Fashion Flubs in Trendy Stockholm

Being out of touch in the fashion world is nothing new to me.  I have my solid colored shirts, jeans and I'm good to go.  I've been living in the same walking/hiking shoes/boots for the past 10 years or so (much to the horror of my fashion conscious friends).  I will constantly opt for comfort over fashion, so I was hesitant to comment AT ALL on fashion in Stockholm which is notoriously unique in its stylings.

Personally, I find some of the fashion here to be absolutely hideous and trashy.  Jon thinks that "trashy" might be overstating it a little but I think that's because he enjoys watching these young Swedish women prance around in short shorts.  I can't blame him really either.

A few things to note -- the older people here (i.e., senior citizens) really know how to dress snappy.  Their clothes are always clean and pressed and have that old timey feel to them.  Kind of like when women used to get dressed up to go to the bank back in the 1950s -- except they still do that here.  It's like we never left the 50's -- well, for them anyway.

Ok, onto general fashion trends...

Stripes/Nautical 

This makes sense because we are surrounded by water.  People wear boat shoes around but most people opt for bare feet on their boats.  These are my kind of people! I can get behind the striped look. It's pretty cute.  Also, most women here range from size 0-4 so they can get away with stripes every day.

80's attack

I was just a newbie when the 80's fashion was in full swing, but I distinctly remember bright neon clothing, Molly Ringwald flowered hats and blousy shirts and high-waisted pants.  Not only have Stockholmites decided that the 80's should be relived but they have apparently brought back only the most hideous styles.  I saw a woman wearing a neon blue windbreaker today...not kidding.  Just when you thought it was safe to go outside, you run across a pair of stirrup pants! Shriek!

Booty shorts with black hose

If you are anyone besides a professional MODEL, you CANNOT pull this off.  Some of the teenagers at the high school across from our apartment have decided that ripping giant streaks in their black panty hose makes them look rebellious.  Instead, they look quite trashy.

Visible underwear

I thought the point of undergarments was to hide them beneath your clothing. Instead, bras are a new accessory and feature prominently through your very-thin-I-can-see-your-bra shirt.  Clearly, this is a summer-only type style here in Stockholm and I'm not sure how I feel about it.  I'm leaning towards trashy but depending on the outfit, it can come out looking quite cute.

Sweatpants

I'm not sure who told these ladies that sweatpants were acceptable to wear anywhere except a college campus at 8am, but they should be informed immediately! I'm all for comfort but there is a limit people!

Hammer time pants

It's Hammer-Time! This is a fashion-don't if I ever saw one.  Nobody's crotch should ever become a walking hazard.

Mom Jeans (high waisted AND tapered)

OK, ok, Stockholm has probably the highest density of moms per capita, so you would think that they could get a free pass on this one.  But NO! I've seen very very young non-moms sporting the mom jean look causing my jaw to gape open in amazement.  You mean you are wearing these intentionally and not by some oversight because you were distracted while raising your family for the past 2 decades???!?!? What other excuse is there?  No 17 year old young lady should be wearing mom jeans at the beach! For heaven's sake! Have some sense of decency!  And mom-jean shorts...well, just forget about it!


So, that's it for now. I'm sure there will be more fashion atrocities that I find humorous in the near future.  Walking around Stockholm is interesting (to say the least) and the people watching is entertaining for hours.  Who needs to read books or listen to music when you can watch the most interesting fashion choices stroll by, smoke cigarettes and push baby strollers.

Coming to a TV near you

Our friends and family can now watch us from the comfort of their couch.  No, I'm not talking about a massive Skype session, though that would be fun, but actually turning on your TV, DVR, etc and watching us for a full hour.  Who wouldn't want that in their lives??

A bunch of my friends urged me to apply to House Hunters International and I did so back in January. When I sent off that initial email, I truly believed that nothing would come from it.  Surely they receive hundreds of hopeful emails a day and have to sift through the lot and pick some random couple or family to follow.  Imagine my surprise when we got an email from the casting director four months later.  She wanted to learn more about us and how we were doing in our housing search.  We had to submit a casting video to showcase to the network just how photogenic we are.  I got a little carried away editing our videos in iMovie and you can watch the end result below.  I must have done a good job because we are scheduled to shoot the show in July!  We think this will be a lot of fun and we are very excited about it! I'm not so thrilled about having to put on real make up every day but maybe I'll watch some youtube tutorials before we start filming.

You KNOW it got wild! : A Photojournal from a Week with Grandma and Pepe

Having been in Sweden for a few months now, we are really enjoying ourselves.  But it is tough not having family and friends close by to talk with or just enjoy time together.  I think that is why Lis and I view our time with our visitors as our own little oasis.  Having friends and family visit us creates a place where we can relax and enjoy time with people who have known us since before 2012.

That is why we were so excited when Grandma and Pepe were scheduled to come out.  We had been looking forward to their trip for awhile, but it really couldn’t get here fast enough. 

Not surprisingly, there was plenty of photographic evidence with both Lisa and Grandma taking pics, so the following is a little photo-journal from their trip!

Day 1 - Arrival!

After a really long flight (and short train to downtown), Calvin rewards Grandma with KISSES and SNUGGLES.  I’m pretty sure that the long flight wiped out any and all memories of this first day, so I could literally type ANYTHING here about their day, and they couldn’t argue!

Day 2 - Exploring Stockholm

Calvin had a stressful morning defending his castle against two ogres

We then went off to explore the downtown area and Gamla Stan,  the oldest part of Stockholm

After an afternoon of strollin, Calvin wanted to walk around in a nice park by the water.

Day 3 - Birthday Party!!!!

One of our biggest (superficial) concerns moving out here was that we wouldn't have anyone to celebrate Calvin's first birthday.  Luckily, Lisa is a social butterfly out here and has made great friends, AND Grandma and Pepe wouldn't have missed this for the world.  It definitely meant a lot to us to have part of our family out here for Calvin's big day

Time to slay a dragon!

(once again, GREAT cake lis!) 

What's a playground party without some swing-induced squeals??

I'm pretty sure this is what Leif Ericsons family photos would have looked like

Day 4 - Skansen

Stockholm as a really fun outdoor zoo, Skansen, focused on Scandinavian animals.  Here Grandma and Pepe lie to Calvin by telling him to look at the “puppy” (only word that GUARANTEES he will look at something) that is actually a ferocious wolverine. 

Pepe helped Calvin explore the gnome house in “Lil Skansen”.  This hour of walking around hunched over with Calvin would have hurt more if there wasn’t ice cream and beer directly outside.  NOT Skansen’s first rodeo.

Nothing is more fun than crawling around like a hamster for a little while. Except when 10 year old Swedish kids keep knocking you down…

Sweden joined in Calvin’s birthday celebration by lighting up a pretty good size candle…

Day 5 - We're on a Boat! (Happy Socialism!)

If I'm off of work to celebrate May Day, we pretty much had to go on a boat ride right?

I can't think of a better place to have a nice picnic than the “Swedish Versaille”

I'm pretty sure that Lisa was just imagining being a little girl and playing pretty pretty princess - who knows, maybe my mom was too??

Time to feed some ducks!  This was in the gardens behind the palace, where we found a little stream with some ducks.  We then realized this stream formed the moat that surrounded the dog park - thats some good engineering Stockholm

Day 6 - Livin as a Swede

Lisa really enjoyed being able to show off her day-to-day mommy schedule.  First stop was at the open daycare.  Grandma was able to see a lot of singing, clapping, playing and parachutin’

Naturally, after song time, everyone was ready to enjoy the outside weather.  Time to get your trampoline on

These cherry blossoms weren’t there a week ago and they disappeared in another week.  Made catching them all the better

 Where is Pepe you ask??  Just exploring former Soviet territories (Tallinn, Estonia) and trying to see what he could get away with saying without getting interrogated by the KGB.

Day 7 - Just Chillin

Island livin - Scandinavian style

Pepe escaped from the Gulag and he is ready to swing!  Weeeeeeeeeeee!!!!

Day 8 - Going in the deep end

Lisa and I left for Vienna this day but we knew that Calvin was in great hands.  First thing they did was hit up a sure thing!  Singalong time!  Pepe was shocked when a tidal wave of Swedish ladies arrived with their babies (and dads on paternity leave of course) 2 minutes before the singing started.  Pepe didn’t know what hit him

(feel free to play "Where's Waldo/Calvin" for this pic), 

The one “must-see” museum on Pepe’s Stockholm list was the Vasa.  Basically a museum showing the “Titanic” of the 1600’s.  One of my friends sons LOVES this museum, and pretends that he is in “Pirates of the Caribbean” when he is there.  I’m assuming that’s what is going through Pepe’s head as well. 

After such a fun day, Calvin rewarded Grandma with some attack kisses!

Day 9 - Kulturhuset

During their Saturday morning stroll, they found a 10K road race.  Pepe taught Calvin to applaud the runners as they passed (the kid LOVES clapping).  Good strategy for future race days!

We've always loved the main library here, the kids area is basically a big indoor playground.  Grandma just had to make sure that bigger kids didn't knock Calvin down.  Not sure if they tried to read any Swedish baby books or not...

Kulturhuset: Kid tested, Pepe approved

Day 10 - Strolling HARD

Sunday morning, Calvin got up nice and early (I’m guessing), so they decided to go feed the ducks.  They didn’t realize that this was no “Slater Park” duck pond and that these birds wanted their breakfast.  After escaping from what was turning into a Hitchcock movie set, they channeled their inner euro and hung out at café’s for a bit. 

When we got back from Vienna, we decided to go on a walk around the water.  The walk that afternoon couldn’t have been more perfect.  The weather was great, the dogs were sniffin and Calvin was a happy boy.  Lisa and I both loved seeing the excitement in my Mom’s face as she described to us all the fun things that they did over the last few days, how much she loved spending that time with Calvin, and how they took full advantage of the family-friendly infrastructure in Sweden.  So during the walk we went up the lake and ended up hanging out on a pier for awhile. The pier had stairs and a ramp, which meant that Calvin was the happiest boy in the world.  We spent over an hour (adults rotating turns), just holding his little hands as he went up and down everything that he could.  Just a great way to spend the afternoon.

Day 11 - Great memories....

Calvin had SO much fun hangin with his Pepe and Grandma that he just couldn’t handle it Monday morning. 

Overall, I know we all had a great time and really took advantage of everything we could.  We had looked forward to this week for a long time, so it was tough that it went by so quickly.  But we are really lucky that Grandma and Pepe (with Laura next time!) will be able to visit us again so soon and we have already started to prep for that trip.  Until then, we will have a lot of fun skyping on the weekends. It’s really funny to watch how excited Calvin gets when he hears the skype noises start – he LOVES himself some skyping time. 

Couldn't have asked for anything more.

Almost forgot we moved here for my job!

Lots of people have been asking how I have enjoyed my job here so far.  I haven’t talked about it much – mostly because, like any job, its pretty boring to read about.  If you’ve read the “sun” blog, you know that I’ve been working a little later than normal lately.  But the last few weeks have actually been pretty fun. 

When I was offered the job, I was told that it would give me great visibility throughout the company.  This has definitely been true on this latest project, where I have been building the Services presentations that will be given to the Ericsson board (services is pretty much anything from Ericsson that does not involve telecom equipment).  I did a quick check the other day, and the board includes the former CEO’s of Volvo and Electrolux (same gentleman), DirectTV, British Telecom,  the founder of Vodafone, and most impressively, a member of the Advisory Board at University of Rhode Island (rhody in da house!)    

Needless to say, putting together a board presentation gave me and my manager reason to talk to people throughout our organization.  While normally I work closely with the strategy managers in each product area, now I was part of the working meetings with the heads of each product line.  We only have 3 of these lines in the Services business, so they are pretty busy folks.  Once we worked out all the details with this team, we then moved on to have even smaller working meetings with the head of our Services team. 

Services generates over 40% of Ericsson revenues, so it was even harder to get time with him.  When we did, it was my manager and I, the Services CFO, the Services head and one other member of their team.  It seemed like a very closely knit group that was more collegial than I had expected – they even managed to take a fun little dig at me when talking about the impact of currency fluctuations caused by the banana republic that they do business with (‘merica), followed by a wry smile.  We spent this meeting talking about how the presentation we had originally pulled together matched what the head of our group wanted to present to the board.  In general we were very much in line, but the hard part was finding the balance between granular details and high-level strategic views.

After updating the presentation to reflect some of these changes, Services management was walking through the presentation with the CEO of Ericsson.  I wasn’t able to be part of that meeting, but within an hour my manager was emailed with direct comments on our deck from the CEO.  His target for the presentation was slightly different from what the Services goal was, which required another few nights of updating things.  Once we get to this level, pretty much any comments are not requests to be discussed, but line items to be completed.  At the end of this batch of revisions, we heard that our presentation was the best of the 3-4 presentations being given to the board, which pleased a number of people, including my boss, my bosses boss, my bosses bosses boss and the CEO. I'll take it.

Overall, being part of small meetings with so many of the top folks in the company is interesting.  Even when I am dealing with just the top management at Ericsson, it is fascinating to see how each tier has a different point of view on what is really important and needs to be stressed to the board.   Hearing how each group thinks about things,  how they wants to present things, and what they feel is relevant to the board members is something I wouldn't be able to experience at many places. 

When I was in consulting, I did a lot of really interesting projects, but mostly interacted with mid/high level managers.  I figured that when I left consulting to go to a corporate gig, I would lose that management access, but instead, even at the earlier stages of this project, I was dealing with much more senior executives.   It really has made the last few weeks fun, even if I have seen a few too many Swedish sunsets from my desk…

Topics that I don't care enough about to give full articles...

I’ve tried recently to put out a lot more blogs, but my queue is still building up, so I figured it was random observations time.  As usual, just a few little things that have jumped out at me, but are not long enough for full-length blogs.

Linguistic Oddity #1 - Pie v cake – When we were having a few meetings discussing the presentation we were building, I kept getting confused with everyone talking about cake.  It was “cake this” and “cake that” and, because we have pastries delivered to the office every other week, I was getting pumped up.  Then I realized that they all substituted “cake” for “pie” when discussing pie charts – “we need to get a bigger piece of the cake” instead of “we need to get a bigger piece of the pie”.  Just a slightly different take on it, but it really threw me for a loop.  Thinking about it, I’m not sure if I’ve ever seen many “pies” available at the bakeries here, just various sorts of cakes, tarts and pastries.  So maybe the “pie” analogy just wouldn’t make sense here.  Regardless, this will require more visits to the bakery to investigate further…

 Linguistic Oddity #2 - Question Marks  – Normally when talking about an issue, ‘mericans say “well, that is the question”.  Here though, I’ve heard numerous folks say “well, that is the question mark”.  Just a fun little discrepancy there.

Linguistic Oddity #3 - Facebook “Assault”  – I overheard my coworker (mid-30s single Greek/Swede guy) talking to some folks the other day.  I initially started paying attention when he started explaining how he was “assaulted” the other day, then became perplexed when he explained that people “liked” it afterwards without knowing.  He then repeated the story to someone else how he had been “Facebook Assaulted”, and someone had posted a fraudulent status that garnered a number of likes from his friends.  No one else had batted an eye during this, so I’m not sure if this is a Swedish thing to use “assaulted” (actually a little more graphic verb) instead of hacked, but I don’t like this oddity as much as the whole pie vs cake thing. 

Dogs -  In the US, you would only see a dog off it’s leash in public when at a dog park.  NOT HERE – it’s everywhere.  In the park, on the running path, in the middle of the sidewalk, crossing the street, there are no limits here.  I’m not sure if they just spend all winter just training their dogs to not leave their side or what, but I know that if Darby (Bessie loves food too much) is off her leash for 2 seconds she will sprint after the nearest duck/rabbit/squirrel/shadow and we will never see her again.  Give us one more winter I guess

Pocket squares – All the euro-guys at work wear pocket squares in their suit jackets.  I realized that my suit jackets looked really, really plain, so I added that little item to my birthday list for this year.  I’m in the fashion capital of Scandinavia – I need to step my game up.  

Live odds during sporting events – When I’ve watched hockey or fotbol on TV and I’ve gotten confused at the sports ticker on the bottom of the screen.  It popped up every few minutes, but the scores didn’t really make sense to me.  That’s when I noticed that they were sponsored by betus.com, livesports.com and a few other online betting sites.  Evidently these were the live odds offered by the online gambling companies.  So if the original odds have Stockholm as the big favorite against Helsinki, but then Helsinki scores a goal, they will update the odds in real time so that degenerate/awesome gamblers can put more money down.  I love it because it is so different from the US method of trying to pretend that sports betting doesn’t exist or that it is the end of pure sports or whatever.  Unfortunately I don’t know enough about soccer or hockey to take advantage of these bets and pay off calvin’s college fund, but if I see these things on during an American football  broadcast, I am IN!

Decks – Now that it is nice out, a lot more restaurants offer seating outside.  By that, I don’t mean that they just toss a few tables and chairs out there – I mean that they build a whole deck, taking up 90% of their sidewalk.  I’m assuming that this isn’t the first time they’ve done this, which means that they must rip down the decks come Sept/October.  These guys LOVE the outdoors once it gets nice out!

Blankets – Along with the whole “outside seating” thang, it’s also been interesting that each bar with a  deck has a pile of blankets available for patrons.  These were available in the winter, but honestly, who would sit outside in the Stockholm winter.  Now though, if the sun goes behind the clouds, the blankets are “really comfy cozy!” (according to lis)

Hockey Sticks – I know that I joked when we first moved out here that I was going to get big into hockey and that Calvin would become a gretzky-style star.  But really, these guys LOVE hockey.  Even now in the summer, I see people walking around with hockey sticks (usually the plastic ones).  Doesn’t matter if it is on the Ericsson campus, at the café or in the subway.  Young, old, guy, girl no difference – they are always ready if a faceoff challenge occurs at any point.