What's up?

Cartoon by poorlydrawnlines.com

Since finding out that I'm pregnant I have:

• Joined a political party (Liberalerna)
• 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.

Sculpture by Bruno Catalano 

Landing the Job Interview

Those of you who know me, know that I have an unusual hobby. That hobby is reading and rewriting CVs and personal letters.  The process usually goes like this:

Friend: Hey, do you think you could take a look at my CV?
Natalie (internally): OMG OMG I get to read another CV. OMG OMG THIS IS SO AWESOME!
Natalie (to friend): Yeah, sure! Send it over and I'll have a look at it tonight. 

Later that evening.

Natalie (to friend after scrupulously looking at every detail) :  Yeah, so I had a quick look and just have a couple of questions - sends a long list of questions.
Friend(internally): Oh God, what have I gotten myself into?

Some background to my hobby. When we moved back to Sweden we were pretty much starting fresh. We had few people that we knew and we knew little about integrating to the Swedish way of life. This meant that when I was 15-16 my classmates were getting summer and part-time jobs through their friends and family while I didn't even know where to start. Then one day during my usual boring English lessons we got to write CVs. I remember what the English teacher said if it was yesterday:

"If you want to find a job outside Sweden you have to have an English CV. You have to be able to present yourself professionally to a culture you don't know."

Suddenly it was clear that this is what I needed to reach the Swedish working world. A tool that I didn't know existed was suddenly handed to me and I went nuts. I sent my CV to every job at Arbetsförmedlingen that I thought I had the slightest chance for.  I would go to companies asking to see the manager so I could hand over my CV to them. The result of all my hard work? Nothing. Zilch.  Nada. I was never contacted by any of the companies that I sent my CV to.

I had been handed a hammer but forgotten the nail. My personal letter used to be a standard short note just specifying the skills that I was good at. I realised that I needed help from a professional Swede. Half a year of my dad reading and criticising my personal letters to pieces finally paid off. I got a part-time job as a tele-marketeer, selling audiobooks. I hated it and held on for 3 months - enough to save up for my first laptop.

Even though I hated this first job it gave me an understanding of the importance of presentation. We had a script that we were allowed to rewrite and change to optimise for the best selling tactic. I used what I learnt and tried to apply it to my application process. I started reading articles of how to write the best applications and asking people to read my CV. More importantly I asked them to send me their CV so that I could actually see their presentation.

The best understanding I got of writing CV's was by looking back at the applications that had gotten to an interview. By comparing the job ad, the personal letter and CV I started see patterns of how they work together. This realisation was so cool that I want to understand more.

So that is why I get this super-excited feeling when I get another CV on my table. I get to apply my years of job application experience at it while at the same time better see the patterns that evolve from the process. But the best feeling ever is actually hearing the results (Thanks T! 12 hours - that must be the quickest turnaround of an job application to job that I've been part of!)

Information is Power

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.

Not everything is at it seems...

Words are about creating pictures or ideas in other people's heads. When trying to engage other people you will pull from your own experiences and try and describe situations in words that will make sense to the other person.

This can be difficult when two people have not had similar experiences. I remember trying to describe the concept of a library to one of my Turkish friends who had never been outside the town she lived in.

But the problem of incomprehension is not the only obstacle. Words have amazing power and each person will attach experiences, pictures, and even emotions to the words. This is made abundantly clear when speaking with multi-lingual people.Suddenly everyday phrases can take on a whole new dimension when seeing the person's look of surprise, horror or confusion. Some examples:

• "I went for a lovely long jump last night."
• Overhearing a teacher shouting "DIE!!" to the students.
• When an expecting mother who decides to share her news exclaims "I'm embarrassed!"

It doesn't matter how well you know languages, you will always have a stronger connection to a sound in one language than in another. This makes the brain leap to conclusions before it has time to evaluate which language the other person is speaking in. In the above cases:

• "Spring" is the Swedish word for run. The same word means "jump" or "bounce" in German.
• "Die" means "Enough" is Hebrew.
• The word for pregnant in Spanish is "embarazada"

When learning languages you need to spend time working out which pictures/ideas/emotions to connect to the sounds. When there already exists emotions connected to the sounds you are hearing, it becomes harder to break or expand the bonds.

I still smile when I'm driving around Sweden and see the signs below. It's not very helpful as I probably take the speed bumps at a higher speed than I should, having attached a happy emotion instead of a careful emotion to the word.

And for those who are as fascinated by data visualisation as I am, Small World of Words is a cool website showing what word association people have and comparing how it differs to a standard Thesaurus. 

Eavesdropping

On the subway after a day at work. I've got the typical glazed look of someone who does not want to be disturbed. The usual chatter of who's done what with whose girl is being discussed eagerly over the phone in the corner while the rest of the subway pretends not to listen.

I hear a an exclamation of "Yok ya!" behind me and I sharpen my ears to try and distinguish the words from the noise. A girl and a boy are talking to each other.

My Turkish was never fully fluent and the years of neglect of the language leaves me poorly qualified to be able to hold a proper conversation. I listen hungrily as the words flow over me, understanding only partly what they are saying but enjoying it all the same.

They get off at the same station as I do. I "accidentally" end up behind them. The girls gives me a glance and then continues her conversation. And my internal battle begins. My internal battle against my cowardice. My internal battle against the natural instinct of not speaking to strangers. My internal battle against acting normal.  And I lose.

I turn away and walk a different path. I choose not to speak. And it is my choice. I can choose to hide that part of me that doesn't fit in. I can choose to act normal.

Riksdagens Security

I'm in line. Waiting to be let in to the warmth. It is open house at the Swedish Riksdag and there is a lot of people waiting for the chance to get in to see where the politicians work.

Finally inside. A security guard tells us to prepare to remove our outer clothes and let our bags be scanned. I've brought a packed lunch so I ask the guard if it OK that I've got a bottle of water and a thermos mug with coffee.
He smiles at me and says
"We do profiling so it's the whole pictures that's more important. I don't think you need to worry."

With that said I feel relieved that I do not need to worry about having to leave my thermos of coffee with the security guards.

My name is Natalie. I live in Sweden. I've got dirty blond/brown hair. I have green eyes, pale skin and speak Swedish fluently. If you ask me where I come from (which rarely happens to me in Sweden) I would answer "It depends on what you mean."

I was born in Sweden
My first words were Arabic and spoken in Egypt
Most of my childhood was spent in Turkey
I speak Swedish with my dad, English with my mum and sister
I have a citizenship in Northern Cyprus
I am a hidden immigrant.
Welcome to my life.