Last weekend was my first weekend exploring outside of Belgium. We ventured to Madrid, spending a few short
days there to see and eat the essentials.
We toured the Palacio Real and Museo Prado, two buildings that seemingly
never ended, showcasing the wealth of the past monarchy and centuries worth of artistic
endeavors from the Spanish culture.
The weekend felt like a blur trying to fit an entire
country’s capital into a few days, but it finally slowed down when I returned
to work on Monday. I began working on my
presentation for the next day. Currently
I work in Leuven, but most of the app development and data analysis happens in
Ghent which is another city in Belgium closer to the coast. Initially from the first meeting with my team,
I had a general understanding of what they expected from me in the coming
weeks. They expected a iOS application
that read in stress values and presented them in correlation to daily
activities. My work is very independent
which allows for a lot of creative freedom and adhering to self-prescribed
deadlines. Working through the first
weeks, I constructed an application that read the users calendar and fit
randomized data indicating how they felt in these moments based on an algorithm
utilizing on biological values. Traveling to Ghent on Tuesday was extremely easy because of the interconnected
train system in Belgium. The directions
were vague, but the building was easily identifiable because it was shaped like
a stack of books. After the
presentation, I gained some very constructive feedback on features that I
should include and how to connect to their database to include real data in my
study.
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De Krook library in Ghent with the imec office on the top
floor
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Throughout the week I worked on some changes to my prototype
applications, making several variations to test functionality and
efficiency. At the end of the week back
at imec, there was the annual summer festival that had an amazing amount of
free food trucks with dishes ranging from tacos to Belgian waffles all the way
to fried calamari. It was an incredibly
fun atmosphere to enjoy with all of my friends from work.
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imec party with free food trucks!
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After the weekend on Tuesday, a group of friends from work
and I are making it a tradition to play basketball and enjoy dinner
afterwards. This weekend I am looking
forward to watching Belgium advance in the World Cup and maybe a trip to Paris...
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Weekly Basketball Tradition
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Dinner after Basketball
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