Yesterday was my name day!

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My name is Kenneth.  And yesterday was my name day!

Kenneth is a pretty common Western name, and many people around the world have this name.  It’s not as popular as Bill or David or John, but it’s not exactly unfamiliar either.  For example, one of the characters in Can’t Buy Me Love was named Kenneth.  But apparently, Kenneth is a pretty common Swedish name for males, too.  Usually reserved for a slightly older generation, it falls in the ranks along names like Mats, Lars, Peter, etc.

For those of you dear readers who have traveled the world, you know that most tourist cities sell little license plates/license plate key chains with names on them.  Each country has its own collection of names, so if you’re in the US, you’ll get the common names like Katie, Kim, Kelly, Kevin, and Kyle.  I haven’t looked at the tourist stores in Gamla Stan recently, but I would assume the license plate keychains in Sweden would have names like Kalle (Karl), Kenneth, Kajsa, and Kia.

But the Swedes are ingenious, and they took it one step further.  They actually created the concept of a name day.  Yep, they assigned a name to every day of the year – 365 reasons to celebrate – and March 22, 2011 was my personal name day.  (Disclaimer: it’s actually for Kennet — no “h” — but a variant of the spelling is with the “h”.)

Yesterday, I got an email from someone I didn’t know named Kenneth Eriksson.  He works at one of my clients, and pulled up all of the Kenneths in his email system and sent them an email saying:

Grattis kollega, du är en av cirka 110 Kenneth som arbetar här!

Som medlem i Svenska Kennethklubben ber jag att få gratulera på namnsdagen.  🙂

www.kenneth.se

(Translation: Congratulations, colleague, you are one of approx 110 Kenneths who works here!  As a member in the Swedish Kenneth club, I want to congratulate you on your name day!)

I got the email since I have an account to their intranet.  I looked at the website and it’s amazing.  It’s a real club, with membership dues and activities.  The main club is in Sundsvall, Sweden.  There’s even a national Kenneth song!

I thought this was ingenious! So I went out yesterday and I celebrated my name day at Vapiano with some friends.  Well, not really, we went out for dinner “just because,” but I was feeling in a celebratory mood just the same.

When is your name day? Do you know someone for each day of the year?

Do Americans Dream of Swedish Sheep?

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I recently posted an entry about how Swedes speak amazing English. I thought I’d post a follow-up on learning Swedish and how it’s impacted me.

First of all, I’ve been here 3,5 years now. I took lessons sporadically for about 2 of those years – my work paid for a private tutor who’d come to the office and teach me for an hour and a half roughly every week. Of course, the nature of my work meant that sometimes I’d have unavoidable client meetings or I’d be travelling somewhere, so I’d have to schedule for when it was convenient.

I am finally at a level where I can understand most conversations if I’m paying attention – at least the context of the conversation. I can speak reasonably well too (at least I think so) and I’m doing my best to write it also. Continue reading →

Innebandy – my new hobby

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Do you remember going to gym class as a kid, all excited about what activity the teacher was going to make everyone do next?  It was always fun for me, especially if it was something that I was reasonably good at, like badminton.  The gym teacher always made sure the sport was something that everyone could participate in, no matter how tall, short, fat, skinny, or uncoordinated you were.  Equal opportunity sports.

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Battle of the Sexes

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Gender Equality?A Swedish girl I dated very briefly was quite into the feminist movement.  Everything was to be perfectly equal between the sexes.  There should be no chauvinism, and men should treat women as complete equals, and should not treat them as a weaker gender.  If you took a girl out to dinner one night, then she should reciprocate by buying the movie tickets.  And if the movie tickets were worth less than the dinner, well, she should buy dessert too.

Excuse me, what?

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Hot lunches and food stamps

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Today we had a visitor from our Amsterdam office.  He is planning to transfer to the Stockholm office in August 2011 so he wanted to come and check out the city, the office, his future colleagues, etc.

Kenneth in Amsterdam 2008

Kenneth in Amsterdam

Unfortunately (or fortunately, depending on how you see it), Mother Nature decided to unleash a snowstorm on Stockholm today.

We took him to lunch and he asked a few questions about how the work culture was like in Stockholm.  It’s always nice to get new people in the office because it reminds me how I’ve become Truly Swedish – things that foreigners find interesting or curious don’t even faze me anymore.  The topic at lunch?  Hot lunches and rikskuponger, which I fondly call “food stamps.”

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Lönhelg – Pay weekend

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If you have a job in Sweden, you get paid on the 25th of every month (or the weekday closest to the 25th if it falls on a weekend/holiday).  Just once a month.  None of this weekly paycheck thing or the 15th and 30th of the month that we’re used to in the US.

This means that people are usually pretty poor by the weekend leading up to the 25th of the month.  Including this blogger.  In fact, being poor on the days leading up to the 25th of the month is truly Swedish. 🙂 Continue reading →

Why is it so easy to get out of prison, but so hard to get in?

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Welcome back, readers!

It’s a new year and time for some new thoughts on what it means to be Truly Swedish.  I visited the US during Christmas and the differences between our two cultures stood out even more while I was there.  I love seeing these differences and analyzing them.  The trick is learning what those differences are, how to adjust to them, and when to just “let it be” so you can stay sane. 🙂

I went to lunch with a bunch of colleagues yesterday and while we were walking there, we started talking about criminals and the criminal justice system in Sweden.  I don’t remember how the topic came up, but it was certainly an inspiring walk to lunch.

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