The Happiness Index

The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development has published a fascinating study of happiness across nations. Their website is an interactive and instructive way to spend a few minutes (or more, in my case).

There's no surprise that Scandinavian countries rank highly, but Australia and the USA are right up there, too.

Both left-leaning and right-leaning organizations use the data to support their points of view, of course. The fun thing about the OECD website is that one can input the things that are most personally important, and make comparisons from there. It's definitely worth a look!

Merry Christmas!

We went to Crested Butte for a few days of skiing over the holidays. We had a great time. Merry Christmas everybody!!!

Electricity analysis

I posted earlier this year about electricity use over the past 3 years. This chart is a bit different.

Here, I'm comparing the temperatures against the energy usage. There are lots of websites with historical weather data. I used the mean low temp for each two month period. Clicking on the chart makes it full-size.

It's no shocker to say that, the colder it gets, the more electricity gets used.

Yellow arrows indicate times we stayed at the house; this explains the ginormous spike at Christmas 2010. In fact, that spike is quite instructive. If and when we spend more time at the house in the spring and fall, we'll be paying a pretty penny (or öre) to keep the radiators on. We'll have to find a better way to warm the house... but that's a subject for discussing later!

This is my kind of house!

Dwell magazine (those shameless purveyors of modern house porn) have a slideshow online of a house I just love.

It's a steel cantilevered prefab structure, bolted onto a rock in the wilds of Washington state. The story of its construction is quite interesting, too.

Our little place in Aspö shares a bit of its DNA, I think, with its perch on a rock, and its cantilever over the woods below. I'm not sure the Värmdö planning authorities would have approved it, though!

Happy Lucia Day!

This is my fifth Lucia on the blog. In trying to find something new about Lucia for me to post here, I found a hot new local restaurant of the same name. I'll have to try that out. But I digress.

I did manage to find something new on the web that describes the history of Lucia and her traditions pretty well. 

Sooz has been baking Christmas cookies up a storm, I will see if I can get her to make some Lussekatter, too!

Snö!

I mentioned snowy Stockholm in my previous post. Well, there's been a lot of snow lately. Olle sent me a message, saying there was 40cm (16 inches) of snow in his back garden. I assume Aspö has the same, although the weather in the archipelago can be different. But the Stavsnäs and Sandhamn webcams give me a fairly close view, and there's a lot of snow there, too!

I found one more webcam that has been taking up a lot of my time: a nearly-live video of Stureplan. It's fun to watch the commuters and Christmas shoppers bustling about.

Island trivia

I've posted before about the brilliant @Sweden twitter account, in which a different citizen takes control of the country's official twitter feed for a week. There's been quite an array of different people tweeting about their varied lives and experiences.

This past week's curator has been an oceanographer, and he's posted a number of interesting facts and photos about sea life in the Baltic. I found this tidbit particularly interesting:

• Sweden has almost 220,000 islands. Approximately 98,000 are in the ocean, the rest in rivers and lakes
• Only 1085 of these islands are inhabited (as of 2008). This corresponds to only 0.5% of all Swedish islands
• All together, islands make up only 2.6% of Sweden's total area (although their cultural importance is far greater!)

Although it's balmy here in Texas, and snowy in Sweden, I'd still rather be there today!

Eurovision Update

The Guardian is reporting (in their usual snarky tone of voice) that a number of countries will likely decline to participate in next year's contest. Poland, Portugal, Cyprus, and Greece are all said to be pulling out for financial reasons. None of them are historical powerhouses in the contest, however, so not a big loss there.

The winning country has to hold the next year's contest. The cost for doing so can be enormous. It's long been rumored that Ireland deliberately tanked their 1995 entry because the cost of hosting three consecutive wins in 1992-94 nearly bankrupt the state broadcaster, RTÉ. (They put forth their usual effort in 1996 and of course, won again!)

That said, the contest in Malmö doesn't seem to be suffering. The first tranche of tickets sold out in 20 minutes last week. Even better news is that the Melodifestival starts two months from today!

A report from Olle

Olle sent me a few iPhone pics. He checked the temperature in the bathroom and it was a perfect 7.2°C. Here's how the house looked this weekend. A couple more snaps (including a November flower) are on Annika's photoset.

Thanksgiving

It's the Thanksgiving holiday here in the USA. This is the sixth Thanksgiving that has passed since I've started this blog. I didn't mention the holiday at all in 2007, although I found it fun to look at that month's posts.

2008 was noteworthy as it coincided with Ollie's back surgery. Each of our subsequent Thanksgivings has had extra meaning for me, as it's now also an anniversary of his continued health!

Here's today's family portrait, with the fantastic addition of Sooz's dad, who flew down to Texas to be with us on the holiday.

SAS

News reports this morning are pretty negative about the fate of SAS. Like many established airlines around the world, SAS is struggling to reconcile its state-owned legacy to the realities of a low-cost world of aviation.

I have good friends at SAS, and we have flown them many times over the past 20 years. I wish them the best for their restructuring plans.

UPDATE: Although it went down to the wire (in fact past the wire, thanks to pesky Danish flight attendants), the 8 unions involved did all finally agree to sweeping changes. The Financial Times has a good summary of events- and how things might have been different in America.

A toilet theme park

I posted a bit more than 5 years ago about a toilet-awareness organization in in South Korea which built a toilet-shaped house.

Sadly, Sim Jae-duck, the builder of the house and the founder of the WTA, has passed away in the interim. However, his house has become a Restroom Cultural Park, with toilets from around the world available for visitors.

Not sure if there's a Cinderella there. There should be!

Tick Vaccinations

I've posted many times in the past about that scourge of island life, the tick, or more specifically, the diseases the little bastards carry.

Borrelia, or it's more well-known North American cousin, Lyme disease, is the most common illness. In fact, both Sooz and I have been tested positive for exposure to Lyme, which doesn't mean we have symptoms.

There is a more serious disease however: tick-borne encephalitis, or TBE. Once it's contracted, there is no cure. And it is not a disease that one wants to risk having! I have enough problems with my brain, thank you very much. No need for anything extra to deal with there.

We got our TBE shots when we were in the UK, so we're covered. However, a booster is recommended within 5 years, which would be next year for us. When Sooz visited London ahead of our visit last month, she went to our old NHS doctor and got a booster shot. They were very nice, and didn't charge her the non-resident's fee. (Like I've said before, I love the NHS).

However, going to our village in England to see my old doctor isn't an option for a working stiff like me, so I looked into getting the shot here. After a lot of research, I found that wasn't possible. The reason is simple: there is no TBE in the United States. The vaccine can't even be ordered here as an option, as it isn't licensed for American usage.

My plan B was to get the jab in Sweden, but I thought I'd try something else first. I contacted my company doctor with my dilemma. He took the challenge in good humor, and quickly found a good solution: the vaccine is available in Canada. He directed me to a travel clinic near the Montréal airport, and sure enough, I can stop in and get the vaccine there with no fuss.

As luck would have it, I need to visit Montréal for business in the coming weeks, so I'll plan an hour to stop by and get my booster shot.

The things we global residents have to go through....!

Internet service update

I received an update from Nilla, our representative of the broadband club on Nämdö. There was a lot of Swedish to get through, but this is what I understand so far:

• The cost to wire the Nämdö archipelago for 600 residents is about 48 million kronor- or about 80,000kr ($12,000) per household.
• The Swedish government has said that all households will have access for roughly the same price, 20-25,000kr.
• This gap will be met by funds paid by the government (with matching funds from the EU), but the demand for this money is very high. The 2012 funds were exhausted some time ago.
• A new, more formal broadband association will be formed by the end of this year. A stake of 2,000kr is being proposed for membership in this association.
• This group will take up negotiations to get started with the first phase of the work next year.

There's more detail, but that's the gist of it. We probably will have to deal with our little wireless connection for one more summer!!!

A 12 square-meter apartment

I read about a tiny little house built by students in Lund, a big University town in far southern Sweden. It's quite a cute little place!

The article I've linked to has a number of pictures and some background on this interesting little experiment.

Neighborly help

Sooz and I are in pretty regular touch with Olle and Annika through the magic of iPhone apps. We play Word Feud on the iPhone, sometimes in Swedish and sometimes in English.

When I play in Swedish there is a lot of guessing involved. But sometimes I get lucky and score a good word! When I play Olle or Annika in English, however, they're both very good. I have to work hard to keep up my linguistic pride.

WhatsApp is another useful way for us to stay in touch. Annika uses it to send me her beautiful photos, which I post on the blog.

This picture isn't one of the pretty ones but I am very happy to see it in any case. I asked Olle to check on my heating setup in the bathroom. As you may recall, I keep all the freezable items in there with a radiator set on 8°C. I'm always worried that I set everything correctly, and I feel a lot better now that Olle has confirmed that the temperature is just right. (Too cold, and I get potential damage to the goods and plumbing; too warm and I spend a fortune in electricity and attract critters to the warmth).

It's great to have neighbors who can look across at my house on occasion, it really eases my mind!!

Cinderella

I took a look at the blog's readership stats, and it's clear that Cinderella is the most popular subject here by a huge margin. In fact, toilets in general are the biggest source of new readers.

Given the new-found focus, I thought I'd recap our recent trials and tribulations with our own Cinderella toilet.

The cooling fan is set to turn on as soon as the lid is lifted. The fan is very important, given the heat generated by the combustion process. Without proper cooling and ventilation, it could be quite dangerous. That's one of the advantages of the Cinderella over other incinerating models; its sensor and fail-safe system is quite sophisticated.

Sooz found that the fan didn't come on when we turned it on, and a quick review of the manual indicated a fan failure. A call to Johan, the Cinderella expert I first met 5 years ago, confirmed it. Johan arranged for a new fan to be sent out along with instructions (in Swedish) and a little repair kit.

There was a bit of confusion in which the fan was sent to Stavsnäs instead of direct to us, but Sooz retrieved it and I was able to indeed replace the fan simply.

I was a bit miffed that the fan failed. After all, our Cinderella doesn't get continuous usage, and I keep the bathroom warm when we are away so it isn't subject to below-freezing temperatures. Then again I suppose not using it on a regular basis might be bad, too.

Johan softened the blow by not charging me for the fan, even though the warranty is only two years. He's a good guy (and so is everyone else I met in the company), plus he knows I am an influential blogger on the subject of incinerating toilets!

All's well that ends well, and our Cinderella is safely shut down until next year.

Settling back

I find it hard to come back to 'regular life' after a week on Aspö. Especially now that we're living in Texas, our little house seems so far away. Easter is the earliest time we realistically would come back, so we're talking six months at least. That makes the house feel even further away, both geographically and on the calendar.

I do have a few interesting subjects to write about in these intervening months, not least our paint experiment. There are a number of cultural subjects to address, as well. So the writing pace may slow through the winter, but it won't stop, don't worry!

Back in Texas

Sorry for the lack of posts. A combination of being busy, being lazy, and an annoyingly poor internet connection combined to keep me off the blog. But all is well. Lots to write about in the coming weeks.

At least I've been updating the photo album!!

Lazy afternoons

It was cool this morning, but not as cold as Stockholm; Marcia said she saw frost when she got up!

It's still a bit too wet to paint or wire the extra deck lights but I plan to do that tomorrow as Thursday and Friday will be dry.

The Cinderella is working fine, in fact both Sooz and I think it is quieter now. Perhaps there have been improvements in fan technology over the past 4 years...?

I'm catching up on email and Sooz is working on a jigsaw puzzle. It's quiet and peaceful. Bliss.

Success!

Good news! The Cinderella is back in service. The fan arrived today (although Sooz had to make a quick round trip to Stavsnäs to pick it up).

The instructions were clear and the whole job was as straightforward as I had hoped. It took less than an hour and there were no parts left over.

The best news was the sound of the whirring fan as soon we hooked it up! Success!

I'm off to the main dock to help Janne with moving some wood. Then we'll all have spaghetti for dinner.

The rain is supposed to stop tomorrow so everything is looking up.

We're here... but with a snag

The good news is that the drive, shopping, and boat trip all went perfectly. The house seems to be in tip-top shape. All is well except for one detail.

The Cinderella isn't working.

It powers on but the fan does not start up and is therefore inert. The blinking light code indicates a fan fault.

I called Johan bright and early and he also thinks it's the fan. He is going to mail a new one out to us today and we should receive it on Aspö tomorrow morning. He also emailed replacement instructions and it seems pretty easy to change.

The Cinderella came away from the wall pretty easily and I took the back off. Everything looks to be straightforward. Now I just have to hope the replacement fan arrives in the post tomorrow. Sooz does not want a second day without a toilet, and I can't say I blame her!

A busy weekend!

We've been quite busy these past 48 hours. Yesterday was shopping (clothes for the girls and linseed oil for me), then last night was a fantastic dinner at a trendy spot in Stureplan for Camille's birthday. In fact the place was so trendy, we saw Eric Saade (Sweden's Eurovision representative last year), there on a date! Not to worry, I didn't go up to him, although everyone dared me to.

This evening, Tim's American football team has their championship match, and we'll all be there to cheer. Then it's a short night as we're up early for an 0800 boat.

Photos have started on new Flickr set. More added soon!

UPDATE: Tim's team lost, sadly. They fell behind early, but made a damned good game of it in the second half.

Almost there

I'm writing from the BA lounge in Heathrow, hoping to meet up with my lovely wife in a little while. Our flight is in two hours. It's a good thing I had extra time because the vigilant folks at Heathrow security spent quite a buit of time looking at my carryon bag filled with light fixtures and wire. They were very professional about it, though.

My mother sent me a link from the Minneapolis paper; the King and Queen of Sweden are in my hometown, while I am in theirs!! What are the odds of that?

We'll be taking the 0800 Monday boat from Stavsnas. This weekend will be jam-packed with lots of social activities, which I'll report on later.

Preparing our Departure

Only time for a quick post, things have been pretty busy here in Texas!

Sooz just left for London a couple of hours ago, and the plan is for us to meet up in London this Friday afternoon for our trip to Stockholm. We have an action-packed weekend with Rutger and Marcia (more details on that to come). We're off to Aspö very early Monday morning, just a short week from today.

To say I'm looking forward to it is an understatement.