The first Lucia weekend without the Swedish “glögg”,”lussekatt” and window Christmas decoration. I’ve been talking about this before, Lucia as at tradition is not existing here. So that´s why I went to IKEA last weekend to find Swedish Lucia celebration stuff to bring to work. Of course, I found the “glögg” next to the Swedish meatballs, but without alcohol I think it´s a waste of calories (vodka mix is one solution). I thought about bringing “Julmust” because of a comment I got the other day at work (and since Coke and RedBull is alreday decorating desks at work) that the “Julmust” we have in Sweden was great (!), but unfortenately difficult to find i Poland. Wow, I haven t thought about that. Well, instead of showing people pictures on yelllow “lussebullar” I will  make an effort in baking the stuff instead and bring on Monday. Remember I said “make an effort in”.. this is not equal with a nice result. By the way, I alerady showed pictures of Lucia procession with “stjärngossar” (sorry, don´t know this word in english). But the guys wearing white “night gown” with funny hats… ok I could assure people, no- this is supposed to be beautiful and not behaviours of a sect….

Last time I was talking about the Night of the AdEaters, the 6 hour show of advertising movies from all over the world. The show kept going until early morning. Redbull didn´t quite help me stay awake…. Commercials from all over the world, there were so many I haven´t seen before and many favourites of course (ads for cars and behaviours around driving or combination car + animals somehow are funny, I cant´help thinking that…)

Photos..
Lately I´ve been working with a big portal for the Polish market and this is an experience in many ways. First of all I discoverd I´m somehow stuck in the “community” way of thinking and sharing . This is not a priority for this target group on the portal and the huge mass of information, how to structure this in a good way is not easy. I´ve been working with one of the information architectures recently and we talked a lot about this.

Empty water bottles, they are a quiet installation in the corner of my kitchen. A part of the interior decorating. There might be a possibility I´ve  been a little lazy as well…

Photos..

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….

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…..

So, I had a short visit to Stockholm this weekend. No matter the number of times I´ve been flying (I can´t help it) I´m still amazed that you´re “only a few hours away” from a different world. In this case, only 1,5 hour.
Fler bilder
A reflexion of the difference, the bad economic situation, that has been extremely obvious at home and in peoples´ lives, gave me a somewhat naive feeling (despite that my economic situation is part of the chaos), a relief to live in Poland right now. The crise is not that obvious here due to many reasons.
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At work we are currently waiting for the client´s approval in one of the projects to be able to start the production. So today I´ve been doing a lot of resarching for another case within P&G and will continue tomorrow.

In the corner of my eye I noticed….
(a scene similar from “Dinner for One” but without the tiger skin and the servant James)
Starting this afternoon, I will no longer have “the pleasure” to watch my collegues slip forward and backwards on the three pieces of carpet near my desk. They are now removed. I couldn´t stand the thought of being witness to a triple backflip or double frontflip by mistake…

Every day I pass this small ”delikatesy store”, it´s just around the corner from my work. By the look of it, it could have been seen along a deserted country road. Tonight I just had to immortalized it on my way home.… sometimes things appear more interesting in the darkness.

Speaking of darkness…I went to the cinema last weekend, to the film festival. The repertoir seemed to be good enough, but if you wished for the english subtitles the variety reduced a little. Anyway, I found this great movie, ”Snow”, and I really enjoyed the darkness, the nice, warm, comfortable arm chair…ZZZzzz….

This is my second week on client service, where I first started out. Before that I worked at the Media department, the last week of my grand ”tour” around the agency. Just recently I made a summary to be published on the agency´s web site about my first month in Poland, both from a work- and a culture perspective. What is typical Polish and what do I like the most in this country, I should know that by now, shouldn´t I?…. I like many things but can´t explain why, maybe I like the feeling of getting used to things. On the other hand, every day at work has so far been ”new” and different (this is the 6th room and the 5th desk I´m trying out;-). At the moment I have short and changing deadlines in my project at client service. I´m currently working for a hair care brand, interesting, but right now the project are not developing exactly the way I hoped. I will get used to it!

Tomorrow I´m flying back to Stockholm for the weekend. Right now, 7 weeks later, I reached a point where I miss to be ”social in Swedish”, I miss my family and friends, no offence please, you were always in my mind since I left home, but to start a ”new” life in a new country takes your mind of everything else. At least this happened for me.

It´s freezing cold, barefoot on the balcony 6.55 in the morning… well, time to continue reading and preparing for work… or eating breakfast…. or take a shower…. most of all I want to go out to the gym I didn´t find (yet) or had the time to look for… really bad habits are striking me, like eating cookies in the middle of the night. Well, today after work hours, some of us will jump into the training outfits to make a short workoutvideo. Ok, I will put the link here….

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.