Sweden is expensive

I'm back in Stockholm for xmas. I didn't notice as much that things in London are cheaper until I come back here and just gasp every time I see the price of something.

Indian food: 125 SEK per dish! In London you can get food for 2 people plus a large soda delivered to your door within an hour for that kind of money. And it'll be of the same quality.

Mass transit is still more expensive in London, but it's a lot bigger and Stockholm is trying to catch up it seems.

But at least in Stockholm the phone works on the tube.

Hope you're feeling better

When you tell someone that you're home sick the default reply here seems to be "Hope you're feeling better".

Is it just me or is that weird? Better than what? I just told you two seconds ago and you say you hope I'm feeling better. Better than two seconds ago? No, it's pretty much the same.

It makes sense to me if there's been some time since they learned that I'm not feeling well, since it's actually possible for me to feel better now than then.

First contact with the UK health system: 15min waiting for doctor in the emergency care thing (I'm not yet registered with a GP so I had to go there). The doctor examined me and gave me antibiotics (no trip to pharmacy required).

Didn't have to pay anything, and they didn't even ask for my NI number or proof of address, or ID.

To register with a GP I'd need to have two forms of ID, of which one would be a proof of address. I didn't do that since I didn't have any proof of address on me.

So in short: Why don't people say "hope you feel better soon"? Is it just that it's an automatic (but often incorrect, such as in my case) thing you say to someone who's sick, or is it idiomatic?

2-factor madness

Sweden: Every single bank has 2-factor auth. Paypal does not offer 2-factor for Swedes.

UK: Not a single bank has 2-factor auth. Paypal offers three kinds of 2-factor for people in the UK.

(HSBC as the first UK bank (according to themselves) is rolling out 2-factor in about a month. 1995 called. They were watching Jurassic Park but paused it to congratulate you on copying their basic security measures)

Can I change my PayPal address to another country?

No. Due to banking regulations, you can not change your address to a country that is different from the country you used when you opened your account. If you're moving abroad, you’ll need to close your existing account and open a new account. If you maintain residences in 2 countries, you can have 2 PayPal accounts as long as only one is a Premier or Business account.

-- Paypal

(my emphasis)

Crazy candy

I've seen toffee-covered popcorn but strawberry and white chocolate popcorn? Crazy. Oh, and they are also covered in toffee.

DNS wildcard

Virgins broadband has a DNS that hijacks things in DNS using a wildcard or something.

ಠ_ಠ

But at least it was easy to turn off.

Chocolate and mail

When the package says "Drinking chocolate, mix in with warm milk" they really mean it. It won't dissolve in cold milk.

And mail arrives on Saturday mornings. Imagine that...

Electricity plugs

I really like the electric outlets and plugs here. No more frustration being unable to plug something in, screaming and stomping on the damn thing. And every outlet has a power switch.

And no more "don't pull out the cable by yanking the cord' warnings, because you can't.

Nice.

Post codes

I think I understand post codes now.

Don't think of an address as a street and street number. Think of an address as a post code.

The post code narrows your location down to just a few doors on a street. Think 5 doors (it'll probably be closer to 5 than 20). So which door is it exactly? Just provide a house name or a house number.

So a complete address can be something like "SW1V 3LX, 27", which would mean "Foostreet 27, SW1V 3LX, London". The 27 is just there to make it unique.

New country, new hypocracies

The nanny state in the form of Vodaphone feels that grown-up content, which I assume includes porn but also 2600.com, is something I must be protected against. So that's blocked. They require a fee of one pound to unlock it.

Hello tiered interwebs.


While going home on the train today the guy next to me was reading some news paper. On one page there was a topless woman covering the page from top to bottom. Where's Vodaphone when I need them? I will be damaged for life...

Expired food

It seems it's not uncommon for stores to have food on the shelves that's past its display date.

So... watch out for that.

Passport copies

Everyone wants to copy my passport. What's with that?

The employer, the bank, the hotel, the landlord, ...

Identity

I can still not understand that the way to prove that I am real, that I exist and that I didn't just make up my name on the spot is to provide a "proof of address" such as a utility bill.

I couldn't top-up my prepaid SIM because I couldn't enter my cards address. I hope that the deposit for the place we're going to rent is going to go through.

Fortunately the name of my employer has opened doors, but how it this supposed to work?

* You can't get money until you get a bank account
* You can't get a bank account until you have proof of address (bills)
* You can't get bills until you have somewhere where you live
* You can't get a place to live before you have a job and proof of your *previous* address!
* You need a NI number for your employer, but your also need an employer AND home address on your NI number application form.

It's a catch 22. Where are you supposed to start? It seems the only way to bootstrap the process is to "tweak the truth". I have a home address that is the hotel, and a mailing address at the office. I probably can't prove my "home address" since it would be strange if the hotel vouched for me.

I don't understand how my identity is somehow attached to where I live. If someone wants to confirm who I am and who my parents are, do they have to go back step-by-step every place I have lived until they get to "live with parents" and then go "Aha! That's who your parents are!"?

I'm hopefully more than halfway through the process now though.

Water taps

I have researched and now found out how to use the sinks that have separate taps for hot and cold water.

From what I understand there are three strategies:

1) Fill the sink with water from both taps. Eeeew...
2) Choose to either freeze or burn your hands. Because it may take a while for the hot water to get burning hot you may be able to wash your hands before you burn your hands up.
3) Quickly go back and forth between hot and cold tap, so that the cold water protects your hands while they're in the flames of hell.

The reason for the separate taps is historical. The pipes are simply bad, and may have different pressure in the hot and cold pipe.

Bank account

I managed to get a bank account yesterday.

Brought my passport, a signed and stamped letter from my employer (who has a deal with this bank) and..... they couldn't find the address of my hotel in their system. So I had to go back to the office, get a new letter with the right address signed and stamped, and go back. In the end it took about 3h at the bank to open the account, plus two trips back and forth between the office and the bank.

My girlfriend will not have a letter from an employer but has gotten a letter from her Swedish bank signed and stamped. Hopefully this will convince the bank that she exists. When I asked at the bank they asked if she has an ID card with her address on it. She doesn't. They asked if she has a drivers license to prove her address. When I informed them that Swedish ID cards don't have your home address on them she seemed surprised. To me it's more like "why would it be there? My home has nothing to do with my identity".

I find it strange that the UK government trusts my passport that I exist enough so that I can enter the country, but the bank won't let me be a customer unless I have utility bills and an employer. What does proving my home address add? It's bizarre.

I got my Internet banking set up as well. No two-factor authentication, and it seems to have design and features that are from about 1995 compared to Sweden, but it seems to be working. But if this is all I can get I'll be sure to hold on to my Swedish SEB account.

Shopping

Went out and walked randomly looking for a supermarket, but just found restaurants. With the help of the GPS i eventually found one. But where's the food? I'm sure it was there. There was some pasta, and plenty of snacks. Is this one of those countries where you have to go to the butcher for meat?

To be fair I don't do much food-shopping in Sweden either, so maybe I just couldn't see the forest for all the trees.

I did notice that they apparently mean something completely different when they use the word "free" than Swedens "gratis". I'm not really sure what they mean by "free" since the things that were "free" were sometimes just half price. In Sweden "gratis" means "free, requiring no money or other purchase". There is no such thing as "Free with every purchase". If it's free (gratis) then you can just take it.

I doubt that the "Free" 32" LCD TV came with no strings attached.

Bought a charger for my cellphone. All power plugs have a fuse here. Does that mean that there's no fuse box in your home? Do all outlets, even in homes, have a power switch? Time will tell.

The small shop (The Carphone Warehouse, "The Phone House" in Sweden) was filled with people. The whole thing was a queue. No queue notes (kölapp) here, no sir.

Bought a prepaid SIM at a supermarket for 2 pounds and topped it up with 30 more pounds. Was easy enough.

While I remembered to change the time on my phone to GMT, I forgot to set it in the camera. I will have to remember that all photos taken on Jan 2nd have the wrong timezone. I use a GPS for geolocation, which is why it matters.

Had mac-and-cheese in a can for dinner. It wasn't good. :-)

Arrival

Arrived last night. I had been informed that Victoria station was closest to the hotel I'll be staying. Turned out to not really be the case. When I popped up my GPS it told me it was a 1800m walk.

1800m is far when you're carrying two bags and have too warm a jacket.

There's no snow here! I knew it'd be a bit warmer, but since Heathrow was shut down due to snow just a week or so ago I thought there'd be at least *some* snow.

This driving-on-the-wrong that they do here is confusing. Yes, I do know where to look. Really I do. When in doubt I can even look down and see the "Look right", "Look left" that's written in the streets. But looking in the right direction is so ingrained in my brain that even when I know where to look, and I've read it in the street, I still sneak a peak in the other direction.

And when I got tired I had to stop, take a break, and look in all directions before crossing.

I've been to New York. When you're there you realize that everything actually does look just like in the movies. It's the ineffable feeling that the movies get just right. It's the same here.  London looks like a Doctor Who episode.

The waitress at dinner had lived in Norway for three years, so she got to practice her Norwegian. I'd rather get my English going before the first day of work, but whatever.

Paperwork

I called the tax office in Sweden (Skatteverket) three times. I told them I had filled in the "Moving out of the country" form, but wanted to make sure that this is all I have to do in order to not have to income tax in Sweden. Income tax is progressively taxed in both Sweden and the UK, but Sweden has about 30%/50% where the UK has 20%/40% (very simplified).

The first two times the tax office told me that they will demand tax on my income if I live in Sweden. I told them that I won't. I'll just visit a few times. But what exactly is their definition of "live in Sweden"? They replied that they determine that "on a case-by-case basis". Uh... ok? So what are the criteria they look at? They couldn't tell me that.

The last time, however, I got hold of an expert on international tax. She told me that because I own an apartment (bostadsrätt) that I'll be renting out I will have an "unlimited tax duty". My girlfriend who doesn't own an apartment will have "limited tax duty". Uh-oh. That sounded bad. Turns out that since I will be working, living and most importantly paying taxes in the UK it still means that Sweden won't be taxing my income. Yay!

Cancel TV license (radiotjänst), rent out apartment, sell furniture (nobody wanted it, gave it away), arrange for transport of "stuff", ...

I don't really know why Försäkringskassan would want to know that I left too, since I've never had any contact with them, but the tax office told me to tell them, so I did.

Disconnected the computer way too late, on the night before my flight. There were way more cables than I'd remember putting in. There was the computer, temperature sensor, WLAN AP, hard drive dock, usb hub, usb hub 2, monitor, monitor 2, webcam, speakers, keyboard, mouse, uplink from switch, ... So I fixed that instead of sleeping properly.

The girlfriend will be flying in later in order to oversee the shipping of stuff, the cleaning and handing over the keys to the tenants.

Intro

I got a job in London.

It was an offer I couldn't refuse, and Sweden is a bit too Swedish for me anyway.

But this isn't about the job. This is about moving from Stockholm, Sweden to London.

Sure, the Brits drive on the Wrong, but how bad can it be?