100% paraffin

"Paraffin wax is mostly found as a white, odorless, tasteless, waxy solid, with a typical melting point between about 47 °C and 64 °C ( 117°F to 147°F)...It is insoluble in water, but soluble in ether, benzene, and certain esters. Paraffin is unaffected by most common chemical reagents, but burns readily."

             — Wikipedia

Though the sun may go down by 4 p.m. every day and only comes up around 8 a.m. in Lund there is some respite: Swedes love to burn candles.

Compared to other countries in Europe, Swedes burn 45 times more candles every year* per capita. In every house there are countless candles and in every shop there are even more candle holders.

On my recent visit to Gothenburg, where I met up with Viktorija, we went shopping for a day in the city with the country's biggest shopping mall: Nordstan. We didn't spend much time in this shopping mall, but its interesting that it is the biggest (no?).

Going from shop to shop (most of them cheap decorations shops filled with low quality Indian trinkets) we found a lot of candle holders and candles in all shapes, sizes and colours. We actually found a few good candle holders at the second hand shop. Though everything in the place was covered in dust, we got some nice little glass holders for our paraffin fires. Vik took two matching ones back to Vilnius and I kept a rather large (pint-glass style) one for my room.

Buying these holders (and later the candles to go with them) is the least we could do to fit in with the Swedes with their ultra-cozy atmosphere. Its a really nice thing to walk into a house or a restaurant from the cold dark streets and see lots of little flickering lights. Mind you, safety is important as my colleague Birgir can tell you: his tablecloth lit of fire last night after a rogue candle dropped burning wax.

Many people burn candles for ceremonial reasons such as Advent in these long tins with four candles. Others just burn them for the atmosphere they create in the home. Real candles are great, but sometimes they aren't practical.

Something that you will notice in Sweden is that everyone has lights simulating candles in their windows. Obviously they use the electronic lights because keeping eight lit candles on all night between your curtains and your window is neither practical nor safe. Though they aren't the real deal, its still nice when you walk down the frigid streets of Lund to see hundreds of them in all the windows down the street.

Today there was also a celebration where girls put a crown of candles on their heads. Its daring, but it looks cool.

Interestingly in a country so obsessed by candles, I am yet to find a dedicated candle shop such as the ones we have back in Australia.

*Figure completely fabricated for the purposes of emphasizing the point that Swedes like burning candles... a lot.

Skills

Lately I've been surprised about the transferable skills that I had developed in my short, but intense, career in journalism. Being able to talk to people, find people, get around gatekeepers, develop contacts, build rapport, form questions and other skills can readily be applied in the business world.

A lot of it just comes down to basic communication skills. Being able to find the actual meaning in a sentence, rather than being baffled by the jargon and having the courage to refute what the bullshitter is saying, is a skill.

Working with high profile people (as high as the president, prime ministers and cabinet of Lithuania and the president of the EC) has given me some experience as to how these people operate. Inshallah business people act the same way as politicians :-)

Moronism still in fashion

I was shocked, saddened and disappointed this morning to learn that Stockholm had been the target of a (suspected) terrorist attack. Some moron blew up a car, which fortunately killed only one person. As my friend Per remarked in Gothenburg today, "its fortunate it was such a clumsy attack," because it could have been a lot worse in a country that seemed like it should be somehow immune to such disorganized and uncontrollable violence.

Sweden seems rather open compared to other countries and never seems to offend anyone. Anyway, this rendition of John Lennon's "Imagine" by A Perfect Circle sums up the mood for me.

Winners are grinners

A big congratulations to the winners from our class in the first round of Venture Cup:

Brandon with AirOhMail
Ludwig and Mariana with TrackIT!
Taras and Rene with cTrap

All got 10,000 kr tax free. :-)

I really love these fake sparkles that the photographer  put on the big cheques. It would be nice if they put them on the teeth of the winners.

There are more photos on the Facebook page for Venture Cup, but most of them are of an Asian girl eating. Boy was she hungry!

It was good to see three of our classmates win. We also got a win with Fredrick Malmberg. We claim him as our own because he lectures with us and gave us consultation on how to win in Venture Cup. I guess he has shown again that he really knows his stuff!

We also had a win, which we again claim by proxy, with Entrepreneurship masters alumni Michael Hoy, whose project is going to "cure cancer." A commendable goal!

If anyone has photos of Taras and Rene, please let me know and I'll put them up here.

Wondering about WikiLeaks

He may look weird but he is simply a product
of his time.

The WikiLeaks organization and its bizarre looking, but intelligent figure head Julian Assange has got me thinking recently.

Anyone who has engaged me in conversation about the state of journalism knows that the whole world is in deep shit because the mediascape is totally barren. If you don't know what I'm talking about, here is a short summary:

• Journalists used to have normal salaries allocated to them, so they could work hard and do good work.
• Newspapers used to have enough journalists to cover every day issues such as parliament, police beats, court rooms, council meetings, business meetings, conventions etc.
• Now with falling revenues, increased possibilities for media syndication (copy/paste content sharing) and an ever increasing appetite for new snippits of information from bored office workers who sit on the refresh button on news websites, the quantity of journalists has decreased (perhaps 10-fold) and the quality has withered.

Basically WikiLeaks is a product of the world's journalistic desert. No journalist can get out there and find these documents on their own because there is no time for them to work — they are glued to their chair trying to flood their news websites with stories from the wires. Also there is no financial incentive for them to do real journalism. Therefore WikiLeaks was born. Whistle blowers wanted a route by which they could release sensitive information and not get put in jail in increasingly authoritarian "democratic" states.

The powers that be feel pretty comfortable in the world as it is. The fourth estate (the media) is basically a blind old toothless dog that sits at the bottom of the steps waiting to be thrown a bone, no matter how small or mangled it is. Gone are its sharp teeth and energy. So when you have authoritarian governments sitting pretty in their information bubble and suddenly someone comes and radically rocks the boat, of course there is going to be trouble.

It comes as no surprise that governments around the world are condemning all these leaks. After all it makes them look like liars to the people they allegedly represent. It also comes as no surprise to me (perhaps I'm just cynical from working with public officials for too long) that they should try to shoot the messenger and try to shroud the message in uncertainty.

The question is whether people are just going to sit there and do nothing or if they are going to have a good think about it for once...

Article 0

Here is the first paid article I've gotten published in Sweden. Hopefully there is more to come.

I think the article spells out a lot of interesting points for the Swedish system. Basically they are completely disorganized and have no overarching plan about what they will do.

From a personal point of view, I can see that there are going to be a lot of dissatisfied international students in future. The universities are just too plain in what they offer students. At home there were far more services including support staff and other things that aren't available in Swedish university.

Perhaps the universities should stop paying for those automatically opening doors and allocate more money so we can have teachers review our big assignments before we need to submit them for grading...just an idea?

Winter winds

I didn't personally hold up the thermostat, but I was told after I walked to university (around 35 mins walk) with a red face, snot pouring out of my nose and tears running down my face from the cold wind, that the temperature was -11 degrees. Add the wind chill factor to this and it would explain why my face and legs were completely numb.

In celebration of this horrible weather, which my house mate Anton thinks is beautiful (easy to say when you stay indoors and drink tea all day: the snow is always whiter on the other side ;)), I will put this video. Enjoy. Also enjoy how YouTube (a Google company) and blogger (a Google site) are incompatible for formatting. I love it how the video goes outside this column.



P.S. The winter here is nothing like in the video. The whole damn place is covered in snow and ice making it impossible to ride my bike (without risking my life).

Sitting with a list

Writing things down seems to work

Being poor makes you spend a lot of time thinking about how you will cover your bills and put food in your belly.

Every day I make myself a list of things I need to get done during the day. The list features my daily work for Alfa.lt English and then there is always something to do for university one way or another.

Other activities that also make the list include the raft of other activities that I do to easy the financial strain in my life at the moment. I'm slowly finding work in Sweden that pays better than the work I'd been doing in Lithuania.

Going by the look of the list these days it seems like I'm living a triple life: full time university, a work life in Sweden and a work life in Lithuania. Sooner, rather than later I'd like to be able to end my work life in Lithuania because the returns I get for my work are rather poor when you take them and spend them in a country like Sweden.

One way that I manage to get through all the important tasks every day (and even complete a lot of the less important ones) is to make the list in the first place and write everything down and then categorize them in order of importance. Often when taking a break from doing an top-priority job there is time to do a less urgent, but also important tasks in between. Thanks to the technology that surrounds me in Sweden (washing machines, bicycles - things that I didn't have in Lithuania), I can do a lot of things simultaneously.

Parkinson's Law also somehow comes into play when I write tasks down. I even find time for doing things (like writing blogs or eating) in between.

Parkinson's Law: "Work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion."

In the same way, if I write everything down and prioritize the tasks, they all seem to get done.

What is design?

You get what you pay for

I was recently commissioned to write a feature article by a news service in Sweden and I'm waiting on my editor to tell me whether he is happy with the work I've submitted.

In the meanwhile I've got a moment to reflect on why people actually pay others to produce their communications material. For the last three and a half years, I've made my way as a wordsmith (thats fancy talk for journalist) and people pay me because when they ask for something to be made, I make it the way they expect. If its not the way they like it, then it doesn't take long to fix it.

The new mode of the day is for everyone to try to do things themselves in the creative and media fields. It makes sense right? You have learned how to use a camera (press the red button) and you have a USB cable and you have a YouTube account. So why not? As the information age propaganda preaches: everyone is a director, journalist and film star.

The trouble is (and always has been) that you cannot just pick up tools and expect to be good at using them the first time. In most cases (and there are many examples) people get their iMovie or similar low-tech video editing software, chop together some terribly shot raw footage and then they think because it exists, therefore it is good.

Actually you can forgive this misconception, that the makers of these amateur films believe their product is good because over time, by watching television we have come to learn that anything we see on a glass screen is high quality.

It has always been this way because in the past the only people with access to the tools were those who devoted their entire careers to learning how to use it. So back to the present, the amateur director, journalist and film star watches their film and puts it online and suddenly they think its good because its on a screen.

The logic behind this is similar to someone who buys IKEA furniture thinking that they are a carpenter. Or perhaps someone whose finger can bend and therefore they can pull a trigger, that they could be a professional soldier (and not die). Or perhaps you can put your foot down and operate your hands at the same time - now you are a professional race car driver. No.

You get what you pay for. If you think you can do everything yourself, go for it, but do be prepared when you don't get the result you want. Also be prepared to spend more time on the project and waste more resources than if you just outsourced it.

Sauna heaven

90 degrees. Dry air. Cedar benches. No clothes. Cold shower. Wonderful.

Some instruction for the Swedish ladies out there

If you Swedish girls didn't know that you have the power to solve the immigrant integration problem in this country, well think again.

Have a quick look at this informative video from SVT, Sweden's public broadcaster, about how you can help your country get to know its immigrants better.

The beginning of the end

I just saw this story about how automated news stories are becoming closer to reality than fiction. In previous years people talked about computers writing the news, but there were always people laughing and feeling safe in their writers' jobs because "how could a computer replace a human"?

Now it is becoming a possibility, as you can read in this story. Of course these are just sports statistics from low level games, but it starts here and ends somewhere with the Financial Times generating its content by computer.

The Los Angeles Times is famous for outsourcing their reporting to India, a clear slap in the face of its readers. If their city isn't seen as important enough to have journalists on the streets, then why are they bothering to read it?

There is this video that you can watch, which was made in 2003 (I think) then updated in 2005 when their predictions actually came true.

Communication is everything

One thing with working with technical people, such as engineers or science people and programmers and so on, is that they have amazing ideas, but they can't communicate these ideas to others.

Communicating ideas to others is a crucial thing, because we are people and people communicate. In more relevant terms, great ideas will die unless you can get them across to others who can get on board and make them into reality. You might have a great idea, but if you can't turn it into reality and start producing it to the benefit of others, what was the point of having it at all?

Often techies or (as the Swedish business magnate Rune Andersson called them,) technical freaks, have great ideas on a technical level, but they often don't know how to turn them into commercially viable project. This is nothing against technical people in particular and I'm not suggesting that they are deficient in business specifically, but people can usually only be good at so many things. People that are good at both business and technical things are hated anyway: just look at Mark Zuckerberg. They even made a nasty movie about him.

Today at Innovation In Mind, a conference going on in Lund, we had a speech by William Cockayne from Stanford University. Cockayne walked to the stage to Eric Clapton's song Cocaine. It was cheesy.

What he said later in his speech was much more interesting though. He presented his communications tool, which he takes to companies around the world in order to help them get a bright spark idea and take it so people in the communication, market, finance and management departments so they can understand it and get behind it.

Instead of using paper, Post-its or a whiteboard, Cockayne suggested that you should get regular rubbish and items from around the office and home to create metaphorical models that everyone can see, touch and modify. Sticky tape, rubber bands, cups, cardboard, paper, scissors, straws, plastic and so it. The inventory doesn't need to be designed for the purpose: that would just limit creativity.

By making the creativity and communication process interactive, people can see it, change it, discuss it and really get an idea about how it works.

It gets people together and makes a memorable experience that can really trigger people. Its certainly worth trying.

Watch your back

I watched the film The Social Network last night. Its always good to read what you are signing. Always be aware of dilutable shares.

The film wasn't bad. Mark Zuckerberg looks like a bit of a prick in the film. I wonder how accurate it is.

Why do companies fail and succeed?

In class we discussed the reasons why companies fail and why they succeed. These could be seen as opposites, but in actual fact they are not, especially if your definition of success is not just surviving.

Lack of passion, inability to convey the value of your product to customers, lack of cash flow (in my mind a big one), bad company culture, poor environmental analysis, no finance and so on were pinpointed as reasons why companies fail.

The concrete reasons behind success are harder to pinpoint, but we can say that you do well on all of the above.

The thing is that all these things are connected: if you can't convey your value proposition to customers, you have no cash flow and you get no financing for growth. Also, who wants to work for a company that has no customers and doesn't grow? Its all related. Its the blanket (see video).

Marabou price scam update

So I spent the last week monitoring the price of Marabou chocolates (its a very narrow sample I know) at my local Netto, but I noticed no change in price.

There are a few comments I can make here:
Perhaps my original assumption that they jack up the price on the weekend was wrong, but this weekend just gone by was a special one: Saturday was All Saints Day, so that might have had some effect on it, but I doubt it.

I will keep checking the price and let you know when I do notice something. Until then, as far as the reader is concerned, the case is closed.

Marabou nightmares!

I was shocked the other day when I went to Netto that Marabou chocolates were selling for 22 kr per 200g. Given that at the expensive supermarkets in Sweden (like ICA and Coop) the same product can sell for 15 kr, I was shocked. After all, Netto is supposed to be the cheap one.

I went back to Netto the next day to get some milk and while waiting in line (which conveniently runs past the chocolate and sweets sections) I noticed that the prices of Marabou had gone down to 16 kr. It isn't unusual for supermarkets to change their prices, but usually they put a special sticker on it.

I had a think about it and realised that on Sunday (when people are lazing about at home watching movies) the chocolate cost 6 kr more. On Monday (when people are off to work and get their free fika elsewhere) the prices had gone down.

So the hypothesis: Does Netto jack up the prices every weekend? Do they do it by some other method?

I will be observing the prices every time I go there and as soon as I notice a pattern, I'll let you know. As far as I can tell at this point, it is smarter to buy your sweets on a Monday than a Sunday.

Watch this space.

P.S. Frozen chicken at ICA is also cheaper than Netto.

Internet on

I am still alive. I bottled my second batch of beer. I am studying for the exam tomorrow. Ends.

Swedish bureaucrazy

Moving into the new flat has been a headache for a few reasons, but now we have the cherry on the cake. As my housemate Anton thinks, it is some sort of tacit racism against foreigners.

While I'm not so pessimistic about the issue, it still makes me shake my head. Bureaucracy in Sweden is really an art form unto itself. For a developed country that is seen as leading in many respects, I can't imagine how all this crazy paperwork can exist. At the same time I understand that it must exist, or Sweden would cease to be.

We have been trying to get the internet connected at home. At first we understood that we needed to look for our own provider and so we started looking around for different deals. We settled on a company called Bredbandsbolaget and called them.

Unfortunately the robot that answers the phone in Swedish doesn't make it very easy to get things done. I got a friend to call up and she told me that in fact we already had Bredbandsbolaget connected to our flat and that the contract had already been paid for the coming year. The only thing we needed to do was make an account with them.

I went to the shop and bought a router. The salesman tried to upsell me to a model of router that I clearly didn't need (bad salesmanship). I went home and we plugged it in. The internet worked. For two days.

After the second day the internet was cut off, so I called the company and asked what had happened — perhaps it was technical difficulties or maybe we really needed to make an account.

I got through to a person on the end of the line with the help of a friend who told me how to navigate through the Swedish robot. The guy on the other end of the line wasn't much more helpful than the computer that I couldn't understand speaking. He told me to view the account I needed the personal number of the account that was there before. The account no longer existed and the person who lived here prior was gone, so clearly it was impossible for me to give him this number. He told me the only way to activate the internet (which was already active) was to make a free account with my personal number.

The thing is that I don't have a personal number. Because I am staying in Sweden for less than 12 months of study, I get a temporary number, which doesn't cut it for certain things. Temporary number means I can't make an account to turn on already functioning internet that has already been paid for for the whole year.

Later we tried with Anton's number - he has a real one because he will be in Sweden for two years at least. They wouldn't let us use this one either because you need to have been in the country for more than 6 months before you can use the service.

Its mindless.

I am brewer: hear me roar!

My beer is now in bottles. As you can see from the photo (which looks like it was taken years ago) I found 75 Carlsberg bottles. Eventually all the labels will fall off and I will have my own branded beer, but for now, let it be as it is.

It took a good while to clean the bottles because I got them from the glass bin at Vastgota nation. I wanted to be sure that they were clean, so I rinsed them, then soaked them in hot soapy water, then rinsed the soap out (twice) then let them soak with sanitizer for two hours inside them, then I rinsed them again. I have clean bottles for sure, but it did take me some three hours. Next time I will know whose lips have been on them, so I won't have to work so hard again.

Following the sanitizing, I added around 2.5 grams of sugar to each bottle before siphoning the beer in. The sugar gives the yeast something to do and it creates bubbles. This process is called carbonation and gives the beer the fizz that we all love and adore.

At a minimum I've read you can leave the beer for 10 days, but I will leave it for double that to make sure I have a crystal clear beer with softened bubbles. At first the bubbles are quite large and crude, but over time they become smaller as the bottle conditions. Amazing stuff.

Come early November, I'll be crackin' frothies left, right and centre!

Busy week

I have just had the ultimately busy week.

Moving out from one town to another, bottling beer, helping house mates move, doing three different group assignments, having meetings with researchers, sleeping on the floor, going to lectures, writing for Alfa, writing summaries for class, doing presentations in class, going to networking meetings, sleeping...maybe there was more, but I've already forgotten.

If I had more money, none of this would have happened...I would have my own car, I would never have moved to Lomma, I wouldn't have to work in between studies etc.

Interesting what sacrifices you have to make for a free master's degree. Its all good though - at least I'm in my new flat and things are looking up from here.

My course mates decided on their own accord that they would have a small party at my flat on Friday too. It was good that I didn't have to organize anything because I wouldn't have had the energy to do it.

The Book Thief

There is a book called The Book Thief, but thats not what this is about.

When I moved in with my previous landlord, he told me he was very interested in Lithuanian culture. So next time Vik came to visit me from Lithuania I got her to bring one of my favourite books "Vilnius — City of Strangers" for him to read.

When I was moving out yesterday, I asked the landlord for the book back, but he claimed it was a gift. After I reminded him that I asked him to return it, he claimed that Vik gave it as a gift.

"That's nice," I thought. "Its my book and other people can't give it away as a gift even if they want to."

Then when I went upstairs to claim the last of my things he arrived looking sheepish telling me that he couldn't find the book. I knew where it was and he knew where it was, but he wasn't prepared to give it up.

I left without the book. Bastard.

Racism anyone?

Swedes pride themselves on being an open nation, tolerant of pretty much anything on the planet. Ever. Most Swedes cringed when the far right party got part of the vote at the last election because it meant that the evil racists had taken root in the country's parliament.

In general Swedes do live up to their reputation as being open and tolerant. After all, they let people like me (international students) come and learn for free...at least for this year. There are also a lot of nationalities here in the south of Sweden, particularly in the country's third biggest city, Malmö. I feel like this approach to allowing immigrants has really benefited Sweden and provided them with a rich array of people, cultures and food.

So, today I was walking down the street in Lund with Vik and I wanted to take my camera to the photo shop for them to have a look at it. When we got there it was closed and barricaded with pull down roller guards. It makes good sense to secure your shop at night, after all.

Then I noticed three print-outs along the facade. As you can see in the picture, it says they don't leave valuables in the shop overnight, so thieves please don't bust up our shop for nothing. The thing that caught my eye was of course the word "uwaga," which is "caution" or "attention" in Polish.

According to the author of this sign,
Polish people are likely to rob their shop.

The notice was written in Swedish, English and Polish. Swedish of course should be on this form because it is the native language. Then comes English because there are so many foreigners living in Lund. Again this makes sense.

Polish however is not a language that is widely spoken here and basically the shop owners have taken the action of fingering Polish people as thieves that are likely to hit up their shop for a easy krona. Not only that, they are illiterate in English and Swedish (unlike all other nationalities) and so they need to be reminded.

It could be that they have been repeatedly robbed by Poles in the past, but I find that to be highly unlikely. Even if it were the case, it is a matter for the police and insurance companies to deal with. Rather, I think someone in the company probably decided that this was a good idea on their own.

Behind the mask of tolerance are the true feelings of the people.

Its not just this person (whoever made this sign) who has demonstrated nationalist stereotyping, and therefore racism, while I've been here. On many occasions, I have had Swedes pull me aside and tell me in low tones about the issues in Malmö with race and ghetto.

There are a lot of Muslim people and other ethnic groups in Malmö that are crammed together in a tight block. They don't seem to integrate from what I've heard and there have been riots and other incidents that have shown how poorly they interact with the locals.

I saw myself when I went to the nice shopping centre (they have everything!) in the immigrant area in Malmö how the people are different. They dress differently to Swedes and they hang out on street corners, a behaviour that is unusual in these parts.

From my own perspective — having seen the immigrant neighbourhood with its restless groups of young men looking for trouble on the street and other examples of ethnic tension like this sign at the photo shop — I can see that Sweden has trouble with immigrants and foreigners.

Its not really surprising because the country lets in so many foreign people, particularly refugees, every year. What Swedes fail to do is talk openly about the problems that this can create. Because of their reputation as a tolerant and open country, there is a taboo in speaking about the issues. Most of the time when you read about issues to do with immigration in the local media they hold their punches and make veiled statements.

What this does is make people angry and they simmer. Like a pressurized vessel, the famous Swedish tolerance for the rapid influx of immigrants who don't integrate and adopt the Swedish way of life seems to have worn thin. People are angry inside about the issue and can't let off steam because they aren't allowed to talk about it.

Of course I can understand why people don't talk openly about issues relating to foreigners, particularly Muslims and refugees in 2010. Just like at home in Australia, if you say anything at all about anything, you are a racist, so you'd better keep your mouth shut, even if you just want to see the problem solved and have no problem with the people involved.

I wonder if this feeling that I have felt in the locals is an explanation of how the far right party actually made it into the parliament? Perhaps it is a manifestation of the feeling that enough is enough and now people want to talk about it.

Reading, when 180 pages over two days is too much

Read read read read. No talking in class. Read read read. Perform seminar to prove you have done the readings.

My nurse

Anton with a big bowl of his own hand
made curd dumplings. On the other plate,
a big dollop of cream...

This morning I woke up with a cold, so I thought it best to stay in bed and recover. Fortunately I have my Ukrainian house mate Anton to look after me. He takes great pleasure in ensuring that I have all the right vitamins and other positive emotions required for me to get well.

So far he has made me a tea, helped me with some soup, given me a big bowl of home made curd dumplings and told me various jokes to try to lift my spirits.

Anton is a firm believer in holistic and natural healing. Tea with lemon and honey, jokes to produce positive emotions and release endorphins.

Here is a photo of him - for some reason, all these lines came over the picture and I can't get rid of them...

Bubbling beer

Beer is bubbling in my closet. My first brew is working and I hope to be bottling it soon. Not long from now you will realise why I am eager to do that...watch this space...

I have had to put a heater on the opposite side of the door from the beer because it is very chilly inside the house. The thermometer shows just above 11 degrees in the top story. Anton, my housemate seems to think that its the hole in the roof that is letting all the heat out. A plausible theory.

Like most things in this house where I live, the roof is broken and has been for quite some time as I understand it. A storm blew some of the tiles along the join of the roof off and now whats underneath (don't know what thats called) is exposed.

The beer should be kept between 21-27 degrees to ensure that the yeast works in 4-7 days and produces beer. A stopped fermentation (ie the beer is cactus) can be expected at less than 18 degrees. Yeast is a very fussy micro-organism isn't it...?

Torsten the landlord seems to think we are a bit crazy for wanting to put the heating on at this temperature inside. I should point out that the temperature outside was also about 10 or 11 degrees when we measured it and that it is much warmer downstairs where he lives.

If the yeast makes it alive and continues to ferment properly, I'll be surprised, but lets keep our fingers crossed...

Lomma fiesta

Last night Brandon, from my course, came to my house in Lomma where we had a small cooking and brewing fiesta.

After setting the scene with a Twisted Thistle IPA from the System Bolaget, we started brewing my first batch of homebrew ever. It was sort of exciting.

As every homebrewer on the first time, I was pretty nervous and wanted to make sure everything went just right. Brandon was more along the lines of "naaah mate don't worry. She'll be right, just chuck it all in there and giz a swirl!" It seems like he was right because I checked it later on and some small bubbles appear to be forming, which means the the yeast is doing its work!

After that we had some Green 9s and some Koonunga Hill Shiraz Cab.

Roast chicken and vegetables accompanied by some potato mash were for dinner in payment for Brandon's beer making guidance. Num num num num :)

The great thing about having people over is that you can get them to do all the work and reap the rewards. Apart from almost cutting his finger off, Brandon did a good job skinning the apples and cutting them up for jam and cake, which both came out well.

Sorry for the terribly boring "my-life-is-so-interesting-so-you-should-read-about-it-and then-and then-and then-and then" post, but thats life :)

Mushrooming during the study break

Mmmmm smells like mushroom

While some people are dutifully studying hard for the upcoming exam, I took the time to recharge my batteries and go mushroom picking in Lithuania.

I got the cheap flight pretty much at the last minute, packed my bags and went to the airport (via a short stop over at David's house where I ate real Mexican Mole).

Getting out into the forest with a great group of people including my lady Viktorija was fabulous. There was so much clean air out there that it made you dizzy. We picked up some beers and smoked chicken legs on the way into the forest to tide us over — walking around for hours searching for tasty boletus and chaterelles is hard work.

It had been raining recently and the weather was unusually warm for this time of year, so the mushrooms were sprouting everywhere. We had to drive a while before we could find a good spot because every man and his dog was out in the forest looking for those tasty fungi.

We found loads of mushrooms including two of the most poisonous in Europe. What I love about going mushrooming is that I learn something new every time. We always go with Vik's cousin Marius who is somewhat of a forest expert. He can always show me something interesting that I would have otherwise walked straight past.

Our mushroom company. Left to right: Paulius, Viktorija, Adam,
Margarita, Marius. Centre: Meta.

We had the boletus for lunch with some chicken stew, mashed potatoes and Vik's mum's preserved cucumbers and onions... yummy....

To work or not to work?

Today we did our presentation to the class and investors for the hygienic underwear garments. The presentation was so-so, but we didn't get asked any hard questions, so the discussion went fairly well. Perhaps it was too early in the morning for people to think of any hard ones for us.

After the presentation the representative from the hospital system told us he liked the idea and offered for us to continue working on the project. Though the opportunity is good, it would take some time (maybe one year) before we would see any cash at all come into our hands. In the mean time we could be working a lot.

So the question is, to work or not to work on the underwear for the hospitals....?

Screening out the noise

Its hard to hear yourself think sometimes.
Photo by James White.

One of the great things about living abroad in new countries is that you just can't understand what the hell people are talking about.

In the new world of constant information bombardment, not being unable to understand what people are saying is some sort of wonderful gift.

Currently I'm reading a book about re-energizing yourself and what that means for performance. Being able to shut out external sources of information, especially when they are trivial, is one of the ways that we can recharge our batteries. It gives us that little bit of extra time to organize our thoughts and find a little time for ourselves.

Something that my friend Daniel in Warsaw got me thinking about over a year ago finally clicked in my head today on the bus while I was reading a blog post by a journalist colleague from Estonia.

We are really totally bombarded by information to the point where we can't process it all anymore. I don't know if it was ever possible to process all information put in front of a human being, but surely it was easier before we all had four different electronic items we carried on our bodies and switched between at regular intervals.

What my friend Daniel rightly said back then in Warsaw is that he loves living there because he doesn't fall into the trap of listening to what people are talking about. In his native England he is of course able to listen to people talking on the bus or on their phone.

I noticed the same thing when I went home to Australia for three months over the summer earlier this year. You start listening to what people are saying because suddenly there is that extra source of information that you are able to process.

The trouble is that most of the time it is just rubbish. White noise almost. I don't want to listen to what people are saying on the bus, but the thing is that I understand them anyway. My brain automatically tunes in and I listen. Just another source of useless information. Just more noise to cloud my mind.

Add this to things like Facebook, Twitter, the phone, blogs, news, work, friends and you start to go insane. Its no wonder people can't function properly and don't sleep well.

Just another reason why its sometimes nice to live abroad...

Why I don't want to be a journalist anymore

This interview from Estonian Public Broadcasting more or less makes the point about why many people, including myself, want out of the newspaper industry. It is rotten to the core and people don't enjoy their work anymore.

Don't get me wrong — I like writing and I think its a good job, but the way the industry is structured these days, you can't do much. No creativity, no good interesting stuff. It is all about speed over quality and cost reduction over thoroughness.

There are only a few good publications left. The Economist is one for example. Financial Times is also good. After that, well who knows...

This is a very good book for an insight into what you read every day.

How to ask a good question

Working as a journalist for a few years and talking to various politicians and other figures taught me that asking a good question (especially in front of others) is a skill worth learning. There is no time for bad questions and if you ask one, you won't get an answer.

How not to structure a question to someone:
["Um I was thinking that..."], ["useless blah blah blah blah"], [second half of the question], [first half of the question], [other random information].

This makes the person who you are asking the question get confused. Then they can't give you a proper answer even if they want to.

This is how I feel when people ask terrible
and inane questions. Photo by Lorenzo Gonzalez.

Example:
"You know I was thinking that, in my country we have a water pump that can turn milk into tea and it is really loud and expensive to run. People in America like to drive big cars, do you think that? Sometimes I like to eat flowers."

You might think that this particular example sounds stupid and ridiculous, but its more or less how many people like to talk when asking a question.

How to ask a question:
[Relevant information that provides a basis for your question - very important for questions that can be easily interpreted to suit the needs of the person answering],[question, in plain speech...use active voice][finish with actual question].


Read it again if its hard for you to understand — you actually need to ask the person a question. Yes, it would require a question mark (?) if you wrote it down. It should be structured the same way that you would write it. It should make sense.

Example:
"There has been research into wind turbines that show they produce subsonic waves that can unsettle the human body. How relevant do you think this is to town planners in Sweden?"

Another thing: don't ask multiple questions in one sentence...it is just confusing and it gives the person the chance to ignore the parts of the question they find uncomfortable or don't understand.

In short, people around you hate you if you ask shit questions. Don't do it.

Country getaway

On Thursday and Friday our class went on a field trip style excursion to a little place called Bräkne-Hoby (see map). We were taken there to have intensive team building and workshop sessions for our business plans. Bräkne-Hoby is in the neighbouring region of Blekinge and seems like a really nice lush green place. There is also an archipelago, which the locals kept talking about.

My team was of course working on the underpants stuff, as mentioned in the previous post. Until we got some basic knowledge about the product it felt like we were really clutching at straws, but after a while we started to get a clearer idea about the project and who the main players were. Ringing the laundry and the hospital helped. Also, great websites like www.AliBaba.com helped us get into contact with multiple suppliers in China who knew how to make the garments we need.

The people in the region want to put Bräkne-Hoby on the world map, they said.

View Larger Map

Some of the other teams have developed really good ideas, but other teams still look like they are struggling for direction. I was shocked when two classmates told me that our speech seemed to be one of the most coherent and well established.

We were given a lecture by Rune Andersson, a very successful businessman here in Sweden. Its nice when experienced and successful people take the time to come speak to us. It gives the whole class a bit of a lift and some validation that this isn't just a university course, but something that could lead to something bigger in the business world.

We also had some fun while we were there. Everyone in the class had been assigned a role — some had to make breakfast, while others had to organize team building games. I was in the entertainment group with a few others and we had a great time.

Originally we were only given 15 minutes to perform (according to the schedule) and we decided to get together briefly and practice and brainstorm what we could do during these 15 mins. While doing that, a crowd began to gather and suddenly we were performing. The 15 minutes stretched into hours, but I had a great time. Overworked, underpaid, but satisfied :) We played on the guitars, my harmonica, a skinned tambourine that we borrowed from the university and a little rice shaker that I made out of a medicine box. Brandon, Petter, me, David and Alex played for most of the time.

The other entertainment team didn't even get to perform, unfortunately, but thats that way the cookie crumbled...

Genital operations

Part of the first unit of our Entrepreneurship course involves taking an external idea and trying to commercialize it. We were lucky enough to get a project that was invented by two nurses who want a better way to have removable underwear for people having surgery in the genital region. Hands on research required.

Currently the problem is that there are too many buttons on the flap that can be removed for surgery, so surgeons or nurses often just cut the underpants off because it takes too long to take off. Other methods are too expensive to produce. Normally cleaning these garments costs more than to buy a new one, so this has been deemed to be worthy of a second look.

We need to come up with a product, a market and a business model for this. Oh, and we have around one day to do this... This is part of the intense program.

The nurses need to be contacted and we need to come up with feasible ideas.

If we come up with something really great, I won't be writing this blog anymore because they don't have affordable internet options for ocean going yachts yet :) (or maybe they do)...

Company visit and explosion

Yesterday we went to visit a company called Know IT Create. We were given a presentation from the founder and CEO of company Create, which was later taken over by Know IT.

He gave us some information about how he managed company growth from sitting on a box with a telephone in Lund in someones spare bedroom to having a business in multiple cities with 250 employees.

He basically reiterated some common sense things about the service industry such as high customer service levels and working hard. Also, being cost effective was one of his major points too. It was clear from his office that he wasn't a flashy guy. He also wore a t-shirt and jeans, but thats all part of his success as a manager. He keeps it nice and simple with no unnecessary frills. With the money the company saves on glass fronted office space and not flying business class etc, the staff are regularly taken on trips or have team days. This makes the work culture in his business very good.

Something he said later on that I particularly agree with is that you should only work with people that you can laugh with every day, otherwise its going to feel like a loooong time in the office. That was his number one tip for working in a new business, beating even his tip of never giving up.

He was sort of awesome in the eyes of the students because he gave us these really good and huge sandwiches at the start of the presentation. Because a lot of us had forgotten our breakfasts, it was a good way to get us all onside.

Later on when I was riding to the tax authority to get my papers in order, my tyre on my bike exploded for seemingly no reason. Not only did the tube deflate, but the tyre was shredded too, though I was riding on smooth bitumin and there were no holes or objects I could have ridden over. Really bizarre.

I guess that the wheel guard might have rubbed on it somehow? Also the tyre might have just been old, but in any case it was a bit of a shock. Good thing I didn't crash into the bushes...

Party v 1.0

I went to my first party of the year in Lund on Saturday. Before you read the rest of the post, you should start playing the YouTube clip below... (you don't have to watch it, but its just for mood).



It was a dress up party called "Oops I just didn't do that" where we had to dress up as something that would never have happened to us. I went as a gay Ukranian sailor.

Other people put in a lot of effort and then there were people who just showed up without preparing anything, but its always fun to have a go and try something crazy or strange. My favourite outfit was worn by Holger from Germany who came out in a dress and wig. He was pregnant (with a t-shirt stuffed in his dress for the baby-bump) and was smoking and drinking. A nice image. He even gave birth to the clothing at 3 a.m. but it is yet to be named or baptized.

I'd estimate that more than 100 people turned up to the party over the night who filtered through the house. There were four areas where people were hanging out — upstairs, in the kitchen (I'm told its very Swedish to hang out in the kitchen), in the stairs and in the basement where the house mates had made a cool dance floor with improvised Rubik's cubes as decorations. There was also a home made mirror ball. People danced like crazy downstairs and generally had a good time.

Brandon from my course came along and brought some of his home brewed beer. Much stronger and nicer than the mid-strength shit available and affordable from the supermarket here. The Swedish government has one of the world's biggest monopolies on alcohol here. The national company, System Bolaget, is the only place where you can buy drinks with alcohol content over 3.5% of volume. It is expensive when you are on a student budget. For those at home, it is still cheaper than what you are paying, but the range is much smaller. The System Bolaget closes at 3 p.m. on Saturdays and I forgot it was like this, so I had to go for the crappy supermarket beer.

Almost all of the guests of the party were well behaved, a nice thing. Not too many people getting out of hand.

In the house I noticed that all the doors to the bedrooms had massive locks on them: I guess they are used to having parties where lots of strangers turn up. I hope there are more this year because it was pretty awesome...

OK, the song should be finishing by about now...

Catch up time

Its Friday night, but the last thing I want to do is go out to a party or night club. Thats because for the last two weeks I have been going bull at gate with commuting, the girlfriend, work and of course the intensive university program I'm undertaking.

I handed in my second assignment in two weeks today in the afternoon and finished off my work for Alfa.lt shortly after. Anton, the Ukrainian guy I live with, and I went to check out the local pool and sauna, which is around the corner.

Its a small pool (just 25m or less even) and it has four lanes. Three of these lanes were blocked off for children's use and the remaining lane was being shared by about eight people. As anyone who has done laps in a pool would know, it was a little cramped in there.

Anton jumped in the pool and attempted to swim, but it was clear that he had never had a single lesson before. With every stroke he edged closer to having lungs full of water.

A funny thing about that is that when he went to the United States to work for a summer, he applied for a job as a lifesaver at a pool. He didn't get the job because he wasn't good at diving, but I think he should thank his lucky stars that he wasn't given the job or he could be dead by now...Not to mention those people he would have been saving.

I had my goggles with me so I could see underwater, but Anton did not and he came out of the pool with bright red eyes. Indoor pools are always over-chlorinated, but this one had a bit of extra oompf for good luck or something. 

One of my classmates told me incidentally that it is not the chlorine actually, but the mixture of chlorine and urine that makes your eyes go red. Supposedly when the chemicals mix there is a reaction and the eye-reddening stuff is made. There were a lot of kids in the pool, so it could be true, but my god were Anton's eyes red....

After the pool we went to the sauna to check out it. Upon entering the room we were chastised by a pair of old Swedish men with their dicks waving about. Apparently it is more or less illegal to go into a sauna with your bathers on. They said its for two reasons. The first is that you take too much sweat back into the pool via your shorts so they need to keep topping up the chlorine (never heard that one before, but it would explain Anton's eyes). The second reason was that they thought that the chlorine from the shorts would evaporate and cause a poisonous gas cloud to form and choke us all in the sauna. Sounds a bit like fantasy...

After lecturing us about the woes of bathers in the sauna, they started chatting to us about how high the taxes are in Sweden. Soon after we got out and went home.

Now I'm just happy to sit here and get a good night's rest. I might even manage to finish my book finally!

The Start Up Challenge

As I mentioned earlier, the first assignment we were given in our Masters of Entrepreneurship program was the Start Up Challenge, a game borrowed from other big business schools like Stanford University among others.

We were given 100 kr (~€10) on Wednesday around midday and by Monday morning we had to come back with at least 500 kr.

When we were given the money many people were wondering if they could even hit the 500 kr target, but it quickly became obvious that it would be really easy.

Me making cookies with our dough
mixer.

Our ideas were to leverage our skills as photographers and amateur bakers. We made sandwiches on home made bread and home made cookies. The sandwiches were very successful and we managed to tap into a cool niche of students, staff and taxi drivers who forgot to eat something before leaving the house in the morning. Many people were impressed by the fact that we had home made bread.

Alongside the sandwiches — which had cheese, tomato and grated carrot inside — we sold coffee. After around four hours we were sold out and had 600 kr in our pockets.

We decided to change strategy and make cookies. It didn't work out that well, but we made a few hundred kroner profit.

The big money maker for us was our photos for salon idea. We went around offering salons to take photos of their shops in artistic ways for them to use in various settings. This was very successful and it ended up putting us in the top half of the class.

We had a final profit of just under 3,900 kr. Not bad over all.

Show me the money, bitches. 25 kr became over 900 kr for
each member. The team from left to right: Ludwig Mendez,
Mariana Rojas, Adam Mullett, Alexander Okl

The top team won with around 5,600 kr by selling hotdogs, salsa lessons and moving furniture for people. They also bought clothes, fixed them up and sold them at the flea market.

Another team created a magazine and sold ads to two banks. I have no idea how this was achieved given that banks don't make decisions that fast. We were also not registered companies and last time I checked banks require invoices and receipts and things before giving out money. This team managed to come to the class with just over 5,000 kr, but claimed that they had 11,000 in total.

However the rules were that no accounts receivable would be counted and cash was king.

A great experience — lots of fun and a huge amount of learning.

What dreams are made of...

Just so you know what Marabou Dreams actually means, I will tell you now.

Marabou is one of the tastiest mass produced chocolate brands in Europe. They make the most awesome varieties ever.

Here is a photo of what Vik is taking with her back to Lithuania to give out as presents.

As you can see, Mink krokant is one of our favourite varieties. It is toffee
with mint flavour in milk chocolate. So aromatic and so tasty. Mmmmm....

First week in the course

One week has passed in the course so far, but it feels like a month (in a good way).

The course has been very intense and there has already been a lot of group work, which has been good for getting to know my other course mates and to know some things about Swedish culture.

We did fun things like the egg drop game, where we had straws, paper clips, rubber bands, paper cupcake cups, sticky tape, ear cleaners and a piece of cotton wool and we needed to make a structure that would protect the egg when dropped from eight metres above the ground.

The other great thing we've done in the Entrepreneurship course is to do the start up challenge. On Wednesday we were given 100 SEK (~€10) and we had to come back with as much as possible as we could. The challenge isn't over yet, but we have done fairly well (I won't reveal yet how much we made because of the competition not being over yet). I will also later reveal what we did to get that money.

Of course for class there has been a lot of reading, but somehow it hasn't been too heavy, though it was voluminous.

In all, this course so far is more like entertainment than a Masters program, but I don't mind.

Young people are strange

The next generation is taking over and the rest of us are getting older.

I realised today at the bus stop in Lund that I am indeed getting old and that my youth is behind me.

I saw a young couple, maybe 15 years old or so, standing at the bus stop. The girl was quite overweight, had a short haircut and was (as usual for Swedish youth) wearing way too much make up. The boy looked like he had just discovered hair gel and was going nuts with it, setting strands in every direction conceivable. He was inflicted with some serious acne and had braces on his teeth too.

So what happened was that they were hugging and then they went to have a french kiss. Just as they kissed, the boy turned on a Michael Jackson song to accompany the moment. I can't remember what song it was, but they probably thought this was a great way to validate the moment and indeed remind them that it was real.

After all, only things that are recorded or accompanied by digital media really happen. Every time someone kisses on the television there is musical accompaniment. By this logic, if they didn't have the music blaring out of the external speaker on their mobile phone, they might as well have not kissed.

What will the world look like when they are in power?

Less is more

Where is the natural beauty?

What a lot of people (particularly American men) told me when I mentioned Sweden prior to coming here is that there are the world's most beautiful women there.

When I got here — after having being spoilt for the last three years in Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia and Poland — I saw that Swedish girls cake their face with make up to the point that any natural beauty is totally lost.

In fact I doubt some of them would even be recoginsable if they took off their masks.

There is a limit to the amount of make up a girl should put on in the morning:

Less than one millimetre in depth of foundation on your face please!
Do not use mascara and eye liner to the point where your eye lashes become one solid blade - there should be individual hairs there!

Of course this overuse of make up is most prevalent among the school girls and first year uni students who are still learning how to use this stuff, but even older women can be noticed with defined lines of foundation around their chin line and neck.

Sometimes I feel like I'm in a circus.

Riding Skåne

Today I woke up at 6:30 to do my work for Alfa.lt, have breakfast, have a shower and ride to university for the very first class of my master's degree.

When I woke up I checked the flag outside to see if there was any wind. It was limp against its pole and I rejoiced.

By the time I got going on the bike though it was another story with a decent gale of wind pushing me back with every turn of the pedal. I was already 10 minutes behind schedule due to a talkative house mate and thinking I had misplaced my keys. In fact I had already put my keys into my bag the day before in case I forgot them, but I forgot that I did this :)

Look at me go. Bat out of hell!

With just 45 minutes to belt it about 12 km against the wind from Lomma to the School of Economics and Management at the university in Lund, I started to worry that I wouldn't make it. I pedaled hard and eventually made it with a few minutes to spare at the lecture hall, albeit with jelly legs.

On my way home I started thinking about how many kilometres I will ride each day here in Sweden. On Sunday we went to Malmö and around and I rode over 30 km. Today I rode around 24 km or so. I suppose on a regular day I will be riding around 25 km. Its also a 2 km round trip on the bike to the supermarket where I go almost every day, so I can add that in too.

Soon I will be fit as a fiddle — I just hope that in winter the road doesn't get so slushy that I can't ride anymore.

Let there be bread

In my quest to live within my means in Sweden, I tried making my first batch of bread in the country.

At the shop I was surprised to see that a smallish loaf of bread costs between 20-30 kr (€2.00-3.00) and they don't have the bread that I like, which is nice and dark.

I tried to make it twisted, but the baking forms
cooked it into nice rectangles. Oh well. Its still bread.

So I bought a 2 kg pack of flour and Vik and I have been going nuts with it. We finished the packet  off with the bread, but we also made two apple cakes with apples from the neighbour's tree.

Yeast (or jäst in Swedish) is pretty cheap at 1.50 kr for 50 g and flour is cheap too at 7.89 kr for 2 kg. Add a bit of water, sugar and salt and you have four loaves of bread, which will last two or three days each for one person.

Each loaf then costs roughly 2 kr or €0.20. Plus it tastes good and its sort of fun. Torsten, my landlord has a mixing machine with an attachment that kneads the dough, so its really quick and easy to make it too.

The only thing missing that would make me really happy is dark, coarse flour, which is better for you than the super fine white flour. If I can manage that, I'll be laughing.

War on personal responsibility rages...

Governments are again trying to draw up rules and boundaries on the internet — a nation-less domain they clearly have no right to touch. The free market rules on the internet and people are free to use it or not use it as they see fit. That is of course unless you live in a country that censors the internet like China...or Australia.

Click to view the story. From the Wall Street Journal
(Europe edition) on Aug. 26, 2010. Page 5.

Now Germany is considering making laws that would ban employers from looking at a (potential) employee's social networking pages (Facebook, StudiVZ.de etc). [Click on the article to expand and read].

This makes me laugh like all of the other privacy rubbish that people harp on about with Facebook and other sites.

People want their privacy and thats understandable, but we know that Facebook shares our information and our photos (which become public domain when you upload them) with everyone and anyone, particularly those people that make apps and so on.

There is the pseudo-private option of blocking off your profile from public view. You go into your privacy settings and change them all so no one can see anything.

Or if you don't want people looking at your life, the simple and effective way to protect your privacy is not to upload your information.

So back to the newspaper article in the Wall Street Journal, if you don't want your employer or a company you apply to work for to see things like you necking vodka out of a plastic penis on a hens night, then don't upload it! No one is twisting your arm.

Also if you don't want people to know you are affiliated with the Ku Klux Klan, you don't need to upload it.

I know, I know it sounds insane not to exist. I mean some people could not imagine the crazy and unthinkable anonymity of not validating your existence on the internet. If its not on the internet, it doesn't exist. Oh wait is that the point?

Microfinancing culture

While hunting around for an alternative for Facebook (which is getting a bit lame these days) I ran into the site called Kick Starter.

Look at all that money in those small hands!
It could be you or someone you know!

This site is made for people who have an idea and want to get it going, but don't have the cash. There are so many projects that would be great except they aren't big enough to invest in, but too big to finance on your own. Perhaps they don't fit in with any grants on offer or perhaps you just don't want to be involved in the bureaucracy that grants come along with.

Anyway Kick Starter (Beta) is a site where you can put your project up and ask people to fund it. People with a cool idea will attract people who are sick to death of boring old crap. They will give you money, like in this example.

Its the perfect way to fund culture and its proof that people will actually give money to things they think are worth paying for.

With the new micro-possibilities that are open to more or less everyone on the internet, Kick Starter is going to be one of many sites where people can get some dough together to make the world that little bit richer with culture and ideas. God knows we all need some in this media-syndicated world.

Oh by the way, its only available in America, so people reading at home in Australia, you can't use it. Don't worry though, it will only take an Australian about four years to invent the same thing, going by the rate of technological advances in the country. Oh but by that time the internet will be censored anyway. Tough luck.

Words of the day

Three words that I have easily been able to remember are "meatballs", "chicane" and "end". Thats because they sounds sort of funny in English.

Meatballs is köttbullar, which looks like it should have a k sound at the beginning. However in Swedish, when k is followed by a soft vowel, such as "ö" it becomes "sh". So it sounds almost like "shitbullar" or shit balls. Easy to remember.

Chicane is farthinder. Its easy to remember because hinder, means to slow down in English and fart is like fahrt (n. drive/ride) in German, which means to drive. Drive-slowerer. Got it.

End is slut. The u is nice and long like all Swedish vowel sounds, so it sounds a bit like sloooot. At the end of a film, where you would normally see "the end," you see "slut."

A few other words I've learned are smör (butter) and ägg (egg).

Centralised vacuum cleaner

Today I had the pleasure of vacuuming the house. It was easy because the house where I live has a centralized vacuum system, something I'd not seen before. Getting rid of the dust and crumbs was as easy as plugging in the hose into a special socket in the wall.

The vacuum turns on, you do the cleaning and the simply take the pipe with you to the next room. No worrying about electric cords or lugging aroung the heavy bastard or worrying about if the bag is full.

Makes it easy to keep clean.

It's a nice coincidence that I enjoy this luxury technology, but in the last post I was talking about how it's nice to struggle. Life is strange isn't it?

Rolling the stone

I just finished reading the book "The Age of Absurdity: Why modern life makes it hard to be happy"

The book covers a lot of different subjects from consumerism and unbridled desire for everything (and then the disappointment once you have it) to poignant subjects such as the rejection of responsibility. The book also covers modern interpretations on love, work and death.

Following a terrifying chapter about death, I finished it with the summary of the book. More or less, the author's message is that happiness is derived from struggle: that if you are always striving towards something, you will be happiest then. Throughout the book the example of Sisyphus and his eternal struggle to push the stone up the hill is referenced as a metaphor for the happy life.

I won't summarize the whole book here, but finishing reading it at the point when I moved from Lithuania back to the west was perfect timing. While going through it, I started to be able to qualify the feelings of happiness and contentment I had in Lithuania.

The country is quite basic, for lack of a better word. Everything is as it was many years ago, except for technological advancements. In Lithuania they do not suffer from many of the ills that the western world does such as the habit of shirking personal responsibility (for example no one would EVER claim there that they are fat because of a genetic disorder. They would take full personal responsibility and say they ate too much and did too little exercise).

They also have enough to do in their everyday lives to keep them occupied. Doing mundane things like walking to the shops instead of driving and washing the dishes by hand keep you occupied and you don't get bored.

In Sweden I have already noticed that I have too much time on my hands. I cook and then all I have to do with the dishes is throw them into the machine and when its full press the button. Not exactly new technology I know, but I haven't lived with this luxury before.

I guess the thing is that Lithuania is a good place to live because there is always a bit of struggle. You don't have time to sit around and wonder about things because you are always busy just trying to keep up.

Its a very hard subject to write about — to fully explain what I'm trying to say would take two or three books and then some — so I'll just leave it at that for now. Read the book, maybe you will get what I mean...

The Age of Absurdity: Why Modern Life Makes it Hard to be Happy

About Lomma

Here are some facts about the town where I live. (I got the information from the municipal government):

Lomma municipality
The municipality, situated in the west of Skåne on the coast of Öresund , was formed in the 1960s when the small market town of Lomma was merged with the large rural district of Flädie. In January 2009 the population amounted to about 20,450 inhabitants. Prominent features include good housing standards and the nearness to Öresund which affords ample opportunities for a rich outdoor life.


Population
The municipality has three population centres: Bjärred with 9,250 inhabitants, Lomma with 9,700 and Flädie with about 240 inhabitants. The remaining 1,300 inhabitants live either in one of the villages of Fjelie, Önnerup, Lilla Lomma and Alnarp or in the outlying rural areas.


There is considerable commuter activity from Lomma: about 6,700 of the inhabitants work in other municipalities, chiefly in Malmö or Lund, and about 2,600 people from other areas commute to work in Lomma.


Transport
It takes about 15-20 minutes to drive to Malmö from the different parts of the municipality. Public transport is well developed with frequent bus connections with Malmö and Lund. The travelling time Lomma-Malmö, Lomma-Lund and Bjärred-Lund is 20-25 minutes. The distance Lomma-Malmö is 8 kilometres , Lomma-Lund 10 km , Bjärred-Lund 10 km and Bjärred-Malmö 15 km .

Watch this tourism video about Lomma. I think they took every single angle of the town for this, because it really isn't that big.

For those totally excited about the district of Lomma, there is more info on Wikipedia here, though it is five years old now.

Meat!

In Sweden I am living on Lithuanian wages and because of that I've set myself the difficult target of eating for 100 kr (~10 euros) a week. More than a budget constraint, I am interested to see if I can actually do it.

I have been going to Lidl, the German chain supermarket that sells bulk items at cheap prices. Just in case you wanted 10kg of sugar in one trip to the supermarket, this is your shop. Oh and don't forget the 20 cans of corn at discount rates.

The remainder of the pork that Erik and I didn't eat.
Lunch tomorrow.

The problem with Lidl is that it doesn't have much in the way of fresh food. You can buy fresh meat, but the choice is limited and you need to buy 10kg of beef mince or something...they don't really have the small packets.

So I went to ICA, the expensive, but more regular supermarket with a larger range of vegetables and meat products. Fortunately they had a sale on marinade pork ribs for 19.90 kr per kilogram — unbeatable value.

My friend Erik was visiting for a barbecue, which is why we were buying the meat. At that price we got one kilogram of ribs each and took them home and grilled 'em up. 

We didn't finish them of course, but they were so good I went back to go get three more kilograms for the freezer — to let a good deal like that go to waste would be sin and wouldn't help me reach my 100 kr goal.

Cold water

Today I decided to be a bit crazy and go swim in the Öresund channel, which runs between southern Sweden and Denmark.

I rode my bike down to the water, just half a kilometre from my home (one of the advantages of living in Lomma). The wind was strong and clouds filled the sky, but I thought it would be a great way to kick start the day after doing a bit of morning work at my job at Alfa.lt.

I got to the beach and was comforted by the fact that there were a few kids around wearing bathers.

I rode down to the southern beach — not where sunbathers and swimmers usually go, but where my landlord Torsten suggested — and I was all alone. I took off my shirt and ran into the water. Pretty cold, but not totally shocking.

Wading in I realised it probably wasn't going to get much deeper. Those in the know told me that you need to go about 400 metres before getting into swimming-depth water, but I was too lazy to go so far, so I just lay down when I got in knee-deep.

My my was it...refreshing. I put my head under and wow, what a feeling! After pulling all the seaweed and crap out of my hair I felt like a million bucks. So I stayed in the water until I started to feel cold then went back to the bike and rode off.

Very fresh indeed.

Around Lomma on a cloudy day

This are some photos I took quickly so you can get an idea about what the town looks like where I live. To view the photos, click on "fullscreen". Enjoy.