Back to work today after 4 weeks of vacation. To a Brit this seems like an excessive amount, or at least, a considerable amount to take in one go but in Sweden its nothing unusual. All of my work colleagues took at least 4 weeks with some taking up to 5 or 6. One of our friends took 8 weeks - using a combination of both vacation time and parent leave. Not that I'm complaining, when I worked in a government lab in the UK I was always way over my leave allocation, I ended up not submiting leave sheets and, in a similar laissez faire manner, just not turning up but even then I still tried to maintain something close to 25 days.....this, however, was the job where as I came to the end of my contract I spent some time hiding under my desk, or under a large cardboard box which I found. This actually was quite an eye opening experience as it allowed me to spy on my boss rifling through my desk, as he foolishly assumed he was alone (not suspecting that a government employed Higher Scientific Officier was crouched under a large box), as I peered out through the little hand slot in the box's side. I stopped doing this when I was almost rumbled by the cleaner but fortunately they fled the room rather than disturb a box from which muffled sniggers were faintly audible. I digress. Yes, 4 weeks holiday and back to a choked email box, nothing horrible lurking and a good start that an application I wrote was accepted by the EU, jolly good.

It occurs to me that I might have mentioned the box situation before, but as this blog has been running for more than a year now you'll just have to forgive me if I repeat myself. Or thrash me soundly with birch branches. Whichever.

Music: None, as the desk top computer has presented us with the error message 'Primary Hard Disk Fail', which does not bode well at all.
Weather: After four weeks of rain, its now sunny again. The norse gods clearly have a sense of humour.
Swedish Everyday Factoid: When the traffic lights are green, for pedestrians, cars can still turn right across the crossing leading to a few scary moments.
Little Gem: Once again the head under the stone syndrome prevented me from finding this little gem....Google Print....I found it when I saw the news article on the Beeb site regarding copyright problems.