A kingdom for a debugger

Hej friends,
to those of you who don't know what I am doing here in Sweden I am going to answer this question in this post. Currently I am doing my master's thesis and as it is in the field of Particle Physics it involves a lot of computing. Debugging my analysis code to look for a particle that is predicted but has yet to be discovered took the past 2 days. Meanwhile I was participating in yet another collaboration meeting that is held here in Uppsala on a fairly regular basis. During those "stategy sessions" we give status reports and discuss further plans of the research group associated with the experiment I'm working with. By today our group leader signed my official affiliation and I hope to contribute to this ASAP. That's why I am killing my time debugging...
Debugging is a highly time consuming issue and takes usually whole days. However, living needs such as food and drinks need to be satisfied and I just recently went to my nearest ICA. Yes, I hate the ICA because of the very limited overpriced variety of products. Moreover, I just figured out the ICA's with the shortest and with the longest opening hours. So my closest ICA opens at 9 and closes around 7 - way too early for me to get there. Hence I went to the next-to-nearest ICA, close to Rackarberget... and I saw this:

This poster annouces the store with Uppsala's best opening hours. Absolutely ridiculous and worth mentioning in my blog. So is the information paper for swedish TOEFL test takers. One might think that people who are in charge of offering the TOEFL are aware of the peculiarities of (Sw)english... those of you are proven wrong. After taking my test in a remote village outside of Stockholm (this is at least how it looked on a map) which turned out to be well connected via the T-bana, I realized that the test-center hand-outs contained 3 to 5 major flaws which were mainly related to (Sw)english, f.e. - what does this mean you may ask? f. e. is t. ex. or "till exempel", so for an example... just to give you one little example. But who dare I to criticize the Swedish people while still making stupid mistakes. Anyhow it was worth to mention here either.
Finally I have to admit that my corridor mates are really disgusting pigs. Not that I had to clean my part of the fridge and freeing it from 3 year-old overly disgusting mildew but when I came home two days ago, my whole stuff in the fridge was covered with a yeast-water-oil-something... yucks... Hopefully I won't stay here very long.
Recently friends from Humboldt University were here to visit Uppsala and I had offered to show them some of the town and the university. As a result I've been to "Taket", the V-Dala summer restaurant 3 times in less than 2 weeks and got some nice burger at both places, at Taket and at the summer-restaurant from Snerikes. Yeah for that! And yeah for the american-car festival being over. The grand finale was last saturday where plenty of old fuel-consuming vintage cars were holding a parade at Fyris. But look for yourself:

Meanwhile, choir has started again and it is good to have some known friends around. That was particularly true for Simon who managed to motivate me during my very first (sad) days in Sweden. We (=the rest of the choir and me) are going to perform during the "reccemotagning", the freshmen gathering next thursday and tuesday afterwards. I'll see how much I will get involved with choir activities. It is among with other things on my list but highest priority I give to my thesis and planning the future.
So now I have to go to bed...
hejdå

The mystical swedish bank system

Hey friends,
today I want to leave a note about a particular helpful thing I've just figured out. In the guide for new International / Exchange students it is strongly recommended to open a bank account here in Sweden. This argument is however rather flawed. First of all, the following information mostly apply to those of you who are citizen of a EU country. As a fresh new student arriving in Sweden you don't have anything but your passport and probably the letter of acceptance. Additionally you don't want to pay stupid money conversion fees when getting some swedish crowns. One of your first things would then be to open a bank account at one of the major banks such as Nordea or Swedbank. You cannot go to any bank of your choice since you usually need your Swedisch Personnumber in order to open an account.
However, those banks together with SEB offer "good deals" for you as a non-Swedish citizen. Last year for instance, I got a basic account with Swedbank, including a debit card (required to get money from the ATM and to pay without cash) and had to pay 130 SEK per 3 months for the use. You may now argue that this is not much for this service. But honestly, when do you really need a swedish bank account? Usually when you have to pay your rent, the student union fee or when you receive money for working here. For the first two things there exists an easier solution.
Since lately the conversion rate between Euro and SEK changes frequently and it is therefore not really wise to transfer money from a non-swedish Euro account to a new swedish account. Instead you should use the SEPA transaction. SEPA is the fee-free wiring of money withing countries of the European Union. It is widespreaded and as secure as other systems. However, to use this system, you need two numbers: the International Bank Account Number (IBAN) and and the Bank Identification Code (BIC / SWIFT) in order to place your transaction. Usually your bills only contain the Postgiro or Autogiro number which is used here in Sweden. You cannot use this number for your SEPA transaction. You will need instead to ask the landlord or the student union to tell you those numbers. I did this with Uppsala Studentkår and here is the result:

Dear Stephan,

Here are the numbers that you requested.

Iban-number: SE6050000000053681024782

Bic/Swift-code: ESSESESS

Best regards

Uppsala Student Union

Sometimes asking perhaps stupid questions helps a lot.

Finally for all of you who may plan on coming to Sweden to stay there for a while I have one suggestion to avoid those payment issues. The SEB ("Svenska Enskilda Banken") operates beyond the borders of Sweden and allows you to use either swedish crowns or Euro without paying fees. Particularly this means that you can pay with your VISA card any bill in SEK and you won't be charged for the conversion. You just should be careful with getting money from the ATM and if so, use your Debit card at an SEB-ATM. For example I just opened an account when I was in Germany back in December 2008. For students this account is free of charge. I got a VISA/EC card together with it and I can use it here in Sweden without any additional costs. But finally, it's up to you on how you spend your money while being here: whether it is in a pub or for stupid non-necessary fees is your own responsibility.
Hejdå,

A troublesome start...

Hi friends,
This is now yet another post which i'm writing during a flight. This time it's the announced flight back to Sweden and back to work. The preparation this time was rather short-handed and not as i expected it. After domen nice barbecue at my parents place I had some serious stomach problems, which caused an almost two hours long delay of packing all my stuff. To make things worse I had yet another time to pay overweight... As a result my cheap SAS flight doubled it's price. But now I'm on the plane and hope that I manage the flight without any further major issues.
Yesterday i've received an email from my supervisor at Uppsala which contained new instructions for my thesis work. My master thesis will probably keep me quite busy during the next four months. This is the approximate plan for the rest of 2009. Although I perhaps won't post as much I'll try to keep you guys up-to-date.
Hejdå, Stephan

[Posted with iBlogger from my iPod touch]

Preparing for Leave

Hi friends,

it's kind of incredible. In about 11 hours I will be on the plane again. Back to Sweden, back to work, back to reality and probably back to a colder climate. During my stay over the summer I managed thanks to the help of my Hannah to do the GRE test which should give me admission to Graduate School in the U.S. However, this is more a backup plan. Our ultimate goal is to get into Copenhagen, not just because of being in Scandinavia again but mainly since it fits pretty good with my future plans and it seems to be the best choice for Hannah for doing her research with medicinal chemistry. How things will turn out we have to wait for this - but until then we'll try as hard as possible knowing that one day we will be together forever.

Stay tuned for more news from Sweden again.


Hejdå

Print option now without waste of paper

Hi friends,
those of you who asked me about a print out possibility of my blog including the pictures but without all the fancy (but useless) stuff at the left column I can finally tell that it's possible. Thanks to "www.printwhatyoulike.com" I added a snippet which allows you to simply click on the "Print"-button below the "about me" passage. Then you will get a nicely formatted version of my blog. See you later guys!
/Stephan

My blog in different languages

Hi guys.
Thanks to all of you sending me birthday greetings and special thanks to those of you attending my little "party". Since I'm back in Germany over the Summer, friends and relatives were frequently asking or better complaining that I did not call often enough. Usually I would refer to my blog and say: look at my blog that's where I put all my updates - online and accessible for everybody. However, since most of them are not fluent in English nor native speakers they are usually complaining about the language issue. I don't really want to switch to German or some other language and rather prefer to continue writing my blog in plain English. Therefore I had to look for a possible workaround. And there is a solution: it's called "Google translator" and it does exactly this: when you click on "My blog in other languages" (right below the field about me) with the nice google-gadget and select the language you want to read my blog you will be redirected to a translated version. It works for most of the posts although the result is obviously different from a real "german-written" blog. I hope you still enjoy reading my blog and I'll try to update the 2nd America post ASAP.
Have fun.
/Stephan