Even Flow..

Sorry, I'm a bad blogger. I promised a lot of people to blog about my move to Sweden, but I haven't. And since I still don't have a mobile phone subscription, I can't use twitter as I used to, every moment of the day. The short version is in the title: Sweden is awesome and I broke a finger.

The somewhat longer version is that life is great here. Me and Kasia are doing great; I'm having such a great time being with her. Work is great too. I'm doing pretty cool stuff, both coding and tinkering with networks and unix systems to squeeze out every possibility to get even better performance. We're currently serving 50 million ads a day (and yes, online ads.. I sold my soul) with just a hand full of servers, running a Ruby application. The team I'm working with consists of only smart an experienced people, which makes it even better. I'm learning every day.

My Swedish isn't really great yet. I've signed up for a course, but I have to wait some months to start, since it's fully booked. In the mean time I'm doing some Rosetta Stone, but not so much. I hear a lot of Swedish at work, but everybody speaks English, so there is no real need to speak Swedish. Reading is not so hard, since there are a lot of commonalities with Dutch, but speaking is a lot more difficult.  However, I had a small breakthrough yesterday, when I went to the hairdresser. She doesn't speak English, so I was forced to speak Swedish and I had an actual (and pretty decent) conversation with her! I guess it's all about not being shy and just try.

Swedes are friendly people and very modest. Business is somewhat different than in the Netherlands. For example, meetings are different. In the Netherlands, often people go into a meeting with a goal. Decisions should be made. A general consensus is OK, but there should be a result after a meeting. Here it's different. Meetings are for listening to people and talk about the stuff that needs attention, but decisions are made at the coffee machine. I read some articles about this and some said that Swedish mentality is closer to the way people do business in Belgium, but I'm not sure. Belgians seem far more hierarchical; one person is the boss. Here, it's more about compromises and talking.

Some people asked me if Sweden is expensive. I guess it can be, but apart from the alcohol, it feels a bit like the Netherlands. Of course my salary is in Swedish Kronor, so it's harder to compare, but I don't really have the feeling that products are that more expensive here. I must admit that I'm not very price aware, so it's more a gut feeling. VAT is higher; 25% and 12% instead of 19% and 6%, but I guess you get a lot back from that. Alcohol is excessively expensive though. Half a liter (note to Wayne: "I'm sorry sir, I don't know what a liter is") of beer costs roughly Euro 6,50 in a bar and a Mojito is roughly Euro 13,-. Next to that, you can't buy wine or (normal) beer in the supermarket. There is only one company that sells alcohol and it's run by the government and there a bottle of beer is about Euro 1,50. In the supermarket you can buy 3.5% vol. beer, but that just tastes like water.

But you get a lot back for the stuff you pay. Public transport is good. I think it's better than in the Netherlands. Metro runs pretty much on time (in the Dutch meaning of the word) and often. Swedes tend to have a thing for time. If the metro is 3 minutes late, it's late. 13 past the hour isn't a quarter past, it's 13 past. Interesting difference.

Another thing you get is health care. Paying for that is done through taxes, directly. Not through strange systems with insurance companies. If you need health care, you will get it. Everybody is equal. The first 900 kr (90 euro's) per year, you'll have to pay by yourself, and then it's free for 365 days.

How do I know this? Experience. 3 weeks ago I broke my right ring finger. I went snow boarding with a friend and at the beginning of the first run, I touched the ground with my hand while trying to keep balance. It hurt, but I thought that it would be just a contusion. It wasn't even a cool crash or anything and I had been standing on my board for only 5 seconds. I went to the first aid at the slope to have it checked, but the guy there said it was probably only a contusion and that it was just a little bit swollen. so, I continued boarding for a couple of hours. My finger turned blue and purple the next day, but when the swelling disappeared after a couple of days. I still couldn't move it and it still hurt, so I decided to see a doctor and after some x-rays it turned out to be broken. At the hospital, I got a cast that is coming off today. I'm actually sitting at the hospital while writing this piece. I just had x-rays and I have a doctors appointment in an hour. Hope it healed a bit and that they'll take off the cast, because it's really uncomfortable and typing is pretty hard.

I'll try to make some more time in the future to blog and I hope I can get a mobile subscription soon, so I'm able to be online a bit more. But I'm alright!