So after Amsterdam, it was time to take an hour and half hour train ride down south to Eindhoven.
We were able to sit first class which gave us lots of room for our luggage. It would've been extremely tight had we not.
Little did we know, this would be the last time we'd see greenery the remainder of our trip.
We finally arrived to Eindhoven train station and drug our luggage to the hotel we'd be staying in for work.
The rooms were good. Plenty of space to unpack our stuff, and a big work station.
View from the window:
And the other side:
After a bit of settling in, we headed out to explore the place we'd be living for the next two weeks.
We called it an early night since we had to report to work in the morning. Lucky for us, a colleague of ours from Invivo that now lives in Eindhoven agreed to meet with us at the train station in the morning. The next few mornings, we'd have to catch a train, and then a bus to get to the Philips campus.
January 14th, 2013:
As planned, we met with Dale, caught the train and bus and made it to Philips Best.
Here we started with a kick-off meeting and introductions, and immediately started on training. It was a successful first day there. I was pleasantly surprised with the helpful of the production personnel training us. I didn't wear the proper shoes this day that were ESD safe because I wanted to dress nice in my wedges, and I honestly didn't expect to train this day -- only observe the processes. My counterpart in Best offered me his boss's ESD shoes, which ended up working out well.
Nerd alert:
I wanted to share with everyone what I actually did there with pictures, but unfortunately, I don't want to break any rules and post photos of our products. I did however, edit some of the photos and blacked out the products I was working on. I have to warn you, when you see them, you'll agree they're pretty ghetto because of my editing, but what can ya do?
Sitting beside me is my first trainer, Mieke. She was a trip, and I really enjoyed her company! She used to actively participate in Zumba until it became boring to her, where she then picked up a country line dancing class with some of her coworkers. The following week, she shared with me a video of her in the class with everyone. It truly was a good old-fashioned boot-scootin' boogie! I loved it.
Writing out a recap of the day:
Here is another one of our trainers, Chris.
After the work day was over, we returned to our hotel and eventually went out to explore some more of downtown Eindhoven. There was this weird egg shaped architecture that ended up being a bike shop inside. To my understanding, the locals think this is ugly and are upset the city started putting up these weird structures.
Eindhoven is pretty cutesy downtown. There are shopping malls and restaurants just as you'd see in the states. It just so happens Eindhoven houses a lot of foreigners. It was very rare that I met anyone who couldn't speak English. We also always received English menus.
We did stop by an old Philips factory turned restaurant called Usine. It was really neat inside. I'm bummed I didn't get any good photos of the inside, but here is the outside:
January 15th, 2013:
I forgot to mention earlier, but Wesley called me every morning around 6:25 am to ask me if I was heading down to breakfast. I am thankful for this because there was one morning when I had overslept. This morning, however, Wesley asked me if I had looked outside yet, letting me know it snowed! I hadn't yet, and ran right over. I couldn't believe it. When we were in Amsterdam, I asked the hotel receptionist when the last time it snowed was, and he guessed February 2012, and that they weren't expecting anymore until February 2013. I was kind of disappointed to hear this... but that disappointment went away when I saw this in Eindhoven. I haven't seen snow since ~2009, and that was the first time I had been in it then.
Needless to say, it was a much more interesting trip to get to work.
The bicycles were even beautiful when they were covered in snow. For a lot of people, this is their only form of transportation, so the snow can't stop them from getting to the train station.
Me and Wesley on the train:
Had to get a photo in front of the main Philips building. I never went in this building because the entire campus is made up of many buildings, but it's a good photo-op.
On break times, we took advantage of looking at the snow. At one point, the Philips personnel were giggling at us as we stared out the windows, and they just acted like it was any other day.
I told my Invivo coworkers that I HAD to make a snowman! To be honest, I didn't want the Best employees to watch me do it because I thought I'd feel embarrassed. We walked around one of the buildings to where a pond usually is, and I tried my best to put a mini snowman together. The snow was so fresh though that it was had to get it to clump together. I tried to roll it, I tried to cram it hard into a ball, but no matter that I did, it would fall apart. Here is the best I could do:
Here is where the pond normally is. That's one thing I really liked about the campus are all the pretty areas outside in nature.
They were "green" when it came to their trash. Every day after we'd eat in the cafeteria, we had to separate our trash by paper, plastic, food waste, and regular trash. I think it's a great idea.
Another great thing about their facility was having fancy coffee machines available. It's the type you walk up to the machine, press a button, and the coffee pours into a little plastic cup ready to go. It was perfect for thawing out.
More photos of the work day:
Production usually left around 3:30 pm, so we had time to gather notes and use the "Invivo Room" to contact colleagues back home in the states. 3:30 pm NL time made it 9:30 am Gainesville time.
Walking over to the Invivo Room:
View from the Invivo Room:
Me and Wesley on the bus back to the train station:
This night I decided to go out to dinner alone. Sometimes there is such a thing of spending too much time together with people. I felt safe in the area, so I explored a few streets, found another frozen pond, ate at a cafe, then headed home.
January 16th, 2013:
Side story: This is the day my boss would arrive to Best from the USA. He was actually supposed to be there the 15th, but due to flights being delayed, he made it the next day. Nevertheless, we now had access to a rental car.
In the same hallway the Invivo Room is in, there's an interesting painting on the wall of an aerial view of a bathroom. I never got the story to it, but I am wondering if it's a painting a child made that has benefited from Philips technology. At any rate, here is a photo, open to your interpretation:
By this time, I was actually getting pretty sick. I was coughing a lot and feeling some aches and fevers. Mieke hooked me up the best she could with some cough drops. She agreed I was sounding like a man more and more. ha
Picture later that night of one of the churches in Eindhoven:
January 17th, 2013:
Since we had access to a rental car, we took a trip after work to a cute city called Maastricht.
Just being silly in the middle of the square:
This was a beautiful cartwheel, but we could never get the picture just right.
Guy on the right gave us directions twice that night. He was actually kind of funny because he offered to take a photo of all of us (which you see above), and made a joke about running away with the camera, something that honestly crossed my mind before he said it.
Church:
Finally settled on a restaurant which had interesting decor on the ceiling.
The bathroom mirror at this restaurant had advertisements light up all over it. I saw one that was really bizarre and actually waited for it to cycle through again so I could catch a photo. I only recognize one word, and apparently it doesn't mean the exact same in Dutch. I asked someone to translate it for me, and it wasn't anything crazy at all... something about installing some water system so you can take a bath (I think).
Graffiti-ed sign:
When we went back to the parking garage to leave, my boss had misplaced the parking ticket. We spent some time searching for it, which we would eventually find -- days later. haha.
January 18th, 2013:
That morning, we checked out of our hotel because we were going to see about traveling some over the weekend. Wesley was always a gentleman to me, offering to tote my laptop/luggage around when he could.
My boss visited with a supplier this day and caught a ride to work with another colleague of ours, so this meant that someone needed to drive us to work in the rental. You know I jumped at the opportunity. Driving in the NL is definitely different than FL, especially with snow on the ground. There are tons of bicyclists, like I've said before, who also have their own traffic lights, but It actually wasn't too bad at all. The GPS in the car helped a lot.
So I had made pretty good progress on the first product this week that I could technically start on the next product, which we originally hadn't planned on working on till the following week.
Before we left for the day, Chris (mentioned earlier in this post), gave us some Speculaas after I had asked him about them earlier in the week (they were recommended to us). Apparently Philips Best gives out of a package of these for Christmas, and these particular ones are a higher-end brand. We tried them out and compared them to tasting like gingerbread cookies. Not bad.
As our day was coming to an end, snow was still on the ground. In the picture below, I tried to catch a photo of a rabbit (left of center) that was running around.
This would conclude our first week of work at Best.
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