When my blog got sick...

So I finally got around to looking into how many of my blog posts were lost when my blog got the flu about a month ago.  I ended up loosing about 25 posts including both plant trek trips.  If by any crazy chance someone subscribed to my blog and has copies of my old posts I would really appreciate it if you could send me anything you have.  Thanks!

Amster-Amster-Dam-Dam-Dam!

On Friday night a group of people from Novartis (my internship company) asked me if I wanted to go to Amsterdam and I said "sure, why not?"

As a side note, Amster-Amster-Dam-Dam-Dam is a song my Mom used to sing with her classmates when she was little.  Probably so they could say Dam!

Amsterdam is about a four hour drive from Marburg Germany so we got up at 6 AM (I did not get to bed until 2 AM that night) and took the Autobahn to Amsterdam.  Driving on the Autobahn was pretty fun and it did not feel that different than driving on a US interstate.  We were traveling 150 kph (90 mph) and getting passed, but I have experienced that in the US as well...it was just legal.  A good portion of the road had slowdown areas as well (and even more for large trucks) and that helped keep people from going too fast in dangerous areas.  My only complaint with the Autobahn was when exiting or changing to another Autobahn.  The exits would not list which of the two roads (one exit ramp that split into two direction) went North and which went South.  The signs only listed 2 cities that each road went towards.  This makes traveling difficult when you don't recognize either city.

These are some fin shots from the road tip:

• Top and bottom left: A fun old fashion car (could not catch the make/model)


• Top middle: A windmill


• Bottom middle: A bathroom I had to pay to use, but that gave me a coupon for the store (I did not find out it was a coupon until it was too late.  Blast!)


• Top and bottom right: Wind turbines.  I'm not a big fan of wind turbines because they are not feasible solutions to the energy situation.  Sure, they collect free energy (wind) but there are so many issues with them (do not generate power all the time, many areas are not suitable for wind collection, etc.) that I think we could better spend the money researching other energy options.  Regardless of my feelings about wind energy, these things are massive and impressive to see.  The blades are so long that they are moving at incredible speeds.  Once again, I will defer to HowStuffWorks.com's articles.

The rest of these pictures are not in order of when they were taken, but they do give a good idea of what Amsterdam looks like and some of the sights I saw.

• On the left is the house that Anne Frank and her family lived as they hid from the Nazi's.  The museum there was excellent (though no pictures were allowed so all I have is this shot from outside) and you had the chance to walk around the rooms where she and her companions stayed.  They also had historical items such as the paperwork documenting when she arrived in Auschwitz and her actual diary.

• Top left: Once again, another tiny tiny car.  I do not believe that two typical Americans could fit in this car (the seats were smaller than an airplane seat or a wooden bleacher seat at Fenway)


• Middle and bottom left: We passed a band playing American Classic Rock (though they did not seem to know all of the words to some songs) on top of a convertible.


• Middle and right pictures:  Random pictures from the marketplace in Amsterdam that opens up on Saturday.  The line the streets with these wooden tables and people sell all sots of things.  This went on for numerous city blocks.  I had to get a picture of the flowers because they were everywhere.  All over the city were stores for growing flowers, flowers already cut, and many houses had flower boxes outside their windows.

• Top and middle left:  Look at how there are no railings next to the canals.  The top picture is a restaurant where the patrons sit along the edge and the middle picture is another restaurant and although you cannot see it in this picture, there are cars parked parallel to the canal just a few feet out of frame (you can actually see a car in the bottom right picture that was supposed to be a picture of a fun looking boat)...again, no rails so I hope you know how to parallel park really well.  You just would NOT see that in America.  Everyone (the city, the restaurant, the person walking by who did not warn you) would be sued if someone fell/drove into a canal.  I'm actually with the Europeans on this one.  Let the idiots get wet!

[caption id="attachment_1292" align="alignnone" width="89" caption="it took me about 1 second to find a picture of a car in an Amsterdam canal"][/caption]

• These other pictures in the collage are a number of different shots of the various canals I passed.  I knew Amsterdam had canals but I had no idea how many canals it had.  I also did not realize how planned out and structured the city was.  For an old city, the canals and roads are very straight and symmetrical.

Look at how straight the outer canals are! The engineer in me loves symmetry.

• One of the funnest looking sights in Amsterdam was the beerbike pictured above.  The vehicle was a movable bar that is powered by drunk legs.  The bartender has a PA system and people were required to sing karaoke as the group drank and drove.  All I know is that it looked like a ton of fun.

• More scenic pictures from Amsterdam.  I've seen this all over Europe but I wanted to point out the construction occurring on the train station.  You can see it (or "not" see it) in the bottom right picture.  If you look at the bottom half of the building you will notice that it is a mural painted to look like the building to cover up the construction that is going on at the moment.  It is a cool way to make construction to historic building look a little less unsightly.  I've seen the same thing in other parts of Europe, but I'm not sure I ever mentioned it in a picture before.

One of my favorite series of books is the Aubry-Maturin series by Patrick O'Brian.  They made a movie out of called Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World starring Russel Crowe (very well done movie!) and ever since reading that series I have loved the old wooden ships (aka Diversity).

• Bottom right: I am sitting on the "throne of ease" aka toilet, but I am not actually using it.

[caption id="attachment_1293" align="alignnone" width="150" caption="If referring to an old wooden ship as Diversity means nothing to you: Stop! Put down whatever you are doing and go and rent Anchorman. You apparently have not memorized your lines."][/caption]

• And finally, the highlight of my weekend: urinating outside.  It's all legal in Amsterdam.

You may notice there are no pictures from the Red Light District of Amsterdam...well pictures are not allowed.  You may also notice that there are no pictures of a "coffee' bar...well, we didn't do any of that so :-P

Vroom vroom (more like buzz buzz)!

As I mentioned before, Novartis graciously provided Johanna and me with a car to share.  It is a Ford Fiesta and it is a fun little car to drive.

• Top left and middle: Outside pictures of the car.  I don't really know why I covered the license, but they do that on TV and TV is smarter than me, so I follow TV blindly.


• Bottom left, bottom right, and middle right: Proof that Johanna and I can both drive a stick (manual transmission), because the car is in fact a stick.  I learned how to drive a stick in undergrad because my friend had a stick and because I don't drink and was the only sober person around...I drove.  I knew how a stick worked more or less, but I could not have drawn you a diagram (like I could with an engine) and even though I am a chemical engineer, and as AN engineer this upset me.  Naturally I headed over to howstuffworks.com and found the following article on manual transmission.  I love the internet!
  
  
  
  • Also note how dirty the floor is! Completely unacceptable in Germany where of course zey take good care of zer cars.  Time to break out the vacuum.
  
  
  
  


• Bottom middle left: Check out the sweet push button start.  The keys never leave my pocket.  The car unlocks when I walk up and gets mad if I leave the car without shutting the door (like when I ran into my apartment real quick and left Jo in the car, it beeped at her).  It also gets mad if we start moving before putting seat belts on.  Loud noises!


• Bottom middle right: I forgot to write the engine's sweet stats, though I did snap a quick photo.  The car buzzes like a bee and as I said is quite fun to drive.  I'll do a little more digging the next time I am in the car and update this post.
  
  
  
  • Update!  The car has a 1.25 L engine that produces a whopping 82 bhp which lists 0-60mph in 13.3s.
  
  
  
  

As a side note to reinforce the sunlight at all hours of the day thing, these photos were taken at 9 PM.

We came, we saw, we conquered

Since I was sick the first weekend I had not seen much of Marburg so we decided to take a blitzkrieg approach (when in Germany do as ze Germans do) and walk around the city for two straight days.

[caption id="attachment_933" align="alignnone" width="220" caption="I must admit that since landing in Germany I have had this uncontrollable itch to build up an Army and then attack on one too many fronts...I think it is something in the water"][/caption]

Our friend Conner from MIT (doing an internship at Audi) came to Marburg this weekend to visit friends so he joined/escorted us while touring the city.  Conner did a semester abroad in undergrad to learn German and he did that semester in Marburg, so a number of his friends are still in the area.

First we just walked around the city.



saw a cool little one person car



Then we went up to the castle.

• Bottom middle: Johanna and I are drinking water from a statue of a pig's head.  It is the ONLY water fountain I have seen in Germany.  They simply prefer beer.

On Sunday, we hiked up the hill to Rapunzal's castle and got a view of Marburg from the other side of the valley (and of course, there is a biergarten there).

[caption id="attachment_1243" align="alignnone" width="112" caption="The heart shaped item on this sparked a discussion among the Germans we were with about the proper translation for tacky...especially since the heart lights up if you call a local number dedicated to the heart and it stays lit as long as you stay on the phone"][/caption]

All in all, a great weekend.

Company provided housing rocks!

As I mentioned, Novartis put Johanna and I up in Marburg and we are living in style.  Here are pictures from my apartment.  Given that I am trying to channel my inner-Stephanie (my older sister who is so good about taking pictures when she is on trips) and I have a ton of pictures, I have decided to start hardcore using Picasa's collage feature.

• Top left: My street name


• Top middle: Immediately after turning onto my street, you encounter a section of road that is way to small for two cars.  Zis is no problem as sidewalks function as roads in Germany (and most of Europe from what I have seen)


• Top right: my street


• Bottom left: My building is the further white one on the left


• Bottom middle: My building


• Bottom right: My front door

• Center Picture: My kitchen


• Top left: My limited supply of warm food (bread, rice, pasta, cookies, and Flinstones gummies vitamins)


• Bottom left: My limited supply of cold food (sandwich meat and cheese, coke, ketchup, mustard, and I have since added brats)


• Top right (2 pictures): My washing machine and my dryer (a rack)


• Bottom right: My ironing board (kitchen counter top)

• Top left: Most of the windows in the apartment have these gas heater...I can't tell if they work (it was cold enough to need heat during my first week) because they never feel hot even if I turn the knob to a higher number.  Maybe the have sensors and it never got THAT cold.  We'll find out when winter comes


• Top middle: My desk in my bedroom


• Top right: Closets in the bedroom


• Middle left: My small bathroom


• Middle right: Living room that I am never in with a TV that gets CNN and BBC in English and everything else in German


• Bottom left: Picture of my bathroom door looking through the front door (my room is upstairs so I have to go downstairs to pee, bleh)


• Bottom middle: Stairs to my place


• Bottom right: My bed with retro sheets (when I was sick with the flu I think I saw faces in the sheets but it turns out they are just crazy shapes...so I guess that means I was hallucinating a little bit...maybe it was the Nyquil...thankfully I brought cold medicine and headache medicine with me in my bags).

And of course, ze one embarrassing thing about moving here...

My name is Drew Hill, I attend MIT in a dual degree masters program, and I'm an idiot.



Do you see the little straps to the right side of the window (the picture above is two pictures of the same window)?  Apparently, if you adjust that strap the large wooden slats outside of the window drop down and block out the light  (see how dark the right picture is).  This is essential because it gets dark around 11PM and gets light at 4:30 AM.

[caption id="attachment_1236" align="alignnone" width="150" caption="apparently, Europe is much farther north than the US...who knew? In my mind, they were always a similar distance from the equator because the temperature ranges are similar...but that is obviously not the case"][/caption]

When my landlords came by my apartment after the first week they asked me not to drag the decorative curtains to the middle of the window (to block the light in my face) and instead use the wooden slats.  Boy oh boy did I feel dumb.  Two things in my defense though: 1) Johanna has slats at her place and did not know what they were for either and 2) in Florida I have seen similar straps on hurrican shutters (heavy metal shutter) so mentally I just discounted the straps. I'm still an idiot though.

I have arrived in ze Germany

This post is a bit delayed but that is not entirely my fault. I arrived in Germany on June 4^th (or as I have to get used to saying it while I am here, the 4^th of June) but the internet at my apartment was just turned on today (the 10^th of June). As long winded as I am, this post, which should have been spread out over two or three posts had I had the internets when I got here, will be pretty long.

Lets start where I left off with my last post, my initial orientation. Overall, not too much to say about the orientation. We were in Cambridge for three days where we heard quick presentations from members of the V&D executive and management team and learned about what products they make, the industry as a whole, the culture of Novartis as a whole and V&D, etc. The process was useful, but I will say that like anything that requires you to sit in a room for 8 hours straight, there were times when I got bored (and as we all know, when I get bored I fall asleep) but that was not too often.

After the third day of orientation I said my goodbyes and got on a plane heading from Boston to Zurich.

[caption id="attachment_1213" align="alignnone" width="150" caption="Jo and I before takeoff (and before I felt ill)"][/caption]

Somewhere on this flight I started showing signs of the flu, which did not make for a pleasant flight. By the time we landed in Zurich I was doing my best not to vomit and I took those token airsick bags with me as I exited the plane. As we (I flew with Johanna, who is stationed in Marburg with me, and Becca who flew with us to Zurich and then continued on to Italy) walked around the airport looking for the apothecary I kept seeing large signs about swine flu…so I figured I better not appear to sick or they might put me in quarantine. The pharmacist would only give me airsickness medicine and with the language difference we had trouble convincing her to give me anything else. I’ve flown in large planes and small (4 person) planes, been on a number of roller coasters, and sailed on large and small boats (in bad weather too) and never once gotten motion sick, so I knew I was not airsick. The medicine may or may not have helped but either way, Johanna and I said goodbye to Becca and boarded our flight to Frankfurt.

[caption id="attachment_1220" align="alignnone" width="150" caption="Jo got a picture of me trying not to vomit on our bags in the Frankfurt airport"][/caption]

We got into Frankfurt and after a little fun we were both dropped off at our apartments (there was confusion with our arranged driver so we had to take a 1 hour cab ride with someone who did not speak English well, but it worked out pretty well aside from being late). We went to Jo’s place first and I wrote down her phone number (we did not yet have mobiles) and then continued to my place. We got there and I discovered that I had neither a phone nor internet connection. At this point I was feeling very ill and as I was shown the apartment I finally had to just sit down. The landlords and a local Novartis HR person, who was nice enough to meet Jo and I at our apartments, asked me if I was jet lagged and I tried to be polite as I silently wished that everyone would leave so I could throw up. The landlords (who are both, Jo’s and mine, very friendly and speak some English) showed me a payphone 1 block away so I called my wife and told her I was at my apartment and then I went home and slept for the next three days. Sure, I woke up once in a while to run to the bathroom (which is downstairs from my apartment, though it is my own personal bathroom) but mostly I slept. Friday morning (the very first morning after we landed, and my first morning of sickness) was supposed to be my first day of work in Marburg, but feeling like I did and without a phone to contact anyone I sat outside on the curb until the driver Novartis sent to pick me up showed up, handed him a note to give to Johanna telling her that I was sick, and then went back to bed. Luckily for me I had Johanna here in Marburg with me. She brought the car with her after her first day of work (Novartis gave Jo and I a car, how awesome is that) and brought me some food and water.

On Saturday, even though I felt terrible, I got in the car with Jo and we went to a store to buy a cheap mobile phone. We’re still not sure how to add the minutes we bought because the operators are speaking in German…but eventually we’ll get someone to help us. For now, they work and it is free to receive calls so we’re not using that many minutes.

[caption id="attachment_1214" align="alignnone" width="150" caption="I can't check my voicemail cause its in German!"][/caption]

Monday was my first day of work and as I expected it was rather uneventful. As everyone has told us would be the case, the beginning of an internship is nothing but downtime. You’re in a new place, learning a new process, and meeting new people (multiplied here for the language factor) and you’re really just not up to speed enough to contribute. I did not get much time with my supervisor because the CEO was visiting that day (and of course my supervisor had time set aside for me on Friday, but I did not make it to work that day) so we will catch up later this week or next week. He had one of my office mates escort me around for the day (starting with the doctors office, see below).

Upon meeting my supervisor he of course asked how I was feeling and I talked about my illness. I told him that I got a flu vaccine about 1.5 weeks ago (I needed a flu vaccine before I could enter the labs here) but I still managed to catch the flu. He was concerned about me and wanted to make sure that I in fact did NOT have swine flu (especially before I entered the labs here). I’ll be working in a lab where they make flu vaccines and so they actually have swine flu, along with many other flu samples, in the labs here.

[caption id="attachment_1210" align="alignnone" width="382" caption="click on the following clip from Willow to see what happens to you when you get the Swine Flu...Novartis would not like me saying this because it will cost them a ton of money in selling flu vaccines...but we could probably take care of this Swine Flu thing if we just sent Val Kilmer (the greatest swordsman to ever live), Willow, some Brownies, and a hot chick to take care of Queen Bavmorda (if this does not make sense, watch Willow...its worth it)"][/caption]

Either way, he sent me to the doctor on site (this facility is enormous) where I got the general physical I need to work in the labs here as well as a test for swine flu. I do NOT have the swine flu. The most entertaining parts of the physical was trying to take an eye exam with someone who spoke very little English…and trying to explain to that same person that because I had been sick for three days and evacuated my body of all possible substances…that I could not produce a stool sample at the moment.

After the physical, my escort and I trekked across the facility (or campus as they call it in Novartis…or is it a campus because we are in Europe…not sure) and met my other office mates and got my computer and email setup. I spent the rest of the day reading different presentations and overviews. My actual direct supervisor, who knows the details of my project and should be able to provide me direction, is out of the office until Friday so I spent most of the first week reading SOPs, touring the lab, trying to learn the general process, or reading past LGO theses. Overall, not too bad of an experience and had I not gotten sick it would have been a great experience. Novartis is treating Johanna and me exceptionally well and I look forward to the rest of my internship.

My blog (like me) had the flu

During the LFM to LGO changeover, something happened to my blog that caused total destruction.

[caption id="attachment_1200" align="alignnone" width="150" caption="it is possible that someone divided by zero"][/caption]

Thanks to the hard work of the LGO IT department, a majority of my blog has been recovered and the text from the older posts have been recovered, so I can at least get majority of my blog back.  I've been writing blogs in Word so now I just need to post the text to catch up (flu reference explained in my next post).  I'll post date them so they are in the right order.