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...
Sunday, 20 January 2013
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.
Tuesday, 8 January 2013
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.
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.
Thursday, 29 March 2012
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.
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.
Thursday, 8 March 2012
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.
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.
Tuesday, 28 February 2012
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.
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.
Saturday, 28 May 2011
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.
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.
Wednesday, 19 January 2011
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.
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.
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