I got back from Stockholm a couple of days ago. I was up there to spend some time with a couple of friends before I went to Japan. A nice couple of days!

Yesterday I got my visa, finally. So now everything is 100% ready to for the trip!

I have also decided to buy the Macbook in Sweden. It turns out there are a number of advantages for me to buy it in Sweden. It has been sent from China now so I’m hoping it’ll arrive some time next week! I might make a video of the unboxing and replacing of HDD.

That’s a simple update of what’s happening right now. Not really that much, which is nice. I wish I had someone to play Race for the Galaxy with though. It’s a strategy card-game which you can see in the picture above. It’s very fun yet causal to play.

So I think it’s about time for an update again. I am back from Britain and that all went super-well. You can read more about it on Emanuels blog. It was a good first run and we’ve been invited to the next event in November as well.

Thi is the room we got. Two small beds but definitely nice enough to stay during the event.

The biggest difference between DreamHack and the british LAN is this:

This is me and Emanuel in London, we got a half day in town before we flew home again. Really nice town, I like it a lot, it’s not Tokyo but it’s by far one of the best places in Europe.

In London we bought food at this awesome Japanese food store with everything really Japanese. Totally awesome store, I wish we had one of those in Sweden.

After London I went back to Stockholm and have been hard at work since. Before I talk more about that I want to share something I’ve recently taken an interest in:

I have really gotten into eating nice dinners at restaurants. Like really enjoying the food and taking my time. Get in, order something really nice with a nice glass of wine and just enjoying the food. Then sit and chat and discuss things for a while until the wine is finished. When you feel like you’re getting bored with just talking (and getting a little hungry again) you order in deserts and continue the culinary experience a little while longer. After you’re done completely, no dishes, no hassle, no nothing. You just pay and leave and be done with it! Totally worth the extra cost of the food. I don’t think I would enjoy doing it more than like once a month though, but I’ve only ever done it like once a year, so I think I’m gonna start doing that more.

Anyway!
After coming back from London I switched offices to the offices of another company, for which I will be working a bit as well. They have this super-awesome thing standing on a shelf in the break/meeting room:

It’s the Emmy they won for their “The Truth About Marika” game!

In other great news, Emma has joined me up here in Stockholm — so now I’m not lonely anymore! She came a couple of days ago and she is doing the town while I’m working =P
With the arrival of Emma I have also gone down a bit in my working hours to a lean 8 hours a day =P Which honestly feels a bit more healthy.

So I suppose it’s time for an update! All of the pictures found in this post and more can be found in their full-size versions on my flickr.

I’ve been real busy here and even though I didn’t get much accomplished this weekend I work pretty much all day long during the weekdays. By all day long I mean like today, get up 8, be at work by 10, leave work at 22, be home at 23.

I’m going to try to just bring a nice little picture update because I’m too tired to write anything serious about my experience here so far.

The first couple of night I slept at a hotel (Scandic) because the guy I was gonna live at didn’t leave for Indonesia until the end of July. I really love hotels, I think I’ve said that before but it bears saying again. One reason why I really love Scandic is this though:

Their breakfasts RULE!

This is what I look at most of the day:

And this is the building I spend my time in:

It’s a reallly cool place and the offices are just super impressive and creative. I really get a feeling that the people there do what they love and it’s awesome to be surrounded by that kind of environment. It’s super high-tech and the people are way more creative than me, I really feel like a small fish in a big pond. I’m usually the big fish in the small pond, so this experience is certainly something different. It’s inspiring and fear-inducing at the same time.

This is the more typical office-space, this one is that of my colleague Daniel, who brought me up here.

The guy whose apartment I’m loaning is a pretty cool guy too, got some cool stuff here. But there’s really only two things I want to show because I don’t want to like post his entire life-story on my blog without his consent

Yep, that’s a Zombie Outbreak Survival Kit and a Projector right above the desk.

There are two things I really like about Stockholm so far.

It’s easy to go out and grab a beer, there are many places, pretty much all quite nice and there are usually people outside even when it’s half-late. So it’s not a ghost town after 5 pm like it is where I’m from.

The other thing I really like is this place:

It’s a bookstore called SF Bokhandeln (Science Fiction Bookstore) and they have quite a selection of manga, perhaps 5-6 shelves like the one in the picture. Almost all of it translated to English or Swedish but even some Manga in Japanese, which is cool!

They have a lot of other role-playing stuff and games so while I was there I bought a super-advanced 2 player card-game called Call of Cthulu, apparently it’s somewhat like the Magic card game — which I haven’t played.

Here’s me and a good buddy spending our Saturday trying to figure the thing out

Well that’s it for now, I’m off to shower and then maybe watch an episode of Gantz if I feel there’s time and then sleep. Same procedure tomorrow, up 8 — home at 23.

By the way, I try working 12 hours a day now because I’m going to the UK on Thursday to host a game (more on this later) and need to catch up on work in advance. It’s suprisingly hard to work 12 hours though. With 1 hour of to-and-from-office-traveling and 3 hours of breaks and food a day. A 12 hour day turns into 16 hours. If you want a remote chance at getting 8 hours of sleep and some time to yourself, 10 hours is pretty much all you can do. I don’t like cutting into my 8 hours of sleep but I might have to, I do during school without much problem but I’m not used to it now. Oh well. For now I’m doing 10 hours a day and just hoping that I’ll be able to work like 2 hours a day in the UK.

So I’m on the train toward the capital of Sweden, about to try out another lifestyle.

Stockholm is, apart from where I usually live, actually a city. I would call it a city, it’s not a big city, but a city non the less. It has a subway and like, at least some people.

I’m gonna be working there mostly so it’s gonna be a tryout of an actual lifestyle of living and working there. It’s gonna be fun to see if I can like the city and if I can like the work as something I could consider doing as a career.

I’ll be staying there until school starts around the start of September and I’ll be blogging as usual, so we’ll just have to see how it works out!