First Day

So, this will be my last post detailing every aspect of my day for a little while. But this a pretty awesome day if you ask me. It was my first day of work.

So I walked to work this morning. I was lying in  my bed this morning, listening to the rain, thinking about how much it would suck to walk an hour in the rain. Then I thought about taking the bus, and possibly taking a taxi. But the longer I laid there in bed the more I realized walking 3.5 km was the most viable option. So I woke up, broke open my hagelslag for breakfast, only to discover it takes terrible with the brown(weird-flavoured, very nutritious, I'm sure) bread I have bought, and proceeded to make myself cheese sandwiches for lunch. I also put on make-up, it was my first day of work and all. So once I had actually gotten outside it had started to rain. I ran into my roommate (literally) that I had met yesterday, he is from Nigeria but an international student at the university here.

The walk to work was nice, but I have come to the conclusion that no one really walks here, everyone just bikes. So walking 3.5 k wasn't really the funnest.

Work

Once I arrived, I checked in, got a badge and waited for my supervisor to come and get me. Unfortunately, my supervisor has the week off, so I got a stand-in. He seemed pretty cool anyways. I was told a bit about the company, and shown around the office. The office/studio was just one big room, with product designers, visual designers, CAD model makers, interface designers and students. All the desks were in clusters. All the interns sit together, front and center. Next to us are meeting tables. There are cartoon cardboard cut outs all around, and big rubber balls here and there, as well. It was very cool! In the next room they had physical model makers. This means shops! They have a bunch of equipment, some RP stuff, and the wonderful smell of acrylic lingering.

So, one disappointing fact was that I didn't have a computer this morning, it was MIA. So I was shown around the rest of the facilities, got my assignment given to me, and given some background information to read as I waited for my computer. I also saw a prototype for the project that I am working with, which was very very cool. Once my computer did arrive it didn't connect to the internet :( So I went for lunch with the other people in the Design Department. I had packed a bagged lunch, but I bought one instead so that I could go and see the cafeteria. Everyone ate together, and I was able to talk to the other students that were working there. They were very interesting and both from dutch universities and studying design. They tried to explain the Dutch school system to me, but it was very complicated with many levels, I still don't completely understand.

After lunch, I got my computer and email set up. It was pretty straight forward, after a bit more instruction from my stand-in mentor I started my work. The rest of the afternoon passed pretty quickly. It was semi-frustrating that I couldn't eavesdrop on any of my co-workers or the other students working around me. They would switch to English once in a while for my benefit, so I really needed to wait to be invited into the conversation.

Biking


After I was done work, I made a fool of myself, I couldn't figure out how to work the turnstile. The secretary was on the other side, and looked at me like I was completely retarded. I then checked out a bike key. Basically how that works is every evening I check out a bike key, bring it to the Fietstallen (bike parking) and find the awesome old one-speed bike that matches the number on my key chain. I then, can ride it home and back to work the next morning, and I return the key.

So I got my key, I found the bike, and was thoroughly impressed by how nicely it rode, considering. On the way home, I stopped to get a bike lock. Because there was a lock on the back tire, but after being in Amsterdam and other places in the Netherlands, I knew that locking your bike was something you took seriously. So I went into my favourite discount store and grabbed a 10 Euro lock that looked pretty legit. After, when I went to lock up my bike more seriously, I noticed that a lot of people didn't lock their bike up with more then one lock. There were loads that had other locks on the bike (the dinky ones you find in Canada too!) that weren't even attached to anything, just chilling under the seat. So I think, I will probably not bother with a hardcore lock (the majority of the time I will just be locking it up at work and in my backyard)

So I also picked up a phone on the way home. I got a prepaid sim, with 7.50 credit (plus a bonus 7.50)  for 15 Euro. I thought it wasn't a bad deal. But then I realized the rates were pretty stupid. I didn't want to struggle with bringing it back, so I just thought, well I won't use my phone that much anyways right? Then my wonderful mother called and texted me a bunch and cost me 1.50!! :P