I got my personnummer in the mail today, only three days after asking for it. Good efficiency that.
It's the Swedish tax/personal registration number, somewhat like the US Social Security number. Unlike in the US it's a very public number. It's used often. When you move you're supposed to tell the authorities within a week. They'll update your registration, and the change propogates to those who are interested. For example, there's no need to tell the bank your new address because they'll get it from the tax authorities.
My number is 700822-2817. It has internal meaning. Since most people reading this don't read Swedish, I'll translate the high points. "De sex första siffrorna beskriver personens födelsedatum." means "The first six digits denote the person's birthday." Now everyone knows how old I am. "De påföljande tre är ett löpnummer" means "The next three numbers are a serial number" (literally a "run number"). "där tredje siffran beskriver personens kön – jämn siffra för kvinnor och udda för män." means "the third digit denotes the person's gender – even digit for women and odd for men". Yep, I'm odd. This suggests there were about 140 men registered in Sweden with my birthday.
I was curious about the serial number. The Swedish tax authority's personnummer document says that until 1990 it was assigned serially but now it's generated randomly. Looks like I'm not part of a cohort of 140. The numbers worked out nicely though; 140 on that day * 365 days * 2 genders * 70 years average lifetime gives a population estimate of 7 million, which is close enough given the one sample.
The "-" character means I am under 100 years old, else it would be a "+". The last digit is a checksum digit. ("kontrollsiffra" directly means "control digit".) The algorithm is described in that PDF. It's a simple algorithm using the pattern 2121212. checksum("700822281") = 10-(sum_of_digits(2*7,1*0,2*0,1*8,2*2,1*2,2*8,1*1)%10) = 10-(sum(1,4,0,0,8,4,2,4,8,2)%10) = 10-(33%10) = 10-3 = 7.
Once I got my number, I went to Swedbank to ask about opening an account there. Yesterday I went to two other banks. Swedbank had by far the best service and were the most helpful. They also came recommended by Laura and Jacob. When I went to the other banks I was surprised at the response. In most US banks if you say "I'm going to open a personal account, deposit a chunk of money into it for a down payment on an apartment, I'll need a loan for the rest of the price, and I'll start a business account in a few months" then you'll get to talk to a representative one-on-one, or directed to the main branch where you can get that level of service.
Swedbank was what I expected. I opened a personal account there. Now I need to figure out how to get a wire transfer to it. I know the IBAN but the US isn't part of the IBAN system.
I then went on a tour of Majorna and Masthugget, to get a feel for those areas. Those and Linnéstan are where I'm most likely to find a place to stay. The prices are lower than in Vasastan and I want a 1 bedroom place which is around 60m2 and with a decent enough living room area for a dance party.
I decided that Majorna - which is the cheapest of the places I was considering - was too far from the center, where all the cafes, restaurants, and excitement are. So Linné or Masthugget. There are about 10 viewings in that area next weekend.
Friday, May 11, 2007
Wednesday, May 09, 2007
lägenheter
which means "apartments" in Swedish. I started looking for a place to live. I'm staying at the House of a Thousand Wows until I find one. One "wow" is that Laura and Jacob are letting me do that. Yesterday (Monday), after I went by the tax office to request a personnummer, I went to Boplats Göteborg. They mostly deal in 1st hand rental contracts. There are 1st hand and 2nd hand rental contracts, and I won't go into the details now.
I registered on their web site and searched for the type of place I wanted (center of town, around 60 sq meters, <$1200/month). There were 4 hits. One was for people 55 or over so 3 real hits. I couldn't figure out what a column was in the results table so I asked. It was the number of people who have expressed interest in a given apartment. The one that looked the most interesting to me had almost 4,000 people interested in it.
Yes, 4 thousand. What's the point then of being one more in that crowd? The woman there at the office said that was not unusual. I had heard that getting a rental place in Gbg was hard, but that was incredible. Jacob enlightened me somewhat. Places here are rent controlled, based mostly on living area. That keeps the prices down, but means that a lot of people want what places are available.
It's easier to buy a place here then it is to rent. Yesterday evening I started looking for an apartment to buy. This follows the pattern I did in Santa Fe, where I looked at a few rental places and decided to buy a house instead. Proved to be a good decision.
The web sites for apartment rentals are very bad. They are cumbersome and hard to use. By comparison, the ones for buying are wonderful. Of course, there's more profit for the real estate people, but I think also that because so many people want to rent a place they are willing to put a lot of time in to go through a bad user interface.
One of the things I learned in doing the research to buy here is that another reason to buy instead of rent is the tax discount. That's like in the US too, but I didn't know how things were structured here.
I'm looking for a bostadsrätt apartment. "Bo" = "live", "bostad" = "place to live", "rätt" = "right". Apartment buildings here can be structured (are often? are always?) structured as a co-op. That's rare in the US outside of New York City. Looking at Wikipedia there are differences between a bostadsrättförening and a housing co-op. I know the Swedish system better.
The building is owned by the association ("förening"), which is basically a non-profit. The people who live in the apartment own shares in the association. These are voting shares, and not ownership shares. Jacob says that means the value of the building is therefore not included as part of your personal wealth. Important in a country that until recently had a weath tax in addition to income tax. A member gets the right to live in one of the apartments. (Hence the term "bostadsrätt".)
How will Lesley figure out my taxes? How will I figure out my Swedish taxes? Good thing I've been careful not to mingle personal and business accounts. Still, I'll need two accountants for the indefinite future too.
Going back to the apartment search. I went online and found about 20 that were in the rough area I wanted, of the right size, etc. The price for an apartment like I want goes for about $250,000. That's a 1bd apartment (here called "2 r.o.k" meaning "2 rooms and a kitchen"), or possibly a 2. There's a tradeoff between having a larger living room, which can be converted into a dance floor, vs. having a smaller bedroom for a home office. Still debating that in my head.
After going through the options I picked the ones with showings today. There were three I was interested in. All three were nice inside. One was in Guldheden, which is right above Chalmers. It's atop the hill and has a great view overlooking the city. But it's uphill and a bit far from the places I want to be.
The second was in Linnéstan (the Linné part of town, named after Linnaeus). Great section of town; close to lots of restaurant, bars, shops, and more. The wallpaper wasn't my choice of patterns but otherwise nice. Bedroom was airy and sunny, what with two windows. Handy in the winter I imagine.
The third was in Masthugget. It's very close to Oceanen, which is where I got tango and salsa dancing. Across the street is a grocery store, and on the other side of that is the tram stop for 3 different tram lines, all going into town. The apartment was on the top floor, which gave me a problem. It has a nice balcony, but there's nothing between it and the ground far below. It's enough to trigger my fear of heights. I could bear it, but wouldn't enjoy it. Great views though.
All three had many other visitors while I was there, with the last being the most popular. I'm estimating that any one place in the areas I'm looking will have 40-50 people viewing it. Some subset will bid on the place. If more than one then there's a bidding contest. Usually places here go within a week or two.
Heikki's house in the UK, in a small town south of Cambridge, was on the market for over a year. My house in Santa Fe was on the market for a couple of months.
I won't have a personnumber/tax id for another few days. Once I have that I can open a bank account. I'll also be talking with the bank (I don't think there are mortgage companies here) about getting a loan, and what my options are. I've got money from selling my house in the US, which will make for a good down payment. I'm told normal is 10% down but I'ld rather do higher as I've got the money and I think real estate here is likely to be a good investment.
I registered on their web site and searched for the type of place I wanted (center of town, around 60 sq meters, <$1200/month). There were 4 hits. One was for people 55 or over so 3 real hits. I couldn't figure out what a column was in the results table so I asked. It was the number of people who have expressed interest in a given apartment. The one that looked the most interesting to me had almost 4,000 people interested in it.
Yes, 4 thousand. What's the point then of being one more in that crowd? The woman there at the office said that was not unusual. I had heard that getting a rental place in Gbg was hard, but that was incredible. Jacob enlightened me somewhat. Places here are rent controlled, based mostly on living area. That keeps the prices down, but means that a lot of people want what places are available.
It's easier to buy a place here then it is to rent. Yesterday evening I started looking for an apartment to buy. This follows the pattern I did in Santa Fe, where I looked at a few rental places and decided to buy a house instead. Proved to be a good decision.
The web sites for apartment rentals are very bad. They are cumbersome and hard to use. By comparison, the ones for buying are wonderful. Of course, there's more profit for the real estate people, but I think also that because so many people want to rent a place they are willing to put a lot of time in to go through a bad user interface.
One of the things I learned in doing the research to buy here is that another reason to buy instead of rent is the tax discount. That's like in the US too, but I didn't know how things were structured here.
I'm looking for a bostadsrätt apartment. "Bo" = "live", "bostad" = "place to live", "rätt" = "right". Apartment buildings here can be structured (are often? are always?) structured as a co-op. That's rare in the US outside of New York City. Looking at Wikipedia there are differences between a bostadsrättförening and a housing co-op. I know the Swedish system better.
The building is owned by the association ("förening"), which is basically a non-profit. The people who live in the apartment own shares in the association. These are voting shares, and not ownership shares. Jacob says that means the value of the building is therefore not included as part of your personal wealth. Important in a country that until recently had a weath tax in addition to income tax. A member gets the right to live in one of the apartments. (Hence the term "bostadsrätt".)
How will Lesley figure out my taxes? How will I figure out my Swedish taxes? Good thing I've been careful not to mingle personal and business accounts. Still, I'll need two accountants for the indefinite future too.
Going back to the apartment search. I went online and found about 20 that were in the rough area I wanted, of the right size, etc. The price for an apartment like I want goes for about $250,000. That's a 1bd apartment (here called "2 r.o.k" meaning "2 rooms and a kitchen"), or possibly a 2. There's a tradeoff between having a larger living room, which can be converted into a dance floor, vs. having a smaller bedroom for a home office. Still debating that in my head.
After going through the options I picked the ones with showings today. There were three I was interested in. All three were nice inside. One was in Guldheden, which is right above Chalmers. It's atop the hill and has a great view overlooking the city. But it's uphill and a bit far from the places I want to be.
The second was in Linnéstan (the Linné part of town, named after Linnaeus). Great section of town; close to lots of restaurant, bars, shops, and more. The wallpaper wasn't my choice of patterns but otherwise nice. Bedroom was airy and sunny, what with two windows. Handy in the winter I imagine.
The third was in Masthugget. It's very close to Oceanen, which is where I got tango and salsa dancing. Across the street is a grocery store, and on the other side of that is the tram stop for 3 different tram lines, all going into town. The apartment was on the top floor, which gave me a problem. It has a nice balcony, but there's nothing between it and the ground far below. It's enough to trigger my fear of heights. I could bear it, but wouldn't enjoy it. Great views though.
All three had many other visitors while I was there, with the last being the most popular. I'm estimating that any one place in the areas I'm looking will have 40-50 people viewing it. Some subset will bid on the place. If more than one then there's a bidding contest. Usually places here go within a week or two.
Heikki's house in the UK, in a small town south of Cambridge, was on the market for over a year. My house in Santa Fe was on the market for a couple of months.
I won't have a personnumber/tax id for another few days. Once I have that I can open a bank account. I'll also be talking with the bank (I don't think there are mortgage companies here) about getting a loan, and what my options are. I've got money from selling my house in the US, which will make for a good down payment. I'm told normal is 10% down but I'ld rather do higher as I've got the money and I think real estate here is likely to be a good investment.
people
On Sunday I was walking to the tram stop to go tango dancing on the wharf near Röda Sten. In Swedish we were dancing on "Ångbåtsbryggan" which means "Ång" = "steam", "båt" = "boat", "bygga" = "pier" or "quay", "n" for definite article => "the steam boat pier". Strangly enough, bryggdans, meaning "quayside dancing", is in that dictionary. Which implies something about the frequency of dancing there? Oh, and American English I never use "quay". To me it's a strange British/Commonwealth thing.
Okay, so I was walking to the tram stop and saw someone from AstraZeneca. Said hello. Earlier today, in Masthugget, I saw someone I knew from tango, biking by. It was directly across from Oceanen, where I go tango dancing, but it wasn't tango dancing night there. After tango dancing (which was in Vasastan) I dropped by my favorite street kitchen and said hello to the guy I know there working behind the counter. Hadn't seen him since I was here in January. I carried the frequent visit stamp card around with me, as a memory. It was fun to drop in late at night, people partying on the streets, and chat with him a bit while getting a late supper.
And sometimes my stomach just yearns for a burger and fries, and they do a pretty good one.
I like that I can walk around town and bump into people I know. That happens surprisingly rarely in Santa Fe, even after 8 years.
And I like that now when people ask "how long are you here this time" I can respond "I have my residency permit, so I'll be here at least a year." Emily, I think it was, asked me yesterday if people have started treating my different now that I actually live here, vs. being just a visitor. I'm not sure. Perhaps. It does feel different. I can make plans for more than a few months ahead.
Okay, so I was walking to the tram stop and saw someone from AstraZeneca. Said hello. Earlier today, in Masthugget, I saw someone I knew from tango, biking by. It was directly across from Oceanen, where I go tango dancing, but it wasn't tango dancing night there. After tango dancing (which was in Vasastan) I dropped by my favorite street kitchen and said hello to the guy I know there working behind the counter. Hadn't seen him since I was here in January. I carried the frequent visit stamp card around with me, as a memory. It was fun to drop in late at night, people partying on the streets, and chat with him a bit while getting a late supper.
And sometimes my stomach just yearns for a burger and fries, and they do a pretty good one.
I like that I can walk around town and bump into people I know. That happens surprisingly rarely in Santa Fe, even after 8 years.
And I like that now when people ask "how long are you here this time" I can respond "I have my residency permit, so I'll be here at least a year." Emily, I think it was, asked me yesterday if people have started treating my different now that I actually live here, vs. being just a visitor. I'm not sure. Perhaps. It does feel different. I can make plans for more than a few months ahead.
Monday, April 30, 2007
photo evidence
Here is my passport with my temporary residency permit for Sweden.
Isn't it grand? Isn't it cool? Isn't it phat?
I left Studio Six at about 6:30 this morning to drop the car off at the airport. I like Enterprise's service at Heathrow. Dropped of my suitcase at luggage storage at the airport. X-rayed just in case it contains a you-know-what. Express train in to Paddington station, tube to Marlybone station, and a short walk to the embassy. Checked in and waited no more than 10 minutes. Looked like most others were there for a Schengen visa to visit Sweden. There was a new mother going back to Sweden who needed her daughter's photo taken. I was called up. The woman behind the glass printed out the sticker, but it was too dark. She took another picture, printed it again, and poof .. too legit to quit.
At that point it was about 10:15. I walked around and over to Baker St. underground because of the Jethro Tull song. (Apparantly Ian Anderson once lived at 34 George Street, which is nearby.) Had forgotten that Sherlock Holmes was supposed to have lived nearby. There's a statue for him at where the address would be. Madame Tussaud's is nearby and was very popular, given the lines to get in.
It was a gorgeous spring day so I walked over to Hyde Park (Marble Gate corner) and had a lay-down in the late morning sun. Bought a book for the road, er, flight, and went on back to the airport. Picked up luggage, checked in. Small detour as they wanted to verify that I was who I was in person; problems of using a US credit card at a UK call center when I got the ticket. Through security. I had gotten a week of internet connection time with "The Cloud", and it's still active, hence the ability to write this.
Line is called for the gate. Going to Amsterdam and then to Göteborg. W00t!
Isn't it grand? Isn't it cool? Isn't it phat?
I left Studio Six at about 6:30 this morning to drop the car off at the airport. I like Enterprise's service at Heathrow. Dropped of my suitcase at luggage storage at the airport. X-rayed just in case it contains a you-know-what. Express train in to Paddington station, tube to Marlybone station, and a short walk to the embassy. Checked in and waited no more than 10 minutes. Looked like most others were there for a Schengen visa to visit Sweden. There was a new mother going back to Sweden who needed her daughter's photo taken. I was called up. The woman behind the glass printed out the sticker, but it was too dark. She took another picture, printed it again, and poof .. too legit to quit.
At that point it was about 10:15. I walked around and over to Baker St. underground because of the Jethro Tull song. (Apparantly Ian Anderson once lived at 34 George Street, which is nearby.) Had forgotten that Sherlock Holmes was supposed to have lived nearby. There's a statue for him at where the address would be. Madame Tussaud's is nearby and was very popular, given the lines to get in.
It was a gorgeous spring day so I walked over to Hyde Park (Marble Gate corner) and had a lay-down in the late morning sun. Bought a book for the road, er, flight, and went on back to the airport. Picked up luggage, checked in. Small detour as they wanted to verify that I was who I was in person; problems of using a US credit card at a UK call center when I got the ticket. Through security. I had gotten a week of internet connection time with "The Cloud", and it's still active, hence the ability to write this.
Line is called for the gate. Going to Amsterdam and then to Göteborg. W00t!
Tuesday, April 24, 2007
residency permit .. granted!
Date: April 24, 2007 4:17:39 PM BDT
Subject: your application for residencepermit
Dear Mr Dalke
You have been granted a residencepermit for one year. Please contact a Swedish embassy, most embassys can provide you with your "sticker" in the passport, if there is a problem please contact me and I will send them your permit by e- mail.
Best regards
Maria von Schéele Frejd
The Swedish Migrationboard, Norrköping
Subject: your application for residencepermit
Dear Mr Dalke
You have been granted a residencepermit for one year. Please contact a Swedish embassy, most embassys can provide you with your "sticker" in the passport, if there is a problem please contact me and I will send them your permit by e- mail.
Best regards
Maria von Schéele Frejd
The Swedish Migrationboard, Norrköping
Sunday, April 22, 2007
planes, jellyfish, bathing attire and saunas
When I went to visit Blanche and Daniel I flew 1time from J'burg to Durban and back. It's a South African low cost carrier, along the lines of Southwest and Ryan.
(As I understand it, Southwest started in the 1970s, back in the days of regulated air travel. They got around the federal laws because they only flew in Texas, it being a rather large state. This was still in the days when they chose stewardesses in basis of attractiveness. The targeted businessmen and there were two levels of tickets. One for $X and one for $2X. With the $2x tickets you got a free bottle of whiskey. An early frequent flier incentive, since the company pays for the ticket.)
1time is perhaps most like JetBlue, though I've never taken that airline. I'm only thinking of the leather seats. Like other LCCs, you pay for extras. Want a Coke? Pay for it.
I flew SAA (South Africa's national carrier) from Jo'burg to Cape Town. Quite a difference. It was a two hour flight, with a hot meal and free drinks. It costs more for service, of course. I don't know by how much. Friends say it isn't that bad, and sometimes it's worth it. It wouldn't have been for the 1 hour flight to Durbs.
I'm on SAA now flying north, and north, and north to London. Flight map says we're about level with the Namibia/Angola border, with about 9 hours to go.
Speaking of that trip, the three of us went on the beach. It was the downtown beach - Hamilton and Amanda say there are better beaches, but this is what we did. While walking on the beach there were small jellyfish with long blue tails. We didn't know what they were. They walked on them, producing popping sounds. I avoided the main body.
We walked along the water's edge. All of us started feeling strange, painful feelings in our feet. Okay, avoid the jellyfish. We got to one of the swimming areas. They were widely separated, with large "no swimming" gaps between. The taxi cab driver says it's because of undertow. The swimming regions are in the safe areas.
We swam in the surf. It wasn't like Florida. I've spent a lot of time on the beach, but Florida's beaches aren't that diverse. Some months ago I mentioned that with the shingle beach at Hastings. Here the surf didn't curl quite right. We body surfed and while there were decent sized waves there was only one where I got a good ride in.
There are two places I've had good body surfing waves. Sebastian Beach, Florida, near where my dad's parents retired. It's on the Atlantic ocean, far enough north that the Bahamas don't help attenuate the waves. And San Diego, where I body surfed once late enough in the summer I didn't need a wet suit and near sunset so at times I could see fish silhouetted in the wave between me and the sun.
As we relaxed on the beach afterwards the lifeguard P.A. said "Beware. There are blue bottles. You are advised to keep young children out of the water." No one seemed to do anything different. Only latter did I look up "blue bottles" in Wikipedia. (Do it yourself; I'm at 35,000 ft with no internet access.) It said they are also known as "Portuguese Man O' War", and with a picture of one taken in around Biscayne Bay, near where I grew up in Miami.
Had I known there were PMO'Ws in the water, I might have reacted differently. I heard such horror stories about the pain, including one kid in scouts who had stepped on one. The remedy, supposedly, is to put meat tenderizer on the wound. But I've never bought nor used meat tenderizer so that suggestion doesn't help me. I can say that the pain is sharp, but dies quickly. I didn't stop on it directly though.
The taxi cab driver said several stung him at once when he was a kid. Wrapped around him even. He had to go to the hospital because of his body's reaction, and now he's allergic to them. These are the stories I heard growing up in Florida, hence my surprise that people were in the water with blue bottles about. Though they were there because of the onshore wind, which meant they were mostly at the water line and not in the water where we were body surfing.
Also, a new sight for me was the Moslem women in the water with full burkhas on, next to women wearing bikinis. There are different levels of strictness, so some Moslem woman had visible faces, walking with those that didn't. Some of the kids were wearing a pretty complete bathing costume as well. Though I hear some kids in the US wear those too, and not necessarily out of body modesty. Some parents insist their kids wear those clothes to protect against UV. Compare to my day when "sun block" was still called "sun tan lotion" (a habit I didn't break until about 1999 when Susan pointed out my dated Floridianism) and my sister and I at the start of the summer would have contests pulling off the largest patches of peeling skin from the sunburns we would get swimming and playing for hours at Venetian Pool.
Body modesty, even in US culture, is a strange thing. I've read that in the old days, pools like at the YMCA required swimmers to be naked. (That's "Young *Men's* Christian Association" - no women were present.) As a kid I read a series of books - the Clearwater gang series? They were about a boy being raised in a good Christian home. These were books you would buy at the Christian bookstore. I remember liking them. I learned the phrase "flotsam and jetsam" from that book, and some other things too. They were decent stories, for the most part. My grandmother bought a Christian science fiction book for me once which I recall was really bad. It SF elements (scientist, helper, and two kids build rocket ship) but wasn't SF and was structured almost solely on "if you pray then God will provide."
In the Clearwater books, the boys would skinny dip in the river.
Once with my grandma (the same one mentioned twice already) we were at the beach. My sister and I wanted to go in but we didn't have swimsuits with us. Grandma said "why not swim in your underwear?" We didn't. That just didn't seem right to us. Thinking about it now though, when she grew up it was before nylon and other fast drying clothes. Cotton and wool don't make good bathing suits. I wonder if it's a materials thing - people just didn't have anything better to wear, so it was best to go naked, if no one else was about.
There were mixed sex beaches of course, with everyone in full swim costumes, bodies completely covered. Again, as I recall, there was a riot at Atlantic Beach some 100 years ago or so when a few of the men decided they would go topless.
Ahh, without internet access I can't research this or provide interesting hyperlinks. :(
For the last couple of weeks I was staying with Heikki and his family. They are Finnish, excepting Minna's daughter's husband who is English. They of course have a sauna downstairs. It came with the house, though it wasn't well designed. They did a lot of work getting it up to spec, per Finnish customs and expectations.
It was my first time in a Finnish-style sauna. Swedish ones are dry. They run the one at AZ at about 90C/190F. Heikki ran theirs at about 72C (165F) which doesn't seem as hot, except it's a wet sauna. That's where you pour water on the rocks. Frequently. The steam comes up and ... well, it's hot.
There's a Finnish word for the steam, which I can't remember well enough. (Hence I've failed Heikki's test. Something like löljö. Grrrr. Wiki "sauna" to get the answer.) The translation is several things: "steam" and "spirit" are two direct ones. It's the steam coming off of the heater (some Finnish word like "kivas", which I confuse with the New Mexican term) but it's also what makes it the sauna. Hence the Finns disagree with the concept of a dry sauna.
Everyone is naked in the sauna. The same is true in Sweden, for the most part. It's a bit different with the AZ sauna because so many people in the comp. chem group are non-Nordic. So there people wear suits, or keep a towel wrapped about, even when it's only guys. The only other Swedish sauna experience I have is at the gym locker room, which isn't a good enough data point.
While naked, it's not sexual. I don't doubt that it could be, but that's not the general case. There's a story, perhaps apocryphal, about a Nokia executive going to the US to run an office there. He schedules a group sauna as a getting-to-know-each-other event, and is surprised at the response he gets against the idea. I suppose in the US organizing a mixed-sex sauna for work could count as sexual harassment. There isn't the social expectations of what is and isn't proper in that situation.
I looked once into getting a sauna for my house in Santa Fe. It would cost some several thousand dollars for the sauna proper, which would be electrically heated. That needed 220V power, compared to the normal 110V in the US. Which wouldn't be bad except that my junction box was already maxed out. Any electrical work done to the house would require replacing the box with something bigger, costing a few more thousand.
Perhaps I should have done it anyway. After I put my house on the market, and with a few weeks before I left the country, I found out there was a leak in the roof, which went through the ceiling fan/lamp in the office/bedroom. There was a storm, and water was dripping off the bottom of the fan. I called a roofer who said it was a simple problem. They would patch it for a few hundred dollars and that was it.
Turns out it was worse. When the buyer's inspector came he said the roof needed to be redone and the electrics fixed. That lowered the price of the house by about $10,000, and I suppose it can handle a new 220V circuit now.
It wasn't a good house for a sauna. It would have to have been in the corner of the patio or the back yard, with no plunge pool (though there could be snow banks in winter), and getting to the shower would mean going through the garage and house to the normal shower. Doable, but not as nice as I would like. Wonder how having one would have affected the resale value of the house.
Heikki has a pool right outside the sauna. Last night it was about 18C/64F. I did go in the water, but not for long. Watch out though! Give me a few years in Sweden and I might be rolling in the snow like a native.
We're 2/3rds of the way up to the northern border of Angola. There's now only 8 hours to go. My laptop's at 13% power, the cabin lights are off, so it's time for me to (try to) sleep. From way up high in the sky I bid you all good night.
(As I understand it, Southwest started in the 1970s, back in the days of regulated air travel. They got around the federal laws because they only flew in Texas, it being a rather large state. This was still in the days when they chose stewardesses in basis of attractiveness. The targeted businessmen and there were two levels of tickets. One for $X and one for $2X. With the $2x tickets you got a free bottle of whiskey. An early frequent flier incentive, since the company pays for the ticket.)
1time is perhaps most like JetBlue, though I've never taken that airline. I'm only thinking of the leather seats. Like other LCCs, you pay for extras. Want a Coke? Pay for it.
I flew SAA (South Africa's national carrier) from Jo'burg to Cape Town. Quite a difference. It was a two hour flight, with a hot meal and free drinks. It costs more for service, of course. I don't know by how much. Friends say it isn't that bad, and sometimes it's worth it. It wouldn't have been for the 1 hour flight to Durbs.
I'm on SAA now flying north, and north, and north to London. Flight map says we're about level with the Namibia/Angola border, with about 9 hours to go.
Speaking of that trip, the three of us went on the beach. It was the downtown beach - Hamilton and Amanda say there are better beaches, but this is what we did. While walking on the beach there were small jellyfish with long blue tails. We didn't know what they were. They walked on them, producing popping sounds. I avoided the main body.
We walked along the water's edge. All of us started feeling strange, painful feelings in our feet. Okay, avoid the jellyfish. We got to one of the swimming areas. They were widely separated, with large "no swimming" gaps between. The taxi cab driver says it's because of undertow. The swimming regions are in the safe areas.
We swam in the surf. It wasn't like Florida. I've spent a lot of time on the beach, but Florida's beaches aren't that diverse. Some months ago I mentioned that with the shingle beach at Hastings. Here the surf didn't curl quite right. We body surfed and while there were decent sized waves there was only one where I got a good ride in.
There are two places I've had good body surfing waves. Sebastian Beach, Florida, near where my dad's parents retired. It's on the Atlantic ocean, far enough north that the Bahamas don't help attenuate the waves. And San Diego, where I body surfed once late enough in the summer I didn't need a wet suit and near sunset so at times I could see fish silhouetted in the wave between me and the sun.
As we relaxed on the beach afterwards the lifeguard P.A. said "Beware. There are blue bottles. You are advised to keep young children out of the water." No one seemed to do anything different. Only latter did I look up "blue bottles" in Wikipedia. (Do it yourself; I'm at 35,000 ft with no internet access.) It said they are also known as "Portuguese Man O' War", and with a picture of one taken in around Biscayne Bay, near where I grew up in Miami.
Had I known there were PMO'Ws in the water, I might have reacted differently. I heard such horror stories about the pain, including one kid in scouts who had stepped on one. The remedy, supposedly, is to put meat tenderizer on the wound. But I've never bought nor used meat tenderizer so that suggestion doesn't help me. I can say that the pain is sharp, but dies quickly. I didn't stop on it directly though.
The taxi cab driver said several stung him at once when he was a kid. Wrapped around him even. He had to go to the hospital because of his body's reaction, and now he's allergic to them. These are the stories I heard growing up in Florida, hence my surprise that people were in the water with blue bottles about. Though they were there because of the onshore wind, which meant they were mostly at the water line and not in the water where we were body surfing.
Also, a new sight for me was the Moslem women in the water with full burkhas on, next to women wearing bikinis. There are different levels of strictness, so some Moslem woman had visible faces, walking with those that didn't. Some of the kids were wearing a pretty complete bathing costume as well. Though I hear some kids in the US wear those too, and not necessarily out of body modesty. Some parents insist their kids wear those clothes to protect against UV. Compare to my day when "sun block" was still called "sun tan lotion" (a habit I didn't break until about 1999 when Susan pointed out my dated Floridianism) and my sister and I at the start of the summer would have contests pulling off the largest patches of peeling skin from the sunburns we would get swimming and playing for hours at Venetian Pool.
Body modesty, even in US culture, is a strange thing. I've read that in the old days, pools like at the YMCA required swimmers to be naked. (That's "Young *Men's* Christian Association" - no women were present.) As a kid I read a series of books - the Clearwater gang series? They were about a boy being raised in a good Christian home. These were books you would buy at the Christian bookstore. I remember liking them. I learned the phrase "flotsam and jetsam" from that book, and some other things too. They were decent stories, for the most part. My grandmother bought a Christian science fiction book for me once which I recall was really bad. It SF elements (scientist, helper, and two kids build rocket ship) but wasn't SF and was structured almost solely on "if you pray then God will provide."
In the Clearwater books, the boys would skinny dip in the river.
Once with my grandma (the same one mentioned twice already) we were at the beach. My sister and I wanted to go in but we didn't have swimsuits with us. Grandma said "why not swim in your underwear?" We didn't. That just didn't seem right to us. Thinking about it now though, when she grew up it was before nylon and other fast drying clothes. Cotton and wool don't make good bathing suits. I wonder if it's a materials thing - people just didn't have anything better to wear, so it was best to go naked, if no one else was about.
There were mixed sex beaches of course, with everyone in full swim costumes, bodies completely covered. Again, as I recall, there was a riot at Atlantic Beach some 100 years ago or so when a few of the men decided they would go topless.
Ahh, without internet access I can't research this or provide interesting hyperlinks. :(
For the last couple of weeks I was staying with Heikki and his family. They are Finnish, excepting Minna's daughter's husband who is English. They of course have a sauna downstairs. It came with the house, though it wasn't well designed. They did a lot of work getting it up to spec, per Finnish customs and expectations.
It was my first time in a Finnish-style sauna. Swedish ones are dry. They run the one at AZ at about 90C/190F. Heikki ran theirs at about 72C (165F) which doesn't seem as hot, except it's a wet sauna. That's where you pour water on the rocks. Frequently. The steam comes up and ... well, it's hot.
There's a Finnish word for the steam, which I can't remember well enough. (Hence I've failed Heikki's test. Something like löljö. Grrrr. Wiki "sauna" to get the answer.) The translation is several things: "steam" and "spirit" are two direct ones. It's the steam coming off of the heater (some Finnish word like "kivas", which I confuse with the New Mexican term) but it's also what makes it the sauna. Hence the Finns disagree with the concept of a dry sauna.
Everyone is naked in the sauna. The same is true in Sweden, for the most part. It's a bit different with the AZ sauna because so many people in the comp. chem group are non-Nordic. So there people wear suits, or keep a towel wrapped about, even when it's only guys. The only other Swedish sauna experience I have is at the gym locker room, which isn't a good enough data point.
While naked, it's not sexual. I don't doubt that it could be, but that's not the general case. There's a story, perhaps apocryphal, about a Nokia executive going to the US to run an office there. He schedules a group sauna as a getting-to-know-each-other event, and is surprised at the response he gets against the idea. I suppose in the US organizing a mixed-sex sauna for work could count as sexual harassment. There isn't the social expectations of what is and isn't proper in that situation.
I looked once into getting a sauna for my house in Santa Fe. It would cost some several thousand dollars for the sauna proper, which would be electrically heated. That needed 220V power, compared to the normal 110V in the US. Which wouldn't be bad except that my junction box was already maxed out. Any electrical work done to the house would require replacing the box with something bigger, costing a few more thousand.
Perhaps I should have done it anyway. After I put my house on the market, and with a few weeks before I left the country, I found out there was a leak in the roof, which went through the ceiling fan/lamp in the office/bedroom. There was a storm, and water was dripping off the bottom of the fan. I called a roofer who said it was a simple problem. They would patch it for a few hundred dollars and that was it.
Turns out it was worse. When the buyer's inspector came he said the roof needed to be redone and the electrics fixed. That lowered the price of the house by about $10,000, and I suppose it can handle a new 220V circuit now.
It wasn't a good house for a sauna. It would have to have been in the corner of the patio or the back yard, with no plunge pool (though there could be snow banks in winter), and getting to the shower would mean going through the garage and house to the normal shower. Doable, but not as nice as I would like. Wonder how having one would have affected the resale value of the house.
Heikki has a pool right outside the sauna. Last night it was about 18C/64F. I did go in the water, but not for long. Watch out though! Give me a few years in Sweden and I might be rolling in the snow like a native.
We're 2/3rds of the way up to the northern border of Angola. There's now only 8 hours to go. My laptop's at 13% power, the cabin lights are off, so it's time for me to (try to) sleep. From way up high in the sky I bid you all good night.
Saturday, April 14, 2007
burritos
I made burritos last night for the whole gang.
The car was broken down on the upper deck parking for Super Spar, a local grocery store. While waiting I went to get pies for lunch. Mmm, pies. I saw tortillas and decided to buy some, with the thought of making burritos for dinner or breakfast. It was an easy sell.
Later went back to Checkers (another store) for kidney beans (no refried beans around here), bell peppers, tomatoes, ground beef, etc. Couldn't find sour cream. Could find a small bottle of Old El Paso (I think) salsa. That helped a lot with getting the flavoring right. Wasn't like Santa Fe, where salsas take up a couple of racks of shelf space, but hey, I'm not complaining.
Getting the overall flavor was a bit tricky, given that I had no chiles or chile powder. I faked it with paprika, cinnamon, some basil and oregano, pepper and salt. Would have liked some cumin.
Heikki looked at the tortillas in the bag and said he'd had them before but there were better ones available. As it turned out, I had an ancient New Mexican secret up my sleeve. I lightly toasted the tortillas on the pan on the stove. I find that helps the taste a lot. (In old-school style I could have done it right on top of the flame, but it was an electric stove.)
Everyone quite liked my burritos.
The car was broken down on the upper deck parking for Super Spar, a local grocery store. While waiting I went to get pies for lunch. Mmm, pies. I saw tortillas and decided to buy some, with the thought of making burritos for dinner or breakfast. It was an easy sell.
Later went back to Checkers (another store) for kidney beans (no refried beans around here), bell peppers, tomatoes, ground beef, etc. Couldn't find sour cream. Could find a small bottle of Old El Paso (I think) salsa. That helped a lot with getting the flavoring right. Wasn't like Santa Fe, where salsas take up a couple of racks of shelf space, but hey, I'm not complaining.
Getting the overall flavor was a bit tricky, given that I had no chiles or chile powder. I faked it with paprika, cinnamon, some basil and oregano, pepper and salt. Would have liked some cumin.
Heikki looked at the tortillas in the bag and said he'd had them before but there were better ones available. As it turned out, I had an ancient New Mexican secret up my sleeve. I lightly toasted the tortillas on the pan on the stove. I find that helps the taste a lot. (In old-school style I could have done it right on top of the flame, but it was an electric stove.)
Everyone quite liked my burritos.
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