After 13 years in Singapore it’s time to move back to Sweden, who knows for how long, and I’m expecting that I’ll have various odd realizations about life in Sweden as I’m going back.
21 posts in this series
in Sweden I can enjoy one of the best uses of curry: the banana, chicken, curry powder, and peanut pizza! Washed down with an apple/orange soda.
…I really think it would be slightly better with some pineapple, though 😉😇
drove a car for the first time in a looong while today (years), and after I backed out of the driveway something felt off: I wasn’t 100% sure where I was supposed to be on the road.
I just came to Sweden yesterday, after five days in Bengaluru, India, where I sat in the front passenger seat (i.e. the Swedish driver’s seat). I was positioning the car like I had been sitting in India (fast thinking?).
So I decided to go back to the driveway, because I’m not putting someone else at risk when I haven’t driven for a while and I’m getting a weird feeling.
As I went back I reflected that I know it’s right-hand drive in Sweden (slow thinking?), but I had mostly experienced sitting in that seat as a passenger in left-hand driving countries (Singapore for more than a decade, and just days before, India). I was 95% sure it meant I put myself so I’m closer to the middle of the road.
As I looked it up online: yes, I’m supposed to be towards the middle of the road when driving. I didn’t hit anything. And the sense of the car started coming back after a couple of kilometers. Just like riding a bike 😉
I shared my swedish pizza lunch, and while I know people have strong feelings about pineapple on pizza, I’m genuinely surprised at how strong the reaction is to the creative use of ingredients we have for pizza. Swedish pizza is some of the best around and that’s a hill I’ll die on!
(one person asked “is this throw-up on pizza?” 😅)
it’s so quiet staying in ruralish Sweden that I hear the hum of the fridge/freezer more than anything, pretty great when you’re using to hearing traffic all the time 😀
the kebabpizza special, basically a dönerteller on a pizza, what’s not to love?
Famous rather than infamous. Aaaand now it’s time to have a nap…
…making do without the gooseneck
My recipe for Arvid Nordquist mellanrost. I started by trying to replicate The Ultimate V60 technique by James Hoffmann (which is what I normally brew) and I realized just how hard it is to control the flow rate now that I don’t have my gooseneck kettle (being shipped from Singapore), and I hadn’t really realized just what a difference controlling the pour makes for the taste!
My current brewing setup which has my Commandante grinder and V60 and then a normal wide spout kettle which gives me very poor flow control, and a bag of Arvid Nordquist mellanrost
[… more]something I have missed living in Singapore is going to concerts and I just saw that Electric Callboy is going to Stockholm on the 5th of November, and now, so am I 🤘😁
(gearing up to be a 5th of November to never ever be forgot)
first coffee on the new balcony after moving in to my furnished rental in Karlstad yesterday
…I feel the need to point out that the “You’re the best” coffee mug is the apartment’s.
Now that I’m getting stuff for the new apartment I’m getting a lot of stuff from Biltema. It’s so cheap, and the quality is usually good enough that I don’t overly worry about it. It feels more like “the basics” and no frills but stuff that will do you.
In comparison, I rarely bought stuff in a store in Singapore, because it always felt so expensive and the quality felt way more questionable on the cheap stuff (mostly the tiny shops in Sim Lim or so), not sure if that was a fair assessment most of the time. And I generally felt waaay more uncomfortable with the quality for the cheap things there. As an example, I bought a C7 cable with a euro plug (standard power cable for things like DVD players, and in my case, a charger) from Lazada from some small local shop, very flimsy, low quality, and cost me something like $12 with shipping. I bought one of those at Clas Ohlson for 69 sek (~SG$9) and it’s much higher quality.
It reminds me of talking to a distributor when I was working at DollarStore, he told me that it’s cheaper for them to sell us quality at a lower margin because then neither of us have to deal with returns and unhappy customers. Because a big batch of things that don’t work means you’ll have to scrap the whole shipment, and that’s too costly when you buy container loads of things. I bet that’s true for Biltema as well.
the joy of dealing with things international: DHL refuses to send my work laptop to Singapore using the standard mobile site because it’s too valuable, it might work on some other site, which doesn’t work on my phone. Schenker happily takes it but will deliver it when they want to, but only in Europe. Postnord can’t validate the postal code in Singapore (bug report sent) so I can’t send. Once more into the breach trying to suss out the other DHL site. 🤬
update: whoo, on the computer I could get it sorted on the DHL site and it was 3x the price, so I’ll see if I can get it sorted with Postnord instead because I can’t justify the price difference.
Recycling bins are for packaging, not the products themselves. Wooden ice cream stick? That’s “other,” it’s part of the product, at least in Karlstad. The wrapper? That goes in the appropriate recycling bin based on material.
This seems to be based on EU law, which makes sense, so I’ll assume the gist of this is true in other EU countries too.
[… more]…knows your number but not who you are
I’m moving back to Sweden, and something that surprised me was that if you’ve been registered as living abroad, becoming a registered resident again (folkbokförd) takes 4-6 weeks of processing. Skatteverket (IRAS/population registry) can reject your application. I assume they will if they think you’re primarily moving back to mooch off the Swedish welfare state (I’m not, I promise 😅).
I’m allowed to stay in Sweden, but operating in society is hard, because most systems can’t find any information on me. Practically a ghost (I was gonna say stateless but that feels distasteful to try and put myself together with people who have real problems). And from official system’s POV I don’t currently live anywhere. I have already moved out of Singapore and my employment pass has been cancelled. I have an old address registered in Sweden (I officially lived at my mom’s place when I went to Singapore in 2012), but I have a new apartment I live in now.
[… more]I have managed to do one important thing today: I got a library card! 🥳
Now that I’ve moved back to Sweden without most of my stuff (it’ll be on a ship soon enough), everyone’s got suggestions on necessities. Need to buy all the tools (so I can fix things), the kitchen equipment (because the kitchen is very basic), the cleaning tools (okay, the basicness here might hinder), and the big one: a car. “There are such distances now that you just have to have a car.”
I keep pushing back with “maybe, let’s see in a few weeks.”
[… more]I really miss having an induction stovetop. it really is so much better than a normal electric one
my application to register as residing in Sweden (folkbokförd) has been approved, no longer a ghost merely living here.
I can now get a convenience store membership since the systems can look me up 🙄🥳
Being back and speaking Swedish every day, and more than in years, I have felt that my Swedish has atrophied a bit. That I’m not able to express myself as well in it as in English, so I decided to read a bit more in Swedish.
August Strindberg’s Dödsdansen & Spöksonaten and Fredrik Backman’s Björnstad
I ended up getting a very contemporary author and one very much not. I read Backman’s blog back before he got his first book published, so I knew how funny he was and I read half of Beartown yesterday, he’s really nailing the storytelling. I had a hard time putting the book down.
Strindberg is famous and I haven’t ever read or seen anything by him (that I know of), so why not. I suspect it’ll be a harder read in many ways. It was a very random pick, because I just strolled around the library (second library card down, now I can use Libby from my Kobo), and I totally picked it because Ghost has a song called Spöksonat, so why not…
I just caught myself thinking, “I need to get coasters” so turns out that’s a thing I’m missing from my Singapore stuff 😅
I keep getting surprised when overtaken by others while walking here in Sweden. Back in Singapore I was the one overtaking people. Then again, so many Swedes tower over me, and I at least cottaged over people in Singapore 😉
I hoped to be blazing new trails professionally and not because I was dropping the niece off at daycare after 10-20cm of snow (the wind drift makes it hard to estimate)
and now I own an apartment, time for the renovations to begin, and then hopefully I’ll stay here for a while 😄