I’ve sent about 30 pages of emails this morning, so frankly I can’t be buggered to write a whole load here at the moment, so I’m gonna cheat and post some exerts from the mails instead:
On the subject of work I’m having a truly mad time. I’ve been given 4 weeks to come up to speed and a reading / study list a mile long. The week I’ve been doing windows internals, processes, threads, memory blah blah blah. Its very very geeky and very very fascinating. It’s a bit of a challenge for me in truth, but then its nice to be pushed. I talk to the people around me, just the other SQL guys mostly and many of them have been at MS for 10 years or so, and they know so damn much. It feels like its going to be hard to contribute something at the moment. I reckon I will be fine because I trust my ability to do support at the end of the day, but its forcing me to push myself far beyond what I’ve had to in recent years. If this makes it sounds bad though, I’m describing it badly. Its truly the most brilliant techie geeky fun I’ve ever had, and I can’t wait to actually start working on real customer problems. I actually managed this week to answer a SQL question to one of my colleagues when he needed some help, so this may me feel good, and reminded me that I do know something….
Seriously though, life here is pretty sweet. I’m still integrating administratively because the Swedes have a compulsory identity card scheme (sounds familiar?), which I haven’t received yet and without which you can’t do bugger all. My application is accepted its just at the processing centre currently, so I’m waiting on this. For example I bought a car last week, but they won’t give it to me without my identity card, and I couldn’t insure it either. I can’t open an account mobile, so I’m on Swedish PAYG system currently, and if I wasn’t living in a hotel still, I’d be having trouble registering my utility bills. Its airly all pervading but then there are apparently benefits. Once you are registered, it truly does track everything. Now obviously you could arugue whether this was good or bad from a freedom of information point of view, I have met Swedes who go both ways about whether its good or bad, but the major benefits is that their technology is completely properly integrated across all government departments, meaning that for example if ou change your address, you just tell these people and they inform everyone, and I mean absolutely everyone, automatically for you. Apparently when you do a tax return, they already know EVERYTHING about you income and expenditure and they just send the form to sign and approve. The guy sitting next to me at work did his by SMS last year apparently!!
Stockholm is slowly starting to green up now. Tonight is the big festival where we celebrate the arrival of spring (and therefore have public holiday tomorrow). On another note there are 6 further bank holidays before end of June – go Sweden!! But there’s gonna be some huge bonfires lit and various weird games and stuff like “hit the cat out of the barrel”, don’t know what this is yet, but it starts at 8.15 tonight. Also apparently everyone wears sailors caps and throws them in the air a lot..we’ll shall see, I’ll no doubt put some photos up on flickr next week.
Sunday, April 30, 2006
Wednesday, April 19, 2006
First days in a new job....
The obvious question from the previous post having just read it back (and looked at the photo) is why are you drinking beer for breakfast? Well obviously I’m not, but the point of this story is that you can eat pickled gherkins with whatever the hell you want, whether it be whilst drinking beer in the evening or with cheese and crisp breads in the morning
So anyway…..1 week later and here we are.
What with everything being closed for Easter we kinda had to stop sorting stuff out as everything closed down, so we just spent a few days hanging out and doing the Stockholm tourist thing. You can see the photos on flickr, its been a sunny few days, everything is starting to green up a it with hints of spring and the city is looking better and better.
We went walking at the nature reserve which is just up the road from us for a few hours on Monday and that completed a fairly chilled weekend of the usual type of thing from home really – cooking, eating, drinking, walking, hanging out in town. It was all good and the right way to be before the start of a new job.
So come Tuesday morning it was time to go to work – I must say compared to some jobs I felt decidedly relaxed the night before and I slept quite well. The morning came round and I headed off for my huge 3 minute walk to work. Quite a change from 90 minutes on London public transport.
I think I felt so relaxed because of the fact that I’d met so many of my colleagues in a fairly social situation at the interview stage and kinda felt that I knew what I was getting into.
Anyway the first morning, Alf, my new boss spent the morning driving us around to complete a few more of our administrative tasks. First off we went to Bostad to sign the contract on our new house. Then we went to the tax office to apply for a social security number. This all seemed to go frightening well until today at lunchtime they phoned me back to say that the copies of documents that I’d submitted were not correct and that we didn’t to provide some more info. Anyway – its all moving in the right direction if nothing else. It’ll be a while before I get a bank account, and therefore a while before I get paid, and it also turns out that I can’t pick up the car that we ought until I have a social security number from the tax office. At the end of the day though it all just takes a bit of time. We’re getting there.
Alf helped us a load yesterday anyway, translating for us in the offices etc. We also went to a couple of banks, but we couldn’t open accounts without the documents from the tax office. Its all quite chicken and egg really. Anyway onto Microsoft…
Even after 2 days in the office, the culture is distinctly noticeably different. Quite how much of this is down to Swedish work culture and how much is down to Microsoft I’m unsure as yet, but its been most pleasant so far.
Currently I’m just building and configuring my computers and the like. I could go on for ages about the amount and quality of kit that I have compared to BNY, but then this is probably taken as read! For those of you still at BNY though…..basically though I have a new server, a new tablet laptop, a couple of 19” flat screens wired together, a proper office chair and general cupboards, space and suitable equipment (basically it sure makes a change from buying all my own stuff whilst working for a bank). The space and comfort is very pleasing indeed.
Beyond my actual desk space, there’s the whole office environment generally. Everything is so damn spacious and comfy, there’s free fruit and drinks, the coffee is more than drinkable and you just kinda feel at home really. When I arrived my colleagues / boss had bought me a huge bunch of flowers and an easter egg to welcome me. Its just the little touches.
Obviously though I’m not saying that this is some great utopian vision of work life balance. At the end of the day the bank paid me nearly double what MS are paying, and frankly I was fine with that, cos it was a fair deal. I was happy with them being the crappiest damn employer in terms of anything but money, cos well they paid they fair due. The true trouble is that there were tons of people who weren’t being paid their fair worth who were being paid their crappy London impossible to live on salaries, and its those people that deserve to be treated better with all the benefits when the sheer financial strength of the package is not up to it. I guess I’m experienced and lucky enough to realise this, having worked for enough dumb ass financial houses and the like, but it must be tough for others in a different position. I’m just gonna enjoy the change of culture for a while yet…..
Everyone seems busy in the much the same way as any office, and everyone has the usual stuff going down – “we can’t afford that because of budget constraints” – “we need to focs on customer satisfaction” – the usuals, nothing surprising, but the pace, the people, the plesantness, the overall vibe for want of a better word is different. I think so far that I weigh on the side of this being the Swedish thing as against the MS thing, but we’ll see. After all I have worked for suitably trendy dot com startups in the UK – and the kinda tried to promote that feeling I think but it just couldn’t quite be managed.
Anyway enough the moment, if anyone has read this far then congratulations and respect to your great stamina! Many more things happened today, inside and outside of work, but I reckon I’ve had enough typing for the moment.
So anyway…..1 week later and here we are.
What with everything being closed for Easter we kinda had to stop sorting stuff out as everything closed down, so we just spent a few days hanging out and doing the Stockholm tourist thing. You can see the photos on flickr, its been a sunny few days, everything is starting to green up a it with hints of spring and the city is looking better and better.
We went walking at the nature reserve which is just up the road from us for a few hours on Monday and that completed a fairly chilled weekend of the usual type of thing from home really – cooking, eating, drinking, walking, hanging out in town. It was all good and the right way to be before the start of a new job.
So come Tuesday morning it was time to go to work – I must say compared to some jobs I felt decidedly relaxed the night before and I slept quite well. The morning came round and I headed off for my huge 3 minute walk to work. Quite a change from 90 minutes on London public transport.
I think I felt so relaxed because of the fact that I’d met so many of my colleagues in a fairly social situation at the interview stage and kinda felt that I knew what I was getting into.
Anyway the first morning, Alf, my new boss spent the morning driving us around to complete a few more of our administrative tasks. First off we went to Bostad to sign the contract on our new house. Then we went to the tax office to apply for a social security number. This all seemed to go frightening well until today at lunchtime they phoned me back to say that the copies of documents that I’d submitted were not correct and that we didn’t to provide some more info. Anyway – its all moving in the right direction if nothing else. It’ll be a while before I get a bank account, and therefore a while before I get paid, and it also turns out that I can’t pick up the car that we ought until I have a social security number from the tax office. At the end of the day though it all just takes a bit of time. We’re getting there.
Alf helped us a load yesterday anyway, translating for us in the offices etc. We also went to a couple of banks, but we couldn’t open accounts without the documents from the tax office. Its all quite chicken and egg really. Anyway onto Microsoft…
Even after 2 days in the office, the culture is distinctly noticeably different. Quite how much of this is down to Swedish work culture and how much is down to Microsoft I’m unsure as yet, but its been most pleasant so far.
Currently I’m just building and configuring my computers and the like. I could go on for ages about the amount and quality of kit that I have compared to BNY, but then this is probably taken as read! For those of you still at BNY though…..basically though I have a new server, a new tablet laptop, a couple of 19” flat screens wired together, a proper office chair and general cupboards, space and suitable equipment (basically it sure makes a change from buying all my own stuff whilst working for a bank). The space and comfort is very pleasing indeed.
Beyond my actual desk space, there’s the whole office environment generally. Everything is so damn spacious and comfy, there’s free fruit and drinks, the coffee is more than drinkable and you just kinda feel at home really. When I arrived my colleagues / boss had bought me a huge bunch of flowers and an easter egg to welcome me. Its just the little touches.
Obviously though I’m not saying that this is some great utopian vision of work life balance. At the end of the day the bank paid me nearly double what MS are paying, and frankly I was fine with that, cos it was a fair deal. I was happy with them being the crappiest damn employer in terms of anything but money, cos well they paid they fair due. The true trouble is that there were tons of people who weren’t being paid their fair worth who were being paid their crappy London impossible to live on salaries, and its those people that deserve to be treated better with all the benefits when the sheer financial strength of the package is not up to it. I guess I’m experienced and lucky enough to realise this, having worked for enough dumb ass financial houses and the like, but it must be tough for others in a different position. I’m just gonna enjoy the change of culture for a while yet…..
Everyone seems busy in the much the same way as any office, and everyone has the usual stuff going down – “we can’t afford that because of budget constraints” – “we need to focs on customer satisfaction” – the usuals, nothing surprising, but the pace, the people, the plesantness, the overall vibe for want of a better word is different. I think so far that I weigh on the side of this being the Swedish thing as against the MS thing, but we’ll see. After all I have worked for suitably trendy dot com startups in the UK – and the kinda tried to promote that feeling I think but it just couldn’t quite be managed.
Anyway enough the moment, if anyone has read this far then congratulations and respect to your great stamina! Many more things happened today, inside and outside of work, but I reckon I’ve had enough typing for the moment.
Friday, April 14, 2006
Beer and Pickles
need I say more? well...my breakfast now translates as folows:
marmite on toast = cheese and pickled gherkins on crisp bread
mmmm....
Categories: stockholmlife
marmite on toast = cheese and pickled gherkins on crisp bread
mmmm....
Categories: stockholmlife
The fallacy of expensive Sweden
So I've been here 4 days now, and as I suspected, and told a few people, everyone's expectations of Sweden being very pricey seem to be completely wrong. I qualify this with 2 caveats:
1. I agree that tax is High - but then of course I think this is a good thing cos it leads to high investment and a wel run country - ok this is a HUGE generalisation, but maybe you get the simple point.
2. alcohol and purchased in bars / restaurants is more expensive than London. Bearing in mind the exchange rate (VISA are currently doing it about 12.7 - this is the true tourist rate) - a beer costs 50 SEK = £3.94 and spirits are equivalent. I guess this is why everyone sees the country as like this - they come on holiday - they drink - they think its expensive. Its not like Spain for sure.....
that apart - eating out (food only) alcohol from the off licence, public transport, housing, cars, petrol, hotels, supermarket bills, CDs, mobile phones and calls - they're all the same or cheaper. (unless I have my rose tinted glasses on - that would be as opposed to my beer goggles of course)
Ok so this isn't exactly the RPI example contents but you get the point.
Am I complaining? No ;-)
Ok, so I accept there are a couple of expensive other things I've found - but you get the point.
That apart I still feel poor as I've taken a huge pay cut to come here ;-)
Categories: stockholmlife
1. I agree that tax is High - but then of course I think this is a good thing cos it leads to high investment and a wel run country - ok this is a HUGE generalisation, but maybe you get the simple point.
2. alcohol and purchased in bars / restaurants is more expensive than London. Bearing in mind the exchange rate (VISA are currently doing it about 12.7 - this is the true tourist rate) - a beer costs 50 SEK = £3.94 and spirits are equivalent. I guess this is why everyone sees the country as like this - they come on holiday - they drink - they think its expensive. Its not like Spain for sure.....
that apart - eating out (food only) alcohol from the off licence, public transport, housing, cars, petrol, hotels, supermarket bills, CDs, mobile phones and calls - they're all the same or cheaper. (unless I have my rose tinted glasses on - that would be as opposed to my beer goggles of course)
Ok so this isn't exactly the RPI example contents but you get the point.
Am I complaining? No ;-)
Ok, so I accept there are a couple of expensive other things I've found - but you get the point.
That apart I still feel poor as I've taken a huge pay cut to come here ;-)
Categories: stockholmlife
I bought car yesterday
which is quite weird after 10 years without one. Its blue VW Golf. Its nice, I wanted a Volvo V50 dual fuel eco car (I've got the saloon version hired at the moment) but couldn't bring myself to spend the extra 7 grand. Buying a car was bad enough after all these years. Buy hey we got a good deal (I think!) from the dealer, we get free insurance for 3 months, half price insurance for 2 years, its still guaranteed and its about 15 months old.
He even gave us 5000 SEK off when we couldn't choose which colour we wanted and because Sarah kept pointing out chips in the paint work of each one we looked at. The truth is of course that EVERY car in Sweden has chips in the paintwork after 5 minutes because of all the gravel they drop on the road during winter. But hey I wasn't complaining.....it was decidely painless experience after all this time, and I was never going to be one to haggle.
Mabe I'll trade it in for a volvo when the house has sold ;-)
Categories: stockholmlife, cars
He even gave us 5000 SEK off when we couldn't choose which colour we wanted and because Sarah kept pointing out chips in the paint work of each one we looked at. The truth is of course that EVERY car in Sweden has chips in the paintwork after 5 minutes because of all the gravel they drop on the road during winter. But hey I wasn't complaining.....it was decidely painless experience after all this time, and I was never going to be one to haggle.
Mabe I'll trade it in for a volvo when the house has sold ;-)
Categories: stockholmlife, cars
Last night in the UK - Sunday 9th April
great memories - thanks guys. This is one of out better photos as a group eh?
Categories: londonlife, friends, moving
Categories: londonlife, friends, moving
Wednesday, April 12, 2006
First full day in Stockholm
So here we are, waking up to our first full day in Stockholm.
I feel very very strange indeed. The last days have been pretty dan freaky frankly. James & Prima's wedding was totally great at the weekend, both nights were amazing fun. Sunday night then we went out with Tom, Karen, Steve and Jon and had some tapas and beers and a few laughs together. It was a fine was to spend my last night. Since then I've been a huge mix of really string emotions ranging from excitement, fear, trepidation, sadness, and some which I don;t really have the vocabulary for which could only be described as "come on then - I'm mad for it" - and "we're here - we've done it".
Monday during the day was spent packing and we saw all our parents at various points during the day, which was nice, but difficult as we hadn't alot of time to devote to them at that point as we were just running around packing madly.
In the morning Airpets came and took the cats away, and that was pretty damn tough. Sarah was in tears and I was quite choked. I know they'll be cool - but we're just a bit soppy about them, it'l be good when they arrive here. But that'll be a few weeks yet I expect.
Up until that point I'd fairly held it all together, with saying goodbye to everyone and all the organisation. I was just treating it like a project of things to do I guess and some of the size of it all hadn't really hit me. That night my last task before going out to grab some food down the road for dinner, was to take the compost up to the top of the garden. Now the top of the garden is probably my favourite place of all within that house and I just lost it completely and was in floods of tears, standing looking out across the park and the downs, the sun was setting, the sky was orange and beatifully lit, the birds were singing a dusk chorus and frankly it was a stunning evening and seemed to encompass everything that was good about living there. For about 30 minutes I was just absolutely gone, couldn't talk, couldn't communicate, just sobbing incessantly (as I am now a bit writing this!). This just kinda brought out everything else for me, and I was wailing at Sarah and well, it was both good and bad. Good to get it out I think. I thought alot at that point about all the people I was leaving behind. The thing is however much I know I'll see the people the question, I will miss them terribly and i will miss being able to just give them a call and meet up that same day or whatever. That's a tough thing to let go. When you're feeling like that everything seems a bit intense eh.
anyway.....
So last night, having arrived and sorted out the car hire etc. We checked into our apartment hotel. Its right next to work and it's just like a normal hotel really, apart from only part time reception and no restaurant. Obviously the benefits above that are that we have a small kitchenette and a fridge / freezer etc, with various pots and pans. Basically most cooking is possible apart from there is no oven.
We then went off to see 2 houses. The first was nice but they wouldn't take cats (mistake by the estate agent there) so we left fairly quickly. The second was really nice in a fantastic location overlooking a big lake with loads of great woodland and lakeside walking right outside. the owners were the most friednly people ever and we ended up staying for 90 minutes having loads of tea , cake and ice cream with them, and they then took us on a walking tour of the local area!! It was quite strange at first because of not being used to the hospitality of that type, but once you get over that, then it was fine. The only thing was that we didn't really want their house, as its not available until the end of June earliest, and I don;t want to live in a hotel until then. But hey, it was a great evening, we chatted alot and asked them questions about life and stuff, it was useful, and they got to chat to us about England as well because their son was going to university there in October.
So then we came home, grabbed a couple of snacks, because we'd stayed too long in that house viewing and all the supermarkets were shut, and had an early night. It had been a long and strange and quite emotional day, but surprisingly I slept quite well.
Categories: stockholmlife, moving
I feel very very strange indeed. The last days have been pretty dan freaky frankly. James & Prima's wedding was totally great at the weekend, both nights were amazing fun. Sunday night then we went out with Tom, Karen, Steve and Jon and had some tapas and beers and a few laughs together. It was a fine was to spend my last night. Since then I've been a huge mix of really string emotions ranging from excitement, fear, trepidation, sadness, and some which I don;t really have the vocabulary for which could only be described as "come on then - I'm mad for it" - and "we're here - we've done it".
Monday during the day was spent packing and we saw all our parents at various points during the day, which was nice, but difficult as we hadn't alot of time to devote to them at that point as we were just running around packing madly.
In the morning Airpets came and took the cats away, and that was pretty damn tough. Sarah was in tears and I was quite choked. I know they'll be cool - but we're just a bit soppy about them, it'l be good when they arrive here. But that'll be a few weeks yet I expect.
Up until that point I'd fairly held it all together, with saying goodbye to everyone and all the organisation. I was just treating it like a project of things to do I guess and some of the size of it all hadn't really hit me. That night my last task before going out to grab some food down the road for dinner, was to take the compost up to the top of the garden. Now the top of the garden is probably my favourite place of all within that house and I just lost it completely and was in floods of tears, standing looking out across the park and the downs, the sun was setting, the sky was orange and beatifully lit, the birds were singing a dusk chorus and frankly it was a stunning evening and seemed to encompass everything that was good about living there. For about 30 minutes I was just absolutely gone, couldn't talk, couldn't communicate, just sobbing incessantly (as I am now a bit writing this!). This just kinda brought out everything else for me, and I was wailing at Sarah and well, it was both good and bad. Good to get it out I think. I thought alot at that point about all the people I was leaving behind. The thing is however much I know I'll see the people the question, I will miss them terribly and i will miss being able to just give them a call and meet up that same day or whatever. That's a tough thing to let go. When you're feeling like that everything seems a bit intense eh.
anyway.....
So last night, having arrived and sorted out the car hire etc. We checked into our apartment hotel. Its right next to work and it's just like a normal hotel really, apart from only part time reception and no restaurant. Obviously the benefits above that are that we have a small kitchenette and a fridge / freezer etc, with various pots and pans. Basically most cooking is possible apart from there is no oven.
We then went off to see 2 houses. The first was nice but they wouldn't take cats (mistake by the estate agent there) so we left fairly quickly. The second was really nice in a fantastic location overlooking a big lake with loads of great woodland and lakeside walking right outside. the owners were the most friednly people ever and we ended up staying for 90 minutes having loads of tea , cake and ice cream with them, and they then took us on a walking tour of the local area!! It was quite strange at first because of not being used to the hospitality of that type, but once you get over that, then it was fine. The only thing was that we didn't really want their house, as its not available until the end of June earliest, and I don;t want to live in a hotel until then. But hey, it was a great evening, we chatted alot and asked them questions about life and stuff, it was useful, and they got to chat to us about England as well because their son was going to university there in October.
So then we came home, grabbed a couple of snacks, because we'd stayed too long in that house viewing and all the supermarkets were shut, and had an early night. It had been a long and strange and quite emotional day, but surprisingly I slept quite well.
Categories: stockholmlife, moving
Sunday, April 09, 2006
Farthing Downs in Spring
Our last day out walking in the UK for a fair old while, but what a day to go. We walked from the old house at Coulsdon, up farthing downs and then out past chaldon in the Downlands Circular Walk. As you can see the weather was spectacular and when we reached the farthest point, on the north downs way itself, we could look back towards London and see all the way to the West end and Docklands. Along this walk we saw many things that encompassed the thoughts and feelings of the past 7 years, 2 houses, working in the city, much beautiful outdoors, and a lot of silence and thought, setting your mind ready for the next stage. Its wierd I've spent all my time walking here in the last few years, thinking about what life may bring me as my mind wanders and meanders along, in a totally relaxed state, and now here we were realigning our thoughts for relocation and a big change. We then looped back the the fox for lunch and then the last few miles home. About 12 miles in all and a great great way to say goodbye to the UK. It doesn't get much better than that. Then its off to the weddings and to say goodbye to everyone.
Categories: londonlife, walking
Categories: londonlife, walking
Can I come to Stockholm with you?
Its the last day together for us and the cats. Kipper obviously wants to come with us which is why he's sitting in the packing box. Little does he know that he's off to stay in the cat hotel with Daisy tomorrow morning. They got their passports now, its just that we haven't got a house yet and they can't stay in our hotel. It'll be sad - we'll probably cry when they leave, but I met with people at Airpets last week, and they're really nice and super friendly with their animals, so I know they'll be in good hands. Maybe we'll give them tuna for tea as a treat....
Categories: cats, stockholmlife
Categories: cats, stockholmlife
Monday, April 03, 2006
The final BNY leaving party
So here it is - number 7 , the last blowout. The question here is, Am I?
1. celebrating a Crystal Palace goal from the game coincidentally on in the background of the bar we were in.
or
2. Attempting a ghost impression
3. dancing in a very drunken fashion
answers on a postcard....
Categories: londonlife
1. celebrating a Crystal Palace goal from the game coincidentally on in the background of the bar we were in.
or
2. Attempting a ghost impression
3. dancing in a very drunken fashion
answers on a postcard....
Categories: londonlife
The winner
enough said - the iron gamer 2004 is settled.....it took 18 months but finally we're there - god it was close - last game, last round, everybody in it. blimey - it made mario kart special cup seem like a walk in the park.
Categories: londonlife
Categories: londonlife
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