A Taste of Sweden                                                          Jan. 22

Today we went to visit Valea AB and met with Andrew Hammond who is a European Patent Attorney. To get to the company we had to take a short ferry across the water because it is located on an island off of Gothenburg. It is a technology and law based company and it is owned completely by the staff members. At Valea they help clients receive patents for new designs and inventions. When we first arrived at the company we all had to sign our names on a piece of paper as part of  non disclosure act. Because the company works with new inventions, they want to ensure client privileges and keep their new inventions a secret from competitors. The company has a variety of European patent attorneys, trademark attorneys, and design attorneys. With such a big variety of jobs, the employees have to have a variety of degrees as well. The employees have either a masters of science, engineering, law, or PhD degrees. 

Quotes from Valea:

"An invention is a new idea that helps mankind."

"An invention can be a product or  method."

Hasselblad Visit

After an interesting presentation and very good lunch at Valea we headed over to Hasselblad to meet with the product manager, Ove Bengston. We had a brief presentation about how the company got started, the first couple of cameras that were made, and the new cameras that look more modern. Hasselblad cameras are very unique in its amazingly impressive clarity and high resolution capabilities. The cameras are very expensive because of their high quality photographs and multiple functions. The least expensive one is around 8,000 Euro which is about $9,000. The cameras have the ability to be in black and white and color. The very first picture on the moon was taken from a Hasselblad camera. Hasselblad cameras are used for  lot of arial images as well as modeling and by professional photographers. The best part of this company was being able to see the employees working on the cameras because it was all hand made!

Stained hands from cutting the beets

For dinner we went to the Taste of Sweden where we split up into groups and made our own four course meal. My group was in charge of making the the starting dish which was reindeer, a red wine sauce, fried sourdough bread crumbs, beets and onions with garlic. Making this meal for the whole group was incredibly fun! We were all running around the kitchen trying to get everything cooked and doing a good job with it. We had the help of two chefs, but for the most part we were on our own trying to figure out where everything was and how to cook it. When I was cutting up the beets my got stained red and it did not look very pretty. It was such a fun night being able to work with everyone and doing something new. In the end all the food turned out to be very good! Everyone was laughing and telling stories having an amazing time with each other. It was a really good way for all of us to bond and get to know each other a little bit better.

Daily Reflections:

• I am not the best chef
• working together as a group is more efficient than working for yourself
• reindeer is surprisingly really good

Swedish Taste