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")
Great post! I have a few gripes of my own about here too, but trying to see everything as an adventure, we'll see how long that lasts!
ReplyDeleteOooh my first comment! :D
ReplyDeleteI keep reading that the first few months are the "awesome adventure!" phase. After that, the next few months are the "this place isn't as good as home" phase. And of course, after that, the "meh, i'm used to it now" phase.
Thing is for me, I seem to be able to adapt pretty quickly to living somewhere new so to me, this is just another city. Granted it's IN EUROPE(!) but I've never been too worked up about these sorts of things. Maybe I'm too laid back for my own good. :P
Keep Posting PK!
ReplyDeleteYeah laid back is good - I guess I'm just impatient! I liked your blog about all the 7-11s - I thought the same, then realised they were so different from regular 7-11s we should sue them for false advertising!
ReplyDelete