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!