The Swede in the middle of Silicon Valley

Wednesday, May 30, 2007

The visa interview

So I just wanted to share my crazy morning to get to the interview.

06:20 am: The alarm goes off and my cousin comes into the room to make sure that I'm waking up. (I stayed at her place).
06:30 am: I've washed myself and is getting dressed with my new suit which cost me a fortune.
06:40 am: Heading of to the subway station with my cousin, ahead of schedule.

06:55 am: PANIC! I've forgotten my passport at my cousins place. I get of the train, runs to the other platform that goes back.
07:00 am: The train finally arrives after 5 painful minutes.
07:05 am: The train is now back at the first station.
~~~~~~: I'm running like a maniac to my cousins place to pick up my passport, the more I run the more sweaty I get, awesome to smell horrible for my interview....
07:15 am: I'm back on the train towards Stockholm downtime and realize that I'll never make it to 8am.

07:25 am: Suddenly I see my cousin at the subway station which the train is coming into, apparently she has been jumping on every train since I left to check for me. We're going one more station and all of a sudden she drags me out of the train and starts running. Since I know that I'm screwed in regards of timeframes I just follows her. When we get up on groundlevel she grabs the first cab she sees and tell him to drive fast as hell. (Notice that it takes about 40 minutes to go by car from this station to the embassy and the time is now 07:30am.

~~~~~~: Time passes....

07:55 am: The cab arrives to the embassy. JUST IN TIME!! My cousins throws me out of the cab to make sure that I'll get there.

So now I'm here, and what do I see.... a LOOONG queue, outside, in the cold.

So I'm standing in the queue for 45 minutes, I'm still not inside the embassy since everyone has to pass the security control. And I'm getting more and more worried that I'm screwed.

08:45 am: I'm now in the embassy, leave my papers and passport to a cashier and sits down to wait.
09:15 am: A man in the speaker says: Jonathan Petersson, please come to window D.

A small note here, everything that's within ( ) is thoughts I'm having during the so called interview.

I'm now standing in front of the immigration guy who sits inside a stall, we're divided by a glass window.

- Good morning, he says.
- Good morning, how are you?

- I'm fine thanks, and you?
- I'm fine to.

- So you're going to work for SQL in the United States?
- Yes (It's called MySQL...)

- What does SQL stands for?
- Standard Query Language (Gha! Wrong it's Structured Query Language)

- Uhm ok.
So how long are you planning on staying in the United States?
- Well, we haven't decided yet.
I guess I'll stay as long as the company needs me to.
If they want me to stay for one year I'll do that.
If they want me to stay for two year I'll do that. (Why do I continue!?)
If they want me to stay for three year I'll do that. (Gha man get out of it!!)

- Uhm, ok.
Your visa is hereby approved, you'll have it sent to you on Tuesday.
Have a nice day.

- Uhu? Well thanks....

So I'm spending all this morning hurrying like crazy, spends $30 on a cab, have bought a new suit for way to much money, and shoes for $150 which he doesn't even sees just to spend less than 5 minutes doing non-constructive talking. What an awesome way to start the day on.

Monday, May 28, 2007

More updates on the visa

I've finally received all the papers needed for the visa, a nice chunk of 180 papers or so. On Wednesday I'm having the interview and then I'm probably one week of from leaving Sweden, must say that my feelings are mixed but as we all know, the show must go on.

A piece of salad


Well this is the last week in my apartment and this will probably be the last dish that I'll do.

Saturday, May 26, 2007

Tuesday, May 22, 2007

Ehm, what?!


Well this was the last thing I expected to see while walking home...

Saturday, May 19, 2007

Demos at Birdie


Tonight they're showingi demos at Birdie hopefully we get to see something decent.

Friday, May 18, 2007

Wednesday, May 16, 2007

Vienna


So I went to Vienna a couple of days with my family, it was really nice, the picture is from a lookoutpoint on a mountain near Vienna

Poker in the office


So the support team is here this week so they decided to have a poker night, not that I'm playing but I felt like joining, get to know some of the people

Monday, May 7, 2007

Going back to the Dark ages?


So for some reason my neighbours has been throwing their garbage in the front of their houses, don't ask me why...

Sunday, May 6, 2007

Slack all day long


Like my cats I've decided to slack all day

Aah


So tell me could you possibly say no to this?

Brunch by Fyrisån


The summer is coming and Uppsala is the best as always, 20 degrees C.

Tuesday, May 1, 2007

No Valborg without a BBQ


Slightly delayed but the mobile network was kinda unreachable yesterday anyway as the title says no Valborg without BBQ!