First Week of Work

So.... I don't have a good buzz going this time (Andy) so this post may be a little less strange.

Currently I am back in Gävle for the national holiday weekend. Apparently a few years ago they had to actually force strongly suggest people take off work to celebrate this holiday since Sweden has never really had to be liberated from any other countries, at least not since like the 14th century or something (after which they were usually controlling pretty sizeable swaths of land as I understand it). So nobody really gave a shit until whoever had the authority said "don't bother coming in to work today", giving people an extra day a year to get shitfaced I guess (like they needed any more). All I know is it made my first week of work 4 days long.

When not in Gävle preparing to party, Frida and I are living in a part of Stockholm called Bergshamra. Our friend Fredrik who goes to the Royal Technical University hooked us up with his student apartment for the summer while he is back in Gävle working. This is good since we will both be working in Stockholm until school starts up again for Frida. She'll be at Saab Scania programming computers to kill people optimize interfaces and stuff and I of course will be at Bromma designing pornography spreaders (which is not what I always think it sounds like). Fredrik's apartment is small and in a student "ghetto" (which means that a minority of people in that area have slightly darker skin and speak Swedish with a faint accent, or are asian with glasses and a hello kitty purse) but it still kicks ass because IT'S IN STOCKHOLM, BABY! We will be there until probably Septemberish.

This week, this week, hmmm, so much to say... I found out that you can actually get not particularly great food in Sweden, and realized that I've been spoiled by good restaurants and great home cooking. Everyone at Bromma (in the mech. eng. dept. anyway) goes to eat at this restaurant inside a car dealership (trust me it's weirder than it sounds, there's a bright yellow Hummer H2 half blocking the door) "because it's cheap", meaning $8.00/entree, no drink (other than water), no salad, no bread ($9.75 with that junk) and trust me it is cheap (meaning not great). They "specialize" in traditional Swedish fare (again meaning cheap, since basically no one here had money until about 75 years ago or so) such as falukorv, which is like a HUGE fucking sausage (we're talking 5 or 6 inch diameter at least, the inside of which looks like bologna), isterband (or "lard-ribbon" in english), heavy sauces, rubbery potatoes, etc. But my favorite has to be fläsk, which is like HUUUUUGE fucking pieces of bacon in "four onion sauce". If I had known beforehand I definitely would have ordered it, but I will next time.

Also, people approach me constantly and start talking Swedish, I have no idea why. Apparently I have been randomly approached this week as many times as most Swedish people are in a year. People just start "blah blah blah"ing in Sweden or whatever talk they are used to and I'm all "I speak English fool" and they are all "Oh, please to take our photograph as we riding escalator!" or "Please give me money!" or I don't even know what since half the time they just walk off without saying another word when they find out I use a normal language. Freaks.

I guess I should say more about my work for anyone who is interested. I don't have a cubicle, which is super sweet. Bromma just moved into the building about a year and a half ago, and everything is (as is fairly typical in Sweden) understated, modern and nice. I share an office with two contractors Bosse and Sven (retirement age), and another guy Peter who is roughly my age (a little older than me) and super cool. There is windows to the outside AND into the enclosed courtyard where we take our mandatory coffee breaks (seriously, they will come get you if you aren't standing by the coffee machine ready to go). Speaking of which, the coffee is infinitely better than at Kalmar (sorry Kalmar) and you can get REAL cappuccino, espresso, even hot chocolate out of it. Anyway, so far this week I have made a model and drawing of a pre-designed part (just a big chunk of steel pretty much), and then designed an adapter for the sensor shafts of a hydraulic motor and encoder and I am now working on a spacer/coupler for the same, which was kind of difficult but I figured out a solution right before leaving work today, which means I won't be able to finish it till Monday : / Oh and I don't have a calculator at my desk which really fucking sucks. And if they want to make a decimal they use a , instead of a . which is weird. And then the whole metric system, which is so ridiculously much better than fucking English retard units.

Hmm, other than that, I haven't had any problems using the bus or subway, and haven't gotten lost yet, which is surprising since I have no fucking clue where I am most of the time. Oh, another interesting thing. In the US when we graduate high school of course we get the cap and gown. Here they get a fucking sailor hat and they drive around in the back of dump-truck looking things honking and screaming. It was seriously annoyingly loud downtown this week. What isn't annoying however is high school girls in sailor hats and bikinis, I'm not sure that will ever be annoying to me. To quote a great man: "Wow-wa-wee-wa".

One last thing. I was super lucky to get this job. I doubt (pretty damn sure actually) I would have gotten anything as good as this back in the US. Luckily for me I don't think they understood the GPA system that well, or at least paid little attention to it. They judge people more by their work ethic than their grades, which I feel is a much better measure also. So; working through school + glowing reviews from Kalmar + shitty GPA = good job for Pat = (still) lucky.

I'll probably post again this weekend before I go back to STHLM. I don't have another hungry mouth to feed internet access in the ghetto so if I don't get back to your messages/emails for a while that is why. You'll just have to wait. Ass.