Brussels Sprouts

We have some exciting times ahead of us! It's old news for some of you, as we've known for some time now - it's been in the process since February and was finally confirmed in early June - but for the rest of you; we're moving to Brussels, Belgium, at the end of August! This is the main reason why it's been quiet on the blog at times. Well, that and having had another baby in February, resulting in lack of "me time" since then. But the main reason has been that the move - the decisions related to it and all the stuff that needs to be organised - has taken a lot of energy. In a positive way of course since this is something we really want to do, but it is still something that has occupied my mind a lot. Before the job was finally confirmed in June I didn't want to reveal anything on the blog.  But I have felt like I've been hiding something from you and posting about other stuff has felt unimportant and a bit pointless. Except for about the kids and especially about Harald of course. Now when I have "come clean" about our plans I can go all in and write every day of course! :) Though I doubt I'll have time now when I have less three weeks to pack! Yikes!

So why are we going? I've been offered and accepted a job at the European Commission. Initially I felt the timing wasn't great as I had planned to stay home longer with Harald - and when the Commission contacted me the first time in late January - early February he hadn't even been born yet - but as I didn't know if I'd ever get the chance again I wanted to give it a shot. And in many ways the timing is very good, as Peter can take parental leave to start with and doesn't need to find a job right away. It would probably have been a more difficult decision if we'd have had the stress of him finding a job (we could live on one salary for a while but would prefer not to). My contract is one year to begin with, with a possible (and probable) extension up to three years*. I have been granted a leave of absence from my job here in Sweden, which give us both job security if we do return after a year.  Our intention is to stay in Brussels for three years but we also like the fact that we have the first year to see how it goes and if we like it.  There's also the risk that the Commission may not be able to extend after the first year, as this position is always dependent on the availability of funding, so again, very grateful for the leave of absence / parental leave.  Peter has to find a job and we don't want the move to affect the children, especially Isolde (Harald will probably care less where we are), in any negative way.  Isolde is a very social and carefree little girl so we hope she'll adjust fine even though she may find it difficult at start not understanding the language of course.  But children learn so quickly.  I've heard people say that kids start picking up new words already after a couple of weeks.  As it looks now she'll stay at home with Peter for the first month or two (he'll have a handful!) and then start pre-school, maternelle (more on that later).  For the children the timing couldn't be better, as I think it's much easier for them to make the transition at this age before they have started school and made too many friends, etc. (though I'm all for it at any age in theory) compared to if this opportunity had come in five years' time.

I've dreamt about going abroad again (I've lived abroad for almost 6 years before but I've been home in Sweden for ten years now) for a long time, and living real life (not student or trainee life) abroad, and also about working for the EU institutions, but when the opportunity actually arose it was a different matter!  In many ways the decision was easy for the reasons explained above - I couldn't really turn it down - but I don't only have myself to think about now but a whole family, and we wanted to make an informed decision.  So we spent a few days doing research about what it would mean for us financially to move and also, and perhaps more importantly, move back to Sweden in a few years' time.  What would happen to our parental benefits, pensions, mortgage payments, student loan payments, tax, insurances, etc.?  What impact it would have on us as a family, our children, our extended family? Lots of things to think about.  Not all affecting the decision as such, but good to think about and to be aware of.  I only had a few days to accept the offer, but after that there was a period of a couple of months when I waited for the next step in the process, whereby I had to present evidence of my qualifications, job experience, etc. and also go through a medical examination (mainly for the medical insurance that comes with the job), before the position was made final.  The interview took place in early March**, the "evidence and medical visit" to Brussels in early May, and in June it was all finally confirmed.  And 2 September I start!

The drawback of moving to another country is of course being far away from our family and friends.  We're "taking away" the grandchildren from mormor, morfar, farmor & farfar but we hope they as well as our friends (you!) will come and visit often (we have a guest room!) and we'll also spend most of our holidays back in Sweden.  We're grateful that it's 2013 and the communication opportunities are endless - Skype, Viber, Facebook, Instagram, email, sms, etc.  We have some friends in Brussels already, which is nice, and some of them have young children as well.  Peter is a bit nervous about how to "entertain" two kids in a new place in the beginning but luckily there are two mothers Peter can hang out***.  One of them is the wife (and now friend) of a former colleague of mine who's expecting their second child any day now (and they have a four-year old already).  Unfortunately they are moving back to the UK in April next year but we'll have almost nine months to hang out with them.

The other mother is fellow blogger and Swede Petra whom we've both met a few times - once in Stockholm (just me), once in New York and once in Brussels (now in May) and maybe on one further occasion??  She's expecting number two in the next few weeks - and big brother V is just eight months younger than Isolde - and will be home with the baby and can hang out with Peter.  We'll actually be neighbours - same building, different flights of stairs - as Petra has very kindly helped us find accommodation****!  Very fortunate for us, Petra and her (Spanish) husband Oscar (whom we haven't had the chance to meet yet but are looking forward to getting to know!), have some (also Swedish) friends who happened to plan to return to Sweden during almost the same period we were looking to rent somewhere, so that has worked out perfectly!   Petra and Oscar rented their flat for a while a couple of years ago before they decided to buy in the same building!  We really liked the flat when we visited in May so we think it's going to be a great year, both living in the flat and having Petra and family nextdoors!  Even though Petra and I have only met IRL a few times it feels like we know each other so well, as we're been following each other's blogs for several years.  Can't wait to become proper IRL friends! :)

We're very excited about this new phase in our lives!  Now we just need to get through these next couple of weeks of sorting out the last bits of various paperwork and packing all of our stuff.  We're not bringing any furniture, "only" boxes with clothes and kitchen items, etc. as well as our bicycles and larger children's items, but it still takes time!  The removers come on 19 or 20 August and Peter leaves on 21 August to drive down with our car and I fly down with the kids (and my parents) on the 23rd.  Our stuff will arrive on 26 or 27th, which will give us almost a week to unpack and settle in before I start work.

So that's our big news!  Now I have to book those flights so we can definitely go! :)

* So called "contractual agent" contract (there are two categories; the one other is up to six years).  I have been in a database for contractual agent jobs since 2007 when I took and passed an exam, a so-called concours.  This was the third interview but the first actual offer, and it was also the first opportunity at the European Commission; the other jobs have been at other EU organs.
** I was meant to do the interview on 18 February but when Harald arrived unexpectedly on 12 February, I was able to change the date to 6 March.  It was always planned to be over VTC though, as I wouldn't have been able to travel that late in the pregnancy, and when I Harald was only
*** The Swedish church has a play group twice a week that I'm sure he and the kids will be frequent visitors too.
**** And helped me with my thousand other questions!  Thank you so much!  I'm eternally grateful! 

Best Thing I've Heard in a Long Time

Read on Johanna's blog that Crocs, the company that makes the horrible* shoes with the same name, may go bankrupt. Unfortunately people will probably keep on wearing and buying them since there are plenty of copies out there :(

The same Wall Street article says that Borders is doing bad too and that is a real shame though. Hope they pull through.

* Okay, you can wear them in your garden but that's really it. Kids up to age 4 are off the hook too.

Recent Headlines

Good news

• - The EU bans pesticides (well, not all but a substantial number)
• - Obama ends Bush's ban on funding of abortions in the developing world
• - Obama starts tackling all other damage caused by Bush. Hopefully this will also be undone.
• - Ericsson freezes salaries - Ericsson has frozen its 200 top managers' salaries as the outlook for 2009 is uncertain and profits fell drastically last year. CEO Carl-Henrik Svanberg believes the company has survived well in the tough times but that it is unreasonable to think that the company would be unaffected by the economy in 2009. The company also wants to cut the workforce by 5,000, of which 1,000 are in Sweden and lower dividends to shareholders.
• - Sweden does well according to the Sustainable Society Index

Bad news

• - Swedish boards are still male-dominated
• - The World Bank still finances more fossil energy than renewables
• - Wall Street is still high on bonuses

The Gender Constant

Time to write about one of my favourite topics - gender equality (my other favourite is climate change, as you've probably noticed).

Unfortunately last year, Sweden lost its no 1 position on the World Economic Forum's equality list, the Global Gender Gap Report. Fortunately we only dropped to place 3, after Norway and Finland (Iceland is no 4 and Denmark no 7 so the Nordic region sure dominates that list). The list compares 130 countries, covering 92% of the world's population.

The rest of Europe does pretty well; Ireland is no 8 and Germany no 11, while the UK occupies place 13 (I'm actually a bit surprised that Ireland and Germany do better than the UK; will have to blame it on my prejudices about Catholic pro-life Irish people and stay-at-home-mother-loving Germans). Don't move to Saudi-Arabia, Chad or Yemen if you are a woman.

The index is based on four main pillars: economic participation and opportunity, educational attainment, political empowerment and health and survival. The Nordics score very high in all those categories; Norway overtook Sweden partly due to its work on increasing the share of women in top management position (by legislating; Sweden has decided against that route - we'll see what strategy works best in the long term).

The USA is in 27th spot. One factor for the average position (towards the lower end for developed countries) is the limited maternity provision at childbirth. Here's an article from New York Times on this topic (from 2007 but it's still very relevant):

Paid Leave for Maternity Is the Norm, Except in ...
AMERICAN women sometimes joke that they plan to move to Sweden or France before they become pregnant, to take advantage of the generous paid maternity leave those countries provide.

In fact, would-be moms may not realize they have many more options than just those two: 170 countries offer some paid maternity leave, and 98 of them offer at least 14 weeks off with pay.

The United States is not one of them.

This point was starkly illustrated in a world map published in the August issue of National Geographic entitled “Who Gives Parents a Break?” The data was provided by the “The Work, Family and Equity Index,” a report released in 2007 by researchers at Harvard and McGill.

On the map, the United States stood out as an arid brown blotch, one of only four — the others being Liberia, Papua New Guinea and Swaziland — with no paid family leave.

Why doesn’t such a policy exist now, on a national level? There is no simple answer.

First, the 1993 Family and Medical Leave Act does require certain larger companies to give workers who meet certain criteria up to 12 weeks of unpaid leave. But as many as 40 percent of workers don’t qualify under the provisions of that law — because their employer is too small, or they haven’t worked for the company long enough. And a survey in 2000 by the Department of Labor found that 78 percent of workers who qualified for this leave said they didn’t take it because they couldn’t afford to.

Employees may want greater government involvement, but many businesses object to the idea of being required to give paid leave. The main issue is financial, said Marc Freedman, director of labor law policy at the United States Chamber of Commerce, which opposes government requirements for paid family leave. “Paid leave is widely provided by many businesses already,” he said.

“Employers are at least resistant if not opposed because of their fears of the cost impact of this mandate. They would have to find the money to pay for these benefits.”

While companies may balk at the cost of paid leave, many workers often do need time off for reasons having to do with health or family responsibility — and they can ill afford to lose any wages, let alone their jobs.

As the lawyer Joan Williams notes in her book “Unbending Gender: Why Family and Work Conflict and What to Do About It” (Oxford University Press, 2001), many people, and not just employers, are still influenced by the outdated ideal of the single-income household, in which a working person typically relied on someone at home to care for a new baby or a sick relative or cope with any of the myriad situations that families face.

MOST families today are dependent on two incomes. But Debra Ness, president of the National Partnership for Women and Families, an advocacy organization in Washington, said, “Our policies don’t reflect the reality of working families’ lives.”

There have been changes at the state level. California has had a paid family leave law since 2004, and Washington State approved a parental leave law in April. Similar bills have been proposed in other states. Most of these measures are paid for entirely by employees.

In California, workers contribute a small percentage of each paycheck into a collective benefits fund; those who need a leave can take six weeks off at 55 percent of their wages.

At the federal level, Senator Christopher J. Dodd, Democrat of Connecticut, and Senator Ted Stevens, Republican of Alaska, introduced a bill in June, that would in effect become a financial supplement to the federal Family and Medical Leave Act. Unlike the California program, funding for the Family Leave Insurance Act of 2007 would come from a combination of employer and employee contributions, and general tax revenues as well.

Clearly, there are a lot of details to work out. But given all of these proposals, and the 170 countries with paid leave now, surely there is some solution for the United States. There are plenty of good reasons to go to Sweden or France, but paid parental leave shouldn’t be one of them.

Mr President(ial Candidate), Sort Out the Healthcare System!

I've written on the issue of different healthcare systems before. I came across this article on the American health service in my saved items in my inbox and wanted to share it with you. It's a year old but it feels very topical.

America’s Lagging Health Care System (editorial in New York Times, November 2007)
Americans are increasingly frustrated about the subpar performance of this country’s fragmented health care system, and with good reason. A new survey of patients in seven industrialized nations underscores just how badly sick Americans fare compared with patients in other nations. One-third of the American respondents felt their system is so dysfunctional that it needs to be rebuilt completely — the highest rate in any country surveyed. The system was given poor scores both by low-income, uninsured patients and by many higher-income patients.

The survey, the latest in a series from the Commonwealth Fund, is being published today on the Web site of Health Affairs, a respected health policy journal. Researchers interviewed some 12,000 adults in Australia, Canada, Germany, the Netherlands, New Zealand, the United Kingdom and the United States.

Given the large number of people uninsured or poorly insured in this country, it was no surprise that Americans were the most likely to go without care because of costs. Fully 37 percent of the American respondents said that they chose not to visit a doctor when sick, skipped a recommended test or treatment or failed to fill a prescription in the past year because of the cost — well above the rates in other countries.

Patients here were more likely to get appointments quickly for elective surgery than those in nearly all the other countries. But access to primary care doctors, the mainstay of medical practice, was often rocky. Only half of the American adults were able to see a doctor the same day that they became sick or the day after, a worse showing than in all the other countries except Canada. Getting care on nights and weekends was problematic. Often the care here was substandard. Americans reported the highest rate of lab test errors and the second-highest rate of medical or medication errors.

The findings underscore the need to ensure that all Americans have quick access to a primary care doctor and the need for universal health coverage — so that all patients can afford the care they need. That’s what all of the presidential candidates should be talking about.

Elephant On the Loose in Stockholm

The newspaper Dagens Nyheter tells the story (translated):

"An elephant is on the loose in Stockholm. The news came from our tippers, who had heard on the police radio that two patrolling cars were on their way to Enskedefältet to attend to an elephant that had escaped from a circus.

There is no time to lose. We have to get a picture of the escaped elephant before it is caught.

Quickly heading to the photographer's car. On our way towards Årsta we hear the news on the radio. 'We're breaking for traffic information. We have an elephant warning, yes, you heard it correctly, elephant warning by Huddinge Road.'

We start looking into the bushes and on the golf course, but no elephant.

The informer said that it could be in a residential area. The photographer curses the fact that the camera is in the trunk of the car and wonder if it's okay to stop on the highway.

I wonder if we dare leave the car if we see the elephant. And we discuss whether it is an African or an Indian elephant. The African is bigger, but what about agressiveness? Even a small Indian one can probably be as terrifying if it's stressed. It was safari mood in the Spring sun in Enskede.

But it was a story which was too good to be true. A simple check with the circus shows it is false alarm.

Later the police tells us that somebody called in about the escaped elephant after having seen an elephant when it was being exercised. According to the circus the elephant Lubli is so good that she is allowed to walk around freely.

Always check a good story, that is the conclusion. But some adrenalinfilled elephant hunt on a regular, boring no news Thursday was still not wrong."

For pictures, click here.