In Sweden : Good food and general comments

Sweden in general (9 million) seems to have more population than Denmark.
Temperature outside : 11 degrees. Cooler than Denmark. Just fine. Need a jacket.
Hotels are good. Here it seems unlike big luxurious hotels in US, the hotels are cost conscious. The finishing is not the best I have seen. However they are actually good enough and seems to be more sensible. It is better to stay in a hotel down town than outside the city. We stayed first two days outside the main town, to reduce travel time for the official meetings. More points :

Taxis are easy to get.
Roads have more people.
Very nice roads.
Left hand drive.
Good cars.
Side roads are neat and clean.
Currency : Swedish Kroner. Here both Euros and Swedish Kronars are accepted. However when they give the change, you only get Swedish Kroners.
1 Euro approx. 10 Swedish Krona
Taxis accept Credit Cards.
There are specific lanes for cycles here too.
Near Shopping centers the roads have people on the streets :-)
Fantastic People. A lot of people in general have migrated from different countries. You will also see people who have a lot of mixed nationalities. We met a waitress whose parents had parents who were mixed : jewish + swedish, african american + white and her boy friend is actually, Italian, Serbian parents.
Europe has a lot of languages. Each country has a diff language of its own. Danish, Swedish, Serbian, French, German etc. They are diff and each other can't normally understand the other. However it is written like English i.e it uses Latin alphabet, also called the Roman alphabet.
THe food is in general bread, meat (beef, pork, chicken) and sea food.
Lots of historical buildings and many of the buildings have an ancient architectural look.
Lots of varieties of food present. We had food in a typical Swedish restaurant, Indian and then a Lebanon Restaurant. The Indian and Lebanon Restaurant were very good and enjoyable food. The other food was ok but we were getting a bit bored with the typical; European way of cooking food light.
Night life looks good. People are there on the streets even after 12 AM. We had a walk down the old town. Nice bridges and beautiful streets and old time architecture is seen in the buildings. Its not just concrete !

BTW hope you saw my previous blog on the football match.

Next Stop Sweden : Saw the match Sweden Vs Hungary

Well our next stop was Sweden : Sept 9 to 14.

We got to see the world cup qualifier round between Sweden and Hungary in Solna, Sweden. What a game. First half was getting boring. The second half was action packed. 2-1, Sweden won.
Sweden managed to score 2 goals. Hungary made a consolation "literally" last minute goal. I guess the whistle blew after 10 seconds or something.

Below snaps have our partner Thorir. Thanks for your fantastic hospitality you and your team at Inuit.

My take on Sweden latter.

Euro Tour : First Stop Denmark

Well, I had the opportunity to visit Europe as part of an official visit from our company to visit partners and customers. Will be blogging about the personal experience to various countries here.

Our first stop was Denmark : Sept 6 to 9 2008.

Will be blogging going forward on my European trip adventure, starting from Denmark. We will be going from here to Sweden, France, Italy,Germany, Portugal, Poland, UK.

Started along with Alex D Paul from Chennai to Denmark to Copnehagen. Reached Copenhagen at 11:30 AM. Immigration at Brussels, Belgium.
Flight from Chennai to Brussels took 11 hours. Brussels to Copenhagen : 2 hours.
Brussels has a nice airport. Similar to Singapore airport. Strange thing is the security checks here is lesser than India / US.

Afternoon, after lunch, we were joined by our partner here Martin of Draware.dk. The typical Danish food / lunch seems to be bread / burgers. We had a huge beef burger with some juice. People here donot drink water. Only beer :-) Pleasant climate. We went to the hotel at 3 PM. Its a 100 room hotel in a fantastic / post card green kind of surrounding. Too good. This hotel has just 1 lady at the front desk, no persons to help out with bags etc, all self service. The only strange thing is there is no elevator in this hotel. So we had to carry our suit cases 2 floors up.
Denmark in general (5 million) has very less population though.
Temperature outside : 15 degrees. Very pleasant, not cold.
Taxis are hard to get I guess.
Very less population.
Very nice roads
Calm traffic flow. People stick to the "max" traffic speed. If it says 40 max, then they do not go over 45KM/hr.
Left hand drive.
Good cars.
Side roads are neat and clean. Not that broad though. The main roads are 3+ laned. Roads are very straight.
There are specific lanes for cycles here. Also people go cycling and boating as a hobby on weekends to get some exercise.
Near Shopping centers the roads are not too crowded.
Fantastic People.
Can see Sweden from here on the coast. Denmark has over 5000KM of beach line (not necessarily straight though)!
Denmark is one of the 3 Nordic countries along with Sweden and Norway. Scandinvian countries include Nordic + Finland.
Lots of historical buildings and many of the buildings have an ancient architectural look. The scene from the hotel window, too go ! Like the botanical gardens in Ooty /or a golf course you can say.
Some other peculiar things : cars drive with the lights switched on. There is no way to switch if off. It seems that is built in to the system as it reduces accidents.
Sept was very good weather.

Checkout a few snaps.

Life Saving Identifying a Stroke

During a BBQ, a friend stumbled and took a little fall - she assured
everyone that she was fine (they offered to call paramedics) .....she
said she had just tripped over a brick because of her new shoes.

They got her cleaned up and got her a new plate of food. While she
appeared a bit shaken up, Ingrid went about enjoying herself the rest of
the evening.

Ingrid's husband called later telling everyone that his wife had been
taken to the hospital - (at 6:00 pm Ingrid passed away.) She had
suffered a stroke at the BBQ. Had they known how to identify the signs
of a stroke, perhaps Ingrid would be with us today. Some don't die.....
they end up in a helpless, hopeless condition instead.

It only takes a minute to read this... A neurologist says that if he can
get to a stroke victim within 3 hours he can totally reverse the effects
of a stroke...totally. He said the trick was getting a stroke
recognized, diagnosed, and then getting the patient medically cared for
within 3 hours, which is tough.

RECOGNIZING A STROKE
Remember the '3' steps, STR . Read and Learn!

Sometimes symptoms of a stroke are difficult to identify. Unfortunately,
the lack of awareness spells disaster. The stroke victim may suffer
severe brain damage when people nearby fail to recognize the symptoms of
a stroke.

Now doctors say a bystander can recognize a stroke by asking three
simple questions:
S Ask the individual to SMILE.
T Ask the person to TALK and SPE AK A SIMPLE SENTENCE (Coherently, e.g.
It is sunny out today)
R Ask him or her to RAISE BOTH ARMS.

If he or she has trouble with ANY ONE of these tasks, call for help
immediately and describe the symptoms to the dispatcher.

New Sign of a Stroke -- Stick out Your Tongue

NOTE: Ask the person to 'stick' out his tongue. If the tongue is
'crooked', if it goes to one side or the other,that is also an
indication of a stroke.

Free Tool to Record how to demos

Wink is a Tutorial and Presentation creation software. It useful to for
creating "How To Demos" about software products. You can even add voice
in addition to screen captures.

Checkout about this free tool in the below link :
http://www.debugmode.com/wink/

MTASC : Free Flash Compiler

MTASC is the first ActionScript 2 Open Source free Flash compiler.

From their website, "It can compile large number of .as class files in a very short time and generate directly the corresponding SWF bytecode without relying on Macromedia Flash or other tools.".
This means you can create flash application using their compiler without having to buy flash developer licenses. It can't get better than that.

http://www.mtasc.org/

Japanese have different emoticons

Just came to know recently that Japanese use a different set of characters to represent their emotions on the web. whatjapanthinks.com is a site that points to the various Japanese emoticons.  Also Japanese emoticons are also known as Anime emoticons or manga style smiles.

BTW the above website seems to be a good read for those planning to visit Japan, it gives some good info about the life style in Japan.