First Week in Stockholm

After six days of arriving in Stockholm, I've already moved. So basically my first week here was spent unpacking, then packing, and then unpacking again! I'm now in Näckrosen so I'm now only 10 min away from downtown by metro. The flat is much better furnished and my room is really nice. I've got a bunk bed with a sofa underneath it, tv, dresser, desk and wireless internet - all these things I didn't have at my previous place. I can't describe how nice it is to sleep on a real bed and on a pillow that's not a pillowcase stuffed with sweaters.

I finished a week of work already at Tilgin. My office is in the area considered as the Silicon Valley of Europe. My company is actually located right next to Microsoft and Adobe. I'm not sure whether it's my company in particular or just the general work environment here but it seems really laid back. I haven't even been shown how our applications work. Instead my manager's written up a bunch of docs describing job functions, software life cycle processes, etc. and instead of having me just take an hour reading them over myself (they're extremely straightforward), he spent a total of 4 hours reading each line with me and describing things in even more detail. It was pretty boring to say the least! At my last few jobs I was just basically thrown into the project and and just left to figure things on my own. Here, it's quite the opposite.

Can't really describe more about work, so on to the office space. It's really nice and it's got the IKEA look with all hardwood flooring and blond birch furniture. Some office rooms have frosted glass that are used for writing on like a whiteboard, and it's pretty cute to see all backward writing on the windows. There's a nice homey feel as well since all of us share an office with 3 other colleagues so it's open concept but private as well. Instead of stairwells separated from the space, we have stairs in the middle of the office going through 4 floors. All the desks have a button underneath to raise or lower it. The odd thing is I find a lot of people raise it high in order to stand while working. The kitchen sitting area has a cafe look to it and the kitchen has a whole wall tiled by microwave, fridge and freezer doors. It looks pretty neat! Since the water here is super clean, everyone drinks water from the tap. The kitchen sinks have two separate faucets for drinking water: one for plain water, and the other for bubbly water (I know Christian would be so jealous!) We get fruit baskets twice a week, which I absolutely love. Now I just get all my fruit intake at work :) I guess a healthy lifestyle is pretty important here because my company also subsidizes for gym memberships and any other sports activities we want to take up. I heard badminton's really popular here so I'm trying to find a good badminton club to join.

My co-workers are very friendly, but it's hard to remember 100+ peoples' names (and even harder to pronounce many of them.) One guy has a Toronto Maple Leafs jersey on his wall next to a Swedish team jersey. And another co-worker's wife is actually from Richmond Hill! Small world :P Every Wednesday a handful of people play innebandy (floor ball) during lunch time at a nearby gym. It's the same idea as floor hockey, but the ball is super light and bouncy so it's much faster paced. The goals are also about 1/4 the size of a regular hockey net. Another indication of the laid back nature of the people here is that they'll take 1.5 hours to play and shower, but then come back to the office to take their lunch break! Even before I arrived, the company already sent invites for the Christmas party and just a few days ago they sent out information for a ski trip they planned in April! They really love to have fun :P