Updates from Sweden

Ok, so, I haven't sent out an update since arriving here. I've finally got a day off and a little time to myself sooooo....

I arrived in Lulea about two weeks ago, on the 18th. I spent the first two days recovering from jet lag and doing a little maintenance-stuff (getting my laptop up and running, etc). Then started the meetings...oh did they ever start. Wednesday through Friday were meetings with the consultants, Saturday was spent with the environmental consultant working on permit applications, Sunday we traveled to London, Monday and Tuesday with more consultants, Wednesday with the management consultants, Thursday to Newqey/Truro in Cornwall, England to meet with the mining consultants, Friday meet and then fly back to Heathrow; Saturday fly from Heathrow to Stockholm to Lulea and then a 2.5 hour drive to Pajala. Finally, last night was spent with mayor of Pajala for some festival of lights. It was snowy and overcast so there wasn't any northern lights to see!




This is the hotel in London (Epsom actually). Our management consultants selected the place for us, it's called the Royal Automobile Club but it's really got nothing to do with cars. It's the clubhouse/hotel/restuarant/bar for the private golf course. The sign down under the stairs says a fire burned down the original building and it was rebuilt in 1935. The 2nd floor was being renovated so they gave us a deal, pay for one night, get the next one free. Nice rooms and a bit more posh than I'm used to. We got in trouble the first night we arrived because each of the 4 of us came down individually and immediately were asked to leave. Apparently the club has a ban on denim; we were all wearing jeans. We had to go back to the rooms and change before we could eat. Shouldn't be a problem, but by this time, I had already been living out of my suitcase for a week AND I only brought one pair of slacks. So, for the 4 days I was there, I had to wear the same slacks with a variety of shirts. To make matters worse, I had hoped to some laundry done but there was no laundry service. So, it was always the debate in the morning, do I re-wear a dirty shirt or wash one in the sink for the next day. Oh, one other item, no irons in any of these hotels. All of them had electric pants presses but no iron. The pants press do not do a very good job with shirts! P.S. there was also a rule that if you were going to exercise, you need to wear only white... needless to say, there wasn't a lot of "ethnic diversity" in this place.

This photo was taken as we were flying from London to Cornwall, probably somewhere between Plymouth and Newqey ("new-key"). It looked very stereotypical of the UK so I thought I'd at least send it on.

This photo is from our hotel in Falmouth (I think that's where we were!). The harbor here used to be one of the ports where the Cornish tin was shipped from. The whole area is full of old tailings dams, "coyote-holes" (as we'd call them in Nevada), and underground workings. The mining consultant we are using here says that whenever you buy a home in this part of the isle, you have to have a mining survey before closing to prove there are no old workings under the house.

This is another view from the same spot, just looking at the houses that line the harbor area. We had lunch this day in a place called "The Norwegian House". Apparently, during the tin mining boom, lumber was shipped from Norway down to England for use in the underground mines for ground support. The wood was brought into the port and then barged upriver to this particular saw mill and then cut for use. The river has since silted up, but the building was definitely old and had the low ceilings and exposed old beams. I tried to get some real Cornish pasties but there wasn't any on the menu at this restaurant. However, at the end of the March, I'll be back for a week; one of the mining engineers promised to take me to his favorite shops, he considers himself a "Cornish pastie quality control engineer" and knows all the best places.

This is our brand-new office in Lulea; they just signed the lease the Friday before I arrived. It's really big inside, almost too much for what we need but has all the infrastructure we wanted. It used to be an electronics company. It's got a locker room, showers, etc and even a sauna. Apparently the electronics guys used to use the sauna to test the reliability of the circuit boards under harsh conditions. All the Swedes and Finns are looking forward to commisioning the sauna, however I can't say it means much to me!

This is a view from the main bull-pen area of the office. In the background of the photo is a row of offices, one of which will be mine as soon as we get some furniture. The sauna is on the right wall.

This is the view out one of the windows in the office. It was -10C yesterday but the Swedes all keep saying it's been a very mild winter and they hope it cools off soon!

Because of the way I loaded up the photos, some of them came out of sequence. This is another view of the RAC, the golf course is on the right, this view is of the pro-shop and golf clubhouse. The front door of the hotel, in the previous hotel photo, is on the left.

So, tomorrow we'll be here in Pajala attending to some administrative issues and checking on project status. Then on Tuesday, we're going to drive to Norvik, Norway to look at some port facilities, drive to Kiruna where LKAB mines iron ore from deep underground mines, and look at a couple of other towns we're considering for locating some of our facilities. Nothing exciting but it'll interesting to see the Norwegian side of the Atlantic!

Thursday I'll be back in Lulea, stay until the 13th and fly home for a week. My trip home will coincide with the kids' spring break so we should have a good time.

Will try to post more when I can!