After a prolonged hiatus I feel it may be time to pick up the pen and ever so slowly revive my blog. No promise on any sort of regularity or frequency of coming blog posts, but they will exist. I have never seen "Redsurfable" as an obligation, but rather a tool to express creativity and to share some excerpts from my life, and this will continue. On a positive note, this extended break has given me a lot of material to use for coming posts. Let's start with what I was up to the summer of 2014.
Upon finishing my 3rd year of medicine l returned to the forests of Småland. I would spend a total of 3 months in Sweden: the entire summer vacation. I was looking forward to this extended stay in what quite literally is the motherland. Last time I spent at least 3 months in the Land of Fika was when I was 15, so a return was long due. Even though I was on summer vacation, there were still a load of things to get done, not least on the work front. I managed to get a job in a retirement home, working as a nurse's assistant. Now in the retirement home life is a lot different: everything revolves around the meal times. Everybody is woken up and readied for breakfast, some needing more help than others, thus depending on the day this could take its sweet time. After breakfast has been had, and the stubborn have been conivnced on consuming the rather vital morning pills, the day begins. Well, it does for some. The more active of the seniors would go for some morning gymnastics, or perhaps weaving or knitting. Others would look through the morning newspaper, and mumble something about how it was better before. Some would just return to bed and take a morning nap. Same sort of thing would happen after lunch and dinner also. It was a very good experience for me, to get some work experience in Sweden, and most importantly in the healthcare field. Even though as a doctor my work will be very different and less patient oriented as that of a nurse's assistant, I felt it was important to start from the bottom and work my way up. To solely study and then come to Sweden and start to work as a doctor with no other working experience is something I would not want to do.
My job was located in town, but as I was staying in my little village I had to have a car to get there. After my struggles with getting a driver's license (I believe I have written about this before, if not that story needs to be documented) it felt extremely liberating to be able to get into my 2002 SAAB 93 and drive off towards whatever life had in store for me. People always said having a car was the essence of freedom, and I couldn't have agreed more.
Upon finishing my 3rd year of medicine l returned to the forests of Småland. I would spend a total of 3 months in Sweden: the entire summer vacation. I was looking forward to this extended stay in what quite literally is the motherland. Last time I spent at least 3 months in the Land of Fika was when I was 15, so a return was long due. Even though I was on summer vacation, there were still a load of things to get done, not least on the work front. I managed to get a job in a retirement home, working as a nurse's assistant. Now in the retirement home life is a lot different: everything revolves around the meal times. Everybody is woken up and readied for breakfast, some needing more help than others, thus depending on the day this could take its sweet time. After breakfast has been had, and the stubborn have been conivnced on consuming the rather vital morning pills, the day begins. Well, it does for some. The more active of the seniors would go for some morning gymnastics, or perhaps weaving or knitting. Others would look through the morning newspaper, and mumble something about how it was better before. Some would just return to bed and take a morning nap. Same sort of thing would happen after lunch and dinner also. It was a very good experience for me, to get some work experience in Sweden, and most importantly in the healthcare field. Even though as a doctor my work will be very different and less patient oriented as that of a nurse's assistant, I felt it was important to start from the bottom and work my way up. To solely study and then come to Sweden and start to work as a doctor with no other working experience is something I would not want to do.
My job was located in town, but as I was staying in my little village I had to have a car to get there. After my struggles with getting a driver's license (I believe I have written about this before, if not that story needs to be documented) it felt extremely liberating to be able to get into my 2002 SAAB 93 and drive off towards whatever life had in store for me. People always said having a car was the essence of freedom, and I couldn't have agreed more.
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