• an academic journey
• a cultural journey
• an intellectual journey
• and an emotional journey

Next to these categories you can of course still read every post from start to end. And also, read my report for the HKU (although it is in Dutch).

Thanks for being an audience. Although there weren’t that many reactions on the blogg itself, I got a lot ‘offline’. All supported me and learned me new stuff. Thanks for that :) Frida recently told that a friend of her was following both our blogs with a feeling of inspiration. That was really wonderful to hear. I hope it was interesting. For me it helped a lot to write things down. And it was an easy way to update the people ‘back home’ :)

For now I stop this blogg I think. I don’t have the need for it that much anymore. It is something I did when traveling. The posts from this blogg will go to an archived place on my website to which I will link from here. And one day I will have another blog of another travel; which for sure, will come :)

One thing to close, the tips I wrote in my report for HKU for other traveling students.

“The tourist sees what he came to see. The traveler sees what he sees.”

Go without too much preconceptions, look at the world like it is and remember, that how different people may be, the country is not in a crisis, so apparently, their way of working works fine too.*

Culture is so much more than just ‘fine-art’ culture. It’s how people act and think. Which structures are being made, what people think is normal, what things they completely overlook because they never do that kind of things and how close you are with people. If you’re starting to see that, you’ll ‘see’ a lot more. If you hold on to the glasses of conclusions and preconceptions you actually are holding on to your own culture which makes it a lot harder to learn from the other culture.

* Which says something interesting about countries being in a crisis right now :)

Well, not completely true of course :) I just finished my last course here, handed in the research paper. I did a research about ‘doing nothing’. About the time people have in between tasks. About what they do with that and how that influences their work and their personal well-being. If you’re interested, leave a note or check my portfolio some time later.

But at the same time, I make sure that I get some fresh air :) I took a short ride on the bike to Hällberga and Skogstorp. A trip on a sand road along an old train track. I met the poisonous snake of Sweden, in a dead state though. And then, when you’re in the middle of the forest, suddenly this village of Hällberga turns up. Without even a name sign, too small for that.

And with MDH we went on a last trip with the international group, to the silver mines in Sala. We spent some time 155m underground (without that much fresh air, although there was enough via ventilation holes) we also had a good time playing dodgeball (spökboll, trefbal), eating fresh salad in the park next to the mine, and later enjoying the view of little ducks in a park in Västerås together with Frida.

One more week now. Then Frida is free from work also and we go away for a few weeks. Visiting her parents place again, to Gotland (the supposed beautiful island next to Sweden), canoeing maybe and we’ll see. Oh yeah, learn more about self sustaible living!

One research was investigating the (Hofstede’s) culture dimensions (like individualism – collectivism, femininity – masculinity, long-term – short-term orientation) and how they applied to exchange students. Otherwise said, is it so that people from the ‘travellers country’ have another scale on the culture dimensions? :) And, although the research has some limitations, it showed that for example people from this travellers country were more individualistic – not surprisingly of course.

A lot of the other research also showed a difficulty in research and culture and language. When research about stress and burnout for example, might it be the case that American people experience something else than Swedes. And thus that when it turns out that American people are more stressed and have more burnouts than Swedes (according to this research), that that is because they see more situations as stressing and/or have a different understanding of the ‘same’ word.

In the train back to Eskilstuna a guy was offering his newspaper back to some elder couple opposite to him; he probably borrowed it earlier. After they said that that wasn’t neseccary he said “tack så mycket” (“thanks you very much”, in Dutch you would probably say “heel erg bedankt” or “dank u zeer”). To me, that sounded a bit too much for just getting a newspaper in general, but it might be influenced by the fact that the people were older, more ‘respect’ for elder people? Or a different understanding of the same language? Maybe in Swedish it is more common to speak like that..

Do I still want to continue with HKU? I’m not thát sure anymore. Although it might not be bad for me and also give me a nice few projects again. (Something practical finally! I’m quite done with the theory here..)

I found the Interactive Institute here. Looks like a nice place for projects. I’ve been thinking about staying there for some time. If at all I get in here at some place. Without diploms, without the language (which is more important here than in the Netherlands).

And spiritually the Netherlands would be a very interesting place. A lot of things are happening there. So maybe we can life there for some time. Start new projects there, explore what I want on that green sphere.

I’ve started to work again, small things, but still. Yesterday I continued walking through the methods I use in projects I did. The step of yesterday was making a mindmap of everything. Quickly the paper (A4) became too small :) There is a lot that I know, a lot I’m experienced in, a bit too much maybe? At least I should structure it a bit more now. I want to describe the methods, for myself and for ‘clients’.

And when I was going through some past projects I saw Lones again.. Did anybody made those things for real? I could use them now.. Or, in two months would be ok as well ;)

“This our concept video of the Emotion Stone, that transfers warmth, emotions and gestures over long distances. This video gives an example how it could work.”

The last few weeks I’ve noticed that I look differently at the trip to school, at doing shopping, at walking in the city. I finally start to see this as normal. Before it was still my study abroad. Now this way to school has become my way to school, this city became my city. I feel at home, I think.

On the right is a part of that life. On my way to school the air was on fire. Oh, btw, another fire that was part of the life here, was Valborg. The Swedish helgdagar (holiday) on the 30th of April.

From one of the first books about intercultural interactions:

Strangeness is no longer a temporary condition to be overcome, but a way of life.
Harman

It was a good introductory lecture about things you already know but are good to now have the words for; stress is not having a lot of things to do; stress is about (not) being in control; stress is about (re)interpreting situations to gain this control. Another one was the thought that positive stress doesn’t exist, as stress is not having control anymore, about going over your taxes, it is always negative. Positive stress is just pressure. Another interesting one for ‘leaders’, if you want to help somebody with stress, don’t do their tasks, rather give them control over these tasks.

An interesting puzzle we’ve been taking as an example for the past lectures is the following:

You’re lying on a railway track. You’re stuck. In the far distance, you hear a whistle blow. What do you think, feel and do?

More after the meeeep..Most reactions varied from “I’m going to die”, “see your life flash before you”, “fear”, and “say goodbye to your loved ones”. Nice examples of giving up life..

But you can also take a more stress reducing – and also way more positive – approuch. Look around, what do you see? Maybe there is a second railway track next to you? Maybe there is a canal with boats (with wistles)? Are you tied stuck or is it just your leg which you can get out of? Are you maybe lying in line with the tracks? Are you actually in the middle of the city and are there a lot of people around to help? After these thoughts, you can start doing something about them :)

All about interpreting the situation. Look at the possibilities this situation gives you. I was thinking that maybe all stress comes from a too rigid interpretation of the situation. You think you won’t be able to handle this, you think you will fail. Based on experiences from previous situations where something went in a certain way, you’ll judge the current situation and think it will be the same. By really looking at the situation you’re in, looking from other perspectives as you learn at any creative study, you should be able to solve the situation.

Depending, of course, on how much you can do about it. Although I think the last step you can always make is change your mind, change the way you feel about something. Your attitude towards a certain situation.

On Tuesday I went to Mestute, an outdoor shop in Eskilstuna. I’ve been there before and met very nice people. So I went again to have a chat about the new stress course.

Hans, one of the owners, told about the two helpers he has on his shoulders. On his left shoulder sits anxiety, on his right curiosity. He has to listen to both, balance his shoulders. People who try to reduce their anxiety also lower their curiosity. Resulting in walking with hanging shoulders :)

We also had this in the first course, anxiety (and uncertainty) are reduced as you get to now people (or situations) better. But in the same way that anxiety shouldn’t grow to high, it also shouldn’t be reduced completely. If there is no anxiety or uncertainty you not doing anything new.

Hmm, interesting trying to explain this. Learning through teaching..

Now we have to write a paper about being a leader in an organization leading the organization for change. In the end I chose the organization to be my own, the company I want to create. Not the easiest one, but good to start the development on that one. So I have to find out what kind of leader I want to be. I feel that at the moment I’m more a personal leader, leading myself. Which is actually perfect, though not for this paper :)

But, just do! So, I’ve writen a sort of history describing my fictional company. I can design the whole thing, how things work, what kind of people there are, etc. Nice! Today I had a follow-up with the teacher. She helped me in reframing the ‘problem’ (as we need to have a problem to be able to change the organization). And we came to a conclusion on how where it was. I’m going to write about a network of people who are working together and now some want to create a company out of this. How to lead this group in this transition? The transition in the practicle side, but more on the personal side. What about the people who don’t want the company? How will it influence the atmosphere?

Interesting process :)

It was good to be in a project again. Very different from the project at the HKU. First of all because we had a group of four ‘leaders’. But also because we had a week for the whole project and it was hard to make a good separation of the tasks. Then it becomes more of a problem that we’re all leaders, because we were for example all responsible for the documentation, all responsible for the presentation, all responsible for the research.. Good learning moments. Also I finally experimented with putting together a presentation with my knowledge from the last years of interaction design. Thinking about every step, what to do, what effect it has, what do I want this step to lead to, etc.

Since my time experiments of the last weeks I’ve been trying to slow down more. But interesting enough my frustration inside the group came from me going to fast. Though I thought that this friction with other people’s time might be the hardest, it was not the first problem I encountered. The first difficult thing was that – much more than I thought – time was enclosed in my personal culture. How this striving for being in time is in every task I preformed. Wanting to finish something instead of going for quality. Going for quality also suits me way more, but actually doing it is step two.

—

Well, we thought it was less social. During the experiment we held at our presentation the observing group noted that the group with the large bags was more social because they ate less. Of course not counting for the right environment and group differences, but still.

For my last course – which I finished with a ‘pass with distinction’ grade, the highest possible – I had to write a book review and I reviewed ‘A Geography of Time‘ by Robert Levine. Levine describes very interesting differences between our experience of time amongst different people / cultures. How our experience of time influences our whole structure of life and how not every culture lives with the calendar as we know it. Not only starting the counting of the year at another point in time, but also having different week, month and year lengths.

The most interesting point he makes about time I think is the difference between clock time and event time. People living on clock time let events start when the clock ‘tells’ them to do, whereas people living on event time let the events themselves tell this, also more feeling when the time is right to start something else. An excerpt from my paper:

Take the example of being in a conversation with someone. In a clock-time culture you would keep an eye on the time and try to work towards an end in the conversation when the clock tells you you have something else to do. If this doesn’t work as good as you want, you need to abruptly end the conversation to be in time for the next.

In an event-time culture you wouldn’t mind what the clock says. The conversation continues until both parties have the idea that it is over. This is more likely when a goal has been reached, when you feel that there is nothing more to say. After ending the conversation in this way you still don’t look at your watch. Instead, you’ll see what comes on your path next. This then, is the next event.

This example gives a bit extreme view on clock- and event-time though. Not all conversations will be ended abruptly because time is up and after a conversation in event-time you can take a look on the calendar to see what to do next. Nevertheless, the tendency is towards these examples.

Further Levine gives some lessons you should learn when you’re ‘time traveling’, traveling to a culture with another experience of time. I added a part in which I tell how to change your behavior if you’re staying in the same culture but want to adjust to another time anyway :)

One part of that is ‘learning to appreciate doing nothing’. In clock time cultures ‘doing nothing’ is mostly seen as a waste of time, time in which you could have been doing something else. In event time cultures ‘doing nothing’ is more an event on its own, as good as other events. You spend time looking around you, thinking, not thinking, talking, eating, waiting, feeling. As you see, you still do things, the difference lies in doing things without a direct goal. ‘Doing nothing’ is more about not having a direct goal and just feel what you’ll do and not feeling awkward about it!

So that is what I’ve been doing a lot lately. I spend a weekend with Frida just doing nothing. Talking, looking, listening to music, eating, thinking, laughing, healing. Later this week I saw an older couple in the IKEA restaurant, they already finished their meal and were doing nothing. Looking around, at each other, digesting, thinking, talking a bit. Very cool to see.

Hej, jag heter Lode

The result of my first Swedish class. It is a bit strange to sit in a classroom and repeat the alphabet after the teacher.. :) Useful though, not all letters are that easy.

I think you can understand most of the preceding message. I had to ask what the following were:

• bor = live
• på = on
• tyska = german

The y remains hard, you start it as an i but end speaking an u. And now I know when the k is pronounced in different ways. Normal usage is like ‘kå’, like ko(a). But when preceding the e, i, y, ä, or ö you pronounce it more as ‘sj’, like hemsjöp (the supermarkt I usally go to).

I’m following the level 2 courses at the same time as the level 1 goes a bit too slow and level 2 is simple enough to follow, at the moment anyway :)

I was a bit anxious (a thing we needed to learn for the exam) for this. In the Netherlands I normally have 1 to 2 hours, and 3 hours is for something like a graduation exam. Here 5 hours is very normal.

And actually it was really nice. First I spent 1,5 hour on writing the answers in a short form and then I spent the rest of the time rewriting it and making nice sentences. Also good because you go over the questions and your answers once more and you correct things. This is really different from what I’m used to. Usally I always go through the questions and answers one more time, but as it is already writing down, you hardly look at it in another way, and it thus won’t help much. This time it did. And I think it went very well. Also not that much of a problem as it was about how you understood things instead of knowing facts.

The only thing that was not so nice is the pain in my hand from all the writing. Though it is less when there is no direct pressure, like when you have say 5 hours ;)

Below the mindmap that I created when I was learning. This covers only I think about half or 1/3 of the information we got..

For the people with FreeMind (the software ;)), you can download my mindmap.

The example of the Indian word kal was soon resolved after talking to the Indian students, the word always has a clear meaning because the verb in the sentence, like ‘I went to the shop kal‘ or ‘I’m going to the shop kal‘.

Further it interests me as I like to live more without the current thinking of time. I don’t use a watch or phone since long to keep track of time, I removed the hands from a clock I had in my room and I like to think about being somewhere in time but rather take enough time. It was really nice talking to Frida, a girl I met at the diner of the Indians, which had similar ideas about getting rid of this time altogether :)

But it is far from easy. Other people continue to expect you to be somewhere in time. For example the trains here run only once per hour even with a few gaps in that schedule, in the weekends in only goes like 3 to 5 times and not until late. You have to catch it. Especially since the Swedes like to be on time, 6 o’clock ís 6 o’clock, also for informal meetings.

So I found a book about time experience and leadership. What I’ve read until now is about different orientations towards time. Which in turn influences the way you experience time lines, time duration and how you manage groups. People have a time orientation towards the past, the present or the future. You’ll recognize the patterns;

• People creating plans for the future, getting people with them on their idea of what the future should become, but also surprised when problems suddenly arise that they didn’t expected.
• Other people like day-to-day activities, always know what is going on, continuously check what people are doing and fix problems instead of investing in new things.
• And there are people who remember good all the things, acknowledge peoples attributions, but also like to skip planning meetings and fail to see changes in other people.

And then people mix these aspects, but in general (the books says) you more like one than the other. Immediately I noticed that I fit in all tree groups, although that might because you always like to be different from John Doe :)

More to come as I learn more..

What I particularly liked was that it came clear that stereotypes are not always negative, in fact stereotypes are mostly positive when your talking about your own country, or, as I mentioned, about the country you’d like to be a part of..

And Jonas (the teacher) told about turn taking in conversations. When a French speaks with a Swede the French will be talking all the time as she waits for the Swede to interrupt, which they would never do. Ending up with a repeating French because she will think the Swede didn’t understood and a irritated Swede because he thinks the French won’t let him speak.

As the book I’m reading (Communicating with strangers) says:

In a familiar world, people life through the day by responding to daily routine without questioning or reflection. To strangers, however, every situation is new and is therefore experienced as a crisis.

Parrillo (1980) about Schuetz.

Courses here are non parallel, so we only have one course at the time. Thats for the next 5 weeks and then comes the next course. Some exceptions, but then you probably won’t have more then 2 courses at the same time.

Elaborations on the question above after the beeb :)

I think culture does ‘distort’ your view of reality. I think we can never take off those cultural glasses. The culture you grown up with will always influence the way you look at the world. You certainly can learn to understand other cultures and the way other people act. But the ways you communicate, the ways you think etc., are so much burned into you life. Like walking, it happens in your unconsciousness and you’ll never forget it.

Another interesting question to think about: “how much should a society tolerate / accept in terms of cultural differences?” I think this one is especcially for the current situation in the Netherlands (well, the situation when I left the country anyway ;)). What are the effects of other cultures joining your culture?

This first course I’m following is about the anatomy of intercultural interactions.. Yes, this first lecture was an introduction to the course title :) The course is about laying the basics for the course and giving a theoretical overview of intercultural communication. We’ve been talking about the meaning of ‘inter’, ‘culture’, ‘interaction’ and we talked about things like managing, communication, meaning, context, interpretation and generalization.

I learned a lot about context in the IDSS project in Istanbul. Here Jonas (the teacher) talked about high- and low-context cultures. When someone says something, a part of what is meant lies in the language (being it spoken, unspoken, or body language for example) and another part lies in the context of the culture (and other context too of course). In so called ‘high context cultures’ more meaning lies in the context than in the language itself.

In the end we talked a bit about the ‘similarities / differences’ topic going around cultural discussions. Jonas supposed to talk more about ‘variations’ instead. This can cover both and also implies that they are both there. And it leaves the door open for group variations and individual variations.

Yesterday, the first -whole group- lecture ended with a quote which I forgot to post. I really like this point of view.

“The tourist sees what he has come to see.
The traveler sees what he sees.”
G. K. Chesterton

• ä is pronounced as e
• å is pronounced as ó (oo)
• ö is pronounced as eu

And some more less important for reading:

• y is pronounced as uu
• v is pronounced as w
• g is pronounced as the g in ‘good’
• the e and the end of words is pronounced as an ‘e’ instead of a ‘u’ in most Dutch cases

Try it:

• föreningar
• borgmästare
• karriär
• invånare
• contrasterna
• trådlösa

Answers after the beep.

Did you do well?

• vereniging
• burgemeester
• carrière
• inwoners
• contrast
• draadloze

Then I only stumble upon those little words. Commonly used but pretty unknown to me. And I need to learn to speak it :)