Rollercoaster week, continued

I said I would write down some of what happened lately (don't worry, will get to everything moving- and work-related as well), so at least starting to write this post from a lengthy wait at Arlanda airport, check this out:

- Bad luck friday

Friday the 11th was just ridiculous. I hadn't gotten enough sleep, had laundry to do in the morning, wanted to finish the picture assembly for mother's 60th birthday and woke up with a fiercely flourishing cold. It was as if events of bad luck just wouldn't stop, I wasn't at work when FindYourself™ called, the fire alarm went off at work, the tram suffered delays when I was to go to the train, the frame for mom fell down and hit the lady next to me on the train in the face and to finish things of - mom accidentally stepped on and cracked the framing glass of her own gift before I could even finish it. Needless to say, all of this was very exhausting, but caving in simply wasn't an option, so instead of sulking I tried hard and had a good time with mom's party. On the positive side, I reached FindYourself later, and they promised to send me an offer including numbers by wednesday.


- Saturday, mom's 60th birthday party

Relatives all around, smiles and fake smiles, again and again explaining about the estonian girlfriend who could not be there, that I plan to move soon and everything. Over all a very nice event and I guess that the prospective of moving is relieving some tension there as well. On the train back to Gothenburg I read a fascinating passage in my current book giving a fascinating pseudo-scientific perspective on the issue of correlation between skin pigmentation and the size of male genitalia. The previous sentence is only remotely related to Estonia because of the allegedly prevalent xeno- and homophobia there.


- Monday of despair

On monday I was called by Mediocre™ which wanted to give me a job offer. 50 EEK/h during the trial period, 70 EEK/h after that and in a remote future perhaps but unlikely as much as 90 EEK/h. That makes for 390 EUR per month after tax (545 EUR/month after trial period). Tax-compensated, that is 5400 SEK and 7600 SEK before tax in Sweden. I have both rent and student loans to carry, I don't want to cry in despair every month I get my salary... Mediocre usually hire students who work beside school to do their work, and I might have under-marketed my skills, but needless to say this was devastating news. What if all other Estonian companies can't offer me even workable salaries, as my brother said, then I might as well kick myself tired? That would also imply I can't move to live with my baby, has all this effort been wasted, will I be stuck and bored to death in Sweden?

- Wednesday of small good news

Monday hurt, and even though I grabbed a friend to speak to, the emotions raged during the night to tuesday. Still, I pulled myself together and at wednesday called the chief security person of the Revalbank™. We had been talking and emailing some before, he hadn't seemed very enthusiastic about seeing me, but this time things started moving, and we set a date and time to meet next wednesday. Very excited about what will come out of that.

Before leaving work as well, I discussed with my boss about what possibilities exist to get more money out of my thesis project. As long as I stick to my 20 weeks stipulated, it doesn't matter if my project is huge or really well done, but he expressed some interest in having me stay for a month or so after the project is finished, at full salary. It would just make so much sense, I would get enough money to make the move away from Sweden, I wouldn't have to sit around staring at my belly button while the machinery grinds my degree application and it is much cheaper to hire me to complete more features in my project than to train and pay anyone else to do it. Now let's just hope that is ok with both the upper management and the estonian companies wanting to employ me.

- Thursday of euphoria and traveling butterflies

A busy day, wrote an application to a custom electronics manufacturer, prepared my trip to Estonia and made sure things would keep rolling in the office even without me.

Just as I was about to leave the office and go home to pack, I got an email from FindYourself. It was a pretty detailed description of the job they'd want me for there, Technical Project Manager, and a suggestion on salary. With all the work behind me and all that had happened so far, this suggestion was an incredible relief. The job is very exciting and seems it would fit me very well, and the salary is reasonable. I don't want to describe in too close detail since this is an offer I take pretty seriously - but the introduction salary should be comparable to my student budget the first four months, and after project bonuses and stuff start kicking in, roughly double that after tax. Compensate that for the low cost of living in Estonia, how good this salary is compared to other estonian salaries and that it seems I get a bit of an extra bonus from my thesis project to finance the moving... and I'm more or less up on dry ground now! I can't express how exciting this is to me...