With the help of the poet Robert Louis Stevenson I wish all my readers a lovely summer!

Summer Sun (1885)

Great is the sun, and wide he goes

Through empty heaven with repose;

And in the blue and glowing days

More thick than rain he showers his rays.

Though closer still the blinds we pull

To keep the shady parlour cool,

Yet he will find a chink or two

To slip his golden fingers through

The dusty attic spider-clad

He, through the key-hole maketh glad;

And through the broken edge of tiles

Into the laddered hay-loft smiles.

Meantime his golden face around

He bares to all the garden ground,

And sheds a warm and glittering look

Among the ivy´s inmost nook

Above the hills, along the blue,

Round the bright air with footing true,

To please the child, to paint the rose,

The gardener of the World, he goes.

#SwedeInMadrid - do they understand it's just water?

"If it rains we will cancel"

This sentence that I never or rarely see in Sweden, is very common here in Spain.

When the school sends out information about  "Dia deportivas" (friluftsdagar, sports days) that sentence is always added to the end of the informative text.

Whenever anyone arranges an activity outdoors, the same disclaimer is added. If it rains we will cancel. 

Not everything can be cancelled. People need to go to work and school also when it rains. That is not easy, with Spanish drivers panicking and causing even more traffic jams than usual.

Not that I understand why. Do they spend a ridiculous amount of time trying to turn on the windshield wipers they so rarely use? Are they scared their cars will suddenly misbehave when they get wet? Do they think the roads will turn into slippery slides?

I do not know, I only know that going to work when it rains means a lot more queues than usual. (I am so happy I go by my motorcycle so I can pass the queues!)

If we are out walking and there is an unexpected shower, the busy streets will become close to deserted in just a few seconds. Because you cannot be out in the rain now, can you?

To me it seems as if Spaniards are just as afraid of rain as they are of silence.

I can't help but wonder if they understand that it is just water coming down from the sky...

Maybe they, like donkey, think the rain will make them melt?

#SwedeInMadrid: A scary sound

When my parents visited us in Madrid, we were sitting in our small garden. It is surrounded by a high fence and there are houses on both sides so you cannot see very far.

My mother listened to the screaming, laughing and shouting and said:

"When we drove here, I did not see that you had an amusement park close to your house?"

There is no attraction park close to where we live. But there is a school. What my mother heard were  Spanish children on a break.

Children all over the world scream and shout but here in Spain they do it several times louder than Swedish kids. (See Turning a perfect Spaniard into a Swede .)

It's not just the kids of course. Adult Spaniards are also loud, even though they do not scream and shout as much as kids.

I can deal with the loud volume. What bothers me is the inability to be quiet.

The school that our children go to has a music profile and often arranges concerts.
Children of all ages perform in front of their friends and family. Often, far too often, the parents in the audience talk so loud it is hard to hear the children who have prepared much and long. The teachers ask the audience over and over again to be quiet, but the only thing that happens is that the talking becomes slightly less loud for a few seconds but thereafter the volume goes right up again.

It was during one of these concerts that it hit me. The loudness, the continuous talking, the interupting, the lack of ability to just wait and listen... It seems that to Spaniards:

  

#SwedeInMadrid : "They don't do that!"

A year ago my husband and I went to Madrid to select a house for our family's Spanish adventure.

One of the houses we visited was shown by the owner herself; an elegant, slim woman with a silky grey dress and high-heeled shoes. I remember how astounded I was when she walked on cobbly stones with more ease than I did in my comfortable shoes.

After we had seen the house, Sandra who drove us around asked what we thought about it. I blurted out the first thing that came to my mind:

"She never smiled." 

This was no answer to the question and when it came to selecting a house it was not even relevant. But the woman's lack of a even a little smile made me wonder...
Maybe the elegant lady and her husband were going to have a divorce and did not want to stay in the house?
Maybe they had been hit by the crisis and could no longer afford the house?

Instead of dismissing my comment as something irrelevant, Sandra turned around from the driver seat, looked at us and said:

"Oh, you noticed, huh? They don't do that!"

Sandra is from Brazil and before moving to Spain she lived in New Jersey in the US for many years. She told us that after having lived one week in Madrid, she told her husband:

 "I can't live here! People bump into me in the shops without even saying that they are sorry, and they are angry and yelling at each other all the time!"

One year earlier when we visited Madrid, a man in a shop said something in (for us incomprehensible) Spanish and waved that we could pass him in the queue. My husband and I assumed he said we could go before him since we only had one item to pay for.
When passing him I said Gracias! with a big smile on my face. The man looked back with a stone face. No hint of a smile. For a second I wondered if we had misunderstood him, but that did not seem to be the case.

Yes, Spaniards can sound very angry when they speak to each other because of the rapid speech and loud volume as I wrote about in Turning a perfect Spaniard into a Swede. And yes, they can look very angry and completely ignore your greeting smile.

But Sandra told us, and we have noticed ourselves, that underneath the grumpy faces and angry voices there is a lot of friendliness and helpfulness.

For instance, whenever I enter an elevator in Madrid, all who come into the elevator will say Hola, Buenos dias / Buenas tardes and when they leave they will say Hasta Luego. Every single person, even if we have never met before.

Let's assume that José from Spain is looking for a house in Sweden and that Maria, a Spaniard who has lived in Sweden a few years, is helping him. After having looked at a flat Maria asks him what he thinks about it. José will blurt out the seemingly irrelevant comment:

"In the elevator, no one said hello."

Maria will then turn around and say:

"Oh, you noticed, huh? They don't do that!"

There is something seriously wrong with the stock market today

I recently read an interesting article called the Market Mirage in the excellent magazine Time. Since I work at a company that is currently laying off a large number of employees I found it particularly interesting.

Let's start with the basics, as described in Wikipedia:

"A corporation divides ownership of itself into shares, which are offered for sale to raise share capital. [...]. The total capital of a company is divided into a number of shares."

In other words, the total value of all shares should, if not equal, than at least indicate the value of the company.

But, as Rana Foroohar writes in her article (see the link above), the value of the company in the stock market and in the real economy is often disconnected. We see this clearly when a share goes up (or down) 10% in one day. Did the company's ability to create and sell products and services change that much in one day? Of course not. The only thing that changed is the share holders trust in earning money on their shares.

Because that is increasingly what it is about. Making money out of the stock you have. Not necessarily because you care about the company or what it is selling. But because the stock market is a place to make money.

One piece of information from the article that I really found interesting, is how the majority of the analyzed firms use their earnings:

• 54% is used to buy back their own stock (!)
• 37% is used for dividends (Wikipedia again: A divident (avkastning in Swedish) is a payment made by a corporation to its shareholders, usually as a distribution of profits)

Guess what, this leaves LESS THAN 10%  of the earnings for R&D and employee salary increases!

But, wait a minute, you might say. A lot of companies offer employees stocks at a cheaper price. The executives may even receive a large part of their compensation as stocks. That means that the employees get to share not only a part of the 10% but also the 37% mentioned above right?

Well, remember that the share value has little or nothing to do with the actual value of the company? Instead it is related to if people think they can make money out of selling the share.
When do they think they can make money? When the companies invest in new ideas that may pay off in some 3-5 years? When the company invests in improvements for the employees?
Unfortunately not. On the contrary.
As Rana writes; firms are usually punished hardest by the markets when they are making decisions that most enhance the company's real value.

And since many executives are paid in stocks they get rewarded for decisions that are good short term only. This may include introducing "savings programs" (also known as firing their colleagues...).

So we end up with a system that rewards our leaders when they take decisions that are not necessarily good for the long-term value of the company. Which brings us back to another blogpost I wrote recently, with leaders failing their employees.

In my opinion something is seriously wrong with the stock market.

Rana mentions some positive signs though, with new ideas coming up that may change the way the stock market works today.

So maybe one day most stock companies will do what I always expected them to do: Investing the majority of their earnings into improving the company long term and sharing the profit with all its employees. And shareholders.

The girl with the butterfly hair: part 5 (the end) - The painting

You can read the previous parts of this story here:
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4


"Why are you so nervous today?" He looked at his nephew who was pacing the little area where they had put up their paintings. Plaza Mayor was filled with tourists and many were enjoying drinks and tapas at the terraces.
The young man shrugged and kept on pacing.

"Oh, this is so pretty!" A lady with an elaborate hairdo stopped in front of one of the paintings.
The older man came up next to her.
"Yes, it is, isn't it? My nephew has painted it," he pointed proudly towards the young man.
"Very pretty indeed", the woman said while she touched the painting carefully. "Such a funny idea, all these butterflies. How much is it?"
"It is not for sale", the boy answered without even looking at them. He kept scanning the large square; searching, waiting.
The lady shot an angry look towards the impolite young painter and left with quick steps. She bought a painting from the artist that was standing next to them and she made it a point to show the amount of bills when doing so.

"What is the matter with you today? Why do you put up a painting that is not for sale?"
Finally he saw a change in the boy's face, it lit up.
"Because it is for her. For her only."
The older man followed his gaze and saw the girl that was coming towards them. The long, silver-like hair was just as beautiful in reality as on the painting.

She stopped a couple of steps away from him. The questions that had been in their heads for so long tumbled around without being uttered.

Why did you not invite me in?
Why did you leave?
Why did you keep me waiting for so long?
Why did you not wait just a little while longer?"

As their eyes spoke, they realized it did not matter. It did not matter at all.

He took her hand and walked to the painting.

She looked at it, at every stroke of the brush, at every shade of color.
"It is beautiful", she said softly.
He let her hand go and put his arm around her shoulder.
"Of course it is. It is you. The girl with the butterfly hair."






Illustration: Michiel Rosendahl

#SwedeInMadrid: Turning a perfect Spaniard into a Swede

A kid screamed very loud. So loud that my Spanish colleague and I turned away from our dinner at Kista Galleria in Stockholm (we were on a business trip together) to see what the screaming was all about. Then we heard a parent scream back in Chinese.
We both turned back to continue eating. My colleague said:

"When we lived in Sweden (he and his famly lived in Sweden for 3 years) my wife and I noticed that whenever we heard loud kids in Sweden, they weren't Swedish. We always wondered how Swedes could get their kids so quiet."

Well, since I am Swedish and have three kids I know a lot about that.

Our youngest son Lukas talks more than the rest of the family combined. And he is loud. Already when he was very small my husband and I would tell him:

"Sh! We are right here, there is no need to scream. We can hear you anyway." 

We also showed him the volume button on the radio in the car and suggested he turned down his own volume button when he talked. (He did inform us that this was not always possible since his button was stuck on max...)

He also tends to interrupt. If I am talking to our middle-son Samuel, Lukas may come running and yell:

"Mummy, mummy, mummy, at school I..."

And I will tell him (not once or twice but over and over again):

"Wait a second Lukas, right now I am talking to Samuel. You need to wait a bit."

Then, when it is his turn to talk he talks. And talks and talks.

"Then this happened and then that and do you want to know how this works? If you unscrew this first and then that, look mummy, look!"

There is usually no end. So if someone else wants to talk to me, for instance our oldest son Sebastian, I tell Lukas to take a break now and then so someone else gets an opportunity to talk.

After a few months in Spain I had an insight. I told my husbandy:

"You know what we are doing? By telling Lukas to talk softly, wait for his turn when talking and leaving space for others to talk, we are trying to turn a perfect Spaniard into a Swede!" 

If we just let our Lukas be, he will integrate a lot better than the rest of us who still stand there waiting for our turn in a conversation. A turn that is as likely to happen in a conversation with a Spaniard as getting a slot in the traffic without pushing (after having lived here for some nine months this has yet to happen.)

Who knows, maybe now that we live in Madrid, Lukas feels more at home than ever.