Stockholm Day One: Check!

Day One, Over and Done

My relaxing weekend and well needed dose of nature and the outdoors in Västerås had to come to an end eventually so I now find myself enjoying a strong black coffee in Södermalm, Stockholm.

I arrived with the last of my commuting kit yesterday. Two bags of clothes and toiletries/miscellaneous junk, basically splitting my life 50/50 between what I have in my ‘base’ flat and what I have with me in Stockholm. In the spirit of ‘getting things done’, before leaving Vasteras I set myself a couple of goals for the week along with a list of things I need to do:

Goals

• Work towards getting a job
• Be social and meet new people

Todo

• Sort out my new room
• Get an internet connection

As I’m currently typing this using wifi from the (lovely) Bagel St Cafe it’s fair to say that after day one I’m still failing on the internet connection, however I’ve surprised myself at how well I’m managed to go with the rest.

On the train ride into town I got a call about some prospective work which has lead to a meeting later in the week – even if nothing comes of it it’s a nice confidence boost to know that I’ve been getting some interest literally as I arrived into town.

After organising the meeting I managed to quickly sort out my new room (easy when you don’t have much anyway), ticking that box, and then jumped on the T-bana to try and tick the ‘Be Social’ box.

 SHRUG

For the past six months or so I’ve been trying to learn as much as I can about web development, and in particular Ruby on Rails. When I saw on meetup.com that yesterday was the monthly get together for Stockholm Rubyists (SHRUG – Stockholm Ruby User Group) I decided it would be a great way to get to know a few new people in the city.

The meet up was hosted by the guys at thoughtbot, who also supplied the (free) food and (free!!!) beer. So thanks a lot to the team at thoughtbot! The meet up itself was good, I didn’t really write much code but I did get to meet some cool people and have some interesting tech discussions.

It gave me a few things to think about for my current project and I’m looking forward to the next meetup, although unfortunately that won’t be until towards the end of summer.

 So…

I’m pretty happy with things so far. I won’t be able to really rest until work is sorted but it’s still been a good start.

About David Turnbull

I'm a New Zealander in Sweden, building web-apps with Ruby on Rails.