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.