Born in the vibrant city of Singapore with a unique Eurasian blend of Portuguese and Chinese heritage, my journey has taken me from the bustling streets of Singapore to the serene and open landscapes of Sweden. My educational pursuits in Singapore culminated at tertiary level with two separate Master degrees, after which I embarked on a new adventure in 2002, moving to Sweden. In Sweden, I pursued with deep interest, the knowledge field of applied linguistics, particularly corpus linguistics research methods, earning a doctoral degree from one of northern Europe’s largest universities, the University of Gothenburg. I currently work as Project Manager, focusing on EU and international projects, at RISE Research Institutes of Sweden, at the Division of Bioeconomy and Health, Department of Agriculture and Food. My office is located in Mölndal municipality. Mölndal, known also as the Valley of Mills, is located about ten minutes by bus ride from the city center of Gothenburg to the south. If you’re ever traveling south from Gothenburg to Malmö, whether by train or car, you will likely come by Mölndal municipality. In these pages at cmariec.com, you’ll find my lifestyle musings on culinary and travel adventures from Singapore to Sweden, and from when I lived and worked the Arctic City of Tromsø (2018 to mid-2022). SINGAPORE | SWEDEN | NORTHERN NORWAY Life in Singapore Pursued all academic interests in Singapore, of which the post-graduate years were founded in two separate disciplines. In 2000, graduated with two separate Masters Degrees: (i) Master of Science in Information Studies at the Nanyang Technological University (NTU) in Singapore (ii) Master of Arts in the English Language at the National University of Singapore (NUS). In 1999, represented the Republic of Singapore at the Miss Universe Pageant in Trinidad and Tobago. With this came a variety of film, educational TV, media, and ambassadorial work for the Singapore Tourism Board. Life in Sweden In 2002, moved from Singapore to Sweden in order to pursue a PhD in Gothenburg, where a number of international corporate head offices were located that all had a substantial business presence in Singapore and also Asia in general. In 2009, graduated with a PhD in applied critical linguistics from the faculty of humanities at the University of Gothenburg, with a cross-disciplinary thesis entitled, Swedish management in Singapore: a discourse analysis study, looking particularly into the concepts of assimilation, integration and hierarchy, at top management levels of Swedish-Asian corporations in Singapore. 2013, as research fellow at the Centre for International Business Studies (CIBS), School of Business, Economics and Law at the University of Gothenburg, Sweden, researching the future implications of increasing Asian-Swedish cooperation within the field of international business. The project is entitled Gothenburg in Asia, Asia in Gothenburg, funded by the Anna Ahrenberg Foundation. The project is aligned with the 400 years anniversary of the city of Gothenburg in 2021, and falls under the broad category of Kunskap Göteborg 2021 initiated by city representatives of Gothenburg, Göteborg & Co, University of Gothenburg and Chalmers University of Technology. 2015, was granted the Flexit post-doctoral scholarship by Bank of Sweden Tercentennary Foundation (Riksbankens Jubileumsfond, RJ) for a three year project together with the Swedish-Swiss multinational enterprise ABB. From 2015-17, the research will take place at ABB Corporate Research Sweden HQ in Västerås, and at CIBS during 2017-18. The research focus of the project is how new technologies are perceived and accepted by users and customers, using linguistic methods of data analysis. More information can be found at RJ’s website, at Riksbankens Jubileumsfond (RJ) Felxit 2015. Life in Northern Norway (2018-2022) 2018, late summer. I acquired new work as Market Scientist at Nofima. Having moved to the county of Troms in August, I’m currently enjoying myself, exploring the island city of Tromsø. From the 1900s, this city became known as Paris of the North due to how the people of Tromsø were exceptionally stylish and sophisticated in contrast to the fishing village preconception that many might have of a city located in the Arctic Circle. In my years in Sweden, I have known Sweden to be called the land of the midnight sun. During the long summer mights, it was beautiful to sit and watch the sun’s languid pendulation between east and west, touching the horizon out at sea before going up again. Northern Norway takes this languid pendulation of the sun to the extreme. It is not only known as the land of the midnight sun, but it is also the land of polar nights and the northern lights. This is my new adventure. And in these lifestyle blog pages, you’ll find my personal thoughts, insights and musings. Cheryl Marie Cordeiro | PhD MSc MA ACADEMIC REFLECTIONS | CV LIFESTYLE BLOG

Reverberations of Royal summer parties at a Swedish 14th century castle

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A copper engraving of the castle.
Text & Photo © JE Nilsson, CM Cordeiro 2013

North of Stockholm sits a grand and picturesque castle that was the residence of Princess Sophia of Sweden from 1578-1611. It is today in fact the only privately owned Royal castle in Sweden. It has a rich history that is best associated with Sweden’s King Gustaf III and his young Danish consort Sophia Magdalena. They lived in the castle during the 1700s enjoying a mostly carefree and happy life. From the 1300s the castle belonged to a succession of Swedish royalty that included Gustav Vasa, John III, King Gustav II Adolf and HSH Hereditary Prince Frederick, who eventually became Frederick I of Sweden and reigned at the time of the foundation of the Swedish East India company (1731-1813) who had their first ship ever sailing to China named after him i.e. – Fredericus Rex Svecia.

In 1917 the castle was acquired by a Swedish industrialist who eventually took a great interest in Chinese porcelain collecting in a circle of friends that included the then reigning King Gustaf VI Adolf and the then young arts historian professor Bo Gyllensvärd. The castle and its substantial porcelain collection was subsequently inherited by his children in 1967. The family settled in the castle trying the best they could turning it into a home. Today, the castle has been passed on to new owners and theatrical performances, weddings and other large banquets continue to be held at the location.

The castle and its grounds, having seen its fair share of social parties and crowds moving through its rooms, reverberated such energies that waxed and waned with time of day and seasons of the year. As with most castle grounds in Sweden, as night falls, the silence that encompasses those grounds become so deafening that the drop of a pin on a polished tabletop might come as a relief. But the castle grounds were seldom quiet, especially at night.

A while back when the castle was still a home and its grandeur silently lingering in private hands, after a long day and night of pleasant conversation on our common interest in Chinese porcelain, the topic eventually ventured over into the supernatural and the possibilities of this huge building housing some uninvited guests. “Well not really”, the hostess answered, “we don’t really think of any of it much. It is just kind of part of the house but incidentally, I hosted you all on our guest floor and was just curious if any of you experienced anything unusual this night?”
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Chokladkalaset 2013, Göteborg

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Cheryl Marie Cordeiro, 1O4P9102a

At the annual Gothenburg chocolate festival.
Rule Forty-two.
Text & Photo © JE Nilsson, CM Cordeiro 2013

I didn’t think I would meet Douglas Adams’ thoughts in this context, but this was an event of forty-two. In Adams’ The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (1979:181), in answer to the ultimate question of life, the super computer, Deep Thought, was adamant forty-two was the answer.

“Forty-two!… Is that all you’ve got to show for seven and a half million years’ work?”

“I checked it very thoroughly,” said the computer, “and that quite definitely is the answer. I think the problem, to be quite honest with you, is that you’ve never actually known what the question is.”

“But it was the Great Question! The Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe, and Everything.. .. ”
“Yes,” said Deep Thought with the air of one who suffers fools gladly, “but what actually is it?”

Thing is, Adams was not alone, for Lewis Carroll might have known the same.
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BARCELONA

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Timelapse of Barcelona by Alexandr Kravtsov. Just beautiful.

As David Bickley wrote, of A.Kravtsov’s 480gb of images:

“What’s even more impressive is what Alexandr went through to make this piece. In his words it took “a broken camera, lost flash drive, near 100 subway rides, 24 000 photos, endless hours of post production and rendering and 480 gigabytes of material.” That’s insane!”

BARCELONA. MOTION TIMELAPSE from Alexandr Kravtsov on Vimeo.

Art, wine and a reading

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The Swedish East Indiaman Gotheborg III, by a Swedish Marine artist, Niklas Amundson.
Text & Photo © JE Nilsson, CM Cordeiro 2013

The smiles were friendly and the smell of – what? – newly lacquered frames? filled the air as I walked through the solitaire gallery. Bright lights, strategically placed, to accent the finest of details whether of paint on canvas or the deep burgundy of the wines against the glasses in hands.

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I studied frame after frame of paintings on the walls of the gallery, my gaze pausing slightly longer at – a surrealistic Miró. With wine swirling in the glass in hand, that wasn’t for my drinking, the picture on the wall sent my mind into a vortex of thoughts, with the words of Charles Bukowski’s South of No North (1973:85-86):
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Bok & Bibliotek, Göteborg Book Fair 2013

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Cheryl Marie Cordeiro, Bokmässa2013 441 598

At the Göteborg Book Fair 2013.
Text & Photo © JE Nilsson, CM Cordeiro 2013

It’s been a few years, since 2008, that I’ve found myself at the annual Gothenburg Book Fair, one of the Nordic regions largest market place for the book trade that began as a trading platform for teachers and librarians. Since opening their doors in 1985 with just 5,000 visitors, the book fair has today, more than 101,000 visitors over four days, with three parallel running sessions of conferences, seminars and events, alongside sales stands and an International Rights Centre for agents and publishers. The book fair celebrates their 29th anniversary this year at the Swedish Exhibition and Congress Centre.
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Multidisciplinary, Interdisciplinary, Transdisciplinary

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The past decade has seen an increasing call for the field of International Business studies (IB) to embrace interdiciplinarity, the interest moving from cross-disciplinary and multidisciplinary in nature to one that encouraged the blurring of boundaries and the integration of disciplines to render new insights.

In a recent roundtable session, the terms multidisciplinary (MD), interdisciplinary (ID) and trans-disciplinary (TD) were discussed in relation to the field of IB. As could be expected we all entered the debate with our own tacit knowledge of the field, to be put on the table and to disentangle our various definitions.

The task proved more interesting when one paper on the definitions of these words was placed on the table, that now set a reference point. And then more papers were presented that set a number of different reference points.

We did what we do best in such situations and that was to survey the ground from a top-down perspective, and then break for coffee.

With a single cardamom cookie on the side that came with the Swedish fika in times of brainstorming, and sipping the strong doses of black coffee from the small coffee mugs in hand we set out to consider the various viewpoints.

If I had previously thought, that the list of 164 different definitions of the concept of culture, already back in 1952, by American anthropologists, Kroeber and Kluckhohn was confounding, only because as Apte (1994:2001) wrote in the ten-volume Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics, “Despite a century of efforts to define culture adequately, there was in the early 1990s no agreement among anthropologists regarding its nature.“, where Avruch (1998) noted that much of the difficulty of understanding the concept of culture stems from the different usages of the term ranging from high culture to popular culture and then culture as values and beliefs, that are still dominant in general discourse today, then the disentanglement of the three concepts of MD, ID and TD would certainly take more hours of critical reading.

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With ears to the ground

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The fika break is a Swedish near holy opportunity to stay tuned in on what is really going on.
Text & Photo © CM Cordeiro 2013

It was 2004.

We were sitting in the canteen of the main administrative building. The canteen was located on the higher floors, with high ceilings and large windows that overlooked three other buildings with chimneys billowing smoke.

At the table where we sat, the aroma of a hot cup of Zoéga coffee wafted through the air.

Coming back to Sweden
The story at hand was how reintegration into the Swedish organisation – coming back to Sweden to work, after having been abroad for a few years – constitutes just as much of a culture and organisation shock for many, as those who go to foreign countries to work.

Little attention paid to reintegration
While most organisations take care of practicalities, even giving their top managers / employees cultural orientation to the new culture they would soon be experiencing as part of their overseas posting to a foreign subsidiary, the aspect of re-acculturation when coming back to Sweden thereafter, is little paid attention to. Most would take for granted that employees would delight in coming back to Sweden and just being relieved doing so, reintegrating right back to where they were.

    – It’s difficult to be back in Sweden for me. I started in Germany, that was during the late 1980s, then from Germany, I was moved to Poland, and then from Poland, I was moved to Latin America. From Latin America they decided it was Japan and now I am back here in Sweden. I have been working for this company for more than twenty years now. And my wife didn’t want to come back to Sweden. She really liked Latin America. Japan, not so much but she would have preferred staying in Japan than coming back here. I come back here, you think my colleagues would be happy to see me? No, you are like an outcast. In fact, some even tell you, it is not good that you have been abroad working, because you forget the Swedish culture and what it’s like to work here. You are in your own world, and frankly, I feel useless. The company should have a re-orientation programme for people like me, to reintroduce ourselves to the home company.

    – You feel, useless? But, you have directorship, or at least, that is your job title.

    – Yes that is my job title but what you do and what you feel, that is different from the title given to you in the company. The title could be because I have been here for very many years, so in a way, they are obliged to give me this position. Or course, it is also merited, I have a lot of experience. But you can say, I feel a little lost at the moment.
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