Forms to National ID

Forms, forms, forms. Relocating to another country, even temporarily, involves quite a few forms. One of them is a medical report which includes an immunization report.


I got a complete physical yesterday but had a tough time digging up my immunization record. I can't even find my old Steppenwolf records, much less an immunization record.

After calling every single number in the yellow pages under "travel medicine" and still not finding where I got my previous immunizations (recall I had to take the deluxe immunization package when I went to India in 1998), a colleague recalled it was "Associated Internists." Good thing my colleague's memory is so good: I was within milliseconds of calling Guy Noir, Private Eye.

However, using the "Associated Internists" clue and Google I found that they had moved and changed their name to two names: World Wide Travel something and Beacon Medicine. Since my records were more than 2.5 years old, the time they decided to join catch up with the 1990's, my records were hard copy.
So I went down there for my appointment which was a good news bad news thing. The good news is that I'm about as immune as piece of granite and don't even need boosters for another 5 years. I could survive swimming in a vat of yellow fever, the hepatitis alphabet, and malaria bacteria. The bad news is that it still cost me $66 bucks. Who knows what the insurance was billed?



Then I had to take the signed immunization record to my general practitioner who is supposed to fax my complete check up results and immunization record to a doctor in Sweden. Seems like American medicine offers superbly trained doctors and miracle drugs but is still in the dinosaur age in terms of using computers, IMHO. Worse, the concept of fax'ing and mailing the completed forms (and reading the instructions) seemed foreign to my doctor and all her staff. I knew as I saw them shove the forms into my folder (and I'm not talking a computer folder, this one is made of cellulose) I'd have to call back to "make this happen."


Why do I bring this up?

Well, I've always thought we in the US should have a national database with all our medical records accessible by password. Furthermore, people should be able to mine the database for all sorts of medical data. Imagine seeing a map of the United States color coded by density of the flu? or any disease? Imagine seeing it change over time like a movie: from 1980 to present? Imagine how quickly the CDC could discover outbreaks when they used such maps (assuming doctors entered the data: Jo Smo has the flu on such-and-such data and his address is ...) The computer would use the address to place my data on the map. Correlations with weather, food distribution, pollutants, and all sorts of things could be done. Including not having to worry about clinics going out of business or changing their names!

Data is knowledge.

Anyway, it all reminded me of the national number that every Swede has. It's the same number as on their driver's license, simply transferred to the driver's license when the reach driving age. The number it self is coded. The first 8 digits represent their birth date. The next 2 represent the hospital ward they were born in (some hospital's have multiple wards). The next digit represents which birth they were that day. Boys get even numbers and girls get odd numbers (or maybe vice versa). If there are more that 5 girls or 5 boys born that day, there's a procedure for "creating" a new ward. The last digit is called a check-sum digit. It's value is chosen so that the sum of all the digits is a number whose last digit is zero. This is used to greatly reduce human errors when typing in the numbers into computers. Their computers are already programmed to verify the check-sum.

These numbers are tied to what books they check out of the library, their bank-accounts, their medical records, everything. The American Privacy Rights groups would break out in hives if some one in the US even whispered this. In fact, I may be followed by a guy in a trench coat for writing this. Let's keep it between us, ok? Anyway, the national ID sure makes Swedish society work like a well oiled machine.

I have no idea how Sweden protects against identity theft but knowing the clever Swedes, I know they've done something. I hope to find out.

I do know that if they loose their card. They have to get another but it involves receiving mail in separate envelops on different days: kinda sorta like our pin codes for our ATM cards.

There ought to be a way, maybe a voluntary system, in the US for achieve much the same thing (and more, as I mentioned above) and still maintain a modicum of privacy protection. We have the technology.

Perhaps one of my Swedish readers could elaborate on the Swedish id.

The Vassa Museum - A Must-See in Stockholm

Even folks that eschew museums will like this one. You can see the whole thing in an hour and a half and there is only one thing to see: The Vassa ship that sunk in the bay nearby and remained underwater, mostly preserved by the cold depths, and later resurrected and restored. Most of the ship is original. The parts that are not are purposely made a different color so visitors can see the restored pieces. The whole story of why the ship was made and why it sunk less than 30 minutes into it's maiden voyage is rich with symbolism....In blunt terms, the King wanted to make an impression so he forced the engineer's at the last minute to add another deck and to have the heavy guns on top deck for the maiden highly publicised voyage. This made the ship more unstable - this told to me by Swedish colleagues but the web page seems to light touch that part. The King ordered a "Root Cause Analysis" which was quickly closed when all indications said it was the King's fault. Wikipedia has an excellent description of what happened plus some technical details.

Punschrulle -- Not for dieters!

A Punschrulle is best with coffee. I've heard they weigh in at 230 calories and 12 grams of fat. Like most Swedish foods, there are little to no preservatives. Of course, the shelf-life is shorter but they do taste purer. The common name for this dessert (probably what you'd order in a coffee shop) is dammsugare which is a compound word meaning "dust sucker," otherwise know as a vacuum cleaner. They have a resemblance to a vacuum cleaner that used to be sold in Sweden.

Did you know?

You can get information about any city and most places in Sweden simply by going to the URL www.name of the city or place.se. Examples: one of my favorite islands with one of my favorite resturants is Fjäderholmarna which is found at http://www.fjaderholmarna.se. To see the English version, click on the English flag.

Try the informative Stockholm link, too.

Swedes, especially Stockholmites, Love to Sail

There's water all around Stockholm. There the Baltic with it's archipelago of more than 15,000 islands. There's also Lake Malerin which is huge. Many sailors prefer the vintage wood sailboats, while other prefer newer models.

Marinas are a common site in and around Stockholm. Some of the marinas are non-profit, run by communities of volunteers. Volunteers are expected to help in the Spring putting boats into the water and the Fall taking them out. They are sometimes expected to stay up all night long a day or two out of the year as a security guard.

Stockholm Public Transportation

Getting around in Stockholm is easy. There is an excellent subway system that connects with a commuter train system (pendeltag). I stole the pictures from Google Images. Most of the trains are very modern but there are some old ones: the government is slowly replacing the old ones with modern smooth & quiet ones. The system is as punctual as any in the world. The train staff works hard to stay on time because there pay is reduced based on tardiness.

One Cat, Two Dogs

One of the biggest dilemmas before moving to Sweden is to decide what to do with the pets. Since Sweden and the United States are on excellent terms, the regulations are as simple as can be found (with the possible exception of Canada and Mexico). The rules as I know them are:
Dogs and cats must be re-vaccinated by a licensed vet and a lot more stuff.

Will we take them? We're still undecided because they are such an integral component of the family. However, having them limits where we can live in Sweden and also presents an "animal sitting" problem if we take any trips in Europe. We have the same problem in Colorado, though.

What Will Janis Do?

Janis is looking at several options to occupy her time while Dick works. Of course, she will find a work-out center to continue on her health quest. She'll also learn as much Swedish as possible. She and Dick may join the American Club in Stockholm. She and Dick already have a nice set of friends in Stockholm and some in the Gothenburg area.

She will apply for a work permit. But, instead of working, she might go back to school, either online from Regis University in Denver or an English speaking curriculum in Stockholm, for example here.


She and Dick plan to do a little exploring in kayaks, as well as, traveling to various European cities.

The Job for Dick

Dick will manage the continued development of the Ericsson Radio Network Controller (RNC). This product is an integral part of the wireless network. Ericsson has a large team working on this product. As a result, it's one of the best in the industry. Fortunatley, Dick is picking up a well running project. The next 2-3 years will involve a long list of new features.

Preliminaries: Boulder to Plano to Stockholm

Dick and Janis moved to the Boulder area (Lafayette) in 1983. We've made many friends and raised three kids since driving in from Los Angeles in a little green Dodge Colt with our 1 year old son, Lloyd.

In 1994 Dick went to work for the Wireless Infrastructure Division Qualcomm which eventually was sold to Ericsson. In the year 2000, Dick took a 6 month assignment in Stockholm. Janis and the 3 kids joined him for part of that tie (they got to tour Europe a lot while he worked!)

In late 2005, Dick was asked to manage and grow the Plano R&D center for Ericsson on another six month assignment. The six month assignment was extended to 12. Janis took a leave-of-absence from her job and joined Dick for the second six months. The "opportunity" for a permanent re-location to Plano kept popping up. However, the gravitational pull of this opportunity was not strong enough to give up 24 years of friends, Janis' job, our mountain based hobbies, and our kids still living in Colorado. So back to Boulder we trapezed. (BTW, it's a very long drive from Plano to Boulder!).

The situation in the Boulder office (which has since improved) was such that Dick wound up being given a lay-off notice, which was expected. This was also an emotional roller coaster but Dick did discover that he's still marketable.

Then, out of the blue, a former manager of Dick's who had taken a high position in Sweden (but lived in Dublin) emailed Dick with an offer for a "Long Term Assignment" (LTA) in Sweden for 2 to 3 years. The position was a significant step up career-wise so Dick and Janis decided the "gravitational pull" was sufficient to accept the offer, not to mention the "adventure component" to the whole thing.

So that's the short story of how all this came about. We intend to get our kids out for some quality visits twice a year. We'd love to see you, too.

Sweden the First Time: year 2000

Dick took a 6 month short term assignment (STA) in Nacka Strand, a suburb of Stockholm in 2000. The Ericsson office, since closed after the telecom downturn in 2001, is shown in the photo on the right. There is a large statue spraying water over 100 feet high shown on the little "island" just above the boat. The statue was built by an American sculptor for some government in Europe. The government decided to decline the purchase so it was sold to somebody in Sweden, I guess the Stockholm city, and placed in Nacka Strand. The boats are part of the public transportation system: you buy tickets just like they were buses. The boat shown below is one that goes to a small island nearby that has two very good restaurants. You can view the island and the statue a little better in the second photo (unfortunately, there's no person in the picture to provide scale -- the statue is at least 100 feet high.



When Lloyd visited me, we kayaked from Nacka Strand but found it unnerving to be among the gigantic boats.

My office was on the tenth floor of the building shown. I could look out windows and be "even" with the decks of some of the larger boats! Swede's love boats, especially sail boats. I heard (but never verified) that there are 1.6 boats per capita in Stockholm. I believe it.

There is a phenomenology with extended visits. The first month is pure adventure. During the second month you begin to see flaws and become annoyed at anything that's not they way you're used to. Then in the third month, you start to appreciate the new way of doing things and begin to make friends. You find some things that strike you as better than the way you're used to back home.