The Swedish Delight

Housekeeping

2007-04-24T21:21:00.000+01:00

Some random things that I feel need to be mentioned:

What's the difference between a tv and a MacBook? I actually know how to use a tv. This explains my lack of picture posting. I struggle in vain to project a knowledge of computers but really I don't keep up well with the latest options and have difficult setting up my own email accounts. Thus I have not posted any pictures, movies, youtube clips or even links to other blogs I read or stuff I like. You'll just have to learn to deal with it, although I'm still working on that picture thing....I just thought of the perfect example of this. The internet is so smart that it can tell I'm in Sweden but its not so smart to figure out that I can't read a word of Swedish. So all the ads that google gives me or all of the directions at the top of pages (such as this one) are in Swedish and of no use to me. I basically have to blindly click and hope that Nytt Inlagg is Swedish for new post (I only just learned that cuz I clicked it and here I am posting). If I was smarter with computers I'm sure I could fix this problem, but I'm not. Welcome to my world.

Speaking of pictures, I feel that you should know that I never learned how to smile correctly for them. I missed that day in class where they taught you which muscles to flex to get that perfect smile. I am a great fan of the candid photo, purely cuz it can actually catch me smiling and any posed photo involving me (which is like 98% of all photos taken) never seems to turn out great. To summarize, I'm still having a great time in all those photos, I just don't like to smile for them because I never learned how.

My blog postings have been pretty inconsistent which might lead you to think that I don't enjoy writing much, but I've come to realize that I really enjoy selecting and sending postcards. My grandparents wanted a postcard from Sweden (which I guess I have yet to send now that I think about it) but I sent them one from Italy and quite enjoyed it. The problem is that I don't have any of your actual addresses. So in a veiled attempt to see who actually reads this thing, if you send me your address then more than likely you will receive a postcard from me from somewhere in Europe. People who are moving, well, I'm not sure what to suggest. You're college graduates, figure it out.

Aba-dee, aba-dee, aba-dee, That's all folks!

I'm a travelling man

2007-04-19T13:50:00.000+01:00

Been busy the past few weeks basically doubling the number of countries I've visited in my life. First up was a week long trip to the Eastern Bloc, featuring Estonia, Russia (St. Petersburg and Moscow) and Finland, followed by a weekend trip to Barcelona to attempt to warm up.

Russia was scary yet cool. Never have I been so amazed and yet fearful that I would be robbed. I'm sure it is a rather safe country but from all the warnings we got from our trip coordinators and the dodgeyness of the traffic crossings, markets and public transportation, it definitely gives off a "wake-up-without-your-kidney's" kinda vibe. Had a lot of fun there though. Spent most of my time with my fellow Canadians (Terry, Rich, Sandy) and some french girls we met on the trip (Ghezlane, Anja, Estelle). There were about 60 people on the trip in total but it quickly became separated into the different nationalities - basically the Spanish and the French and everyone else. Fun times included asking for a menu and being subsequently shown the toilet, seeing Lenin's tomb and half expecting him to wake up and break the glass box, disgruntled drunk Finn's trying to break down the door of our room, Rich having to hang out with the mom of the girl he picked up the night before, 10 minutes of awkwardness due to no one being able to communicate to the restaurant managers after our reservation was overridden for a cash payment and many other moments that are a little blurry from the Russian vodka.

Two days after returning I set off of for Barcelona to play basketball with the SSE team for a competition at ERAMUS. Our team got thoroughly thumped by each team although in our defense the other teams took it waaay more seriously. Like coaches, trainers, and names on the back of their jerseys kinda seriously. Basically our entire weekend was over in 3 hours. And, can you believe it, Barcelona had the nerve to have bad weather so we couldn't even console ourselves at the beach - it had to be the bar instead. Very cool clubs there, open until 5:30 in the morning. Everything starts later there too, so if you show up to a club before midnight you're really early. Went to one big club, Razzamatazz, that was pretty huge and cool, only to find out the next day that we only saw one of the 5 (5!) rooms in the club. Still good times though. The rest of the school managed a bit better at their sports and we got to cheer on the women's football (soccer) team to gold. Dinner with Swedish people is always a blast, as they sure do love to sing. and drink. Basically once a reasonable amount of time had past it became a contest between the two tables of which table could start a beat and the other join in with the words. Songs included: Lean on Me, Final Countdown, In the Jungle, You've lost the loving feeling and many other Swedish songs (known as schlager, basically terribly cheesy pop songs sung every year in a national contest that people worship). Fun times!

But now I am back to my little residence room - so similar to a hospital room. Not surprising then is that my marathon training is lacking a bit, but I have no other plans to travel in the near future. Well, except for next weekend in which I go to Uppsala to start fires, spray champagne and celebrate the Swedish holiday of Valborg... (school is going good too)

Springy

2007-03-30T12:58:00.000+01:00

You are fortunate that I have nothing to do, am early for class and have brought my laptop with me. All of that adds up to another post. I’m sitting outside and its lovely. I even wore shorts yesterday! Spring has finally arrived and I plan to enjoy as much of it as possible, especially because I have a feeling that within a week it could quickly revert back to winter – the trees have yet to blossom so I have a feeling they know something I don’t. For those of you from McGill, I’m sure you’re aware of our version of the beach, the sloping hill outside of the Redpath Museum (an excellent museum by the way). Well Sandy and I have found the Stockholm School of Economics version of it – a set of 5 stairs in their buildings courtyard that only receives sun from 10 till 3. Everyone crowds on these little pieces of concrete, hardly a substitute for the beach but it will have to do. Its funny though because everyone is still either bundled up or dressed in their power suits. The sun still feels good though and you can often see people with their eyes closed and their face tilted up towards to the sun to try and capture as much of its warmth as possible to make up for the long winter.

Went to see my first official concert in Sweden last Friday. I had been to a music award show thing that had some performances but I don’t really count it. Anyhow, one of the first things Sandy and I did once we got to Stockholm was buy tickets to the Arcade Fire and finally we saw the show. And boy did it disappoint. Yes, I said disappoint. The AF had previously been one of the best shows I have ever seen (Vancouver, 2004) but tonight everything seemed against us. The doors for the show were at 7:30, with an opening band playing. Sandy and I figured we could arrive around 9 and catch the end of the opener before AF came on. We showed up at 9:15 only to find the AF already on stage. What we heard was good but by 10:00 the show was over. They only performed one song for an encore (Wake Up) and by 10:10 the house lights were up. We paid a fair bit of money for those tickets (like anything else is Sweden, tickets are expensive too) so we were definitely disappointed – especially considering most shows in Canada go till around midnight or later. Only later did we find out that Win, the lead singer of AF and a McGill alumni, had to cancel the rest of the tour due to his sinus infection and that he was getting sinus surgery. Hard to hold a poor showing against someone getting sinus surgery, so hopefully he gets better and we can catch them again in the new year. Cool venue though, looked just like a big top tent from the circus – lame crowd though.

Travelling Man

2007-03-24T23:41:00.000+01:00

I’m not dead. I could say that this very large gap in posts was due to a busy schedule, or a protest against media invading my life but really I’m sure all of you know the real reason: I’m lazy. I’ve accepted it, why can’t you? (Note, this is different from procrastination, because I have no mental block preventing me from updating my blog, just a general lack of motivation). I also justified my lack of posting by comparing to a lack of postings from my MBA colleagues, however this isn’t really working out as some have started posting more (good work Gunter) while others still need to do more (ahem, Angus). Regardless, here’s the Coles Notes version of the last month (one last note, this may be a long post so I would recommend following some advice from Bill Simmons and maybe printing this out so that you can read it in comfort on the toilet or someplace else)

My first school term has just ended. Had my first exam in Sweden and the last of my MBA career last Wednesday. I have found that the professors here treat you like children in explaining the rules and expectations of courses, such as covering every note in the syllabus which I could read just as well as they can. However, this was in stark contrast to the exam in which I basically sat down and while everyone was still getting their pencils out and generally settling in they shouted ‘go!’ and that was it. Three hours later and much verbal diaherria on my paper later, I was done. It was an alright test. I didn’t smoke it but it didn’t kill me either. Plus, here in Sweden the grades are divided into three. Pass (50-69), Pass with merit (70-84) and Pass with distinction (85+). So really all I had to do was beat a 69% on the test and I would have done just as well as if I got an 84%, which I believe I did. My other class was a test in my willpower to avoid killing my other group members. It was a Cross-Cultural Management class, which means very touchy-feely subject matter. My group needed to produce a paper, which we could not agree on. Once we finally had a topic we went our separate ways to write it – or apparently I did and no one else because I returned with my part written, only to find out that they wanted to change the topic. Basically the whole project resulted in 6 group meetings in 5 days for a 8-page paper. The last day everyone wanted to meet to just go over it, although I was still the only one that had actually completed my part. For those of you who don’t know, Sweden has a very collectivist society and never before have I clashed with it so much as with this group. I definitely learned more from dealing with my group on cultural relations that I did from that course – although I also learned that my group members were idiots (apart from the German guy). So now its on to the next and final term of my MBA. Fingers crossed for better teams as it will be summer near the end of the term and I doubt I will have it in me to restrain from screaming at dumb group members. Polite Canadians my ass.

Marathon training is going alright. Well, was going alright. Took a break last week to go traveling and then this week I was pretty unmotivated due to a bit of a cold I picked up along the way. But up until that point Sandy and I were running about 4 times a week with a nice long run on the weekends. With the weather getting better it’s much easier to go for longer runs. Our longest so far was about 17km but tomorrow we’re planning on going 20+, maybe even attempt the half marathon. Need to step it up a bit though, those 42Km are still scaring me to bits. We also have been hitting the gym 3 times a week and I play ball 2 times a week. This basically takes up the majority of my time during the week, as once you throw in stretching and showering all that activity ain’t easy on the schedule.

Those of you who know Sandy can attest that his fashion sense is unparalled so it will be no surprise that we recently visited the two most fashion oriented cities in Europe in Milan and Paris. Actually it was more because we had places to stay for free in those cities but they still were both incredible. Milan was so warm and gorgeous. Everything I thought a European city should be. Small streets, big piazzas, mopeds everywhere, old buildings, liberal drinking restrictions, etc. It was nice to see our MBA friends and they were more accommodating that we could have ever asked for. Everyone’s Italian was much better than we expected. Very impressive. We weren’t in Milan long but it was long enough for both Sandy and I to question whether we made the right choice in exchange locations. Paris was awesome in both uses of the word: cool and overwhelming. That city is huge and Sandy and I did our best to try to see the whole damn thing in 2 days. Day one consisted of Versailles, the Eiffel Tower and Notre Dame Cathedral. Day Two consisted of the Louvre, Sacred Heart Cathedral and a sweet yet entirely creepy and weird David Lynch exhibition at the Foundation Cartier. Both days featured a heck of a lot of walking and finished with incredible food – thanks to both Angus and Philippe and a nice French restaurant. It was nice to finally be able to read at least some signs in a different language but it still reminded me of my monolingualness at dinner when I was the only one who couldn’t order in French (thanks Philippe!). It was still pretty cool to have a crème brulle for dessert in the same area as that Amelie movie was filmed – as I cracked the caramelized top I chuckled a little. Saw the Moulin Rouge too, although it’s nothing like the movie with Nicole Kidman and Ewan McGregor. Actually, its surrounded by nudie bars with Irish pubs scattered around too. Too many other comments to list for the entire travels such as the overindulgence seen at Versailles or the Louvre. Oh, and the Mona Lisa was the exact same size I thought it would be (despite everyone else thinking that it should be bigger).

Next up for trips is a 7-day journey to Russia via Latvia and Finland over the Easter holiday. Then 2 days after getting back from that I’m off to Barcelona for a basketball tournament with the school. Looking forward to trying to travel by the train to Russia because traveling with Ryan Air was like taking the greyhound bus. Cramped seats, odd-looking people and no guarantee where you’re sitting. Still worth the 2 cents I paid for each ticket (plus about 20 bucks worth of taxes).

Alright, hopefully those 1200 words helps sedate any cravings you have about my life for the last month. Too bad everyone has probably given up on even checking my blog for new content so people won’t even see this post. I’ll try to do a better job now of keeping up but in the end, don’t hold your breath. I’m lazy.

Happy Semla Day!

2007-02-20T18:58:00.000+01:00

Apparently to celebrate Fat Tuesday everyone in Sweden eats a semla today. What is a semla? Its basically a roll that's been hallowed out, filled with cream and almond paste (which is kinda like custard) and then the top is put back on and covered with icing sugar. Delicious. Had one today while practicing some Swedish with Sandy and his exchange buddy - who is incredibly nice and gorgeous and female while mine is male and AWOL. I really lost the exchange buddy lottery. Regardless, she put up with our butchering her language and we countered with blank stares whenever she chose to speak at a normal pace. Our Swedish is getting better but still miles away from being able to even have a basic conversation. But we're still trying.

Our official Swedish classes are now over and I'm proud to say that Sandy and I were two of only three who maintained perfect attendance. The class went from 52 students to 8. I feel sorry for the professor though, because while we attended we were by far not the ideal students. We tried but she quickly learned that we were to be chosen last to read aloud due to our poor pronunciation skills - apparently the Dutch and German students are the best. But do not fret, I still received my certificate that says I showed up and might have learned something which obviously means that I have proof to justify my claims of knowing Swedish on my resume. Now if I could just get someone to read it...

The Swedish Paradox

2007-02-14T15:26:00.000+01:00

Every time I used to get a hair cut my mom used to always sing a little bit of that old song "get a haircut and get a real job". Well I recently bit the bullet and finally went to the barber(well, stylist) in Stockholm and had the most expensive haircut in my life - frickin $40 bucks! Which is basically par for the course for any haircut here. I was almost semi-excited at the idea purely cuz I've secretly wished to buy a nice $50 haircut, which I've heard can be really worth it when your hair starts growing out - which mine has a tendency to do. And let me tell you, I was severely underwhelmed (which is a word, I looked it up - its one of those things I learned in my school). 40 frickin bucks for a shampoo and a hair cut. That probably will be my first and last in Sweden.

It got me thinking though - if you need a haircut to get a job, but a haircut costs so much, how would a homeless person ever expect to get enough money to get a haircut and get a real job? More perplexing is that I don't see many homeless people, and what's more, those that I do see don't seem to have extremely long hair. Thus, the Swedish Paradox. Hopefully my haircut will lead me to a job, as I really need to step up my efforts in that area. If any person in the venture capital or biotech fields is looking for a person with both business and science experience and an expensive haircut, you've found your man. Call me.

I wear no cape...

2007-02-09T01:03:00.000+01:00

Last weekend Sandy and I, along with most of the other exchange students took a cruise to Finland and back. Sounds wonderful. I pictured a small boat much like the ones you take on New Year's Eve cruises around the harbour in Vancouver. Wrong. This thing really was a cruise ship. I was impressed. It all started well but it quickly became apparent that this cruise was not a sightseeing wonderland when I noticed that the Duty-Free shop was about the size of half the ship and there was a mob waiting for it to open a half an hour after departure. It further dawned on me that the people on this cruise were not of the upper class. There was no Professor, Millionaire and his Wife and no Ginger. The purpose of the cruise was basically to buy as much alcohol and cigarettes as possible tax free. The other catch is that you are only allowed to bring 1L of liquor back, so you have to down as much as you can during the night. Let the fun begin!

We soon joined in the party, drinking in a cramped cabin with no window (although curtains to fake a window). Soon we were visiting several of the bars on the ship and I ended up at the roulette table. I did well for a while but nothing noteworthy. Eventually Sandy and I decided to get some air up on the roof and see the view - there isn't much of a view at 2 in the morning by the way. Immediately we met an incredibly inebriated swede who found out we were from Canada and promptly told us how he loved Mats Sundin and was sad that he will never win a cup in Toronto. It got worse from there. He then told us that he hated his life and was going to jump overboard. We basically started trying to reason with this guy cuz he was clearly serious and was attempting to scale the railing. Sandy left me with the guy to go get help while I had to basically pull this guy down several times and keep him talking to avoid him from jumping over. I had to support Sundin and Leafs as much as possible. I suggested a trade so that Sundin could win a cup and that pissed him off even more(this was quite difficult as I hate the Leafs as any true Canadian not from Toronto does). Eventually after I pulled him back multiple times Sandy showed up with two security guards and 3 crew members. They eventually started talking to him and ultimately had to drag him inside and handcuff him before taking him to the drunk tank. It was an amazingly taxing experience on the emotions.

We basically went back to our cabin to collect ourselves afterwards. Any inebriation is quickly lost by something like that. No one really believed our story until the next day. I tried to party it up for the rest of the night but there really is nothing to do on a ship when all the stores close. Eventually avoiding the drunk old man in his tighty-whiteys in the hall was too much and I called it a night.

So quite the trip. Two cameras were also stolen and I think everyone was just happy to get off the boat. Oh, and the archipelego was really nice, but the weather was miserable, which is why in the photo I look so cold. In the summer though, I can't wait to go from little island to little island. But not on a big cruise ship, I'm done with those.

Heven and Hell

2007-01-30T22:29:00.000+01:00

As many of you know, I'm fond of the potato chip. Terry and Travis I think share this affliction as any open bag of chips in our house was fair game and never lasted the day. Unfortunately, Sweden is terrible for chips. Oh, they have them, but their selection is very limited. There are none of the major brands here and it seems they are limited to three main flavours: sour cream and onion, dill and bbq. Its outrageous, I demand some sort of nacho! However, they do occasionally have pringles (although still limited to those 3 flavours - actually only 2 - no bbq) but while shopping I did come across this gem of a flavour. Gourmet chips! As you can see from the picture, Thai Sweet Chili and Lemongrass flavour. Let me tell you, they were delicious. A little bit thicker than a regular pringle chip too, although they came in a much smaller can. I had to pay through the nose for them but I gotta say, they satisfied that potato chip urge like 3 crappy flavours never do.

Getting home in Stockholm

2007-01-27T14:11:00.000+01:00

Unfortunately my life is not scandalous enough to have fun posts of gossip and rehab visits like the celebrity sites so you'll have to deal with the details of my average nightlife. Sandy and I attended a houseparty at Olov's last night, a nice affair in which we met some more Swedish people. And incredibly one of the girls there was related to a member of the Concretes - an awesome Swedish pop band. Considering Sofi, the exchange student from last year, went to the same high school as the guys from Mando Diao (another good Swedish rock group) it seems that everyone is related in some form or another to awesome bands. I figure it won't take long before I find someone that can introduce me to backstage passes to hip shows of even cooler Swedish bands.

After the party was winding down Sandy and I ventured off to catch the last metro of the night. Never a good idea in a strange city and no back-up plan. We had timed it well but were distracted by the idea of late-night snacking. I'm sure you will all be pleased to know we have found the Swedish replacement to poutine! Its call tunnebrodrulle and its basically a flat bread with a hotdog, potatoes, condiments, lettuce, peppers, etc. Its pretty damn delicious at 3:30 in the morning (although I'm pretty sure that we will find out later that only the hobo's in Sweden eat this stuff as we were informed at the party that the beer we have been drinking is the cheapest crap in town and that most of them wouldn't even think about buying it).

So after grabbing our food we dashed off to the metro and from running down the stairs and onto the platform quickly jumped into the open doors of the last train. Too bad it was heading the wrong direction and we passed the train that we actually needed to be on. So now we were even further away from home with no metro's left to get us back. Thus our multi-hour and multi-bus adventure began. I think we asked about 6 busdrivers how to get home and I swear each one only knew their own routes. Good thing they all spoke English though. So our planned trip of 30 minutes turned into a 2 hour tour of the Swedish bus system - which incredibly runs quite well at 5 in the morning, dropping us off fairly close to our residence. Another night safely completed - and with the amount of darkness up here it was easy to fall asleep and get some hours in before the sun came up.

PS. I don't have any pictures of buses or anything so this picture from my window will have to spice up the text.

PPS. In Swedish, I took the bus this evening is: Jag aker buss i kvall. But I'm sure I wouldn't pronounce it right if I said it.

Waddle, waddle

2007-01-24T14:32:00.000+01:00

As a result of spending waaay too much time with Sandy I have begun my slow decent into becoming Sandy. Thus you may not be surprised to learn that I have become a runner and have now signed up to run the Stockholm Marathon in June. Only after signing up did I learn that the biggest party that SSE holds is the night before the race, but since it cost 108 bucks to sign up and there's no money-back policy, I'll have to just find an appropriate balance of partying the night before.

However, I am not a runner yet due to two main reasons: first, it dumped a foot of snow on us this past weekend so the entire city is slippery and gross; second, my running shoes were casualties of the lack of space in my bag and I have no shoes. So I set out on a quest to find a decent pair of runners that wouldn't cost me an arm in a leg (don't worry, this won't turn into a rant like Terry's about how great European shopping is - I promise). I went to the Swedish version of Sportchek (Stadium) but after being ignored by salespeople I learned that they had crap for selection and no shoes even remotely close to my size, which is odd for a nation of tall people. I finally found the sole running store in Stockholm and went yesterday to get a pair. They were awesome and quickly helped me find the pair I needed. But to find the pair they needed to see me run and video tape my feet.

Now do not fret, just because I'm slowing becoming Sandy does not mean that I will soon be running like I have a stick up my ass. However, as the video tape showed and the salesperson so nicely put "You run like Charlie Chaplin". Which basically sounded to me like "You run like a duck". And its the terrible truth, I run like a duck. I've always considered myself reasonably athletic and pretty decent at most sports but to actually see my feet when I run and to find out that I run like a duck really was a blow. Apparently this is a genetic thing, so thanks Mom and Dad, but it can be dealt with. I will forever run like a duck but my pronation during running - yes, I am a pronator too - has been corrected with the appropriate shoes now.

So now I'm ready to go. I will never ever ever wear those little running shorts people wear but I now have a good pair of shoes. Let's hope that helps in keeping up with Sandy and somehow propels me the 42Km that I have so blindly signed up for.

(PS - Running a marathon has been a bit of a goal of mine so I wasn't exactly tricked into this, I just thought I would work my way up to it with a half-marathon first)

1000 Words without typing any

2007-01-21T16:29:00.000+01:00

London and Stockholm

Despite the claims that Picassa was easy to figure out, I have finally managed to post some initial photos of london and stockholm. I'm not really in many of the photos but I never was a big fan of getting my picture taken anyways. Enjoy. Now that I've figured out how to post them I will hopefully post more shortly.

I Hope Everyone Is Happy Now

2007-01-16T21:45:00.000+01:00

Here is my first blog post. After Matt's comments regarding my lack of communication with everyone I had to finally get off my lazy ass and figure out how this blogging thing goes. Plus I had to have some medium to share with everyone that Sandy got picked up by a guy in the grocery store yesterday. The guy was Swedish but unfortunately not blonde, so I'm sure Sandy was slightly disappointed. I also don't have any epic journey's in search of internet like Angus, just random amblings around the Stockholm area in search of ticket stores to buy tickets for the Arcade Fire show here in March (a successful journey eventually). I've mostly been just adjusting to living in residence again, which despite having my own bathroom is still taking some time. Sharing a kitchen with 10 strangers who all seem to know each other is a bit intimidating, especially since the rules for garbage here are ridiculously complicated (more on that later). School has also just started and I had a two page assignment due before the first class even started. Its tough to complete an assignment when you don't even know what is expected of you - Sandy and I guessed that double spacing was a universal standard for assignments - it is not. Good class though, apart from everyone of the guys in it looking like they stepped off their yacht in the J. Crew catalogue and came straight to class. That and there were only 4 girls in the entire class of 60 people (only two were blonde). That is all that I care to share in one posting, that way I have something more to talk about shortly. Time to click submit and hope this thing works. Fingers crossed...