Starting Work

After mine and Lydia's travels, it was finally time to start work. Unfortunately, when we got back from Amsterdam, I came down with a bit of a flu that didn't go away until well after I started work, so I was quite run down for my first few days. It was especially bad that I wasn't all too clear headed when I first started working, because it seems as if things here work a little differently than they do in Canada. In my previous work terms, I had about a week or so of company, people, and project orientation to easily transition into the work, this, however, was not the case at Empirica.

On my first day, I had about an hour or so to get my computer set up. This is normally quite easy for me, since I have spent most of my life working with computers; however, I quickly realized that in Germany, everything is German, including the computers, keyboards, operating systems and software. This meant that all of my messages and menus for: Windows, Firefox, MS Word, Excel, Power Point, Visio, etc were going to be given to me in German......yea!!!!!! (sarcasm). To remedy this, I quickly went on a downloading rampage, to see how many English programs I could fetch. I was able to get a new Internet browser and text pad, but everything else required a license (if I wanted to get it legally), and all of the licenses at Empirica were for the German version, so I was S.O.L with the rest of the applications. My last applicable English computer fix I could make was to change my keyboard into the English standard....even though it was physically still a German keyboard, with all of the the keys mixed around, but I printed out what a standard keyboard looks like, and I taped that to my desk as a reference.

After I anglofied my computer, it was time for my first project meeting. There, I was introduced to the first project that I'd be working on, which was an appraisal of the current situation in e-health standards. For anyone who knows something about this (and this will probably only be referring to my fellow hinfers), this is a very broad subject, that could be researched for years, with a budget of millions. The report that myself, Benjamin, and one other Employee from Empirica would be working on only consists of around 50 pages, and was to be completed in 1 month! For such a broad subject, this is a great task, considering there are similar reports, with a narrower focus that span hundreds (if not thousands) of pages, and the researchers had years to prepare the document, whereas we only had a couple of weeks!

From that day forward, I have been hitting the internet literature pretty hard. A typical day for me will have me come in at around 9:00am (although it isn't mandatory for me to come in or leave at any time.....as long as I get the work done). I'll fire up the computer and get set up for my day by around 9:30. Then, it's research, research, research. I have never read so many articles as I have read in this past month. It takes a lot of reading to be able to properly assess an entirely different health system, as well as the key players in it! Basically, for every page that I write, I'll probably have done about 5-10 hours of research (since the report has to be very condense to fit in the 50 page guidelines). I'll normally go off for a lunch with Lydia at around 12:30 or so (for around a half an hour to an hour) - hopefully to get some street meat (i.e. Brotworst mit Brot und heiße Senf - brotworst with bread and hot mustard...mmmmmm), then it's back to work. It's then research, research, research, writing, research, research, research, then I'll head off to home by around 5-7 depending on the day, and the urgency of tasks. Normally spending around 8-9 hours in the office a day (and for those of you who remember my salary.....that's about 5 Euros an hour (luckily, I didn't decide to come here for the salary). I find that I'm learning a hell of a lot while I'm here, and I'm gaining some great experience that will be more than useful for me in my later career.

As a side note, another useful tool that I have started using during my time here is the google personal web page, or igoogle. It allows you to create a personal home page that you can use wherever you have an internet connection, and on that homepage, you can add on really useful 'gadgets' which can be things like translators, calculators, local weather reports, etc. It's free to use, and really useful, so check it out at http://www.google.com/ig

As this report is coming close to the end, my work is getting a little more interesting. One of the tasks that I'm currently working on is designing a survey with the open source tool Limesurvey.
This survey (designed by me), is going to be sent out to around 100 of the top e-health standardization experts in Europe, which is pretty cool! I'm also expecting to be given a couple of different projects in the coming weeks to keep things interesting as well (I'll update you on those as they come in).