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Today was my first day at the MPIA and, as I suspected it was mostly filled with admin tasks and no actual work was done at all.
My day started with some fun and games with the buses. It turns out my watch is a couple of minutes slow and so when I decided I had time to go and buy breakfast before getting on the bus, I managed to miss the bus I had intended to get to Bizmarckplatz. No worries, I had planned to get the earlier bus than I needed just in case this happened, and they run every 10 minutes so its not like I had to wait long for the next one. Only the next bus was a couple of minutes late and got stuck in traffic so I just missed the bus up to Konigstuhl. The bus timetable said there were buses at 00 and 35 minutes past the hour, so I went and found myself a coffee then waited and waited.... No bus arrived. Ten minutes after it was due, I gave up and decided to walk through the old town and get the funicular instead (actually, this possibly took slightly longer than waiting for the next bus, but it was a pretty journey and I was less bored by waiting). This only reinforced my decision to buy a car because one bus an hour - not so useful.
When I arrived, I was met by Glenn (my new supervisor, who is completely awesome) and also given a list of people+offices+jobs - the idea was that I went to visit each person in their office, introduced myself and then learned what they do and how they can help me (and also got them to sign my form, which I then had to hand back in to prove that I had completed all my tasks!). So I had a tour of the library, met the travel people, the admin people who gave me more forms to fill out, the computer people and got myself an email account and the technical people who also gave me a key to the department. While I was busy collecting signatures, I also met Remco, the other postdoc Glenn has hired; he also started today and was wandering around clutching his form too and he seems cool.
Once I had seen everyone, it was lunch time, so we all met for lunch; we being Glenn, Remco and me, and two PhD students he is working with - Ronald, who has been at the MPIA for a while and a-girl-whose-name-I-have-forgotten who was also new today. Everyone is really nice and it seems like a fantastic group! It should be good. I'm sharing an office with two other people; one wasn't in today, but I met Tatiana and she seems nice and very friendly so that'll be great too.
Once lunch had been accomplished there wasn't really much I could do in the department as I didn't have internet access at that point, so I went back to town again. I need to register because I will be living here for more than 3 months and had thought to get that done but they closed at midday so I'll do that first thing tomorrow. Once that's done I can get a bank account and then I can start to get health insurance and a mobile phone and other fun things. There's so much to do! I did manage to do some useful things with my afternoon though - I bought myself a monthly bus pass and finally went food shopping :)
My day started with some fun and games with the buses. It turns out my watch is a couple of minutes slow and so when I decided I had time to go and buy breakfast before getting on the bus, I managed to miss the bus I had intended to get to Bizmarckplatz. No worries, I had planned to get the earlier bus than I needed just in case this happened, and they run every 10 minutes so its not like I had to wait long for the next one. Only the next bus was a couple of minutes late and got stuck in traffic so I just missed the bus up to Konigstuhl. The bus timetable said there were buses at 00 and 35 minutes past the hour, so I went and found myself a coffee then waited and waited.... No bus arrived. Ten minutes after it was due, I gave up and decided to walk through the old town and get the funicular instead (actually, this possibly took slightly longer than waiting for the next bus, but it was a pretty journey and I was less bored by waiting). This only reinforced my decision to buy a car because one bus an hour - not so useful.
When I arrived, I was met by Glenn (my new supervisor, who is completely awesome) and also given a list of people+offices+jobs - the idea was that I went to visit each person in their office, introduced myself and then learned what they do and how they can help me (and also got them to sign my form, which I then had to hand back in to prove that I had completed all my tasks!). So I had a tour of the library, met the travel people, the admin people who gave me more forms to fill out, the computer people and got myself an email account and the technical people who also gave me a key to the department. While I was busy collecting signatures, I also met Remco, the other postdoc Glenn has hired; he also started today and was wandering around clutching his form too and he seems cool.
Once I had seen everyone, it was lunch time, so we all met for lunch; we being Glenn, Remco and me, and two PhD students he is working with - Ronald, who has been at the MPIA for a while and a-girl-whose-name-I-have-forgotten who was also new today. Everyone is really nice and it seems like a fantastic group! It should be good. I'm sharing an office with two other people; one wasn't in today, but I met Tatiana and she seems nice and very friendly so that'll be great too.
Once lunch had been accomplished there wasn't really much I could do in the department as I didn't have internet access at that point, so I went back to town again. I need to register because I will be living here for more than 3 months and had thought to get that done but they closed at midday so I'll do that first thing tomorrow. Once that's done I can get a bank account and then I can start to get health insurance and a mobile phone and other fun things. There's so much to do! I did manage to do some useful things with my afternoon though - I bought myself a monthly bus pass and finally went food shopping :)
