Archive for the 'life' Category

Awesomeness and a broken finger

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!

Published at February 5, 2010 in english, life and sweden. 2 Comments

A new date – moving early

In my last post, I wrote about my plans for moving to Stockholm, Sweden. I forgot to mention the exact date, but later, I edited the post and said that it would be the 1st of February 2010. Over the last few weeks I've been speaking to people to find a job and I already had a job interview in Stockholm with a company that seems very interesting. Because I sold my shares in Jewel Labs and staying in the Netherlands will only cost me money, I decided (after discussing this with my colleagues, my family and my girl) to move to Stockholm early. The planning now is to move before the 1st of December. Of course, I still need to rent my apartment to someone (contacted some companies that rent stuff to expats) and find a job, but I know that everything will work out.

Published at September 15, 2009 in life, sweden and work. 0 Comments

Big news: I’m migrating

Let me just cut to the chase: I'm moving to Stockholm.

For real. Not just for a holiday, or something else. I'm moving there to start a new life. Some months ago, I met an incredible girl and fell in love. She's living in Stockholm, Sweden and since I've had a long distance relationship before, I know that being apart for too long is not going to work for me. We spoke about how a relationship would be possible and the only way seems to be close to each other. Because of circumstances, I would be the one that should move and after some consideration, I decided to take the plunge an just go.

Of course, there will be stuff and people that I leave behind. Family and friends, but Stockholm isn't so far (cheap 1.5 hour flights from and to Eindhoven), my house (I will rent it to someone), my company (this was actually the hardest part of the decision) and swimming with my visually impaired friends. I told most of the people close to me about my plans already (I'm really sorry for the people who I didn't tell yet. It's not something personal).

Since I want me and her to be boyfriend and girlfriend like other people, I will rent my own place at first. Next to that, I'm currently looking for a job as a Ruby developer in Stockholm, so if you happen to have connections there or you are looking for a developer in Stockholm, let me know. I deliberately decided to quit my current job, since I also want to build social life. I know it sucks for my current colleagues, but this is something I need to do. Some time ago (before I met her actually), I figured that I don't want to regret stuff I didn't do. Some things I did, I regret, but I learned from my mistakes, but not doing things that I could have done.. It's a whole different story.

My house, I will rent to someone. Preferably to a friend or an acquaintance, so if you would like live in Utrecht, 5 minutes from the central station, in the middle of the great neighborhood of Lombok, let me know. It's a two story house (about 85 m2) with a large living room, two bedrooms, kitchen, bathroom (with bath) and a small back yard. I'm considering renting it furnished, but this depends who is going to rent my house (I might do it through a rental company if I don't find someone I know).

Of course there will be things that I'm going to miss (think peanut butter, stroopwafels and other typical Dutch things), but most of all, I'll miss my friends and family. But since flying is cheap, I will still be able to see all of them. Because of the Internet, everybody is only 30ms away. The only thing is that if someone will visit me there, he or she needs to take alcohol, since in Sweden alcohol is very expensive. Swimming every Wednesday, I will miss. If there's anyone out there that wants to do some voluntary work and drive 2 or 3 people from Utrecht to Amersfoort once a week and swim for an hour, let me know. I've been doing this for over 2 years now and I still like it a lot.

Luckily people speak English very well in Sweden, but I've already started learning the Swedish language. I bought Rosetta Stone and I really like it. Swedish isn't so hard for Dutch people; there are a lot of similarities and the grammar is not so difficult (no cases, no conjugation of verbs), so I'll manage.

As said, I already told most people that are really close and I got great support from all of them. Since I've never done this before, I'm very open for advice from anyone. Over the coming months, I'll keep all of you updated on the progress I make on my blog and probably also on Twitter.

All in all, this feels like the right decision and I'm looking forward to living there, in a beautiful country, with a beautiful girl.

And oh, my cats will be moving too ;)

Edit: I forgot to mention the date. I'm moving before the 1st of February 2010

Published at September 7, 2009 in life, sweden, travel and work. 12 Comments

This years holiday

Since I've started taking lessons to ride a motorcycle, I decided not to go on a holiday this year. I'm going to both HAR2009 and Lowlands and thought that would be enough fun this summer, but things turned out differently. Currently, I'm in Stockholm, Sweden. My two colleagues are on a summer vacation for two weeks and I really didn't want to sit at the office by myself, so I decided to go to Stockholm. Since I can work anywhere when I have my laptop and an internet connection, I'm doing some work here. Next to that, I'm partying with friends and just having fun. Stockholm is a great city. Swedish culture is quite close to the Dutch one and even the language has a lot of resemblance (although it's hard to understand when spoken). Because I didn't want to travel by plane and wanted to see a bit more of Northern Europe, I drove here by car. It was a 16 hour drive, but it was doable. I left Utrecht at 7:30 in the morning and arrived here 15 hours later. Some days ago, we went on a booze cruise to Finland. It was a one-day trip in a big cruise ship (Love Boat style) from Stockholm to Aland. On the boat, there was a huge tax free shop where all Swedish people went crazy. I've never seen so many people buying so much alcohol. Apparently alcohol is expensive here.

Although the countries I drove through (Germany, Denmark and Sweden) are quite similar, there are some things that I noticed and I need to write down for future reference (I might edit this list over the course of my stay):

  • In Germany, a Frikadelbrotchen is something different than in the Netherlands.
  • Danish people can't drive. They stick on the left lane, which is quite annoying when you want to put the pedal to the metal.
  • Swedish ATMs and other machines that eat credit cards want your card upside down.
  • Supermarkets and other shops have an ingenious system of giving you cash change. Everything is automated.
  • Swedish highways are great. Not a lot of cars (except around Stockholm).
  • Parking is much cheaper in Sweden then in the Netherlands. Where I'm staying, it's 5 SEK (0,50 euro) per hour and 30 SEK (3 euro) for a whole day.
  • Traffic lights go to orange before switching to green (we should have this in NL too..)
  • Only saw one police car (without cops in it).
  • Most people drive exactly the maximum speed.
  • There are some nice rock and metal radio stations here in Stockholm. Not only mainstream crap.
  • There is a toll system in Stockholm. It's automated with license plate recognition, but I'm not sure if they can read mine and if, where and when I have to pay.
  • The bridges in Denmark and the one from Denmark to Sweden is awesome.
Published at July 25, 2009 in life and travel. 0 Comments

Festivals and other concerts

Over the last two weeks, I bought some tickets for the upcoming festival season and some concerts. I have no materialized ideas where I'll spend my summer holidays (thinking about a trip to Ukraine; Kiev, Crimea, Odessa), but I know which festivals and concerts I'll go to. For this year it will be Dredg (Melkweg), The Mars Volta (Paradiso), Hacking at Random (Vierhouten), Lowlands (Biddinghuizen) and Porcupine Tree (HMH)! Really looking forward to all these nice events!

Published at April 17, 2009 in life and music. 0 Comments

A Song

As some people might know (mostly close friends and family), last year, I wrote a song. I wrote it for my (then) girlfriend, initially on acoustic guitar and I planned to only play it a couple of times for her and keep it a private thing. After some time, I decided to make a non-acoustic version and recorded different instruments using my computer. The only problem was that I didn't have a good microphone to record the vocals and the drums were very flat, since I punched them in using a keyboard. But nevertheless, I distributed amongst some friends and family. As a birthday present from my Russian family, I got a session in a professional recording studio in Russia to record the vocals. Back home I mixed those in and the thing got better. Since I really wanted the thing to be sort of complete, I bought an electronic drum kit and recorded the drums as well. Just before christmas, my girlfriend broke up with me and my song was put on a shelf. I didn't listen to it for some time, but a couple of weeks ago, I played it again and I figured that I should do something with it. Today I decided to just put it in the wild for everybody to hear. The song is released under Creative Commons License.

Listen to it and let me know what you think. You can download it here.

Published at April 11, 2009 in life and music. 3 Comments

Birthday wrap-up

Some weeks ago, I got one year closer to the awful and frightening age of 30. The counter is at 28 now and I'm really afraid of losing my hair and turning gray after 30. Since I have my fathers hair, it's not likely that I'll get bald soon, but grey for sure. Anyway, this year, celebrating my birthday was awesome; I celebrated two times.  My actual birthday, I spent in Russia, which for obvious reasons was great. I flew east-bound on the 6th and turned 28 the same night at 0:00. Lena gave me my present (which I actually took with me from the Netherlands, but I didn't know what was in that strange looking package) just after midnight. She got me a binary watch, the ultimate geek wrist jewlery! The next day, my Russian family prepared a very nice lunch and I got meet Lena's grandfather. Communicating was hard, since my Russian is still very basic and her grandfathers English is pretty rusty. Anyway, I think we hit it off pretty well.

In the evening we went to a restaurant to celebrate with my Russian friends. Lena's family gave me half a day in a professional music studio to record the vocal tracks for a song I wrote for her a few months back. On Saturday we went there and it was super. I was pretty nervous to sing, but after 4 attempts, the sound engineer had enough stuff to make a mix. After 3 hours of montage, the vocals were ready and I was handed a CD. And no, I'm not going to publish it.

The next day, we were invited to a wedding of Lena's best friend. Very nice and interesting, since it was my first Russian wedding. Weddings there and here are different, but I'll not go into the details now. The experience itself was great. On Monday, the inevitable moment came to fly back. Always hard, but I managed.

The second part of my birthday was the Dutch version. I invited some Dutch friends and we celebrated at my house. The atmosphere was nice, although the party turned out to be a circle-party (typical Dutch party where people sit in a circle talking and I actually hate these kinds of parties), but the all beer and wine finished, someone puked and most were pretty drunk. After midnight we went out to the city center to continue celebrating. The pinnacle of the evening was a round of Vodka, where one of my friends decided to not pour the drink into his mouth, but splashed it into his eyes. Zanas!

Published at November 27, 2008 in english, life, russia and travel. 0 Comments

Tech and the visually impaired

For over 1.5 years now, I've been doing some voluntary work. Every week, I swim with visually impaired people. I pick them up by car and we drive to a swimming pool in another city. The group of people is quite large and it feels like some kind of community.  It's actually not about swimming, but more about social interaction. Over the last 1.5 years, I've gotten to know quite some people and often have very interesting discussions about the abilities and disabilities of the visually impaired. What really surprised me is the technology adoption level of most of the people I talk to. Almost everybody uses email and mobile phones to communicate. The youngest in the group is 23 years old and the oldest is over 85. Even the people that could easily be my grand parents use email all the time and browse the Internet a lot. I don't know a lot of people over 65 that are so actively involved in tech.

Since I am the proud owner of an iPhone, I handed my new gadget to some people last week and the reactions were quite interesting. Of course, this device is utterly useless for people that can't see (well), since there is only one button on the thing, that doesn't even allow you to call. Now, I notice a lot of touch screen devices appearing lately. Samsung, LG and Noka, among others have neat devices with just a piece of plastic that is used for user interaction. My guess is that in a couple of years, all phones will have touch displays and no more buttons. The same happened with color displays. Some years ago, there were only phones with black/white displays, but nowadays, there aren't a lot of these devices on the market anymore. I'm very curious to see how phone buttons evolve and if there are any manufacturers that keep an eye on visually impaired people. Maybe this is such a small market that it's not profitable, so only smaller companies will produce special (expensive) devices, but I hope not.

It's interesting to see how a whole group of people sometimes is just left out. In 2001, a similar thing happened with the Euro notes. Before, we had the Guilder (Gulden in Dutch) and on every bank note, there were dots of ink that you would be able to feel and would tell you what the value of the note was. This is currently not the case for Euro notes. There is no way to tell what value the note has, except by it's size. The higher the value, the bigger the note, but without any comparison, it's not easy to tell what kind of note you have, without seeing it. The difference between a 20 Euro and a 50 Euro note for example isn't that distinguishable. A lot of blind people carry special devices with which they can measure the size of the note, but obviously, this is very inconvenient. I really don't understand why the good idea of putting dots on a note wasn't inherited when the Euro was introduced.

Published at October 3, 2008 in life. 1 Comment

Life update

Just a quick update on life. Currently, I'm very busy finishing a project for one of my customers, which will be done by the 14th of October. A new project is already in the pipeline, for which I'm very eager to start with. The project will be about implementing a brand new Ruby on Rails application and I really can't wait to do some hardcore coding again. Being a freelance developer allows me to pick the projects I really like and after 6 months of managing people and talking a lot in meetings, it's time to dive into some code again. Next to that, there is another upcoming project that I started with a good friend of mine last year, but is now getting very serious. The planning is to rent some office space and start coding to finish the product before January.

For the rest, things are going well. Last weekend I travelled to St. Petersburg again (for obvious reasons). The weekend was so great. The only thing we did was visit a birthday party of some friends and the rest was just spending time together. I decided to fly from Dusseldorf this time, since it was a lot cheaper than from Amsterdam and the scheduled times were also much better (Friday in the afternoon and back on late Sunday evening). I flew with BlueWings, a German budget company, and the service was nice.

The day after returning, I suffered my usual post-Russia depression, but now I'm doing fine. I know that this was not the last time.

Published at September 10, 2008 in life, russia, travel and work. 0 Comments

And back online..

Today I realized that it's been over a month that I've blogged anything here. Lately, I've been kind of busy and spend less time online. Also other media have suffered my absence latetely. Various people even asked if I'm ok and asked about stories about NYC and Russia.

Actually, nothing happened. I'm ok, but kind of busy lately. In short, NYC was great; the HOPE conference was awesome with a lot of interesting speakers, a lot of fun stuff to do and to see. I really enjoyed my time there. The rest of NYC was also nice; I saw the stuff I didn't see before (couple of museums, neighborhoods, building) and with Bart and Ronald, I had a trip (in a Ford Mustang) to Atlantic City.

Russia was also great. Of course, the main thing was my girl and this was awesome. Therefore I'm back in Russia in the beginning of September. Next to that, I took extra Russian classes. I learned a lot, maybe too much. I really need to go over the lessons again to process the boost of information I got.

After coming back home, I really missed Russia. Obiously, her, but also all other people I got to know, the food, the language, the city. So, now I'm still recovering. Since a lot of people that work in my projects were on a holiday over the last two weeks, I've been working a lot to fill in for some of them, but now most of them are back and things are getting back to normal.

All in all, I'm feeling ok, maybe a bit tired from last weeks. I didn't really take rest during my holidays, so I think I'll need to recharge a bit over the coming weekends. And obviously, I can't wait to travel to Russia again!

For the people that missed me online: I'm back :)

Published at August 18, 2008 in english, life, russia and travel. 1 Comment
« Previous Entries