Walk to work
The walk to work takes about half an hour meandering through small streets with beautiful gardens, euphoric smells of lilacs, quaint concrete houses, and frequent “Morgan” or “Gruzie” greetings from the locals. Sometimes there are hoards of youth going to school – the bike mafia, all with their ‘rucksacks’ and taking up the entire stretch of the road – fortunately sidewalks exist so I don’t get trampled. Eventually the cozy streets filter into the main arteries of Baden with cars, buses, and bike paths, which all eventually lead to the train station, near my work location. It is not peculiar in Baden to see combustion of business suits with pants tucked into socks for biking.
Work
The work atmosphere is great. My supervisor is extremely helpful and very personable and I’ll be sad to see him moving from the CFD (Computational Fluid Dynamics) Combustor Group to Project Management at the end of June. Bouchta Choufa, my supervisor, is trying to teach me everything he can about relevant fluid dynamics, heat transfer, and combustors.
I’m currently refining a mesh in a software program called Gambit, similar to Ansys, to run simulations in a program called Fluent to test velocity and temperature distribution. CFD is very pertinent because it is a huge cost saver when the CFD model can be matched to the experimental model. I’m currently working on a methanol gas turbine combustor and will hone my skills on crude oil combustion throughout the remainder of my term. I’m learning a lot of technical jargon regarding gas turbines and am anticipating that I’ll visit the manufacturing facility in Birr in September. Office dynamic is different – cubicles or one’s office space only goes to elbow height so everyone’s head peaks over the top. Plus, when you arrive, you say hello or sometimes even shake people’s hands that sit around you to greet them for the day.
Employees are surprisingly young. Some have just completed their degrees and other have up to two master degrees, such as my supervisor. Coffee breaks are strongly encouraged, 2 a day which are promptly at 10am and 2pm where the interns and younger employees (from Brazil, Ireland, USA, Italy, Germany, Maldovia, Canada) discuss weekend travel plans, cultural differences and many filler topics in English.
Plus, when it’s someone’s birthday, which it already has been 3 times in my 2 weeks at work – the birthday celebrity brings in their own cake to share with their office colleagues. Since my birthday was on a weekend, I skipped the cake invitation, but may feel guilty about it at the end of the week to do an office cake celebration… The international appeal of this company is undeniably vivid with the multitude of languages used at work: Russian, French, German, Italian, English and some Swiss German. My supervisor is from France via Morocco and mostly of our conversations are half in English and French. I think it’s fantastic and I’m looking into taking German lessons here.
Walk from work
Older women and men are doing gardening outside not seeming to be perturbed by inflexibility, what I thought was a consequence of ‘much wisdom’. There are many other visitors on the roads including garter snakes, fire salamanders, cats and snails. The snails create a sticky situation because when it rains, there can be so many, all varying in size and color that it can be a meticulous game of hopscotch all the way home. Some don’t have shells, which could make visibility difficulty and squishy surprises on shoe bottoms!
FOOD
Sometimes I stop by the grocery store on my way home – as I’m near the train station. I eat so much chocolate, that I am thankful that I live on the top of a hill because it’s so good! Lindt is every so popular here as well as Migros chocolate (budget style), which comes in bars just a bit smaller than computer keyboard. The yogurt is most scrumptious and the cheese section is much larger than any attempt in Canada’s traditional grocery store.
FITNESS
There are many running paths throughout Baden that converge into the woods with several fitness circuit stations, which seem to be randomly positioned at ultra convenient locations such as chin up bars, carefully selected logs to do running steps. Plus, there are water fountains everywhere in which fresh water splurges out continuously. Some are adorned with decorative statues; however, I have yet to see one of a little boy peeing (Chinese pottery ding-a-ling version). Last week I played a game of squash in a local fitness centre and I seem to still be able to hit the ball.
Walk from work
Older women and men are doing gardening outside not seeming to be perturbed by inflexibility, what I thought was a consequence of ‘much wisdom’. There are many other visitors on the roads including garter snakes, fire salamanders, cats and snails. The snails create a sticky situation because when it rains, there can be so many, all varying in size and color that it can be a meticulous game of hopscotch all the way home. Some don’t have shells, which could make visibility difficulty and squishy surprises on shoe bottoms!
FOOD
Sometimes I stop by the grocery store on my way home – as I’m near the train station. I eat so much chocolate, that I am thankful that I live on the top of a hill because it’s so good! Lindt is every so popular here as well as Migros chocolate (budget style), which comes in bars just a bit smaller than computer keyboard. The yogurt is most scrumptious and the cheese section is much larger than any attempt in Canada’s traditional grocery store.
FITNESS
There are many running paths throughout Baden that converge into the woods with several fitness circuit stations, which seem to be randomly positioned at ultra convenient locations such as chin up bars, carefully selected logs to do running steps. Plus, there are water fountains everywhere in which fresh water splurges out continuously. Some are adorned with decorative statues; however, I have yet to see one of a little boy peeing (Chinese pottery ding-a-ling version). Last week I played a game of squash in a local fitness centre and I seem to still be able to hit the ball.
No comments:
Post a Comment