Monday, November 20, 2006

Oh, beautiful week numbers...

A Swedish co-worker called today and talked about a deadline in week 5.

In Sweden, organized life is based on week numbers. School semesters, vacations, spring break, work deadlines - everything is referred to as happening during or between a certain week number or numbers. This is very practical because everyone knows exactly what you're talking about.

No talk about the "third week of November". (Or is this week considered the "fourth week of November? Was that first week of November with five days considered a full week?).

Right now it's week 47. Period.

It took me awhile to realize that this doesn't exist in the US. No calenders comes with week numbers and if you say that you're going on vacation on week 24 and 26, people look at you as if you were... hm.. an alien...

5 comments:

malin2 said...

Hahaha!!
Fnissar igenkännande.
Sedan kan man ju se det från en svensk boendes i Sveriges sida som inte förstår att inga andra länder räknar veckor. Många gånger har man fått förklara att du kan du säga datumet, snälla.

Annika said...

AND it is so irritating trying to make plans with Swe friends and family.."Oh let's see..I have vacation week 27..." What the HELL, just give me a DATE instead...
:-)))))

cecilia said...

yep, yep - nickar igenkännande
min mamma envisas fortfarande med att fråga om vi kommer och hälsar på i vecka 20 eller vecka 24 - om man förklarar för henne - igen - att jag inte har nån aning om när det är konstaterar hon att det måste vara jobbigt att inte ha vecko nummer - hur gör folk när de planerar då?
Ja.....använder en almanacka...antagligen....?

Anonymous said...

It's better to give specific dates.

There is one phenomenon in Sweden that is so funny. It's when the calendars come out. You can almost hear the government workers counting the "red days" and figuring out when to take sick time or vacation time to extend the red days into l-o-n-g weekends. It's almost a science here for them to get the maximum time off by precisely calculating those days with sjuk tid och personal time.

JaCal said...

Well, specific dates are fine - but it also very convenient to speak about week numbers. Makes planning so much easier, especially if your a project manager, managing projects over time - the columns in an Excel planing chart can be really small...

Long weekends are great - especially then ones in spring! You sure need that after a long dark winter! ;-)