Monday, August 27, 2007

 

NRW day


Last weekend there was the NRW day festival in my home town Paderborn. The day celebrates the foundation of the state of Nordrhein-Westfalen, or short NRW. This event was celebrated outside the state capital Duesseldorf for the first time this year, so Paderborn could feel honored to host the event.

There were art and music performances the whole weekend, including the German popstar Sasha, food fairs, industry fairs and other events in town.

Last but not least my good friend Victor turned 27 the same weekend and celebrated his birthday. Maybe that was the reason why the NRW day celebration was in Paderborn this year :)

Sunday, August 12, 2007

 

Strasbourg


Today my parents and me went to a day trip to Strasbourg in France. Strasbourg is the capital of Alsace, the France-German border region in the south. Strasbour is a very historic city and a very European one too: the Strasbourg cathedral is one of the most important churches in Europe and today Strasbourg is the location of the European parliament.

Strasborg is something like my "main attraction", everytime somebody comes to visit me I take him/her to see Strasbourg, as I think it is really worth a visit.
The historic town center has a lot of old houses and narrow streets. The town also has all this nice "French" character with street cafes, quite backyards and so on. As soon as you cross the border things just seem different, even if you cannot tell directly why, you just know that you are in France now.

I put up some photos from our trip today. Go have a look.

Friday, August 10, 2007

 

Summer slumb at the University

Looks I came back during the big summer break, half of my professors seem to be away for vacations. So I have been knocking at a lot of closed doors in my faculty this week. I have to see my profs so I can transfer credit for my courses at NUS and also to plan my Diploma thesis, but this week NOBODY seems to be here, not my profs and not the person from the exam office. So I spend my week with writing a lot of emails to profs and hope for a reply.

Today I had a telephone interview for my diploma thesis, let's hope that things will work out as planed.

Sunday, August 05, 2007

 

About German Diploma and Singaporean Master Students

Last month I visited the Nanyang Technological University in Singapore to meet this German Researcher there. He told me this little observation that I would like to share at this point.

We were talking about Diploma thesis and at some point he said that they were more willing to accept German students to write a Diploma Thesis than local students to write their Master thesis. When I asked about the reasons he said that they have to invest less time for Diploma students, as they were usually more independent in their work.

So when they would reach a point where the next step is not 100% clear, the German students would be more independent to explore and investigate for themselves, while the Singaporean students would always come to ask the Professor what to do and how to do it.

I can not really judge on this, as I have not been supervising any students in my career so far. And of course the usual biases have to taken into account (those students who undertake all the afford to go to Singapore are probably quite independent characters in the first place, etc.).

Still I was delighted to see our Diploma in such a good light, as the German education system is taking so much criticism at times.

 

Kamuna


Yesterday I went for the Kamuna. The Kamuna is the "Karlsruhe Museum Night". During these event all the museums in Karlsruhe are open for one night (until 1am). You only pay cover charge once and can access all the museums and can even use all the public transport to travel to the different locations.

Quite a nice event with special events at the different museums and a live band in front of the castle. Karlsruhe really has some good cultural events in summer. Just wished my wife would have been here, too.

Friday, August 03, 2007

 

First Day@SAP Research

After two days of SAPStart Orientation Program in Walldorf-Rot, I started in SAP Research in Karlsruhe today. The problem was that my user is not created yet, so I couldn't access my computer. As a Software Engineer this is a problem.

But other than that SAP seems to be a good place to work. And that is not only because of the free coffee :) The workplace is really cool, people always address each other by their first name, there are coffee corners and other places where you can just meet and chat. Of course the SAP building here in Karlsruhe is not as impressive as the HQ in Walldorf the last few days, but still not bad.
And things like training new interns seem to be handled handled professionally.

Karlsruhe in summer is nice by the way. After one year of tropical climate the weather here seems almost Mediterranean. Although it is slightly too cold for this time of the year.

Have a great weekend!

Thursday, August 02, 2007

 

First Day@SAP

My first day at SAP started with a small surprise. Instead of going to my work place in Karlsruhe straight away, I was asked to attend a orientation event at SAP HQ. So I had to drive there this morning. Luckily I still have my car, otherwise it would have been quite a journey.


The SAPStart program is quite fun so far. A number of presentations that introduce you to the company, tell you the does and don'ts and a number of networking sessions where you meet your new colleagues and coworkers. The event is quite big, at least 50 people, so I wonder how frequently they have this event, every week, month, two month?

Too bad, I didn't bring a camera to the event today, the place looks really nice. There is a small lake outside the canteen, people sit on the stairs or the ground and have lunch or assemble in cozy coffee corners to discuss stuff. And the best thing is lunch is free as is the coffee, tea and water. Good stuff.

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