Quick Trip to London

Last week I had to go to London for a work seminar. I use italics because I would never complain about going to another country for ANY reason. Ok, well, maybe not for being jailed.

I digress.

While there I met with quite a few of my work collegues for three days - which was great. Always nice to meet the people behind the name in an email. Aside from the chance to meet everyone in an informal manner I also got some great info out of my contacts as it relates to work. That's what those of us in the business world call "Win-freaking-Win!" Wait... maybe that's Peter Griffen who says that... Aaaaanywho.

I made plenty use of The Underground (or as it's locally called, The Tube) for pretty much the entire 5 days I was there. While not as clean or spacious or new as Stockholm's Tunnelbana, it was rather pleasant. Maybe it's cuz I'm sucker for history and appreciated for what it was as plenty of the locals would bag on it. Which is their right, they do live there afterall.

While 3 of my days were mainly business I did get to explore during the weekend.

Friday night was drinks out with a friend (and former co-worker at two companies). Good conversation and some great general insight into London itself. Made mental notes for future trips.

Saturday I made the pilgrimage up to The Emrites and went shopping for some Arsenal gear. Go Gunners! After that I met a friend from the States and some of her international friends for drinks - was quite a good day.

Sunday was the day I had to fly back, but not before I took a bus tour in the rain when it was about 4-5C out. Typical London weather I'm told. Regardless I took a bunch of photos (some pretty good, others not so much - they're a bit tilted. Apparently I couldn't hold my phone too steady. :(

All and all it was a lot of fun but I really need to go back and explore the place more in depth. Seeing it all on the back of a bus doesn't really do it justice.

Oh, final thought - London, I figured out why there is so much trash on the ground. You have ZERO garbage cans. Put some up on every corner, problem solved. You're welcome. I'll see you later.

Almost there...

Ok, it's been a while since I've posted. Apologies - I've been busy/without the intarwebs.

So a fair amount has gone on since I last posted. Some of it good, much of it meh. Lets start with the good, and then cover the meh. Not sure what that says about me as a person seeing as I want to lead with good news and leave you with the bad.

Anywho... I apologize for the bulleted formatting. It's kind of my thing. I love using it at work as it's a great way to outline things in a simple and straightforward manner. Much like how I do most things.

Good:

• Finally got into my permanent flat in a nice part of Stockholm. There are a bunch of shops and resturants nearby that I've been slowly checking out. Lots of them actually. Oh, and I'm close to a subway (Tunnelbana, or T-bana) line so my daily commute is rather short - around 15 minutes. Much better than the 40+ minutes to and back I had been doing for the last 3 or 4 years. Plus I don't have to pay attention to driving, I can play some games on my phone, read the news, or (most likely) check work email.
• I travel to London for work in a week! Another new city to check out, except I don't have to pay for it! Will meet some work associates that are new people to me, as well as meet up with some old work associates that I never had the chance to meet. Should be a grand time. I do need to go back for a trip so I can spend more time exploring. A lot of history in London, and in the UK in general (all of the countries located therein).
• Riina (my cat) has passed her titer test, something to do with how much of the Rabies vaccine is present in her bloodstream, and is now eligible to join me in Stockholm! As it currently stands she just needs to have 2 more documents get signed by folks in the States and get a de-worming just prior to travel and then she's all mine again. :) I've missed her a ton. Prior to moving out here the longest I've been away from her was about 4 days. She isn't too thrilled when I leave for work every day so you can imagine how angry she's going to be with me after 2.5 months. :P
• Started my Swedish lessons and am coming along slowly. It's an interesting language, but thankfully some of the German I took in high school and college help me with pronunciation and generally looking at a word and understanding what it might mean in English. Right now my largest hurdle will be learning the odd rules / silent letters that plague any language. Note to self, when I have kids, teach them some of the more popular languages. I'd imagine it would be something like English, Spanish, French, German, Swedish, Russian, Chinese, & Arabic (unfortunately there isn't a predominant language in Africa). Man it would be cool to know all of those! That kid could travel just about anywhere and know a language close to the native one.

Meh:

• So I have my new flat, but I have none of my stuff from The U S of A. After not hearing much about it after 3 weeks of being here, I finally got word that it had been "delayed for several weeks." As you can imagine, that doesn't make me too pleased. To be honest, I'm not even 100% sure what I packed in there anymore (I have a list saved on a USB stick, don't worry) but I know that I NEED a lot of it to function like a normal human being. IE. I'd love to have dishes to eat off of and utensils to eat food off of said dishes with. Granted I can go buy that stuff if I *really* had to, but Stockholm ain't cheap kids and I'm not made of money. If that means I have to suck it up eating sandwiches for breakfast and dinner, so be it. I barely notice breakfast anyway as I eat while I get ready for work.
• Closely related to my first meh mention is related to entertainment. This may not be a big deal to some of you, but since my biggest hobby is playing video/computer games, not having my game consoles, or a higher end computer, is killing me. I'll sidestep the fact that I'm currently without internet at home too since I literally have no need for it; seeing as I don't have anything capable of using said internet at the moment. Sorry, I digressed - "Stay on target!" I know what you're all thinking: "OMG GO EXPLORE STOCKHOLM, ITS FREAKING EUROPE!" I'm aware of that, thank you. :) Since I'm not much of a party goer, nightclub fiend, etc. I'm just checking out some shops and more local sites at the moment. It is the winter so some of the things I want to do either may not be available, or I feel would be better served if I explored them during a much warmer period of time. So in short, I'm waiting to do the cool shit when it's nicer out. Especially since I'm slowly getting used to this whole "snow" thing again. Spent too long away from New York and got soft with the Left Coast way of life where it's between 50-90 almost all year.
• I don't know the language and I realize that it will take me quite some time to be anywhere close to conversational. Now I'm not annoyed that people can't speak English here, because as I've noted, they all do. Nor am I annoyed at how I'm progressing in my language class. No, I'm annoyed because I feel like I'm missing out on a lot by not knowing the language. Co-workers have told me this, friends have told me this, as have books, but just walking down the street and not understanding people that walk by you is a little... How to put this... unsettling? Not in a conspiratorial way, but just that odd sense of not knowing WTF is going on. Thankfully at work people quickly switch to English when appropriate, although I do have a sense of guilt for forcing them to not use their native tounge.
• Missing Riina. Studies and testimonies say that pets calm their owners. I can definitely say that's true of Riina. Granted she can be a brat at times, but she always puts me at ease after a long day at work. Or just if I'm having a bad day for some reason. Not having her around has left me more stressed in general. That combined with moving between 3 different places the last 2 months and how I fare with sleeping in unfamiliar places on unfamiliar furniture has left me very tired. I haven't slept well since I've moved here.

Ok, that was a large info dump. Hope I hit everything I wanted to, but at this point I'm quite hungry and would like to not be in the office for too much longer. I spend enough time here when I'm working. :P

Hej då!

Minor gripes

First off, sorry for the lack of updates. Work has kept me quite busy. Now that I have that out of the way, time for the update.

Gripe #1 - A lot of people smoke.

Mostly women too (turn off). Maybe i just didn't notice it much in the last few cities i lived in because i wasn't paying attention. Well I'm paying lots of attention here and ugh...

Gripe #2 - Currency Differences

 This one is mostly an issue with me, but I'll call it a gripe (you'll see). So the currency ratio is about 7 Kronor per US Dollar. I know this. I've memorized my times tables! But the fact remains I still view SEK (the abbreviation) as Monopoly money, its just not real. I know that's mean to say to a people who's country I've been welcomed into but it's hard to overcome when the ratio is that high. Anywho, while shopping the first few items I pick up I'm really paying attention to the price. Part of the way through I give up because the "funny money" notion creeps onto my brain. This could all be avoided if (and here is the gripe, told you it was coming) they used the freaking Euro! Sweden is part of the EU! And its not like their currency is strong against the dollar like the UKs is so I don't get why they don't adopt. I'll have to look into this.

Lastly, Gripe #3 - North American time zone differences.

I knew going into this gig that I'd still be communicating a lot with the various US teams and that it would be a challenge because of how far ahead in time I am. Which is +9 hours ahead of the Left Coast where most of my contacts are. As you can imagine this makes business calls a lot of fun. Luckily I start work a bit later than usual to counteract this but now I'm not only fighting a time zone change in terms of sleep schedule change, but also breaking my normal "hours of operation". I went from getting into work around 730 to starting work at 1000. On some level my brain is still rebelling against the very idea of this. Getting close to mastering this one, but not there just yet.

Well my work laptop's video card freaked out on me when I tried to start it up last night so I'm updating from my phone again. Big pain in the butt so I'm gonna sign off. Hopefully o can get that fixed Monday so I can update during the week. Definitely some more items worth mentioning.

Vi ses! (Swedish equivalent of "See you later")

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaand working again!

Well after the longest vacation I've had in 3 years, all 1.5 weeks of it, I am up and running at my new officebuilding. Felt good to start working again, after all that time off I almost didn't know what to do with myself, I was getting a little bored.

I can hear you all now - "But you just moved to Stockholm!" True, I did. But I did so during the holidays which meant a lot of places were closed. That doesn't mean I didn't go exploring though! I wandered around Stockholm (specifically the Sodermalm area) my first two days when I was put up in a hotel there for 2 days. Some nice sites, good eats, some interesting shopping. I'll have to visit again when things are open so I can take a closer look.

After the hotel I got my temporary flat - located in the Ostermalm area. I'm in a quiet area, and although there is a "mall" nearby, it's pretty much just a bunch of apartment buildings. I walked around a bit on New Year's and saw some of the more main roads near me. They didn't offer a whole lot, but the closer I got to Gamla Stan the more resturants and shops I saw. I didn't walk around Gamla Stan much but I DEFINITELY plan to as it has a lot more of the museum-y type things going on. Some of that rich history stuff I enjoy. :)

Ultimately I ended up in, what I believe is, downtown Stockholm. Lots of expensive shops, resturants, and bars - not really my thing but I'll check them out when I have more time. Some all around nice sites in the area anyway.

I'll upload some pictures when I can properly manage everything from my work laptop. Currently I don't have the rights to install anything so I'm a bit hamstrung at the moment. That's all for now, more later!

Hej då! (goodbye in Swedish)