Sweden

That yearly post…

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Well, I don’t give this blog as much time and attention as I should, but I figured I should throw up an update, since what can go wrong, it’s 2020 and the world seems to try to implode on itself.

Ended up spending nearly 5.5 months in Sweden this year, as I went to Europe for some business and then decided to help out my parents for a couple of months, which ended up being a lot longer due to the lack of flights, courtesy of the Wuhan virus.

My old man also kicked the bucket during this time, so in a way it was good timing, or I wouldn’t have made it back. I guess I’m weird, but it many ways I finally feel liberated and free. Maybe it’s not the feelings you should be having, but not all of us have the same relationships with our parents.

On the plus side, I manged to swap out my British license to a Swedish one, as the British one is not likely to be very useful after Brexit. A lot of things back home when it comes to dealing with government paperwork is so different these days compared to when I left Sweden almost 22 years ago. These days, if you don’t have BankID, it’s almost impossible to do anything that involves government agencies in Sweden and you can’t even shop online from many e-tailers, without it. It’s really quite bizarre that this power has been given to the banks in Sweden.

At least I have one of those now, but I need to renew it in three years time, which is about the same time I need a new passport, so if not before then, I have to go back to Sweden for that. It’s kind of frustrating getting a passport with only five years validity when you live abroad and there’s nowhere locally that you can get one. This doesn’t take into account that it costs five times as much to get one abroad (including the postage costs) and for me it would involve flying to another country to have one made anyhow. It’s the little things…

At least I managed to avoid catching the virus in Sweden, but it also mean that it was a fairly boring 5.5 months, as there was only so much one could do. At least I got to eat a lot of food that I’ve been missing and I cooked up about three months worth of meals for my step mum so she’d have something easy to eat once I left, as she’s not really cooking like she once used to do.

A lot of plans didn’t happen this year and might not even happen next year, but life goes on. Until next time…

And we're back…

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Sorry about the big gap in posts, but I’ve had a lot on and not really been in the writing mood. Anyhow, I’ve posted two new burger places to the list of eateries in Taipei and they’ve both got their own pros and cons, so make sure you check them out. The yearly Swedish crafish party (kräftskiva) was delayed from last weekend to Friday night thanks to typhoon Sinlaku that decided to stop by for quite a while and which produced a downpour of about 1.8m.

It was packed last night, but the scary thing is that since last year, I only knew about 5 or 6 people, which shows what a big turn-around of foreginers there is here. It doesn’t seem like most people come here for the long term, although considering the huge ammount of English teachers and what appears to be a big influx of University students, at least from Sweden, I guess it’s not so strange that there’s a bit turnover.

I’m going to try to get my finger out and update the site more regularly, as it seems like I have a fair few readers, despite the fact that it’s not updated on regular basis. If anyone has suggestions of places that we should go and eat at, please send me an email, you can find my email address in the contract me section at the top of the page.