Hi This is me

Hi everyone!

My name is Tomas, 37 years old and living in Sweden.
I've been a SW fan for as long as I can remember and that's something that's stayed with me over the years. I mainly care for the OT but feel excited about The Force Awakens.

I run the website Leia's Libary which I started as a personal project during my paternity leave. I write about my collection (mainly posters and action figures but I'll put anything up there that I find in my childhood vault) and Star Wars stuff I find interesting.

I'm also a big fan of the internet in general and I've been working with it since the late 90's. I love trying out new things, designing, building and developing stuff. My latest project is the "Episode VII Countdown" - a widget for WordPress that you can add to your site and have your own customized countdown to SW Episode VII. If anyone here is a user of the widget pls let me know - feedback is always appreciated

Besides that my two kids take up most of my time. My 2 year old daughter (Leia..) is already a big fan and at the moment she's practicing her skills in "breathing like Darth Vader" (and she's actually really good)

Looking forward to take part in the discussions here. Have a great day everyone!

 

Please tell me about Sweden's economy, control over corporations, minimum wage, and quality of life as I keep getting headlines about how awesome it is there.

 

Welcome hope you love it here.

 

Skiara - Sorry about that, the second I hit the submit button I realized that it may come out spammy but my intention was just to provide some more details about who I am and not to promote stuff. Thanks for not coming down to hard on me

As for the snow this year has let us down so far, there was basically no snow at all here for christmas (except for the north parts where there is always snow during the winter). Now it's getting colder though and we are starting to get a glance of a typical Swedish Winter

 

VadersLaMent - Glad you hear good things about Sweden, and yes - it's truly awesome here (at least if you ask me). What some may complain about is the weather - big parts of the year it's really dark here (and if you live up north you only get a few hours of sun per day during the winter) and also really cold. The good thing about it though is that I think you appreciate the sun and the summer even more

As for the economy I don't really know how to summarize that in short but I'd say it's healthy and we've handled the last financial crisis really well compared to other countries. We really don't have a minimum wage in the same sentence as for example the US, instead it comes down to what industry you work in, what trade union you belong to etc.

However, the quality of life (in labor laws) is probably one of the biggest contributions to Sweden's "fame" around the globe.
We also have very generous laws for parental leave for new parents. Parents are together entitled to 480 days of paid leave from work per child, starting from birth. Sixty days are reserved for each parent, beyond which parents are free to decide how to arrange their leave. The parental allowance is 80 percent of your salary and is paid by the social security system. Fathers may also take ten days leave in connection with the birth of a child.
If you have to stay at home from work in order to look after a sick child under the age of twelve, you may be entitled to temporary parental benefit.

So thanks to the generous laws in this area I got to the opportunity be on paternity leave for seven months with my first born for example - that was worth so much to me.

We also have pretty generous laws when it comes to vacation, at least five weeks per year. Many employers however offer more.

If you have any other questions just drop me a message - I'll try to answer as good as I can

I can also recommend that you have a look at this brief brochure about working and living in Sweden that Electronics Arts has put together, think it will answer your questions even better (not so much focus on economy though):
http://dice.se/wp-content/uploads/Welcome-to-Sweden1.pdf
Here is also a pretty funny video from one of the unions in Sweden, explaining what it's like doing things "Like a Swede":