As part of my husband and my preparations to move abroad, interviewed a friend about how it is to live in Amsterdam.
Started working actively to get labour union representation at my work.
Started doing weightlifting regularly at a gym.
Intensified my studies in leadership and applied them in my work.
It's almost as if I've gotten a huge drive to prove to myself and others that I am more then just a baby carrier. Not that the world outside my closest friends and family have noticed. The first questions to me are "How many weeks has it been?" or "Aren't you excited about a new tiny person coming in to your daily life?!" My response is "Fourth month and no not really, it's something that going to happen in the future and I'm excited about things I'm doing right now".
Who counts in weeks in their daily life anyway? What people want to actually know is if you've stopped puking and if it's ok for them to comment about the size of the belly or not.
I am seeing many parallels of my pregnancy to how it was to move to a new country as a hidden immigrant. (For those who don't know what a hidden immigrant is, you can find it here) I see the constant social insecurity that arises when I respond in a non-typical way to standard questions and I recognise my own frustration and fear in not being able to show who I really am because of the social construct of what is expected of me.
Facing these issues is something I haven't needed to do for a while but it does help that I've done it before. The added benefit of knowing what worked and what didn't makes groping around in this new set of social constructs more methodical and hopefully less painful for both parties.
I want to finish off with a sculpture that I feel speaks strongly to me. Bruno's own interpretation is that the statue represents that every traveller leaves behind a part of themselves when they leave home.
For me I see it as a reminder that we never see more than a portion of each person we meet. There is so much more to a person, some of which we will never be able to comprehend. Being aware that I do not have the whole picture is a great reminder to not jump to conclusions, and actually listen to what the person is saying.
My friend D spent the week-end with me and we had a wonderful time having the most girliest week-end ever with baking Nutella-bread, watching "Gift vid första ögon kastet" (Married at first sight) and playing Mortal Kombat X
During the week-end D had also introduced me to a game called Covet Fashion and on Monday morning she came to the breakfast table with a thoughtful look on her face and asked the question
"How many votes on average does my look get per event?"
I am slowly trying to get used to Apple. The new work computer is a Macbook so for the past week I've been trying to get the hang of how things work and all the shortcuts. My approach has been to use the computer as much as possible in the most usual everyday activities, like writing, surfing and coding.
So far these are my major likes and dislikes with the Mac.
It's been a while since a week-end has been so focused on gaming. Apart from playing Minecraft, Civilization IV and V, I've been busy helping Matte with getting his latest game ready for release.
Matte is back to working full-time at Adtoox, but it does not mean that he has stopped with his game development. The latest game in the pipeline has been "Balloons from Outer Space" and our (mainly his) hard work has paid off! The game is now available at Google Play. For all you who are lucky enough to own an Android device you can download the free mobile game here.
For all of you others, it's possible to play the web-based version of the game below:
In June I was elected as workplace representative for the office and have loved every minute of it.
It is one of the things, apart from my colleagues and projects, that I'm going to miss the most.
My current workplace is covered by a collective agreement and one of the benefits because of that is that the employees have the right to elect a representative and they chose me. As a representative I got to present to the employer what the employees want and I also have had the right to recieve all information concerning changes to the organisation, changes to the workplace and how the company is going. Shortly, it's meant that I could ask questions and expect answers to most of them which is awesome! I get to be 5 again and ask "why?" "why?" until I annoy everyone. But jokes aside, it does come with an amazing right to actually know what is happening. In a world where a lot of companies make money from selling knowledge it is a rare treat to be able to experience knowledge freely.
For those who do not know the Swedish employment system, the workers union is a very strong force in the politics of workers rights. There is very few laws in Sweden that governs employment rights and instead a lot more power is giver to the unions and their collective agreements. In most cases this has been for the better as the common collective agreements in Sweden are much better for the workers than most law regulation in the rest of Europe.
Of course there is also downside to this set up. Not all companies in Sweden have a collective agreement in place. The latest numbers I could find was 88% of the Swedish workforce is covered by the agreements. This means that 12% risk getting contracts which do not cover rights such as minimum wage, wage development and pensions.
I am in a period of my life where all my energy is focused on work. As work is a touchy subject to write about ( all those NDA's and intellectual rights agreements have a tendency of getting in the way) I am reduced to write about the mere mundane... such as my party last week!
I turned 25 in August and wanted to do a proper celebration. Now August is not a good month to have parties so I combined it with my annual waffle party. Not being able to speak for all I'll just say that I had great fun! The blanket fortress seemed appreciated as it was rarely unoccupied and all of my prepared waffle mixture was eaten. No all time record was beaten (12 is the standing record since 3 years back I think) but B combed in the title of Waffle Eater with a tidy number of 9 waffles.
I always do waffle mixtures from scratch, not being a fan of the ready made mixtures so here is the recipe for those who ant to give it a go. Serves 2 normal people or 3 weaklings:
2 eggs
3-3½ dl flour
0.5 - 1 dl melted butter/margarine
2 tsp baking powder
½ tsp salt
Enough milk to make the mixture smooth (somewhere around 4-5 dl)
Mix everything and pour in the milk last to avoid clumps . Count on around 1-1½ dl of mixture per waffle. It usually tastes better if the mixture is prepared the day before.
As everyone seemed too busy eating the waffles than taking pictures of them ( I deem that a success) you can get a picture of me licking a lollipop instead.
The party did however beat the record of the longest party I have held, with the first guests arriving a few minutes after 13, and the last one who was in any condition to leave exiting after 01 in the morning. Lets just say that the blanket fortress seemed to have done a good job of doubling up as a place to sleep.
So the questions have been coming in:
"Are you changing jobs?"
"How did you find the job?"
"Don't you like your current job?"
So I thought it best to answer all in one single post.
Are you changing jobs?
Yes, I will be starting my new job at Tictail as a Data Scientist as of 1st December.
Don't you like your current job?
I like my current job as a Data Analyst at Rezidor and I love my colleagues. My decision to change jobs has nothing to do with being unhappy with where I am. It has everything to do with opportunities and the future.
How did you find Tictail?
Well, I didn't. Tictail found me. I recieved an email from Carl (CEO for Tictail). He said that he had found my blog on the internet, found me interesting and asked if I wanted to meet up for a cup of coffee. After some googling to ensure myself that the person wasn't a complete weirdo, I accepted the invitation.
We met up and I realized that this is a passionate person with a drive that could kindle anyone's interest. As he talked about the future of Tictail I could already start thinking about the data potential that lay within it's depth. His last question was direct - "What is holding you back from joining us?"
I asked to meet the rest of the team. A couple of weeks later I got to meet Siavash and J at Tictail's office. Being at the office I saw that the passion and drive was not limited to Carl. We talked numbers, models, analysis and potential. The questions asked were clever, the analysis had depth and I saw that Tictail has smart people with great abilities. We talked future and I saw how Tictail is really focused on getting a good team to deliver a great product. This drive was visible in every person I talked to, and made me realize that Tictail is going to go far.
So, next step is going to be Tictail and I'm excited!
Update: For those who want to join the Rezidor team you can apply to the Data Analyst role on LinkedIn here.
I stare at the blank page that is placed in front of me when I click on "Create new post". Just before I had a multitude of ideas swirling in my head. Thinking that if I just sit down and start writing I'll be able to get some order to them I opened a page. They disappear. And it's not the first time. The feeling of seeing an empty page and the inability to be able to write down what was in your head is depressing to say the least.
I am not talking about writers block. I have constant moments in my everyday life where I'm thinking, "I should write about that" or "that is an interesting topic". But they will hide away when I am placed face first to a page that I am expected to fill.
As I do with all the problems in my life I Google it. Halfway through page two (Yes, I am one of those who will actually look at the second page) I find a blog called "Write to Done" giving a name to this problem. He calls it writer's log jam and I think the name is very appropriate.
My main way of getting out of the jam is to just start writing about what I have done during the day. It almost always leads to tangent subjects that I can then finally get down on paper. I have to agree with Walter Benjamin:
"Never stop writing because you have run out of ideas. [...] Fill the lacunae of inspiration by tidily copying out what is already written." - Walter Benjamin
In the day of copy/paste being a couple of keystrokes (or Alt-E-S-V if you're working in Excel) this can seem outdated. But I take it to heart. Actually sitting and typing away words that have already been written or just writing the everyday happenings of your life gives you a focus and releases the fear of the empty page.
Every day when I have come back from work I have found either a bouncing Matte holding out his phone saying "Look at this! Look at this new thing I've done!" or a bouncing Matte saying "I've pushed a new version. Can you download and test it?"
Our former agreement that demo-days were to be Thursdays flew out the window as every day became demo-day. But now, finally, a beta version of Five Elements has now been released! This means Matte can get feedback from more people than just me :-)
Matte has written a guide for those who want to become Beta-testers. Just click the link and follow the guide if you want to become a Beta-Tester:
If you can't see the above, a direct link can be found here.
I've taken a few screenshots of Five Elements to show off the game design - but mainly to show off my high-score. I've had a few weeks to play this game, and so far I am second-best in the world at this game!
When most people buy a dining-room table, the idea is to have a lovely place to sit with visitors and socialize. That was also our idea when we bought our table last summer. This has not become our reality. Since May our table looks like this:
The reason? Matte is spending every Tuesday and Thursday working on mobile game app development. Four weeks of this has brought the first results! An alpha version of Five Elements is now uploaded and being tested:
Being one of the stakeholders, I have the privilege of being one of the testers. I am impressed. The game has a good structure and is technically very stable. Matte's single-worker adaptation of the SCRUM framework has ensured deliverance of a shippable product after just four days and an alpha version within eight.
Just a few more days and it will be available for the public! Matte is of course loving the fact that he gets to program all day long:
Well, I've managed to keep my New Year's resolution so far!
One month with plenty of things happening.Some highlights:
Started writing articles for PulpInterest.com - can be found here.
At work we have started working with the agile framework SCRUM. I've been reading up about this and I find it is a great way to work when it comes to development. The best source that I found that explained things clearly was CollabNet's free e-learning courses.
Been reading loads of books on my e-bookreader. I am so glad that I finally got one! It is so easy to use and carry. No more paper books for me. I can even use it for education books. The ebookreader has not only a dictionary function to look up words you don't understand, but also wikipedia search! All you do is press on the word you want to know more about and up pops a message box wit hthe dictionary definition and wikipedia summary.
Playing Minecraft mods like crazy - Yes, I have spent plenty of hours playing Minecraft but what has been the focus of my attention lately has been mods like Yogbox, Hexxit and Tekkit. My favourite is YogBox but it is unfortunately a bit buggy and they have stopped developing it :(
Finally had dinner at B's place. Haven't seen his place since we helped him move and it is really looking nice. Am awaiting the moving in party
Went to Södertälje and visited one of Matte's colleague. I really enjoyed that, meeting the family and just talking!
I've had a lovely Christmas, celebrating Christmas Eve with my husband's family and Christmas Day with mine.
The Christmas Day dinner turned out great with everyone chipping in, sister decorating the apartment and table, dad making sure there was space in the kitchen, husband making the starter, me making the turkey, mum making the Yorkshire puddings and gravy and Kiara making us all laugh with her obsession over her new "Poppy". As I'm not one who takes pictures of food... or pictures at all for that matter, here is a picture of Kiara taken by my mum.
Kiara
Sooo...I've ordered an e-book reader! I am going to pick it up tomorrow... and then. Then. The whole world of literature will be at my fingertips!
I will never need to ask myself, "Do I have enough space for this book?" Never wonder if I've brought along enough books to the holiday trip nor lie just exactly right so that the bedside lamp will light up the page so I can see the text. Now why didn't I get this sooner?
For those who don't know, I own a unicycle. I can ride it (badly) and I enjoy it whenever I do have the possibility of taking it out on a wobbly spin.
There is one problem with a unicycle though - it is slow. Why choose a unicycle when a bike is faster and less wearisome? Well, this problem has been solved. RYNO Motors has finally released their newly developed, awesomely designed, motorised unicycle.
And I feel as excited about this as I did when I was looking for my first moped! It is still only available in the US, but come a year or two and it will hopefully be available in Sweden as well. It will also give me time to save up for it :)
I jump from the tower in to the water 200 metres below and I feel my heart leap in to my mouth and the adrenaline kicking in. I surface gasping and swim to shore.
I'm hiding round the corner of a building to eavesdrop on a conversation. A hand is placed on my shoulder, making me jump and run the computer chair over my husband's feet, who had just come in to ask me if I wanted coffee.
Playing computer games is as much part of my life as reading and I will spend some of my free time in front of "that box", like my farmor calls it. I will lose myself in to worlds, strategies and stories with the universe at my fingertips.
When I entered the grown-up world of the work environment I found that I was constantly questioned about my gaming. Coming from a community where gaming is as accepted as going for fikas, I was surprised at the widespread prejudice, misconception and wariness people have towards computer games outside my community. I want to take some time to answer some of the statements that I have experienced.
"You're just playing to get away from reality"
This is, in some sense true. I also read books, watch TV, go to the movies, write and go on holidays to "get away from reality". Getting away from reality is something that everyone does and this is the reason why. Reality is not the one true thing we strive to experience. Change, innovation and enrichment is what we strive after. Just living in reality will never makes us strive for the impossible, nor make us aware of what we have now. Playing computer games is one of the many ways I dream and enrich my life.
"Why does it have to be so violent?"
I could say that not all games are violent. But that doesn't answer the question. Apart from that, some of my favourite games right now, like Assassins Creed and Dragon Age, are violent. Some of my favourite series and movies, such and Lord of the Rings and Game of Thrones, are also violent. Every day I watch the news and I see riots, attacks and disasters. Just looking historically, violence has played a prominent part in pretty much all aspects of our culture.
Crucifixion of Christ
Death of Julius Caesar
Violence has a lot of emotions associated with it, grief, loss, vengeance, anger to just mention a few. This is why it makes both good gaming and filming material. To question violence one should question the reason of why it is in our society as a whole and not only why it is in the game industry. No, I don't like violence. But I don't believe violence can be linked to only to the gaming world. "Why does it have to be violent?" should also be asked to our whole culture, which I don't see is being done to the same degree. I recommend Henry Jenkins blogpost for a more in-depth reasoning around media violence.
"Gaming is not good for you."
This statement is often followed with "You sit all day at work in front of the computer, it's not good to sit in front of the computer all day during your free-time as well".
Gaming, as all types of activities, should be done in moderation. But I am not criticized to the same extent as if I would spend the same amount of time reading as I do gaming. The fact that I could sit in front of the computer 24-7 is not the main argument in these statements.The underlying message that I get from these types of statements is that playing computer games is seen as unproductive and non-developing. And this I would like to dispute. I will now name a couple of popular games and what skills they develop.
Civilization - The two main skills this develops is historical knowledge and strategy. Being a turn-based game, it makes the gamer think carefully each step it does and how it will affect the future development of the game play. To understand how what you do right now affects the future course is a great skill to develop. Used in many areas of the real world from project planning to coding the skill to plan ahead is always useful.
Civilization uses historical figures and you build historical monuments. Understanding the importance of what the pyramids were for the Egyptians or Machu Picchu to the Incans. Also, the possibility to play historical scenarios such as World War II and the American Civil War makes history much more alive then the hours in history class. Minecraft - Creativity is the top skill developed here. To be able to expand your mind from the mere mundane blocks that you can see to imagine what can be created out of them. Youtube is full of videos where people have create the whole of Lord of the Rings world, built a working computer and designed amazing architectural skyscrapers. Some snapshots of some cool pieces can be found here. But I will attach a youtube clip where they have created a jukebox playing the whole Portal - Still Alive song:
Antichamber - Streching your brain to be able to think outside the box. This game focus on the developing puzzle solving skills and rethink the way you perceive things. This isn't the only game in this genre but it is definitely one that has stuck with me as its way of making me see things in a different way is a skill that I have used in the real world as well.
World of Warcraft - Teamwork and Economics. If you don't believe me about teamwork, try communicating with 4+ random people over chat while you are being outnumbered by orcs. This multi player game will really make you realise how each person plays his part in the whole picture. Being able to communicate is key and also to stick to the joint plan. The economics skill is from the auction house in the game. This is where you can sell and buy items from other players. The set-up is like a normal English auction style, and to understand the dynamics of when you get the highest prices, when rare items are sold what is ETS (easy to sell) is a skill which requires the understanding of the community behaviour.
There are all types of different games, each that has different goal. To assume that all games are just toys to pass the time with just shows how out of touch with the gaming world you are.
"Come on, space invaders isn't that great"
Just because the last games that you played was 20 years ago doesn't mean that the gaming industry hasn't evolved. In just the past 10 years the consumer spending in gaming has overtaken the record music industry and the forecast is that it will overtake the newspaper within 5 years (see this article). An industry that is growing like this has spent billions in game development and game play. Game Design has become a science where it analyses what makes people want to play and how do you make a game that makes people want to play more.It is not a fluke that games like Candy Crush Saga become a hit. There are years of research behind many of the most popular games and to actually understand what is out there you need to spend some time playing the new games and not only Solitaire. Which, by the way, is no longer available on Windows 8. Another reason why Windows 8 sucks.
2014-08-12 Update: This whole post seems to have disappeared completely which has meant that I am reposting it now.
Many of my colleagues have moved to Sweden for this job so a lot of our talk at work has been about how Sweden handles immigration and the bureaucracy around it. Now this gave us all a laugh today. Tapping my shoulder, T ask's me if I can translate a letter he has received from the Migration department.
Now read the above sentence again. I had to translate. A letter from the migration department. Who was sending a letter to a person they know isn't Swedish. And know that they haven't stayed in Sweden longer than 2 months.
In short, the message the Swedish Migration Department want to give all immigrants is:
"Welcome to Sweden. We don't give a s**** if you are from another country, you have to know Swedish if you wanted to live in Sweden. But as we can't write that as our law we'll just make it hard for everyone who doesn't know Swedish."
Well I have a dress code at my new job. It's not completely surprising, being the hospitality branch, but it is going to be something that I have to get used to, having not had dress code since 5th grade. And then it was my school uniform.
The closest I could find to my old school uniform. My skirt was more maroon then on the picture, but otherwise it's pretty close.
So the dress code is "Business Professional". Being not very fashion sensitive, this was unfamiliar enough for me to have to Google the style. It is times like these I which I was a man. A proper three-piece suit and I would be set. But no. Instead I'm going to have to find skirt, pressed trousers, a blouse, a shirt, 3 types of shoes, pantihose and spend an hour fixing my make-up every morning. But seriously I feel it will actually be easier to follow Professional Dress than trying to find what I should wear each day. This dress will narrow the choices to pretty much only the blouse. The pain is just the beginning where I am both not used to wearing this outfit and also haven't got any of the items.
So look out business world. Natalie is coming and she hasn't a clue when it comes to dress sense. How many unwritten rules is she going to break in her first week...
I went to an After-Work with three of my soon-to-be colleagues last Friday which I enjoyed a lot. I found out more about what my work assignments are to be and also the structure of work group I will be part of. I am going to be part of a completely new department at Carlson Rezidor. The group will start off with ten persons that have been recruited both from within the company and outside. As it is new, there is much that is undecided and I am expecting that it's going to be extremely chaotic the first months. But I feel even more psyched after this meeting and am really looking forward to being part of something from the very start.
I have now also got my new phone, a Samsung Galaxy S4, so I have had a pleasant evening installing all the app's that I want. So far I'm impressed, although it is taking some time to get used to Android from having a an Apple the past 3 years.
To round off, Matte and I, or at least I have decided the pet that we want: (Start at 0:50 sec to get the best pictures, Blogger seems to have problems with reading timestamped videos):
So last night I cycled down to Karlberg Castle grounds to visit my sister who has just started her 3 year education at the Military Academy there.
When I arrived, I was taken to a guard to be registered and my sister asked if it was possible to show me the castle. Another guard came along just then and informed that the castle had just been locked down for the night. He must have taken pity on our disappointed faces because he looked us up and down and said
"Alright, I'll take you on a personal tour."
The joy! We followed him in through the back door and spent 1½ hours doing a tour of the different rooms, listening to ghost stories and plenty of laughter at the stories he could tell of previous cadets at the academy.
I was too caught up with listening to both my sister's and the guards' lively stories of the place that I didn't take any pictures but some googling brought me to this blog post with some good pictures. I will link to just two of them that I liked especially
First, a picture of the ballroom:
The ballroom is used often for dinners, wedding receptions and, of course, the famous winter ball that the cadets get to go to. This is also where the ghost story of Queen Ulrika Eleonora starts. The story can be found here, although I can say that being told the story in a completely empty castle, as the light is slowly fading as night creeps in and the storyteller is the guard who has worked there for the past 15 years was much more fascinating.
And that leads me to the second picture, the picture of Queen Ulrika Eleonora with her dead children in the background:
![By Holger.Ellgaard (Own work) [CC-BY-SA-3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e1/Karlbergs_slott_panorama_2011.jpg)
