Biking to Belgium

Such a glorious day today turned out to be! I simply love how you can make your own picnics here with bike routes leading everywhere. A bunch of friends from the Univ decided to bike our way to Sint Benedictus Abdij in Achel, Belgium famous for its beer..:)


With the 'mooi weer' (fine weather), we biked all the way to Belgium and nope, no border check, no nothing. We wouldn't have even realized that we had entered Belgium, if not for the message from the mobile phone service provider. After reaching the Abbey we found it to be closed! No need to worry, the beer shop was wide open! The guys were soooo into the cheap and tasty beer that we must have ended up buying around 60 bottles between the 5 of us! I was joking how we must have turned around the economy of the shop!! :D I bought something else that Belgium is famous for, chocolates! :)




Except for my knees complaining over the 35km of pedaling on my wheezing bike, everything else went perfectly well! Gezellig! :)

Economy shopping in Eindhoven

It was a little difficult for me to collect this information when I was new here, so I decided to share it. Definitely not an amazing list for the pros in the world of shopping, but for students like me to survive :).

1. Supermarkets - cheaper to expensive -









2. Department stores, household goods - cheaper to expensive








3. For Clothes




4. Second hand goods and furniture

Location - Meerakkerweg 2



5. Open Market

The beloved Saturday Market for farm fresh fruits, vegetables, flowers, clothing and other good stuff. :)

Location - Woenselese Markt

6. Indian grocery stores

Jyoti Variety Store
Tongelresestraat 87

Omid Store
Geldropsweg 2/C

Rohit Tropische Winkel
Suit Bonifaciuslaan 308 and Bakelsedijk 67

7. Indian clothing

haha! kidding! There is only so much you can expect! :)

Shopping is one my weakest points. I go weak in my knees when ever I get into big shops. I get through the ordeal as quickly as possible generally. I get bewildered and am mostly clueless about what I should buy. Sigh! I need some coaching in this front! :)

Philips, here I come!

In 1891, Anton and Gerard Philips laid the foundation of Philips & Co.in Eindhoven and that is perhaps the biggest thing that happened here. The city was probably put into the map of the Netherlands after Philips' establishment and growth ;). The Eindhoven University of Technology, TU/e was established in 1956 to cater to the research needs of Philips. More and more industries gradually started growing around Philips and now Eindhoven has become an industrial hub of sorts.

So it is of no great surprise that several students at the university here do their projects directly at the industry and TU/e is the number one university in the world as far as university/industry tie ups are concerned.

I quite easily landed myself for a project work at Philips Research (talk about being at the right place! :D ). Not having worked anywhere else before, I was quite taken by the sheer size of the High Tech Campus (HTC), the facilities that they have and the work culture. Everything is so sophisticated. God even the canteens here are high tech! I looked like a fool the first day and stumbled across everywhere.

Everybody looks so serious to me in the office environment and people hardly have time to get to know anybody a little personally. The professional environment does scare me a little bit. University life is a little cosy, especially when you get into research. :D

Time will tell how I get through my project work. So far so good!

Best part: Free coffee machines :D and a 12km bike ride everyday!