Tom van Teeffelen – BAT 2018 – e.t.s.v. Thor

Companies & Pub Crawl

Sun, 18 Feb 2018 03:07:56 +0000

On Friday we woke up at 7:30 to leave for Microchip at 8:00. They presented all parts of their company to us, where we learnt that the company holds 25% of all market shares in 8-bit microcontrollers. We learnt about all their microcontrollers, code generators, applications and more. The presentations took longer than expected so we had to contact Asti automation to tell them we would arrive late. In the meantime we had lunch and then we walked half an hour to Asti. At Asti they showed us their assembly line used in factories and they told us about their cooperation with universities and companies such as Siemens. They enthousiastically encouraged us to take an internship at their company. Around half 5 we were finished at Asti and then we had free time. Most of the group went to the hostel but we left to view the city. After having dinner we did a pub crawl, starting at 21:30. We had a lot of fun exploring the nightlife in Bucharest. Eventually we ended up at a club named Revenge, which was actually cheaper than het Walhalla. Here some of us stayed for a long time and decorated the bar with all the empty beer bottles. We had a great night.

– Leon Cavé & Noortje Geijs

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Tasting the culture of the wonderful city of Cluj-Napoca

Thu, 15 Feb 2018 19:27:08 +0000

It’s Wednesday morning the 14th of February 2018. We wake up in the beautiful city of Cluj-Napoca. After having breakfast at the cozy living room at the second floor of our Zen Hostel. When finished and finally complete we gathered in front of the hostel to meet two students of the Technical University of Cluj-Napoca. The students, Dani Costea and Andra Oprita were our guides this day and showed us various facilities of this university.

During the first hours at the university we were introduced by vice-dean and a professor. After this talk the labs of the university were introduced. When visiting those we were quite surprised by the ancient analog equipment they used to teach their students about the origins of the modern measurement tools they will use in the next coming years. In the next room the vice-dean told us about different projects happening at the faculty of Electrical Engineering and demonstrated some of those. Having told about all the serious stuff it was time to head to the real man-cave of the teaching staff. We were taken to a basement and were introduced to the toy store of the professors. A nice gaming rig, comfy chair, large beamer and a mining rig were all present in this room. Besides various battle bots from the university’s own yearly championship were presented.

After seeing the completely awesome leisure room we went by bus to visit another building of the university. We got to talk to various master students about the curriculum and way of teaching at their university. Next we left the university and went to an enormous shopping mall with our two guides. We got some spare time here and looked around in the various stores.

After dinner we would meet in front of the hostel to go to a pub together with Dani and Andra. At the Che Guevara social pub. We got a great evening here and were complimented by our guides because of our enormous drinking skills.

After a nice night we went to bed to start our next adventure to Bucharest visiting Sighișoara and Bran castle, two very nice places of interest. We were Mees Geurds and Kevin van Hastenberg and were proud to inform you about our very inspiring and joyful day.

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The BAT spreads its wings

Thu, 15 Feb 2018 06:51:16 +0000

When you thought bicycles were a common thing in the Netherlands … they’re not at Eindhoven airport. So, while most of the people were waiting in the terminal, the others were searching for places to store their bikes. This was the start of our study trip to Romania.

Luckily for us, security was not a problem. Everything went smooth and we could continue buying ourselves some too expensive breads and Donald Duck pockets. The confirmation from the university was received after passing passport control and the last call to them was made just before boarding the plane. We would meet them at 9 o’clock the following day.

Next to the complaining women in the plane, the flight was just fine. Romanian people don’t make as much noise in a plane as Dutch people normally do apparently. We landed in Cluj, the weather was okay, the busses were almost easy to find, multiple tickets could be bought at the same time (entering 19 and press + till 25) and the people are nice. We did forget to increase the cash withdrawal limit on our card, but luckily we brought Meeuwis to fix this (thanks Meeuwis).

Our hostel can be described as a ZEN hostel with really nice people, good facilities (apart from one bathroom) and dedicated heating. Pressing the buttons of the heating resulted in a blinking display and a room continuing to be hot. We went out for dinner in groups. A local restaurant was recommended to us by Constin from the hostel. Some however, among us, chose to eat pizza instead. Which tastes great, when we had found the pizzeria. Sings and front doors don’t always mean that the restaurant is not beneath everything via some stairs in Romania.

After having found the 24/7 supermarket with 8.5 lei (~ 2 euro) 2L beer and really bad tasting pizza chips, everybody went to bed to prepare for the next day.

On behalf of the committee,

Jim Beckers & Tom van Teeffelen

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