It's a cold, grey midwinter's day. The sun made valiant efforts to shine over the weekend but the clouds and thick blanket of fog defeated it. Now, at only 10 a.m., it is so dark it could be evening and I have had to put all of the lights on. In addition, the temperature has really taken a nosedive and the icy chill outside seems to seep through the windows to my desk. These gloomy days really get me down, make me feel like simply crawling back into bed and staying there. Just a little ray of sunshine would lift my spirits. Otherwise this is how my week looks:



You can see that today is "Don't speak to me!" day.

I was leafing through the morning papers and came across a story about a Russian clothing company calling itself H&M and therefore about to be sued by the original H&M (Swedish fasion giant Hennes & Mauritz).

The Russian firm maintains that they were unaware of the Swedish company, but a peep at their website showed that not only were they probably aware of them (after all, they ARE in the same business) but that they appeared to have nicked their distinctive logo. The corporate logo is a very important marketing tool and fiercely defended by the owners. The logo to the left is the one we are all familiar with from H&M. The one to the right, comes from the website of the new Russian clothing company. More than a passing resemblance I'd say, even though the Russias tried to defend that co-incidence by simply saying they had no idea how it happened and expressing the wish that the two fashion chains can peacefully co-exist. Somehow, I don't think so!

I wonder what McDonalds would think if they came to Nynäshamn and saw our local greasy Joes's called "The Big M", complete with golden arches? I must ask Lars-Göran to snap a shot of that place.

This week I am also trying to embark on getting a new Aussie passport. It would all be so simple if it was just a renewal, but I also decided to finally get it in my married name. When I married, there was still a few years left on my old passport, so I left it as it was. It's not illegal or anything, I just have to remember to book a ticket in my other name and it's a pain to have my ID in two names. So, you are all thinking, take the new information and marriage certificate etc into the Australian Embassy here in Stockholm and get it changed.

However....

From last year some time that suddenly became "not good enough." You must register your name change in the state of Australia in which you were born! wtf??? So, I have to register my marrige in Sweden, a country where I now live permanently with the government of South Australia - a place I left years ago and where I never intend returning. Yep. That makes sense.

So I contacted the good old Birth, Deaths and Marriages registry in Adelaide (which oddly falls under the umbrella of Business and Consumer Affairs) to see how one goes about this from overseas. Well, all I can say that it is a quagmire of bureaucratic gobbledigook of epic proportions. In order to register my marriage, I have to prove who I am by supplying them also with other documents. Fair enough. But those documents issued by a foreign government are "not good enough" (you know how untrustworthy foreigners are, right?). I mean they don't actually conform exactly to the strict requirements of the South Australian Government (obviously the centre of the universe as far as they are concerned).

For example they'd like me to send my Swedish driver's licence with the application, because "it will have a picture of me, name, address, date of birth etc". Right??? Well, actually not right. A Swedish licence has no address I tell them. They refuse to believe me. And so it goes on. And they are also not happy that Swedish documents are (gasp!) written in Swedish! (*bigger gasp*). You were expecting maybe Swahili?

This is obviously a clash of two systems. On the one hand in Sweden we have person number identification, where all you need is your person number for ID. Everything about you is linked to that precious number. So ID cards don't need addresses etc as they can look all of it up or just order a personbevis from the tax department over the phone. And in Australia, a place where nobody wants the government to know a damn thing about them, you have to have 739 different types of proof of who you are (all conforming to THEIR idea of "proof") in order to ascertain the same thing.

It's going to be a LONG week!