Kaknastornet & Triumph Motorcycles

So I finally had Swedish Meatballs! They were really good; even though my picture of them isn't the best quality. But yeah... I had meatballs on Saturday and then I went to Kaknastornet and took some pictures of the city from up high. It was my favorite touristy thing that I have done since I've been here. Everything looks so nice from up high.

This week I've been working at Triumph Motorcycles AB which is located south of Stockholm near the biggest IKEA in the world. The company here is just a distributor, so they don't manufacture or sell to customers - they sell to dealers. It was very different from working at Skandia and that's mainly due to two things: (1) Triumph is smaller and (2) for Skandia we were doing a Q2 review and for Triumph it's an annual audit.

At Skandia my main job was to make sure the numbers on Skandia's records matched the numbers on the report they were giving to Old Mutual. But here at Triumph, I have had a lot more responsibility (at least it's felt like it). They gave me the accounts I needed to audit and pretty much just told me to go get 'er done. I have the previous years files to help me know what types of things need to be done and the people I work with answer any questions that I have.

I have been working with the client personnel a lot more here than at Skandia. I'll find something that I have a question about and I'll tell Samuel or Katrin and they'll say something like, "That's a good question, you should go ask..." So it's been neat to feel like a real auditor. I audited accruals, prepayments, cash, accounts payable, and fixed assets. And it's been neat because they have been my babies - I did like all the work on them.

It has been good to see both types of work - big client with more robotic work and small client with more project-like work. There are pros and cons to both types of engagements and it has been nice to work on both.

So that's that! I just have a few more days left here in Sweden, so I'll need to finish soaking it up.

More Gamla Stan and "Under the Bridges"

After work on Friday the weather was nice and so I decided I would go on the "Under the Bridges" tour in case the weather gets bad again. I got my ticket and I had about 30 minutes before the boat left, so I walked over to Gamla Stan and had a nice little stroll around the Royal Palace.

I really enjoyed the tour. There was a lot of repeat information from my bus tour and the archipelago tour, but I did get to see some new sites and learn some new things. I took a lot of pictures and those are in my album (about half of what I say is actually in the picture album because I try to give good captions - so if you really want to see what I'm up to, look at the pictures). So yeah... good day in Stockholm and it's now my last weekend here.

2302

I'm finished with Skandia now! I had a good time working there and I enjoyed the people I worked with: Tim, Erik, Winnie, Magnus, Malin, and others. The first couple days of the week were a little slow because the client was a little behind in getting some reports turned in. But Wednesday was pretty crazy because all the reports were turned in and so we had a lot to do. We were busy all day Wednesday and I ended up working until 11:02 that night (I remember the time because Tim left a note for Winnie that had "2302" written on it). So I didn't get back to the apartment until 11:30. Even though it was a long day, it felt really good to be busy and to have my work be appreciated.We went in on Thursday to finish things up and I thought we might be done with Skandia by lunch time, but I ended up working on Skandia all day until about 5:45. But now I'm done and it feels good to have accomplished something.

Friday I was in the office making a spreadsheet and doing some other odd jobs for people. I got a kebab at my favorite kebab place (so I've only been to 3 places, but this place was so good that I had to go again).

This is what a kebab wrap looks like. At most kebab places you can also get falafel or kebab meat with fries. Yummy.

Cool beans

On Monday night I got to go over to Mattias's house with Rob and they had invited two other friends over. It was really fun and we had a good dinner. Hannes - Mattias's son - really likes hip hop and his favorite "artist" is 50 cent.

On Tuesday I went to the National Museum on my way home from work. While walking there, I saw this guy in a kayak:

I had a good time at the museum. I posted some of my favorite pictures in my album. I feel weird saying this, but I found out that I really do enjoy art. So it has been a good few days and I'm glad that I have now been to the National Museum.

Bizzay, Gamla Stan, Archipelago

I was working at Skandia this week and I had a good amount of stuff to do. Thursday was really busy and that was fun: I had things that I had to get done for two different people while at Skandia, then I needed to meet with someone else to get instructions for making another spreadsheet, but I had to drop off some papers in the office on my way to meet him and then I had a mid-point performance review over the phone right after that. It felt good to have such a busy day. But it was nice to get to the weekend so that I could do some tourist stuff.

I did end up going to that one museum by the office on Wednesday. It was a Mediterranean museum that had a bunch of old statues and they even had an Egyptian section with a mummy and a bunch of coffin thingies. So that was cool beans.

But yeah, I went on an archipelago tour on Saturday and it was pretty cool. I was planning on going on the noon boat, but when I got to the ticket place it was sold out, so I bought a ticket for 1:30 and went over to the old town for a little bit. It was neat to walk around Gamla Stan because it is so old and different. The streets are very narrow and most of them are just used by pedestrians. I'm going to have to go back another time when I'll have more free time to explore. The boat tour was nice. It was a beautiful day and the wind was blowing which made it feel even nicer. I saw a bunch of islands and learned all sorts of stuff about the archipelago.

So it was nice being a tourist and I have a lot more touristy things planned for my last two weeks here. I am going to try to be better about posting more often so that I can get some good stuff in about each of my little adventures.

Back at the Client

I sure do love my Chelsey and Hunter! I am so glad that the apartment I'm in has internet and I am so glad that Skype exists! So far, I've spent less than $15 talking to Chelsey and we talk for more than an hour on most days. And she just got Skype herself, so we have free video chats (we were already doing it with Gchat, but Skype has better quality). So that has been a lifesaver! I miss them a lot and it gets lonely living all by myself in a foreign city and a lot of the people I have met are away for vacation. I wish Chel and Hunter could be here with me, but we'll just have to wait until later in our lives to make the trip.

Monday I spent working on another spreadsheet for Nordea and then I had a conference call for the GIP program. I tried going to a statue museum that is near the office, but it was closed, so maybe I'll go on Wednesday. I ate a pizza - they are small and thin, perfect for one person - and then I got some groceries.

On Tuesday, Malin came by my desk in the morning and we walked to Skandia. Skandia is a big insurance company that was born here in Sweden. It was recently bought by Old Mutual. We are doing a Q2 review and I had the job of making sure that the numbers in their accounting system matched up with the numbers in the system used to report their information to Old Mutual. The senior on the job is Tim Yuan. He is from China (came here when he was 6) and he was suprised that I knew where TianJing is. He's a nice guy and I'll be meeting up with him tomorrow morning at Skandia. I also met Heinrich Peterson who is from Ostergotland (which is where I think my ancestors were from). We joked about how we might be relatives, but honestly he does look a little like he belongs to my family. Maybe I can snab a picture to see if anyone agrees... we'll see. So yeah, I'm excited to be working on Skandia and I'll be there until next Thursday.

Today was also the day that I met up with Meltem and Madeline after work to go on a tour bus. There was some interesting stuff, but it felt like it was too long (45 minutes should have been fine, but it was 1.5 hours). But still.... it was good to get some background on the buildings that I see all the time.

Weekend Time

So on Saturday I visited the Nordic Museum and went to see the Vasa. The Nordic Museum was ok, there were some interesting things, but I guess I'm just not the museum type. There were a lot of pieces of furniture and silverware that I just didn't find that interesting, but it was ok.

Then I went to see the Vasa which is a huge ship that sunk in 1628 and was rediscovered and raised up in the 1950s. This was more my type of museum. You can click here to learn more about the Vasa, but I'll give a brief rundown:

The King of Sweden was building up his navy and he wanted a big ship - the Vasa. It was launched and sunk within a few minutes because the bottom of the ship wasn't wide nor deep enough to hold enough "ballast" to keep it from tipping over. Back in the day, some divers got some of the guns from the ship and then everyone forgot about the Vasa until the 1950s. Some dude - Anders - started searching for it and was able to find it. It was preserved because of the "brackish" water - I guess some sort of worm lives in salt water that eats away at wood. So they raised the ship and it has its own museum now. I guess they used to let visitors go on the ship, but it has started to deteriorate, so they don't let you on anymore, but it still a really cool museum.

Then on Saturday night, Anna, from the recruiting side at KPMG, took me out to dinner with her friend. I guess the restaurant is run by the most famous chef in Sweden - he also has other restaurants, but this one is Anna's favorite. I was looking forward to a traditional Swedish meal, but I didn't realize that the "Grilled beef with bearnaise sauce" was really just a steak and it came with a side of fries. I just need to go order Swedish meatballs somewhere I guess. But it was a very good steak and it came from a Swedish cow. So that was fun.

So yeah.... I got to see some sights and have some fun this weekend. This week I'm planning on going to the National Museum on Tuesday and then next weekend I'll either take a tour of the Archipelago or go to the Royal Palace.