Last weekend “snow for the first time this year”appeared and everybody´s Facebook status turned into a weather forecast :-) I already heard the Swedish words “julmust” and “lussekatt” (=Saint-Lucia-Saffron-bread- two-pieces-of-Raisins-on top-shaped-like-the number 8 … are you still with me?)

Many December signs during last weekend struck me ….
… a lot of shivering constantly repeating the comment “Oh Ggggod it´s rreally ccccold now”
… pralines
… hot chocolate
… the Chocolate Santa and his Chocolate Reindeers
… psychadelic Christmas Trees
… fur hats on the tram
I also experienced a unique old fashioned slideshow, turning photos from late nineteenth-century into 3D, so interesting! The place is called FOTOPLASTIKON. After this short but nice moment me and Diana went to WEDEL’S the praline house for chocolate/tea anything warm and yes, this is the place for chocolate lovers absolutely, nice place and the chocolate Santa made you feel hungry somehow…..Photos

So, Christmas is here and I’ll just take my blinders off.…. on Sunday I will light up my first Advent candle. On Saturday, I will “celebrate” ST. ANDREW´S NIGHT, the Polish tradition, which means a night of fortune telling… or depending on who you´re asking, this means also PARTYNIGHT. I heard it´s the last chance to party before Christmas…. piece and quiet will rule until Christmas Eve, but again, I guess not everyone is taking this seriously. Me on the other hand has to be very serious about the Swedish tradition and bring a candlestick to work and explain about the 4 candles, no one had heard about this before.

On Friday I will attend the NIGHT OF THE ADEATERS with some of my colleagues. It´s gonna be so much fun to see this show, an ocean of ad movies from 40 countries! It´s quite an impressive collection with more than 800,000 commercials. Jean Marie Boursicot is the creator of the concept and this big night.

Top 3 “To do list”

1. Put up a plan for my work in the agency for the upcoming 6 weeks
2. Once and for all, find a smooth system for keeping track of all my files for both the Mac and the PC. Obviously, things get lost somewhere, in cyberspace between the 2 laptops…
(Point nr 2 also includes the great autumn-cleaning on del.icio.us!! My God, do I have loads of links here..… I end up looking for something and finally give up)
3. Find a spam filter which actually works, for my mail (which reminds me of my need to set up a proper RSS feed. I totally lost inspiration after creating a great list of feeds earlier but then my Mac crashed…. No more news)

So, there´s been 12 days since my last blog. No excuses except from me being busy and distracted in my mind after work. In my last blog I mentioned a special project at the agency called Never Ending Friending. I will return to this subject in the upcoming days.

What happened lately…

With only 6 weeks left in the first round I´m having a slight feeling of panic. There is so much more I would like to do, learn and try. 4 months is ”nothing” I have realized. To work strategic is a real challenge and sometimes it is difficult to avoid thinking tactical and stay focused on the far-away goals and visions. To loose yourself in a small detour of solutions is easily done.

I left Client service after 3 weeks working mainly with projects branding haircare products and working shortly for Pampers. To be one of the team members in Client service meant working both strategically and conceptual, close to the client. Since last week I work with the Strategic team and the working routines is different here. The project I´m working on at the moment is longlasting and extensive so it´s a great experience to be a part of the team from start until the end!

Lovely Krakow!

The Independence Day, the 11th of November, meant a long weekend for many people in Poland. I enjoyed the parade and celebration with happy people waving their flags in a sunny Krakow. I could go on talking about the great great food from the Polish kitchen, the small cobblestoned streets and cute boutiques squeezed in between the chapels, the Jewish area with its dark alleys where only a small sign in the spotlight is welcoming you in for a beer, the grandious square and the cathedral, the surroundings of Krakow, one of Unesco´s world heritage the salt mine and not to mention the cemeteries on the way to Krakow….. breathtaking! But, I´ll let you see for yourself….

Halloween anyone? Not really, more a weekend of spending time with your family. But still, it felt like a special weekend and some people took the Friday off. Next weekend though, seems to be the big holiday since the 11 of November is “Independence Day” here in Poland and you have the possibility to take the Monday off. I´m one of those people, so I´m going to Krakow from Saturday to Tuesday.

I had a very nice Friday evening! I joined Beata from work to experience the great jazz singer Lizz Wright.

BUSINESS OR PLEASURE
There are plenty of nice places around, like nightclubs and bars, but it easy to miss them, like this place. The city of Warsaw, at least the city centre, is mostly about business. There are a distance between the places. There are many hotels of course with skybars, great views, but if you are looking for more charming places you better look them up in advance.

One thought struck my mind the other morning when I was waiting for the tram. I haven´t really noticed before, but except from the sirens or the traffic jam on the whole something else disturbed the silence. A 5-year old child. It was the first time I saw a child on my way to work. This may sound natural if we are speaking about a business centre, the schools are maybe outside of the city and the centre is not a family-friendly place to live… but still, this occupied my mind for a while. I usually bump into day care children in swarms on my way to work in Stockholm.

WHAT´S UP AT THE AGENCY
I haven´t been writing so much about projects and events on the agency. There are interesting things happening and one project, a very inspiring conference about the impact and possibilities with social media, was arranged by Hypermedia. The project is called “Never Ending Friending”. I will write more about this in my next blog.

This weekend, me and Diana from work (a fan of the-biggest-cafe-latte-there-is) had a great walk through a sunny, lazy Sunday city.

HAPPY MOMENTS…
… like the “SENSITIVE BARBARIAN”, a book store café near the University Library. Happy, simply because of the relaxed atmosphere among the book shelves and I found happiness, 10×16 centimetres of guidance, the color was turquoise …. ok, so I have a strange addiction to Wallpaper guides… (The café turned out to be a part of the guide which I had a feeling of..)


The botanical garden is not any botanical garden, it´s the ROOF on the Warsaw University Library, definitely worth while!

STEALING BEAUTY and the artist GUY BEN-NER
The exhibition “Revolutions 1968″ pictured the stormy years, 1965-1975, from all over world through the eyes of art. Interesting for sure, but I really enjoyed a video project at the gallery made of the Israeli artist Guy Ben-Ner. “Stealing Beauty”, a politcal satire about the world´s captialism and ideal created like a “IKEA sitcom”. (February 08 Postmasters Gallery New York)

“The promised land” - IKEA. The artist Ben-Ner is moving into IKEA showrooms in different stores, Israel, Germany and the US, to live a happy and “normal” life with his family. They are trying to fit in, adapt to a Western way of living. “Honey, I’m hooome”, is the first thing Ben says when he arrives in an IKEA living room with the price tags in different values attached on every object. The movie is shot like a soap opera or a sitcom, where strangers are passing by, looking at the family and sometimes into the camera. Most scenes last until Ikea staff throws everyone out….
What´s more…..

1 month has passed, time pass by quickly when… you know the cliché but it feels true though… ”Fun”, I will come back to this subject in my next blog, or rather, what makes me happy and perform a better job. I have noticed when I read the blogs from my other FA friends we have many things in common, but different missions and situations.

Next week is my “last week” in the ”tour” when I work for every department on the agency to get to know people and their job. This Friday afternoon I moved out from house no 4 and crashed down in house no 5. ”Crashed down” may be the right expression, after 10 minutes (of one guy running up and down looking for a desk) they had arranged a work place for me and I dropped my laptop, and my 51 different cables in the middle of the room; thanks and hello Media department! The ”tour” makes people curious and ask me which department I like the most and why. Hmmm…. I have 1 week left so read my next blog ;-)

http://www.flickr.com/photos/lalexandersson/

Lately I´ve been nagging about NOT having internet in my apartment, but I didn´t realise how desperate you can get when the internet is your only connection to your ”old” world, family, news and friends. Ok, my mobile phone is working, but it´s not for free… I realised I missed a few important mails lately hmm… Internet café is a solution, but I really had bad luck last weekend becuase 2 out of 4 internet café had no room for me and the other 2 was closed on Sundays. I went home to my lovely but quiet apartment.

Last Saturday I took a city walk for 4 hours. The old town was very nice but crowded! The controversial culture house in the middle of the city had a great 360 degree´s view from the roof top, beautiful but ice cold! I passed the former jewish ghetto and discovered interesting historic buildings and views. Warsaw is a city of contrasts!

Honestly, I love the polish language even though I dont understand. But as  I mentioned before I like the sound of it. Of course some misunderstandings has occured (in english as well, it´s not the mother tongue for none of us at the agency) like putting the right address to the agency in my name….  ”zaraz wracam” does NOT mean c/o, attention or anything similar, it means ”I´ll be back in minute”.. don´t write that on the envelope (but Agata who delivered the mail to me had a good laugh).

Finally I figured it out, the messages on the chat, about the ”Pan Kanapka” that appears twice a day.  It means that two different ”sandwich men” (or the ”moustache man”) is coming to the office and bring salads and stuff for you to buy. There is one food shop around the corner but people are so busy so it’s a nice thing with deliverance.

Shake hands
I noticed a very nice, not Swedish ”thing” at work. The sign of a familiar atmosphere, politness or a combination I’m not sure, but in the mornings or after a working day your collegues always shake hands and say hello/bye to each other. Also if somebody enter a room from another department or floor, where other people are working they go around and shake your hands (ok not always but most of the time). The first time it happened I thought they were joking, you know when two friends who really know each other suddenly shake hands, but I like it, gives a personal feeling J

2008-09-14
Two weeks have passed and it feels like a month. The ”feeling of a month” is in a positive meaning though. The first week was partly about getting to know a new culture, routines, being the new person around and to speak english all the time was new to me (To find your way to the work was a victory as well…).

The first week on Client service I read a lot to understand the agency and the project I was given, attend meetings and the movie shooting in the weekend was fun. This week I worked at the creative dep with the creative director and made research and benchmarking. A new (to me) and interesting area within the bank sector. I like writing reports J so I hope they were satisfied with the result. Next week I will meet the R&D team! The culture of the agency (or the Polish working climate in general) To observe people, small things and behaviours is so interesting and I definitely enjoy being here. I guess it will take a while to get used to the tempo though. I have no references to the business, but my collegues told me they are overloaded by work at the moment so a ”normal” working day is around 9-10 hours with no lunch- or breaks, it takes a while to get used to.

2008-09-07 Sunday

Today I had the possibility to join a production team for a video shooting. A viral for a hair care product, 4 stories based on 4 different charactars. I have never been on a movie shooting before so my eyes were quite big in the studio… I joined the team basically to learn and to meet the crew. I´m not working with this hair care brand myself, but to experience every step from a brief to the making of a movie is useful I think. Between the shots there were a long time waiting meanwhile they changed the properties. This project started in May when the idea and concept was made and this upcoming week the client is getting examples of the videos, but not the final examples though, the post production will take some time (Like the background and music for example). This is one of the most extensive project at the moment for the agency and the launch is planned during the next year.

PS. By the way, the weather is so hot! Summer in the beginning of September was not my expectations of Warsaw..

2008-09-02
Swedish Polkagrisar and IKEA 
It feels like I have been here for a long time, the things that happened yesterday feels like a week ago. All the impressions every hour and every minute. Everything is fine, the apartment, the area (I found out yesterday that I live in the former Jewish ghetto) is calm but very close to the city centre and the old town. 

The agency
My first impression of the agency was of course the two white buildings, two-storied house across each other in a green calm area. If it wasn´t for the Isobar logo on the outside you could imagine a family living there. (As you understand we are not talking about the city centre of Warsaw..)

Hard working people (who is eating lunch fast and late) and a warm atmosphere is my second impression. This week I´m working on the Client side in an interesting project for Procter & Gamble so I´ve been reading a lot to learn about the project. I´ve been introduced to many of my collegues but I have a hard time to remember their names. Sorry!

People are really making an effort in taking care of me! I was picked up by car the first day at work and one of my collegues even joined me to the grocery store during lunch to make sure I found the way. The question is which time I will be at work tomorrow since Im´ going by tram for the first time…. The names of the stations is somehow difficult to remember.

The Swedish greeting!
Today I also introduced my collegues to polkagrisar (the polkagris”poles” was appreciated) and the ”Swedish Clogs” (tack Malin för det tipset!). Of course I served them in a bowl of wood signed IKEA…