Majic

Well, on May 30th I've finally made my move to Stockholm, Sweden, where I'll be working in a new position at PrimeKey Solutions AB. This should help me focus more on some PKI than in my previous assignment, and a big change is the fact that I'll be working for a company which is based on Free Software and which also delivers Free Software solutions. The work has so far been relatively slow, but I've been able to pick-up a couple of new skills. I've started working with some HSM emulator, which is a new thing to me. I've also learned some LaTeX (although, to be honest, not much), and I'm starting to like it up to a point. It still has some very annoying (mis)features, which is also leading me to conclusion that there's still something amiss in the world of documentation.

In the upcoming week I'll be working on some QA, and getting acquainted with Jenkins (there's a plane for migrating away from current Hudson deployment), which means I'll be working with some new software again. Looking forward to it in any case.

The move itself was decently easy. I've managed to pack most of my life in two huge bags (~25kg each), and some hand luggage. Since I went over the limit of the JAT (which is 30kg for luggage), I had to pay some extra money, but I think it's still cheaper/more convenient than using some kind of postal delivery system. I did give up on bringing some of my techie stuff (excluding the HDD's, of course). The move started-off a bit bad since the flight was delayed by 2 hours, with plane being replaced altogether in the end. This has made some shift in the plans I had, but also proved to be a good thing. At first I intended to leave most of the luggage at the office, but instead brought everything with me to colleague's place. This proved to be very useful a couple of days later when I managed to step into a foot-deep water by mistake near the house, rendering my shoes and feet completely wet. Luckily, I was nearby, so I got back and switched to alternative shoes (which were better made for rain anyway).

The reason I stayed a couple of days with a colleague of mine was because the apartment we're renting out was supposed to be available from June 4th, at which point I moved all of my stuff there, with my colleague following-in some 10 days or so later. The apartment I'm staying is very nicely located, very near the metro station, leading me to work in under 20 minutes, and also letting me get to T-Central (central metro station in Stockholm) in 15 minutes (although due to some construction work this is a bit longer now since I have to take different line, at least until October).

The weather was a bit tricky for me at first, as well as lighting conditions. The night here last maybe 4 hours or so (at least during summer), and it's otherwise very light even during late evening (like 11pm). My first weekend was a terrible late-autumn style one, with heavy wind and rain. I still managed to get some fun by going to the cinema and watching the ''Iron Sky''. I can wholeheartedly recommend this film to everyone.

I've already had a couple of going-outs, and I think I'll be enjoying the variety of food here. There's many restaurants with cuisines from all around the world. Last weekend I have tried my first Thai dish, and I really liked it. I've also had the opportunity to dine two times at different Lebanese restaurants.

There's many places to go out to in Stockholm to have fun. So far I've been once to a place called Stampen, which houses live jazz, blues, and rock'n'roll bands. On this particular evening they were playing old rock'n'roll and some blues. The placed was filled with people, although I think I might've been the youngest person in there (I think the age average was 45+, if not even 50+). Still, the music was great for me, and I've made a couple of nice videos of that.

I've also taken chance to go to my (now favourite) bar, Akkurat. They sport a really good selection of beers, and I took the opportunity to have two beers with some excellent nachos with avocado/asparagus dipping. I'll be visiting that place more in the years to come for sure.

Since I've arrived in middle of holiday season (in terms of working days being non-working days), I've attended a couple of picnics. One was during the national day where a couple of colleagues and me went to Skansen, had some cheese, then later on moved more close to my apartment to Boulebar for a beer and some game with balls (boule). On that occasion we also went to Lebanese restaurant. A day well-spent.

I've also been invited by roommate's girlfriend for a Midsummer Day for a small party/picnic. It was a really pleasant day, and I certainly enjoyed it (most of the Swedes took off to the vacation houses etc outside of Stockholm on that day, though, so the city was filled with foreigners celebrating the day instead :) ).

There has also been a number of interesting people that I've met, and I managed to organise one board-gaming evening, where we played Dixit with seven players. The game was a full hit, and I think we'll be playing this game more in days to come. I'll probably have to get some more games, especially for 6-8 people.

Finally, some tech-related stuff. At work I obtained the Samsung Galaxy Nexus telephone, as well as Dell Latitude E6420 laptop. The laptop is a very nice beast, with i7, 8GB of RAM, and a 256GB SSD. But more on those two in some other blog post.

Greetings from Stockholm :)