Coming back to Sweden takes a little getting used to, but at least the jet lag is gone, and I’m starting to become productive again. Next on my agenda is to find a suitable place to work, in Stockholm preferably, but maybe Europe for that matter. Exciting times ahead!

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Here’s another nice little curiosity that I stumbled upon. Yellow raspberries! They taste exactly the same as regular raspberries though. It’s interesting how you can fool your brain depending on just the color of what you eat. When your brain is execting one thing and your taste buds disagree.

But what I do not miss is grocery shopping in Stockholm. Neither making a daytrip via at least two-three means of public transportation to Willys only to suffer broken paper bags from the wet snow halfway home, nor paying insane overprices at ICA Alvikstorg för some crappy X-tra fishsticks. Grocery shopping here is first of all really cheap, but the best thing is the huge range and variety of food available. And even the most exotic (contextual… probably applies mostly to Swedes) organic stuff is really affordable. It’s such a relief to be able to walk into a grocery store and just pick whatever you want knowing that you don’t have to eat ramen noodles for the next week if you buy that cranberry/orange bread that just begs to be eaten.

Below is some of the cool stuff I bought from Trader Joe’s on our last run.

Mango/Passionfruit Müsli! Haven’t tried it yet though. And I managed to find Kefir at long last, it’s probably the closest I will get to “fil” ’round these parts.

$5 per pack!!! How awesome is that? I’m gonna get wicked intelligent after my stay in the US…

Dying from awesomeness overdose here. And look at the potatoes, they’re so small! Awesome!!!

I love these. They’re like mutated tomatoes or something.

Pear shaped tomatoes! It doesn’t get much better.

Well, actually it does. Transformers Band-aids!!! Optimus Prime!!!

If it didn’t require me to operate a can opener, that is.

It took both me and Sean 10 minutes of twisting, turning, hammering and cursing before we swallowed our manly pride and searched for “How to Use a Can Opener” on YouTube.

I’ve rarely felt so retarded in my life as when I figured out what was wrong. I mean, I’ve even used this type of can opener before, but something was different with this one. The damn handles were taped together with invisible tape. Thanks a lot IKEA!

Try typing “why are” into google.se, and then into google.com and compare the results in the suggestion window. Google Sweden definately knows what’s what. Especially enjoyed showing this around the office.

The first ho(s)tel was called Stay Hotel, and was kind of carved out of a wing of a bigger hotel. It was supposed to, and I quote, “youthful, high-style, and high-tech”. Well… that depends on if you call windows high-tech. Our windows consisted of metal mesh and wooden shades. And since the police and fire station conveniently enough was just around the block, we fell asleep to a sweet serenade of screaming sirens and horns…

We spent 2 nights at that place. After that our boss Jose took pity on us and put us up at a slightly fancier adress, the Kyoto Grand Hotel. That was totally awesome and a real lifesaver (Thanks Jose!).

We checked out on saturday, because by then we had found a permanent apartment. More on that in the next post!

In the meantime, enjoy this hastily improvised panoramic view from our hotel room over Los Angeles.

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Well, at least that’s what we thought. After we got seated the pilot tells us that there is heavy fog in London (how’s that for a cliché) and we’re expected to be an hour and a half late. Fortunately enough the skies cleared up somewhat earlier, and the plane made good time when we finally got airborne, so we just ended up about 45 minutes late in total.

At Heathrow we didn’t have time for anything except to hastly make our way to the gate. We were flying with Virgin Atlantic and I must say that I am impressed with the level of service and entertainment they provided in economy class. Bit narrow seat spaces but great media centers and very good staff. Although these british flight attendants really got on my nerves because they ended every sentence with “at all”. “Can I get you anything to drink at all?”, “Can I get you any milk in your coffee at all?”, and so on. Weird.

We landed about half an hour late in LA, and that wasn’t too bad. But it wasn’t over yet, because then came the border control. It really was a breeze for me though, the officer who processed me was really friendly and we joked around a bit, the entire process was over within just a few minutes. Sean on the other hand…

Seans and my application are basically identical. The only thing that differ is our personal information. And Sean happens to be born in Iran. That earned him 2 additional hours of waiting and repeated questions. “What color are your eyes?” “What color is your hair?”
It was just so stupid, like it was only to provoke him into losing his temper. But finally they let him in, and we were able to exit the bagage claim and customs. Only 2 hours late.

Well outside we were lucky enough to find Kirsten, who not only was nice enough to pick us up, but also to wait the additional 2 hours it took us to get out. She drove us to our hotel, which in itself is a story worth telling (more on that later), and we checked in, brushed our teeth and fell to sleep.

I’m writing this blog post form my new workspace at The Groop, and so far it all seems great. The office is nice, my chair is comfortable, and somebody brought two dogs to the office, which also is great. It feels good to be here, and I’m looking forward to start working.