Hello!
I thought about how I shall let you know more about me and I decided to tell you a little about my lifetime story. Different from the way you told me about you but this is my way! If I should give you all details I would have to write a book but here I will tell you what I have done, how I think and what I like. Maybe I am not doing the right thing writing to you like this? Excuse me for talking only about myself but I would be very glad if you as well could tell me more about your life and your thoughts. If you do not like the way I write, please tell me. I will also tell you more if you want and I am sure that I can tell you a lot more if we meet and after that. I think that I have nothing to hide, what has happened has happened and the opinions and thoughts I write about are something I stand for.
My family is rather small, my mother is 89 years old, she is living by herself and moved to a small town some 100 km from Stockholm when my father passed away in the age of 86, 12 years ago. My younger brother is also living in that town; he used to be a high ranking military officer and is now working at Uppsala University where he also got his M.Sc. in Engineering during his military career. He is married and has two children in their late teen ages. My son Philip, 19 years old, is living by himself and is studying to become a Medical Doctor. Sad to say I do not have as much contact with him as I would like to have. I lived with his mother for about 25 years but then we realized that our relation was over.
My parents, my father was an Engineer and my mother a housewife, were not rich but they gave me and my brother a good childhood, living in a small apartment. My father wanted to give us things but had not the financial resources to do it. He promised us things but could some time not fulfil his promises. When I was a kid that hurt me but later I understood why.
To get some money I started to work early in parallel with school and I continued to do so during all my studying time. As soon as I could, when I was 19, I took a Taxi license and I drove taxi extra to finance my studies and to buy things. I did not have much time for girls as I was studying and working hard but I had a few relations.
My grandmother, my mother’s mother, was very dear to me but she passed away 18 years ago, 90 years old. My mother had great problems with pain in her back when I was a kid and I lived with my grandparents on and off for several years so she could rest. When my grandfather passed away I moved to grandma permanently and came to live with her during my first university years, before I bought my own condo.
My first sport was swimming and later I competed in downhill skiing but my main interest in my teen years was motorcycles and later cars. Today I enjoy swimming, downhill skiing, gym exercising and I also like to walk long distances.
Even though I thought that school was boring when I was a young kid, I started to study intensively later. I started to study Medicine but changed my mind, thinking that I would be a bad Doctor but a good Engineer, after a while and my first degree was in Mechanical Engineering. I loved to learn about the different engineering subjects but my real favourite was mathematics, this is the tool you need to understand engineering so I was successful in all the other subjects thanks to that. After my first exam I studied Engineering Physics at the Royal Swedish Institute of Technology in Stockholm and Uppsala University. Later I got my B.Sc. in Economics, Business Administration and Business Law from Stockholm University. I also studied for an Executive International MBA from Uppsala University and Northwestern University in Chicago, USA. Most of my studies after Engineering School were done in parallel with working.
After graduation in Engineering I had to do the mandatory military service for a year, I was ordered to be a Military Policeman in traffic duty. This because I am rather tall, about 190 cm, but mainly because I know how to calculate, we were calculating strength of roads and bridges so we could plan for movements of military units and also directing the traffic flows. I continued to drive taxi extra during my military service.
I have been interested in flying aircraft for many years; I started to study for a pilot’s license before my first real job. During the last 3 years of flying I flew 200 hours and that is a lot for a private pilot. I had a European Private Pilot’s License (PPL) and that was validated in Thailand so I could fly myself by hiring aircraft at my club, Thai Flying Club in Bang Phra.
In Sweden qualified pilots can be appointed to fly for the Swedish Armed Forces in the Army flight wing and I had a contract to fly for them not less than 34 hours per year. We were organized in Airborne Intelligence Units and I flew surveillance missions. We also had to do ordinary military training apart from flying. My contract with the Army expired 4 years ago and I decided not to renew it as it forced me to be in Sweden for a certain time every year and I did not want to restrict my freedom to go to other countries when I wanted.
Now I have given up flying, I have flown my hours and look back at many good memories. It was a great time with many good friends, a kind of friendship that is hard to find from other people than from those you sometimes have to trust to put your life in their hands…
After military service I got my first job as a Trainee with one of the then largest Swedish companies, Alfa-Laval, after the traineeship I got a position as a Research and Development (R&D) Engineer working with heat engineering design and calculations. Apart from R&D I also had a role as technical support to marketing departments and that meant that I travelled all over the world. I came to work more and more in marketing and after a while I was appointed Product Manager for Heat Exchangers, responsible for worldwide technical sales and marketing within a business segment. In parallel with that I studied for my B.Sc. at the University of Stockholm, sponsored by the company. After graduating I was appointed as Division Controller and thus went from engineering into administration.
I have always wanted to live in other countries and so far I have lived in Sweden, England, Austria, Singapore, the USA, Sri Lanka, Bolivia and Thailand. I have also travelled worldwide frequently for many years.
I am an Engineer, and will always be, so I quit from Alfa-Laval and started to work in the Telecommunication Industry instead, with Swedish Telecom, there I was a Business Controller working mostly with engineering related business problems in the company’s about 50 foreign subsidiaries. I was also involved in the development of the GSM mobile telephone system which is the international standard today.
After a few years in the area I got an offer to work as Business Developer for a Saudi Arabian oil company. I was travelling around the world buying other oil companies to spread the company’s risks. There were big money around and I also earned some money but I only worked and worked, had no free time. The company sponsored an Executive International MBA program at Uppsala University and Northwestern University in Chicago, USA for me so I did that I parallel with work.
One of the company’s former vice presidents asked me if I wanted to join his Management Consulting Company as a Senior Partner and I did that for almost a year, working mainly as consultant for major oil companies.
Then an old colleague from the Telecom Industry called me and asked if I wanted to work to start up a new telecom company in Sri Lanka, I looked at it and the job was so interesting that I could not say no. I spent almost 2 years at Sri Lanka as Vice President of Telecom Systems and IT of Suntel Ltd. and then I moved back to work with Ericsson (the largest supplier of telecom equipment in the world), in Sweden. I had an appointment as Business Area Manager for Telecom Support Systems and was responsible for many employees around the world. This was again administrative work so when a customer in Bolivia had severe technical problems I volunteered to go there as a Systems Consultant to solve the problems. After about two years the job was finished and I moved back to Sweden again. Now I got a job as Ericsson’s Global Liaison Director, a job with good salary but it also meant long hours and a lot of travelling.
I have sacrificed a lot when working as hard as I did but I liked it and no one forced me, it was my own choice… I had only a few friends as I spent most of the time working but the ones I have were dear. I had no problem at all to learn to know new people but it was difficult to maintain relations due to my work situation. One day I sat down and asked myself “what are you doing?” and I decided to quit Ericsson and to start to live a little, not only work…
First I got some consultancy jobs for development companies; among other things I was Vice President and Chief Operating Officer of the company that developed Bluetooth Wireless Communication. After that I started an engineering company together with some friends. We were developing electronic equipment and my role was to be President of the company which meant mainly management of projects. We got some good patents and one of these was attractive to the Danish Bang&Olufsen (B&O) company, they bought my share of the company and as a part of the deal I got full salary for 3 years without any requirement to work, they just were afraid that I should start a competing company so in return for the salary I promised not to work in Europe for that time.
So what should I do? I travelled to Thailand to look for a condo to buy and at the airport on the way back I met an old friend, he is president of an American multinational company, and he asked me if I wanted to take care of their business in Asia. I said that I think about it but after some time I decided to sta