The big empty north and assorted geographical musings

One thing I failed to comprehend before I moved to Sweden was the sheer size of the country, and the seemingly endless kilometre after square kilometre of dense forests.  According to my feeble research on Wikipedia it is the 55th largest country, and the 4th largest European country and some 53.1% of of it's surface is forest. 

Some weeks ago whilst cycling home from the train station I tried to think about what was west of the town. The simple answer, Nothing. The more complicated answer is deepest, darkest Dalarna. I was able to satisfy my curiosity some weeks later as we headed west to the ski resort of Idrefjäll for some well earned holiday. The route we took more than confirmed my suspicions. 




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Dalarna is the fourth largest län (I suppose a län is what might be a county in the UK and quite possibly a state in the US, excluding the political ramifications of course) and its geography is composed of three things: forests, a sizeable lake and mountains. It's principal claims to fame are the iconic Dalarna horses and the cross country ski race called the vasaloppet. The main cities of the län aren't exactly huge by any standards, the largest is Borlänge, followed the the län capital, Falun, and their populations could easily fit into most modern premiership football stadia. 

Once past the heady metropolis of Mora, notable, principally, for being the finish line for the Vasaloppet, and which boasts a population of around 10,000 our next significant point of civilization was Älvdalen. Älvdalen, with 1,900 inhabitants is famous for, put as politely as one can, isolationism. The town is famous for speaking and continuing to speak their own dialect.

Once past that, you're into another big empty nothing, and our route ran parallel to the dalaälv river and took us up to Särna, which proclaims itself "gateway to the mountains". 

I'm saddened to report the the world's sorriest and most incongruous strip-joint seems to have vanished, I guess the business plan didn't quite work out. I mean, who'd think a strip bar in the middle of nowhere, near a ski resort famously family-centric would fail? Given the appearance of the place, it's just as likely the the owner was arrested for human trafficking. 

Past the Ski resort of Idre, the only thing left is a further 100km or so of beautiful rugged mountains and the then the border with Norway. 

If you look at a map of Sweden, and draw a line across the country at Stockholm and then look north and west. You'll notice something I think is impressive. Saving Falun, and Borlänge and Östersund, there isn't a major city or town (let's call that above 20,000 people) that isn't on the coast. That's a massive amount of ancient quiet forest...

More bad luck

A quick update just to keep in the habit of blogging, as I've found it's way too easy to think, "oh I'll write something this week", and never get around to it.

My major news is that my bad luck with employment in Sweden has struck again. I've been working, very happily, for a global IT company as a consultant software developer down in Gävle for the last five months. In Sweden the first six months of any new job is essentially an extended trial. It's called a provanställning and allows both parties, although mostly your employer, to work out if you're still who they thought they hired and not an incompetent oaf or a dangerous lunatic.  The consultancy arm of the company I was working for essentially acts as a skills bank, and consultants are matched to clients and prospective client's resource / recruitment needs. I was informed last week that due to the state of their current order book (totally empty) for application development work and their disappointing general financial state for the past year they couldn't justify the cost of keeping me on past my six month probation.

This sadly is the downside of working for a consultancy company and the disadvantage of being the last person through the door during tough times. They told me that they were very happy with the job I'd been doing, and will contact me as soon as anything new shows up, but the reality of the situation is that the economy of the region is very reliant on several very large global companies and those companies are looking to drastically reduce their costs. I was and am still very disappointed. It was a great company to work for and was staffed by very pleasant highly able colleagues.

Shitty timing, and once again it's back to the job market. It's all to easy to get caught up in the disappointment and wallow, but I can see that they are struggling at the moment. The few positives I've tried to draw out are that:
1. I have a great employer's name and despite the short period of employment, a glowing reference for my CV
2. I have an up to date  CV ready to be sent out (something we needed to have kept current as a consultant)
3. I have a much better understanding of the local labour market and what sort of commutes are viable from my home
4. I'll be home to help my wife through a tough time managing our two girls (aged 2 and a half and seven months)
5. I've proved to myself that my language skills are up to the task of working in an all Swedish language environment
6. Should they receive something suitable and I don't have a new job they'll contact me and propose me as a sub consultant.

Melodifestivalen Rides Again

Happy days, Melodifestivalen,the annual and only-ever-so-slightly-totally fixed national precursor to euro-vision is back.  

Needless to say I'm a big fan. There are many reasons: the oft repeated, and unintentionally hilarious choreography, the bizarre band names, and the wide range of musical styles. Sadly it's normally all too easy to see who'll get voted through to the final, but the strange assortment of acts always amuses and horrifies in equal measures.  

Tonight for example we had power ballads, boy bandery, an ageing soul artist, a scattering of ex-talent show kids, and a Manga obsessive from Sundsvall who sang a song which had more than a passing debt to the Manic Street Preachers "Generation Terrorists" sound. 

As it was only the first show we didn't see any Swedish Dance bands or Timotej (yes they've entered every year I've seen it so far) and no serious novelty acts like Dancing bear or the Liquorice Allsorts backing dancers of two years ago. We did however get to marvel at some truly madcap backing dancer action (the usual single line / octopus of recent years and followed by some weird vogue style hand waving) and odd preppy stylings courtesy of David Lindgren. 

Anyway, the show seemed to go mostly to my expectations except for manga wannabe Yukio going through to the final and the obvious second choice coming in last postion. The fickle Swedish general public...

Winter assimilation

I was recently talking to an online friend on mine, a Welshman who was complaining about the 'plunging temperatures' and dusting of snow they'd received where he lives in southern Wales. It was, he confided -2c yesterday, and the sprinkling of snow had caused great consternation to road traffic. Just before chatting to him, I'd been nosing on Facebook and chuckling at the 'oh-my-god-we-have-snow' pictures posted by various English friends. Ha, I pointed out, we have had a covering of snow of at least 30cm since late November. Minus two centigrade I scoffed and then proceeded to tell him how that morning I had cycled to the station in -25c, and even dressed in my massive winter parka and ski pants over my jeans, I had to admit that cycling in those temperatures is pretty chilly and slightly a 'mad dogs and Englishmen' type pursuit.

You realize you've gone native when you can chuckle at "low" temperatures back home. When you step outside and -5c feels like a nice balmy winter day. When the sun is shining in January, it's under -10c, and you can feel the moisture in your nose freezing slightly and you like the sensation. When you nip down to the shop on the 'spark' with your daughter.When you have at least four pairs of gloves for the season.When you stand on the train platform on your daily commute and the train arrives right on time day after day regardless of how low the temperature sinks or how much snow falls. When you scratch your head at a nation who doesn't equip winter tyres, or have engine and cabin warmers, or bum warmers in the car seats. When you have three types of shovel for clearing the snow and you look over enviously at the neighbours snow blowing machines. That's when you realize that the place you now live has begun to warp you...

Habitual reprise

 Hello anyone who visits this dusty old blog in the vain hope that the lazy author has written something new, Thanks for stopping by, and well, you know, we're in this together. Occasionally I feel inspired and once again things have happened in the quiet little life we lead up in the the southern tip of Norrland.

To recap, we need some kind of flashback sequence, well here goes:

Scene one: main character enters one of his periodic funks, feels isolated, struggles with his wife's ill tempered pregnancy.

Scene two: Finishes paternity leave, schools first daughter into the Swedish Nursery (Dagis to those in the know)

Scene Three: confounds the Arbetsförmedlingen by getting the first job he applies for (excellent company btw) and providing them with an unlikely success story. Comic interlude between main character and the C.V. 'expert' who'd only worked at one place (yes you've guessed it, the Arbetsförmedlingen, and who had the most laughable C.V. you've ever read)

Scene Four: Slacks off for the rest of the summer preparing for daugher no.2's birth and the start of his new job in October. Drives down to Gävle in peasouper fog with a wife in labour. Crazy sadistic midwife decides the labour wasn't painful enough for the wife and invents an especially painful finish. 

Scene Five: Struggles manfully and at times ineffectually with the logistics of a dual child household. Hangs on for dear life

Now the story unfolds again.

Hit the north part 2

The second force that propelled us North was the Swedish welfare system, the Försäkeringskassan. 

In Sweden every parent has the right to take time away from their jobs to look after their child or children. Fathers are entitled to 180 days, or six months. During your maternity or paternity leave, you can resign at any point, and your period of paternity leave counts against your notice. 

After consulting with my union for advice on how to handle the matter, and then promptly ignoring what they had to say (the advice seemed at best ill thought out and at worst designed to anger my then employer in Malmö) I decided that I would be as open and honest, although it was quite awkward. 

They were a small software house, and during the year I was there three staff (four including me) of a total of ten had decided to move on. It came as quite a shock to the owner of the company, but as I stated to him, this wasn't about my position, although I wasn't really happy there, but my decision concerned my family and the environment we wanted out daughter to grow up in.
I sympathized with his position, and felt like I was letting him down, but I reminded myself how much I'd done for him, including rewriting most of his software development process, and designing and implementing a recruitment and training process. It was a difficult conversation, but I hope I handled it, and my last months there with professionalism. 

Being able to take six months off work to look after my daughter has meant that we were able to relocate to our new house, and that I have been able to build a much stronger relationship with my daughter. It has also allowed my wife to go back to work and to find a great position on the emergency ward of our local hospital. 

Hit the North part 1

As promised a short synopsis of the last few months and how we left the godless wastelands of Skåne, and hit the north.


It all began just before our wedding, I was idly looking at a web site for estate agents(real estate companies for anyone from the U.S), and saw an interesting house in the town my wife grew up in. It matched all of our criteria: it was the right size, centrally located and pretty.
We rang up and booked a time to meet the agent and have look around the house just before we left town to drive back down to Malmö after our wedding / holidays. On the long drive south, and stopping off at the excellent Kolmården Safari park we talked about the feasibility of making a bid for the property. I'd sold my apartment in London by that time and we had a reasonable amount of money sitting in a bank in England waiting for the right opportunity, so we knew we had the means. After two days of exotic wildlife, perhaps emboldened by the lions and tigers and somewhere between Linköping and Jonköping we decided we'd bid for the property.


We contacted the estate agents and let them know we wanted to be involved in the auction for the house. Whilst wandering around doing our grocery shopping the day before, we'd agreed what our maximum bid would be, and we felt we had a good chance of getting the property. It was hard to try not too hopeful, as we had no idea what sort of budgets our rivals would have and how much over the asking price we'd have to go. 


One week later on a Friday evening we held our breath and placed our bids in a telephone auction. Approximately thirty minutes later, we won the auction and had bought a house. 
The following two weeks were a real eye opener, the speed at which we completed all the legalities were a whirlwind compared to how long it takes in the UK. All in, I think it took about six weeks to sell my flat in the UK and have the money sitting in my account, and it cost almost a thousand pounds in legal fees. In Sweden, ten days, and not a single kronor  went to a lawyer. All of the legalities were handled by the local branch of Nordea, and dealing with them was very straight forward. My wife had to travel up to sign some documents, but other than the cost of a train ticket we had activated the first step of our escape plan. 

Blog rebooted

Hello, It's been a year then eh? For a while I felt guilty about not updating the blog I'd started, and then as I got lazier and less motivated, and moods changed (see previous post) I felt less inclined to continue. To cut a long story short, and a story I'll recant over the next few posts, I'll try and bring things up to date, for any one who is interested, used to read this blog, or has stumbled upon it from some link or other.

A large amount has changed, including my location in Sweden (good bye Skåne, see you in hell!), my occupational status, and thankfully, my outlook. Anyhow, it also felt good to try and write something again as a way of getting my brain back in gear. So, that's my aim, we can only pray I have some discipline and some inspiration again.

Immigrant Blues

It's been a long time since my last post. The main reason has been that from January onwards I've been feeling fairly down and my outlook on life has been pretty dark. I've been struggling with a fairly shitty job, the stress of adjusting to life as a parent and feelings of loneliness. I've felt like a person simply shuttling between jobs, overwhelmed by the challenge of dealing with an extraordinarily dysfunctional workplace, and stuck in a rut with the development of my Swedish. I've often felt like an invisible person shuttling from job to job with little or no social contact outside the forced relations at work and the safe haven of my small new family.

These factors all finally took their toll and as a consequence I didn't much feel like writing or felt that I had much to share.

A few months ago I started a course of counselling. The therapy sessions, although ongoing, have really helped me and I now feel less despondent. As a consequence my mood has lightened a little recently so I felt it would be a good time to start trying to find small bits of time to blog.

Recently a lot has happened to me. Some of it has been good, some bad, some neither of those things, but all of it was noteworthy in some way. The biggest news perhaps is that I've finally sold my apartment in London and my connections to London are now only those few good friends I left behind over eighteen months ago. I'm happy that from now on I'll only be paying rent and not a mortgage on a property that has stood empty for eight months.

My girlfriend and I are also getting married this summer, and on the 13th of August (assuming she doesn't murder me before then) we'll be tieing the knot up in her home town of Bollnäs. We're planning on moving closer to that part of the country in the next year or so as neither of us is particularly at home in Malmö and haven't made too many friends whilst we've lived here. Selling my apartment was a great first step, and thanks to the overpriced London property market, we will now be able to buy a nice house in Hälsingland with a very small mortgage.

Anyway, if you've checked the blog and wondered what happened there it is. I feel motivated to write again, so hopefully the next post won't be four months away.

dysfunction junction - notes from working life in a small Swedish software company

I've had blogger's block these last few weeks. That coupled with being up early to work out, and caring for my daughter at night hasn't left a huge amount of time to record what's being going on. So I've procrastinated and not felt I've had much to report on.

Whilst this malaise and period of lethargy took hold of me, I have continued to work for a small company who have a Intranet software solution for franchise companies. I'm working in a team whose mandate is to improve the product, replace legacy code, and fix any bugs that get reported. As approximately three and a half months have passed since I joined the company I thought it would be interesting to summarise my thoughts so far.

So far, I've figured out how the system 'works', to use a sofware development terminology it's a big ball of mud which is a polite way of describing a mess. The challenge is the sheer size of the application, the lack of any coherent architecture and horrible code. To compound this problem you have (although better, but far from perfect) code bolted on, which is a bit like building a luxury condo on rapidly eroding cliff.

Not only do large sections of the product need updating, but the way the small development team works needs fixing. Each person works on their own project with little or no interaction with the others. Communication is infrequent or non existent, to the extent that people sitting feet away from each other often type Skype instant messages to each other rather than just opening their mouths. Last weekend one of our clients was annoyed as no one responded to an email he sent out of hours over the weekend. When a subsequent witch hunt / post mortem was held, I pointed out that if you assume that a group of people will respond, precisely this situation will arise. If however, you actually put in a out of hours cover rota, and have an explicit person handle it each weekend, you reduce the risk of this sort of thing occurring. The owner didn't see it this way, and it felt like he was trying to do it on the cheap, as at no stage has anyone mentioned to me that I should be checking the support emails out of office hours, and for me it summarized the company's problems perfectly.

The owner of the company doesn't seem to trust the developers, and also wants me (as I worked running a similar team in my last job) to help address and improve things. This puts me in a difficult position, I've been hired as a grunt, a software developer, at the risk of sounding obtuse, where's my incentive to put too much into this role? My long term plans don't involve Malmö, or Skåne, I doubt the owner will want to stump up a higher salary, so although I'll work to make sure things run smoothly, my motivation is low. You may think this is cynical and a tad inflexible, but then again, that's how the old employment foxtrot goes.

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.