travel a chapter of a life

It's been 2 weeks since I arrived in Delft.
Bandoeng Technische Hogeschool Fond (BTHF) - a foundation that initiated my visit is doing its job very well. The foundation supports me everything: housing, allowance, insurance, and host-laboratory in the university. I have a comfortable room, sufficient fund, and a nice professor. Everything is just perfect, except the foundation don't tell me what I should do.

Free.

Sometimes it is so annoying when I am bounded with some circumstances that rarely I have enough time to do what I want to do. But often, it is more irritating when I know that I am just in the right time to do things I wanted to do, but then I loose the orientation. It is because in the first case, I know that I would atleast acheive something, but in a latter case, I am afraid if I waste my time and don't even move from my place.

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Or maybe people just need time to settle in a new place?
It is a good excuse though, but ok let's see what I have done in these 2 weeks. In the first week, I met my professor and discussed about the visit plan to various laboratories and universities. I also went around to see the town and to found a bike. Delft, or Holland generally, is a nice place where it is convenient to bike. With a flat landscape -except unfriendly weather sometimes, and a relatively short distance from one place to the other, cycling is recommended.

On the first weekend, I had good time with my extended family in Belgium. I was back to Delft on Monday and did some stuffs for someone in the lab. On the following day, I was talking with a Spanish-PhD student in the lab about his project and asking whether it is possible to join -which in conclusion, a month effective is undoubtedly too short. I travelled to Eindhoven on Thursday, participated in "Design Your Own Future", open-house for Philips company. I was particularly interested in the opening speech about the intellectual economy -the benefit gained from producing patents. It was before 1980 that the source of company benefit was from selling its products alone. But since there are awakening in other companies (Japan, Korea, and now China), the company had to change its strategy. R&D section should produce patents or shared-technology for supplementary benefit (or now most of the benefit?), and the manufacturing should be re-located to a lower cost place, in this case: Asia, includes Indonesia. Clearly, that's the reason why many companies, Philips for instance, keep the research "inside" the country and the manufacturing part outside. What do you think we should do about this? Is it really a drawback for us -that we cannot master the technology?

Back to what I have done, in the afternoon I came to TU Eindhoven (TU/e) to meet an associate professor to discuss about my future master study. I have applied to Biomedical Engineering (BME) in both TU Delft and TU/e, but both of them have different direction. TU Delft, focusing on engineering background, has no problem with my Electrical Engineering -only background, while TU/e, focusing on multidisciplinary background in its BME study, thinks that my monodiscipline would be insufficient to support my future study. That's the reason why I come to TU/e that afternoon. Eindhoven is a bigger city than Delft (and it has Philips there!). Suffering from being bombed during the second world war, buildings in Eindhoven are modern, while Delft, with its old buildings and channals, is more ancient.

I spent the second weekend in Denhaag, an important city in Holland located about 15 minutes to the north from Delft by train. It was Koninginnedag (Queen's day) on Saturday that people have a festival everywhere, especially in Amsterdam. I saw a lot of people in orange -a colour of Holland. Too bad that the temperature dropped again to about 6 degree that I couldn't fully enjoy the weekend. I was freezing in Madurodam, a Holland miniature, and in a way back to Delft. It was a gloomy day, not only was the weather but also my feeling was awful. I think I was not very well-behaved that I know I might make someone there sad, or even worse, disappointed. Anyway, we all grow up from mistakes, don't we?

So that was my last two weeks. A lot of the missions have not been accomplished yet. I'd love to come to a lecture in TU Delft that invites guest speakers on various topics on medical technology -that now I am asking the professor for the permission. This week I also have to contact a lot of professors for a possibility to visit their labs, as well as medical practitioners to visit their hospitals. I have discussed about it with my professor yesterday, we were planning on my visiting to Rijksuniversiteit Groningen, Twente University, Leiden University Medical Center, Rotterdam Erasmus Medical Center, Academic Medical Center Amsterdam, and Utrecht University. My two-month-stay in Holland is a travel, but given only these short time, I need to put more efforts in making contacts and appointments.
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6 weeks to go.
Time for the efforts, and the goal is waiting there at the end to achieve.