 0930 tea, coffee and cakes, key ingredients for a good fika, were consumed. Many, many pictures were also taken. We also presented our teacher, who has made a major difference to our language skills in the short time she's taught us, with a number of gifts. During my time here so far, I have often reflected on how people working in education and medicine have such worthwhile and meaningful jobs and the difference they make to other people's lives. It also makes me think about how irrelevant and unfulfilling my chosen occupation can be. Perhaps I'll rant about that another day though.

The Rektor decided that due to the sheer number of people waiting for a place on a course at Komvux Södervarn he had to reassign our teacher. For us it meant that we'd be placed into the Spåkverket system.

This system comprises of three classes, somewhat like a home room, where you have a teacher who monitors your learning and is your guide. Each Monday you pick the lessons you want to attend for the week. The idea is you take responsibility for your own study, and with your teacher's advice construct a syllabus to take you onwards to the next exam.

The student population is mixed, some are studying for the C course, others the D. This week has been a bit of a false start, as I've only been able to attend one day (I had an interview on Tuesday), Wednesday is our day off, and today our home group teacher is off on holiday. Luckily next week the newly transferred students are on holiday too, as the existing students will individually meet with their home room teacher and discuss their progress. This is very convenient for me as we're off to Las Vegas for nine days tomorrow evening (via London first), for my Brother's wedding.

It should be an interesting trip, both my girlfriend and I are curious to see quite how tacky it really is. We're staying at the golden nugget hotel:

I'm particularly intrigued by the swimming pool which has a shark tank and a water slide tube that passes through the middle of it. Needless to say I've packed my trunks, and hope the weather is warm enough (it is March there after all, estimates are around 20c) or the pool is heated at this time of year.

We're staying overnight in London at my apartment both on the way out and on the homeward leg, mainly because I couldn't find an american airline which wasn't either ridiculously expensive or involved many changes. It'll also give me the opportunity to pick up my post from my apartment in London and catch up with a few friends too.

Onwards to D

So the results are in and it seems the C course exam went pretty well for me, and I scored a VG mark overall. According to the breakdown of scoring I only dropped two marks on the first three papers. My submission on written section was also apparently good, despite my fears after the exam.

So now it's on to the D course, although we're still not sure if that will involve breaking up our current class or continuing with the same teacher. I'll learn my fate tomorrow when class resumes as our teacher met with the head of department on Friday to discuss exactly how they're going to restructure things.

C Course exam, D course shake up?

On friday morning I sat my SFI C course exam. It took three hours and was divided up into four parts:

• A reading paper
• A listening paper
• Another reading paper
• A written paper

The first reading paper was pretty straight forward, an article about a girl who did her pratik (swedish work experience) at a shop where she could practice her Swedish. The questions were pretty straight forward, and were multiple choice. Other questions involved reading a letter to an employer and reading menus for restaurants and answering questions based on them. It was a pretty gentle start to the exam.

I wasn't really looking forward to the listening paper as the sound on most of the recordings we'd heard in class was dire, and it made distinguishing words tricky. Luckily most of the questions weren't too hard, and each section was played twice. The second recording, was a telephone message recording for council services sounded like it had been recorded on low quality tape back in the 1950s by someone who'd had a serious head injury, but the answers seemed obvious.

The third paper, another rcomprehension exercise, and had questions about charts, a train time table and a section about a camping site and didn't present any problems.

I wasn't really happy with the written paper, which asked us to choose between one of employers and to write a short letter to them asking them if they would offer you a pratik. The choices were:

• A supermarket
• A kindergarten
• An Auto repair shop
• A restaurant

I chose the supermarket, as years ago as a teenager I'd worked in waitrose, a british supermarket. I took my time and planned out the sections of the letter:

1. Opening
2. About me
3. Why I'm interested
4. Why I would be suitable
5. Salutations

I then began to flesh out the paragraphs on some scrap paper. I got through planning the first sections but really began to struggle for why I'd be interested. Perhaps it's pride or a lack of imagination, but I really couldn't suggest any reason I'd want to go on a this imagined placement.

In the end the predicitable happened, I realised I'd spent way too much time planning and had to rush writing the letter and wasn't really satisfied with what I submitted. The letter seemed very basic, and I didn't feel I gave myself a chance to either use my vocabularly or show I understood how to use the past / future tense.

Discussing it later with my better half (a swedish native) we concluded that perhaps I was setting my standards too high, and that all the exam would really expect is that you could string a reasonably coherent sentence together and understand the past and present tense. Given that all academic backgrounds and abilities have to pass the exam, perhaps the demands I set myself were a bit too high. I noticed that the exam also featured the usual thinly disguised propaganda for the 'Swedish Way of doing things', and possibly the numerous references to work experience are actually subtly implanting the suggestion into your brain.

On reflection, It's a milestone. At the end of March I will have been living in Sweden for six months, I think, I've progressed steadily. Of my class mates who have a similar level of spoken language, all of them have lived in Sweden for at least two years, and in some cases over five.

On wednesday the teachers of all of the c course classes (morning, afternoon, evening) will meet with the department head (Rektor) to discuss how and who will teach the D course. Our teacher explained that there is a possibility that our class will be broken up and we'll move onto a new course, possibly losing classmates. Personally I hope we get to stay with our current teacher and that our course teaches both C and D simulatenously. This apparently does happen frequently according ot the wife of my american class mate, who is currently studying on course pitched at that level. As I mentioned before we've been very lucky so far as we have a really excellent teacher, and I'd like to continue to study with her.



I'm excited to report that Håkan, the lovable everyman bartender featured in swedish docu-soap 'Färjan' has been given his own new spin off series. It's a fair reward for a man who's unique blend obvious charm, bartending philosophies, and occasional quizzical facial expressions carry the show.

The programme is called, somewhat unimaginatively, 'Håkan's Bar'. The curious can see the trailer.
From what I gather our hero has taken a break from the ferry and headed for the Swedish shangri-la,Thailand.

Tongue tied tuesdays

I've noticed an interesting phenomenon related to my learning of Swedish recently, namely I speak noticeably better Swedish after the first day of the school week than on day one.

Now this may be obvious to the point of being banal, but on Saturday, Sunday and Monday I don't get much chance to practice my language skills. Although my partner is Swedish, and we've established I've reached the point where I can actually hold my end of a conversation up, often she's too tired from working or we forget. This results in us largely speaking in English.

Although I watch some Swedish television, the majority of what's broadcast on television is mostly U.S. imports or the slurry of British crime series.

I do watch some Swedish shows, and a particular favourite of mine is Färjan, which is a docu-soap about Viking Lines' 'Cinderella' cruise ship and its staff and passengers.

I have a guilty pleasure for docu-soaps, but the real attraction for me in watching 'Färjan' is Swedes behaving badly on what is essentially a booze cruise to Finland and back. For a foreigner it offers up a vision of how ordinary swedes behave, and misbehave particularly when the stimuli of alcohol is added.

If you watch it look out for smooth barman Håkan, singing ship's steward and entertainment officer Per Nyberg (complete with, I'm told, impenetrable småland accent and who bears a distinct likeness to Welsh comedian Rob Brydan pictured below on the right)











The cast is rounded off with the detestable little hitler with handcuffs, security officer Anita, who is frequently filmed meting out her own brand of particularly heavy handed justice to inebriated Swedes. One can only hope she isn't as dour off camera, and the show is cut in such a way to depict her as an archetype.

In order to remedy the Tuesday morning linguistic equivalents of cold starts, I'm thinking of attending the language cafe in central malmö. This offers the opportunity to practice Swedish with volunteers. As a concept, I think it sounds great, and shows the effort that the majority of Swedes are making to help us immigrants fit in and improve our language skills.

I hope this will provide me with a mental work out which will leave me ready for the school week. I'll try and find a link, and report back when I've had my first experience.

There is no bad weather...

All good things come to an end, and the coldest winter in skåne for some years looks like it's on the wane tonight.

As a transplanted englishman well acquainted with rain and bone seeping dampness, the sub zero temperatures for the last two and a half months, have been a new and exciting pleasure. The other half, being of norlandic extraction has, of course, scoffed many times at the the locals and my child like pleasure at seeing it snow. Still, seeing the rain fall tonight and the snow turn distinctly slushy in town I can't help but feel a little sad.

It's amused and baffled me in equal measures to hear the locals whine about the snow. Malmö may be many things but it's unlikely to win any beauty contests. Like london, a dusting of snow really makes the place look pretty. That coupled with the lack of sunshine from october until december makes me yearn for the envitable move 'up north' to Hälsingland.

Still the SMHI is forecasting a category two storm saturday night (what ever that means), but the ten day MSN forecast, which I've become slightly fixated with, shows temperatures rising above zero next week.

On the plus note I laughed heartily at the local version of sweden's free commuter rag, also named 'metro'. In the sport section they have a metric evaluating Malmö's favourite son, Zlatan. Today's median Zlatlanometer is 2.5. What scale this equates to, and what empirical evidence was used to arrive at this judgement is totally beyond me.

Trevlig Helgan to anyone with nothing better to do than to read this,

A.