I moved from Sweden to Canada in June 2006 to work, and during my stay there I didn't really keep much track of what was happening in Sweden. Now that I'm back, I've found many disturbing things on disturbing levels. "Something is rotten in the state of Denmark", as good ol' Bill put it. Very apt, except for the Denmark part. The thing that really bugs me is this:
Effective from January 1st this year, 2009, a department of the Swedish military can monitor and listen to or read all public and private communication that crosses the Swedish borders.
Since pretty much every signal from every kind of communication passes the Swedish borders at some point, (because the email servers are abroad, for example), this means that if a person in Sweden calls his buddy in Sweden or abroad on a cell phone, chats online, sends an email or a text message to someone, uses any kind of IP phone, or just a regular phone, the government can read or listen to every word unhindered. They do not need any suspicion of crime or just cause, they can listen in on all of it at any time they want. This law is called the FRA-law.
Sweden - kiss privacy good bye. It does not exist any more when it comes to communication.
The justification for all this is that the law gives the Swedish government a way to "detect and trace external threats". Well. If there was an external threat that was in any way interested in doing something to insignificant little Sweden, THEY WOULD NOT DISCUSS IT OVER THE PHONE! What kind of idiot terrorist would discuss his plans using Hotmail or a cell phone? Especially since this law is public knowledge, and any terrorist with half a brain would KNOW that someone is monitoring the call!
How many people and their phone calls would you have to listen to randomly before you stumble across a suspicious call? Way the hell too many!
The law as a deterrent? Does anyone actually believe that a person bent on carrying out some kind of bombing or whatever would just go "Oh, I guess we can't communicate secretly now. Better go home again..." because of this law? Seriously... I sure as hell don't.
This law is an atrocity and there is no valid reason to rob the Swedish population of their privacy in this way. I for one demand that it be revoked. If I call a friend, it's none of the Swedish government's damn business what we talk about.
I can't BELIEVE that this kind of law actually got passed. I simply cannot understand how anyone would want to be in favor of giving up their privacy this way? A common argument in favor seems to be the ever-so-popular "But if you have nothing to hide it doesn't matter if someone listens." or the variation "You are only against this because you have something to hide." It doesn't matter, eh? Let me tell you. If you had a person following you around all the time, listening to every word you said, not letting you make one single phone call in privacy, it would start bugging you really damn fast, whether you have something to hide or not! So what difference does it make if that person is there next to you, or listening through headphones somewhere else? It's the same damn thing.
In Sweden, a mailman can be fired or even go to jail for opening a letter addressed to someone else and reading it. But according to the law, the Swedish government can do that with any mail they want. Does this seem sensible? Hell no!
If you say something suspicious over the phone, you become a suspect and a potential threat to national security. If you do a search on the keyword "communism" or "al-qaida" on google, you are researching suspicious things and therefore suspicious yourself.
Has anyone read the book 1984? This is starting to sound freakishly much like the thought police. How much further can this be allowed to go?
During WW 2, the image and concept of the Swedish Tiger was created as a symbol for the vigilance campaign. The word "tiger" means "stays silent" in Swedish, and the idea was that all Swedish citizens should stay silent about anything that could be potentially harmful to a neutral Sweden, which at that time was surrounded by countries either at war or occupied by military troops. This concept seems to remain in a twisted way to this day. Swedes stay silent about everything. Sweden is the most taxed country in the world, and we're not really getting anything more for that tax money compared to other countries with lower taxes. Unemployment is rising, pensions are dropping, alarming numbers of cases are handed over to the bailiff because of unpaid debts.
Measured as a percentage of the GNP and compared to other countries within OECD, Sweden had a clear lead with 51,1% in 2005. As a comparison, the UK stood as number 12 with 37,2% the same year. Canada was number 17 with 33,5% and the US was number 22 with 26,8%.
Sweden has free health care. The US does not. Sure, our healthcare is free, but only if we pay 150 kr for the privilege of getting to see any kind of medical personnel in the first place.
So we are taxed out of our asses and our privacy is gradually stripped away in something that more and more resembles a big brother-state. How do the Swedish people respond to this? With silence. A big, fat, overwhelming lack of doing anything whatsoever. People whine about it at home, but nobody does anything to work against it. The Swedish silence prevails. On January 13th this year, a demonstration was arranged in Gothenburg agaist the FRA-law, the IPRED laws, the data storage directive and ACTA. The demonstration was arranged by 7 political parties and youth parties, as well as a network against the FRA-law. Gothenburg is the second biggest city in Sweden with over half a million people living in the city area. So how did the demonstration go? A whopping 200 people showed up. If that is the extent of people's commitment to actually want to do something about things, I think Sweden is really screwed.
We need to do something! We need to get off our asses and get involved! Join a political party and work against this, or at least vote for a party that is against this nonsense! Hand out flyers, write blog posts, send a letter to your government representative.
But! Remember to do it the right way. Violence and throwing rocks at politicians you don't like is never the right way. On the contrary, it'll just work against your idea.
09 February 2009
13 January 2009
Projects
After borrowing some clothes and not really doing much, we got our luggage back about a week after we got here. As promised, they delivered everything right to our front door. Everything was in good shape; nothing was missing and nothing was broken, apart from a wheel that had fallen off one of my suitcases. No big deal, though. It was a pretty old and well-traveled suitcase, and I'm surprised it lasted this long.
I've always liked building things. Growing up, I spent every summer in a huge workshop at my grandparents' place, building all kinds of stuff and learning how to work with both wood and metal. During the 2,5 years I worked in Canada, I had no tools and no space where to work, so I couldn't build anything. It was actually one of the things I missed the most. So now that I'm back in Sweden, with access to a modest amount of tools and at least some space to work on, I got right back into it. I decided to build a longboard of my own. I read a bunch about it online and watched a crapload of videos on youtube of people who build their own boards with quite varying results. It seemed more than doable, so I got to it.
First, I got a nice sheet of 3 mm birch plywood and a bottle of wood glue. I made a plan and a template on paper, cut the plywood into 8 pieces and glued 4 layers together. Then I traced the template onto the plywood and cut and sanded out the final shape. I decided to make a drop-thru deck, which means that the metal trucks that hold the wheels go through a hole in the deck and are mounted with screws to the top of the deck, as opposed to a deck that is mounted on top of the trucks. A lower deck makes the ride more stable. The board is not that much lower on a drop-thru deck, but even an inch makes a difference.
Since I didn't really know how durable the birch plywood is, I decided to remove as little wood as possible for the hole, so I designed a template for a hole that will do just that and fit the trucks I have very snugly. The drawback is that I probably can't use any other trucks on this board than Randal 180's, but since those are good trucks, it's not really a problem. Besides, this is just a prototype anyway.
After cutting out the holes for the trucks, I attached the trucks and wheels so I could try getting on the board. Since I had no real idea about how durable the plywood is, I wanted to try standing on it to see if it'll hold my weight, or if it'll break right away. No sense in spending lots of hours finishing the board and making it look pretty, just to have it snap like a twig when I step on it. So holding on to the kitch
en table for support, I very carefully stepped onto the board. It didn't break. Ok, so far so good. I carefully bounced on it a bit. It still didn't break, so I finally jumped up and down on it. No problem at all. The board is nice and flexy, actually quite perfect for my weight of 82 kg. It bends, but shows no sign of breaking. Excellent. Then to finish it. I sanded the surface and sprayed it with a clear lacquer, then spray painted two metallic black stripes on the back, and hand painted a logo on it. I decided to call the board "Pyry proto". Pyry is a finnish word that means "blizzard". There was actually a blizzard here when I started making it. Proto is just short for prototype. After a few more layers of clear lacquer, the board is all finished, and I must say I'm a bit proud of the result. I put some black and yellow grip tape on the top, and the board looks quite good, if I may say so myself. Now, if only the solid layer of ice that covers the streets here would melt so I could go out and try it for real...
For any longboard geeks out there: The deck is 120 cm long, has Randal RII 180 trucks and Abec 11 83mm 75a Flywheels.
Apart from making the board, it has been a couple of very nice and relaxing weeks of vacation at my parents place here in Sweden. Me and my fiancée Gin have thought a bit about what we're going to do next. The plan was to go to 
England and find something interesting to do there, but we came to the conclusion that staying in Sweden might be an option too. Gin has been studying Swedish while we've been here, and is actually advancing very quickly with it. I have no doubt it wouldn't take her long to be completely fluent at it, so finding a job in Sweden wouldn't be a problem for her. I guess we'll just have to look around and see where we find something interesting. To be honest, we haven't really been looking all that seriously for the last couple of weeks. It has been quite nice to just relax for a while. I had some vacation from work twice while I was in Canada, but both times I was completely swampted with stuff I had to get done, so it wasn't really vacation. I came back to work more tired than when I left.
We had a couple of interviews and offers for jobs earlier, but they seem to have flaked out. This one lady from a company in the UK wrote me and wanted a phone interview. We set up a time for it, but when the time came, she just didn't call and I heard nothing more from her. If that is the extent of their level of organization and courtesy I think I'd rather not work for that company, so I didn't pursue it any further either.
Maybe I should start making longboards? That could be quite fun... :)
The longboard I bought for christmas still hasn't arrived. It's been in the mail from Canada to Sweden for almost a month now. It's kinda funny that it took less time for me to build a new board from scratch than for a finished board to travel across the Atlantic.
I've always liked building things. Growing up, I spent every summer in a huge workshop at my grandparents' place, building all kinds of stuff and learning how to work with both wood and metal. During the 2,5 years I worked in Canada, I had no tools and no space where to work, so I couldn't build anything. It was actually one of the things I missed the most. So now that I'm back in Sweden, with access to a modest amount of tools and at least some space to work on, I got right back into it. I decided to build a longboard of my own. I read a bunch about it online and watched a crapload of videos on youtube of people who build their own boards with quite varying results. It seemed more than doable, so I got to it.
First, I got a nice sheet of 3 mm birch plywood and a bottle of wood glue. I made a plan and a template on paper, cut the plywood into 8 pieces and glued 4 layers together. Then I traced the template onto the plywood and cut and sanded out the final shape. I decided to make a drop-thru deck, which means that the metal trucks that hold the wheels go through a hole in the deck and are mounted with screws to the top of the deck, as opposed to a deck that is mounted on top of the trucks. A lower deck makes the ride more stable. The board is not that much lower on a drop-thru deck, but even an inch makes a difference.Since I didn't really know how durable the birch plywood is, I decided to remove as little wood as possible for the hole, so I designed a template for a hole that will do just that and fit the trucks I have very snugly. The drawback is that I probably can't use any other trucks on this board than Randal 180's, but since those are good trucks, it's not really a problem. Besides, this is just a prototype anyway.
After cutting out the holes for the trucks, I attached the trucks and wheels so I could try getting on the board. Since I had no real idea about how durable the plywood is, I wanted to try standing on it to see if it'll hold my weight, or if it'll break right away. No sense in spending lots of hours finishing the board and making it look pretty, just to have it snap like a twig when I step on it. So holding on to the kitch
en table for support, I very carefully stepped onto the board. It didn't break. Ok, so far so good. I carefully bounced on it a bit. It still didn't break, so I finally jumped up and down on it. No problem at all. The board is nice and flexy, actually quite perfect for my weight of 82 kg. It bends, but shows no sign of breaking. Excellent. Then to finish it. I sanded the surface and sprayed it with a clear lacquer, then spray painted two metallic black stripes on the back, and hand painted a logo on it. I decided to call the board "Pyry proto". Pyry is a finnish word that means "blizzard". There was actually a blizzard here when I started making it. Proto is just short for prototype. After a few more layers of clear lacquer, the board is all finished, and I must say I'm a bit proud of the result. I put some black and yellow grip tape on the top, and the board looks quite good, if I may say so myself. Now, if only the solid layer of ice that covers the streets here would melt so I could go out and try it for real...For any longboard geeks out there: The deck is 120 cm long, has Randal RII 180 trucks and Abec 11 83mm 75a Flywheels.
Apart from making the board, it has been a couple of very nice and relaxing weeks of vacation at my parents place here in Sweden. Me and my fiancée Gin have thought a bit about what we're going to do next. The plan was to go to 
England and find something interesting to do there, but we came to the conclusion that staying in Sweden might be an option too. Gin has been studying Swedish while we've been here, and is actually advancing very quickly with it. I have no doubt it wouldn't take her long to be completely fluent at it, so finding a job in Sweden wouldn't be a problem for her. I guess we'll just have to look around and see where we find something interesting. To be honest, we haven't really been looking all that seriously for the last couple of weeks. It has been quite nice to just relax for a while. I had some vacation from work twice while I was in Canada, but both times I was completely swampted with stuff I had to get done, so it wasn't really vacation. I came back to work more tired than when I left.We had a couple of interviews and offers for jobs earlier, but they seem to have flaked out. This one lady from a company in the UK wrote me and wanted a phone interview. We set up a time for it, but when the time came, she just didn't call and I heard nothing more from her. If that is the extent of their level of organization and courtesy I think I'd rather not work for that company, so I didn't pursue it any further either.
Maybe I should start making longboards? That could be quite fun... :)
The longboard I bought for christmas still hasn't arrived. It's been in the mail from Canada to Sweden for almost a month now. It's kinda funny that it took less time for me to build a new board from scratch than for a finished board to travel across the Atlantic.
24 December 2008
Trials and tribulations part II
After about 30 hours on the move, we finally arrived in Sweden. And true to the latest trend, the trip was far from simple.
We cleaned out the apartment in Montreal and left for the airport. We each had two large suitcases to check in, and one small carry-on bag each. Arriving at the airport, we used the Air Canada self-service check-in machine. It printed luggage tags and boarding passes for us, but no luggage tags. Only a receipt with the luggage numbers. Odd, but OK. Then we went through the check-in counters, dropped off the bags and proceeded to the gates. Because of traffic jams at the Newark airport, the flight left Montreal about two and a half hours late, leaving us two hours instead of four and a half between flights. OK, so we had to wait a bit, but no problem. Still plenty of time in Newark to catch the next flight. The flight went well and we landed in Newark. There we had to check in again for the second flight with Malaysia Airlines, since we only got boarding passes for the first flight in Montreal. The lady asked for luggage tags. We didn't have any, so we gave her the luggage numbers since it was all we had. She had no clue what that was, but wrote down the luggage numbers on a paper and gave us our boarding passes. We proceeded to the gate and the flight left on time. It was a pretty nice flight. The economy class seating area was quite crowded, being very obviously designed for efficiency rather than comfort. But the seats all had small video screens on the back so you could watch movies while flying. I was bored and couldn't sleep for some reason, so I watched Hellboy 2, Journey to the center of the earth, Wall-E and half of the latest Batman movie. Hellboy was entertaining. In no danger whatsoever of winning Oscars for anything at all, but a fun way to spend two hours anyway. Journey to the center of the earth was probably the most ridiculous movie I have seen in the last decade, with plot holes large enough to drive a boeing 747 through and suspension of disbelief to the point of breaking. Look! Already-cut-and-polished diamonds the size of eggs sticking out of a cave wall! *pluck!* Yeah... In shattering contrast, Wall-E was probably one of the best Disney movies out there. Great story, well made, a bit sentimental and sobby towards the end, as always with Disney movies, but overall a really good movie. Batman I had already seen, it's by far the best of the batman movies made so far.
After flying for 7 hours and 40 minutes we approached Stockholm. We descended for landing, but instead of touching down suddenly took off up again. Apparently the plane had a problem with the landing gear not working and couldn't land. So we circled around for another 30 minutes while the crew apparently managed to fix the problem. The plane made a second approach and landed successfully. We got off the plane and to the customs. It always amuses me to fly to Europe compared to the States. At the US customs you have to fill out all kinds of forms, visa waivers, give fingerprints every time, they take a picture of you, they check your passport and ask questions. "Have you participated in any acts of terrorism recently?" and "Have you operated any weapons of mass destructions lately?" Seriously... Even if someone had, does anyone actually expect them to answer these questions truthfully? If someone is going to nuke something, I very much doubt that they'd have any second thoughs about lying about it at the airport... Landing in Sweden, they look at your passport and go "Yup, you have one. Welcome to Sweden." and that's it.
After the 4 second customs inspection, we proceeded to the baggage conveyor belts. Bags came and went, but our 4 bags did not. I can't say that I was very surprised after the way the transfer was handled at the check-in in Newark... We filed a report about it at the service desk and the guy said they would track down the bags, retrieve them and then deliver them to my address. OK, seems cool. I hope they find them.
It seems the tale of the longboard is not over. The deck is in a package due to arrive in Europe in a month or two, while the trucks and wheels are in a suitcase, probably in the neighborhood of Kuala Lumpur. Jesus christ...
We cleaned out the apartment in Montreal and left for the airport. We each had two large suitcases to check in, and one small carry-on bag each. Arriving at the airport, we used the Air Canada self-service check-in machine. It printed luggage tags and boarding passes for us, but no luggage tags. Only a receipt with the luggage numbers. Odd, but OK. Then we went through the check-in counters, dropped off the bags and proceeded to the gates. Because of traffic jams at the Newark airport, the flight left Montreal about two and a half hours late, leaving us two hours instead of four and a half between flights. OK, so we had to wait a bit, but no problem. Still plenty of time in Newark to catch the next flight. The flight went well and we landed in Newark. There we had to check in again for the second flight with Malaysia Airlines, since we only got boarding passes for the first flight in Montreal. The lady asked for luggage tags. We didn't have any, so we gave her the luggage numbers since it was all we had. She had no clue what that was, but wrote down the luggage numbers on a paper and gave us our boarding passes. We proceeded to the gate and the flight left on time. It was a pretty nice flight. The economy class seating area was quite crowded, being very obviously designed for efficiency rather than comfort. But the seats all had small video screens on the back so you could watch movies while flying. I was bored and couldn't sleep for some reason, so I watched Hellboy 2, Journey to the center of the earth, Wall-E and half of the latest Batman movie. Hellboy was entertaining. In no danger whatsoever of winning Oscars for anything at all, but a fun way to spend two hours anyway. Journey to the center of the earth was probably the most ridiculous movie I have seen in the last decade, with plot holes large enough to drive a boeing 747 through and suspension of disbelief to the point of breaking. Look! Already-cut-and-polished diamonds the size of eggs sticking out of a cave wall! *pluck!* Yeah... In shattering contrast, Wall-E was probably one of the best Disney movies out there. Great story, well made, a bit sentimental and sobby towards the end, as always with Disney movies, but overall a really good movie. Batman I had already seen, it's by far the best of the batman movies made so far.
After flying for 7 hours and 40 minutes we approached Stockholm. We descended for landing, but instead of touching down suddenly took off up again. Apparently the plane had a problem with the landing gear not working and couldn't land. So we circled around for another 30 minutes while the crew apparently managed to fix the problem. The plane made a second approach and landed successfully. We got off the plane and to the customs. It always amuses me to fly to Europe compared to the States. At the US customs you have to fill out all kinds of forms, visa waivers, give fingerprints every time, they take a picture of you, they check your passport and ask questions. "Have you participated in any acts of terrorism recently?" and "Have you operated any weapons of mass destructions lately?" Seriously... Even if someone had, does anyone actually expect them to answer these questions truthfully? If someone is going to nuke something, I very much doubt that they'd have any second thoughs about lying about it at the airport... Landing in Sweden, they look at your passport and go "Yup, you have one. Welcome to Sweden." and that's it.
After the 4 second customs inspection, we proceeded to the baggage conveyor belts. Bags came and went, but our 4 bags did not. I can't say that I was very surprised after the way the transfer was handled at the check-in in Newark... We filed a report about it at the service desk and the guy said they would track down the bags, retrieve them and then deliver them to my address. OK, seems cool. I hope they find them.
It seems the tale of the longboard is not over. The deck is in a package due to arrive in Europe in a month or two, while the trucks and wheels are in a suitcase, probably in the neighborhood of Kuala Lumpur. Jesus christ...
22 December 2008
Trials and tribulations
This here is my Christmas present to myself, a Landyachtz DH race longboard. If you are not familiar with longboards, they are similar to skateboards, only much larger. The wheels on this one are 83 mm in diameter and the board itself is 105 cm long. Longboards come in all kinds of shapes and sizes, with different shapes being more suitable for different uses. This shape is well suited for high speeds and going downhill. Downhill racing on longboards is becoming quite a popular sport, and top speeds can reach 75-100 km/h. Though I doubt that I will be going anywhere near that fast for quite some time yet. I'm going to start by learning how to stand on the board and how not to kill myself with it first. Needless to say, helmets and protective gear are a good idea. I'm going to keep track of my progress with the board here on this blog and see how things go, though I predict there won't be much progress yet for a few months. Half a meter of snow on the ground doesn't lend itself too well for wheels even of this size. But as soon as I can find some dry asphalt streets... Whee! So, to start: I'm 28 years old, I've snowboarded a bunch, but never stood on a skateboard before. After not having done any sports whatsoever in about a year and a half now, I'm quite out of shape and probably about 10 kg overweight. Let's see how things stand come June.Getting this board in the first place was a ridiculous ordeal, to say the least. I ordered the board over two weeks ago after checking with the guys at the shop how long it would take for it to arrive. They assured me that I would get it with plenty of time to spare. I had been wanting one for a long time, but longboards are quite a bit more expensive in Sweden. I decided to order it here to save a couple of hundred dollars. So I ordered it, and got a confirmation email with a tracking number for the parcel. A few days before it was due to be delivered, I checked the tracking number and found that the destination was listed as Sainte-Adele instead of Montreal. I had ordered the board to be shipped to Gin's place in Montreal, since I wasn't going to be in Ste-Adele any more. I wrote the guy at the shop that I ordered the board from to see what was up. Turns out he accidentally gave FedEx the billing address instead of the shipping address, so the board was headed for the wrong place. In an apologetic email he told me that he had contacted FedEx and corrected the mix-up, and that the board should now be on its way to Montreal. It was supposed to arrive on Monday the 16th. It didn't. I checked the tracking number again, and now it said Tuesday. Again it didn't arrive, and the tracking info said that it had arrived at the terminal in Montreal.
On Thursday I called customer support at FedEx. The lady had no clue where the box was and asked me to call back later. I called back again and talked to a different person. He said that the package was due to be delivered the next day, on Friday. But on Friday I had a bunch of things to do, closing bank accounts, getting rid of a modem and internet connection, finish cleaning out my apartment, etc. so to avoid the risk of missing the delivery, I asked if I could go pick up the package at the terminal instead. He put me on hold for a few minutes, and then returned to tell me that I could go pick it up at the terminal in Dorval. I just needed the tracking number, and the package would be there waiting for me.
So Gin and I left for the terminal. I had an address, but no precise idea about where the place was. We took a bus to Dorval, and found a FedEx office. It was the wrong one, but they gave us a map to the correct place. The one bus was gone and the next one not arriving for quite some time, so we took off on foot. About two hours later, with wet shoes and freezing our heads off, we found the terminal. There was a security guard at the entrance, so I talked to him. He took the tracking number and called a guy in the main building. After a moment, he handed the phone to me. The guy at the other end of the line apologized many times and explained that he couldn't understand why the customer service would tell me to come to the terminal to pick it up, since the package was not there at all, but on board a truck somewhere and impossible to reach. With time running out, I told him that I absolutely had to get the package by the next day at the latest, since I'm leaving the country on Monday morning. He said he would try to find the package and call me later the same day. There was nothing more to do, so we went home again.
At about 8.30 pm the same evening, the guy called me back and said that he had the package, and that I could pick it up at the terminal the next morning. So the next morning we went back there and finally got the package. It took two and a half weeks for it to get from Vancouver to me instead of the one week as the guy at the shop promised. We took the package home and jumped around with glee for a while, riding the board back and forth in the kitchen. Then I started thinking... The board is actually quite big. At 105 x 30 x 15 cm in size and weighing around 7 kg, I started wondering if they would actually allow me to bring it on board the plane. I looked up the airline website, and found that of course it would be impossible. It is way too big and heavy. The only option would be to check it in as a third piece of luggage. Since you're only allowed two pieces of check-in luggage, the third piece would cost me $225. Oh, for fuck's sake... So the cheapest (and only) alternative is to mail it to myself in Sweden. To reduce the size and weight, and thereby the cost of sending it, I decided to take the trucks and wheels off and ship only the actual deck. Naturally, I didn't have any tools to do that with. So I went to Rona, bought a wrench and a screwdriver for about 20 dollars, and took the stuff off. I will need the tools for board maintenance later on anyway, so I figured why not. I packed the deck in a well-padded package, so now it's all ready to ship. It will cost me around 85 dollars to send it. Gah... It better ride like a freakin' dream when spring comes...
I've decided to name the board "Alecto", after one of the furies of ancient Greek mythology. The name means "unceasing" or "implacable". The mythological furies, or Erinyes, were three demonic deities of vengeance, or supernatural personifications of the anger of the dead. They persecuted those who had committed atrocious crimes and punished them by driving them insane. Seemed kinda suitable somehow. This board certainly doesn't give anything away for free.
10 December 2008
Conclusions
So, finally after 2,5 years of working in Ste-Adèle, I have only 3 days left. My last day of work is December 12th, and on the 22nd I'm flying back to Europe with Gin. It's been an interesting 2,5 years, and completely different from anything I imagined when I took the job. Having just graduated with my masters, my plan was to get away from a stale and academic world for a year and do something completely different, and then return and get serious about finding a job in music. I applied for this job in video game QA without really having much of a clue what it was about, and unexpectedly, I got the job. I didn't have anything else to do at that time and I had never been to Canada, so I took the job. On a three week notice I got rid of my apartment, got all my stuff packed, got a flight ticket and moved across the Atlantic.
It was a quite surreal experience to arrive at the Trudeau airport in Montreal, especially since everything happened so fast. I got the job, and three weeks later I started working on a different continent. I landed around 7 pm and it was way warmer than I had expected. Not really knowing much about Canada, I had pictured it as a place pretty far north where there are lots of maple forests, the climate is similar to Sweden and where everybody says "eh" all the time. A closer look at a map later revealed that Montreal is actually over 1000 km further south than the place where I left from... I was picked up by one of the ladies working in HR at that time and taken to my first Canadian home. (Or rather, my first Quebecois home. I learned rather quickly that many Quebecois don't consider themselves Canadian at all. The French heritage is a rather touchy subject it seems.) The place was a nice-looking house in Prévost, and I was to share it with three Germans. I ended up living there for only 3 weeks, after which I moved into another house in Ste-Adèle, much closer to work.
The work was pretty fun. Not really something I saw myself doing for the rest of my life, but definitely different from what I had been doing before. With 8 hour days and almost a complete lack of responsibility, it was a welcome break from an incessant flow of being up to your ears in things you had to do and things you had to remember. Here I could go to work, do my thing, then go home and forget about everything until the next morning. It was an incredible vacation for my brain. But one can only handle so much non-responsibility before one gets bored. At least I did. There was an opening for becoming a Lead Tester, so I applied and got the job. 8 months later I became a training agent, responsible for training all new linguistic testers. The added responsibilities and heavier workload were a welcome change. It was a highly independent position with many varied tasks, and it allowed me to do things pretty much from the bottom up on my own in many ways, which was quite enjoyable. I've always been more comfortable working on my own than in collaboration with someone. Even in 3rd grade I hated the assignments where we had to write essays together with someone else, sharing the task and the work. I much preferred writing the whole thing by myself, even if it took longer. It's not that I don't like working with people - on the contrary, I like it a lot. But (and this is going to sound really snotty) I found very few people whose work I was happy with. Most of them were unstructured, inefficient and slow. Whenever I had to share a task with someone, I found that the quality of the result would have been much better if I had done it alone. The teachers seemed to agree, as I always had higher grades on the assignments that I wrote alone than on the ones where I collaborated with someone. But I digress.
Working here has taught me many things about myself, about others and about people in general. I've learned that I am often too nice to people, allowing myself to be used or taken advantage of. I've learned that given a task that I enjoy and that I have an interest in, I have no problem working 16 hour days for as long as is needed to get the job done well. The challenge is to find something to do that I have an interest in, as I tend to procrastinate a lot if I don't like what I'm doing or if it doesn't interest me.
I've learned that people are much the same no matter where in the world you are. Europe, North America, Asia... Some people are really nice, some people are not. Some people will care about you and treat you well, while others will be selfish bitches who will do anything to exploit you. Some people take their thing seriously and do it well, while others are only looking for an easy way out. Some people have courage, some don't. It doesn't matter if a person is black, white, red, yellow, green or purple with pink dots. A good person is a good person regardless of color. An asshole is an asshole no matter where he's from. That's just life. The really tricky thing is that the assholes usually don't walk around with a sign that says "I'm an asshole".
Being a good judge of character is way harder than it may seem, and I've learned that I'm nowhere near as good at it as I thought. A person isn't necessarily a nice person just because he acts nice, and even after a year, what do you really know about someone? People who have something to hide are often very good at hiding it.
I think I've gotten back the spark to invest myself in something, to look at a task and really dig into it and get it done. That was largely missing before I came here. Most of the time I just wanted to lie down and hibernate for a couple of months and do nothing at all because I was so overloaded with stuff I had to get done all the time and with people pulling me in a million directions all at once. After having seen how shitty things really can get in a couple of different countries now, I think I have a more optimistic outlook on things. I know I can't change the world very much, so I'm not going to let the world get me down too much when things suck.
I've learned not to jump head first into unknown situations. Informed decisions may be less spontaneous and exciting, but when it comes to bigger decisions the benefits far outweigh the disadvantages. The consequences of throwing yourself into something without looking could in a very literal sense kill you. There are plenty of opportunities to be spontaneous and daring with things that don't have as much potential for disaster.
It was a quite surreal experience to arrive at the Trudeau airport in Montreal, especially since everything happened so fast. I got the job, and three weeks later I started working on a different continent. I landed around 7 pm and it was way warmer than I had expected. Not really knowing much about Canada, I had pictured it as a place pretty far north where there are lots of maple forests, the climate is similar to Sweden and where everybody says "eh" all the time. A closer look at a map later revealed that Montreal is actually over 1000 km further south than the place where I left from... I was picked up by one of the ladies working in HR at that time and taken to my first Canadian home. (Or rather, my first Quebecois home. I learned rather quickly that many Quebecois don't consider themselves Canadian at all. The French heritage is a rather touchy subject it seems.) The place was a nice-looking house in Prévost, and I was to share it with three Germans. I ended up living there for only 3 weeks, after which I moved into another house in Ste-Adèle, much closer to work.
The work was pretty fun. Not really something I saw myself doing for the rest of my life, but definitely different from what I had been doing before. With 8 hour days and almost a complete lack of responsibility, it was a welcome break from an incessant flow of being up to your ears in things you had to do and things you had to remember. Here I could go to work, do my thing, then go home and forget about everything until the next morning. It was an incredible vacation for my brain. But one can only handle so much non-responsibility before one gets bored. At least I did. There was an opening for becoming a Lead Tester, so I applied and got the job. 8 months later I became a training agent, responsible for training all new linguistic testers. The added responsibilities and heavier workload were a welcome change. It was a highly independent position with many varied tasks, and it allowed me to do things pretty much from the bottom up on my own in many ways, which was quite enjoyable. I've always been more comfortable working on my own than in collaboration with someone. Even in 3rd grade I hated the assignments where we had to write essays together with someone else, sharing the task and the work. I much preferred writing the whole thing by myself, even if it took longer. It's not that I don't like working with people - on the contrary, I like it a lot. But (and this is going to sound really snotty) I found very few people whose work I was happy with. Most of them were unstructured, inefficient and slow. Whenever I had to share a task with someone, I found that the quality of the result would have been much better if I had done it alone. The teachers seemed to agree, as I always had higher grades on the assignments that I wrote alone than on the ones where I collaborated with someone. But I digress.
Working here has taught me many things about myself, about others and about people in general. I've learned that I am often too nice to people, allowing myself to be used or taken advantage of. I've learned that given a task that I enjoy and that I have an interest in, I have no problem working 16 hour days for as long as is needed to get the job done well. The challenge is to find something to do that I have an interest in, as I tend to procrastinate a lot if I don't like what I'm doing or if it doesn't interest me.
I've learned that people are much the same no matter where in the world you are. Europe, North America, Asia... Some people are really nice, some people are not. Some people will care about you and treat you well, while others will be selfish bitches who will do anything to exploit you. Some people take their thing seriously and do it well, while others are only looking for an easy way out. Some people have courage, some don't. It doesn't matter if a person is black, white, red, yellow, green or purple with pink dots. A good person is a good person regardless of color. An asshole is an asshole no matter where he's from. That's just life. The really tricky thing is that the assholes usually don't walk around with a sign that says "I'm an asshole".
Being a good judge of character is way harder than it may seem, and I've learned that I'm nowhere near as good at it as I thought. A person isn't necessarily a nice person just because he acts nice, and even after a year, what do you really know about someone? People who have something to hide are often very good at hiding it.
I think I've gotten back the spark to invest myself in something, to look at a task and really dig into it and get it done. That was largely missing before I came here. Most of the time I just wanted to lie down and hibernate for a couple of months and do nothing at all because I was so overloaded with stuff I had to get done all the time and with people pulling me in a million directions all at once. After having seen how shitty things really can get in a couple of different countries now, I think I have a more optimistic outlook on things. I know I can't change the world very much, so I'm not going to let the world get me down too much when things suck.
I've learned not to jump head first into unknown situations. Informed decisions may be less spontaneous and exciting, but when it comes to bigger decisions the benefits far outweigh the disadvantages. The consequences of throwing yourself into something without looking could in a very literal sense kill you. There are plenty of opportunities to be spontaneous and daring with things that don't have as much potential for disaster.
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