Eureka!

Today, I had by far, the most productive day at work that I've ever experienced! All of the work that I have been doing for the last 2 weeks finally came together to allow me to make ten pages worth of beautiful plots showing everything that happens in my combustor, from the velocity that the air is traveling at to the heat which is being produced by the combustion to the amount of pollution created by that ridiculous chemical reaction. Not only was I able to make these plots for one run of my code, I was also able to run another code that computes everything differently to check if I could get the same results. What I ended up with was a huge document full of amazing pictures that I would love to show on here (but I can't because they are highly proprietary...) My results showed me that the new code which I was working to validate performed even better than the old one and it was able to do so with less work from the user (by allowing unstructured grid generation for anyone that cares). Now that I have all of these pictures, I can present my work through a link call to the CFD group back in the U.S. How cool is that!? I'm going to be presenting what I have done over here in Germany back to my old boss and all of the people I worked with over in Indianapolis.

Tomorrow, I'm going to do something even more incredible. I'm going to automate the entire process of what I did (at least most of it anyway). I think this is the part that I like most about engineering. Not only can you set up a program to give you all of this incredibly detailed information that tells you everything that is going on in a very sophisticated combustor, you can also take this whole process and automate it so that no one will ever have to do it again. In essence, I am working to eliminate my own job! Everyone talks about how globalization and industrialization is taking away all of these jobs from the United States. I am actually working to industrialize the very work that I am doing. And this won't get me layed off. It will instead allow me to move on to bigger, more important challenges that need the attention of a human being. No computer could ever take over every job that needs to be done in our world. If it could, we'd all live pretty good lives doing nothing but sitting around and enjoying our time. Engineering allows one to continue to improve a process until it works seamlessly with no need for further improvement. This will slowly and surely change the way our world works and how people live. And I get to be a part of that...

weekend with the Dutch

Last weekend Ton's friends came from the Netherlands to drive him home, but before they left, they decided to stay for a "mini vacation" over the weekend. These kids from Holland were really awesome people. I can't really describe it, but they just had this goofy attitude about making everything fun. We ended up walking around Berlin all day Saturday, seeing all kinds of historical and interesting stuff. One of them was the Kaiser-Wilhelm-Gedächtnis-Kirche, this amazing looking church that got bombed almost to rubble during WWII. The remnants were left standing with a new church built right next to it an a very modern fashion. The two different styles side-by-side make a stunning scene that is hard to capture in one photo. The other incredible building was Sony Center, this very modern structure located in Potsdamer Platz. Walking into the building, you feel like you're walking into the future with its huge plasma TV's hanging on the walls and the interesting looking swirling ceiling. Potsdamer Platz was really an incredible place to see. We also went and saw Checkpoint Charlie. I really had pumped this place up as one my places to see in Berlin, but when I got there, I was rather disappointed. All that is left of the historical crossing from East to West Berlin is a little guard post and a sign that says you are leaving or entering the American sector. It really wasn't very exciting...

That night, we went out to some more clubs. I missed my stop again on the train (gotta work on that) and called it a weekend...

Uni here, Uni there, Uni Uni everywhere

Every day this week I've been eating lunch and taking my "afternoon walk" (another common thing in Germany) with Ton. It's kind of sad that he's going to be done with his internship this week and leaving back for the Netherlands this weekend. We talked a little bit about the school systems in Europe and how they are very different from ours in America. I guess you don't typically do a mere "undergrad" program in engineering. Most students will make it a 5-year program and end up with their Masters at the end of it. In addition, you have to cap your studies off with a 9-month "project" that you can do either at your university or with some firm. I guess Ton just has this left and then he will graduate. We also talked a little bit about the differences between a public funded and private funded university. I guess in Europe, it's very rare for Alumni to give back to their university. University is seen more as a necessity than an entirely new era of your life like it is in the U.S. Colleges here rarely have campuses and students usually just live in random apartments somewhere close to their University. There is no place that builds up that "college life" culture like at Purdue. In addition sports are not common at all for universities. Usually, there will be some club teams but they are not nearly as competitive as college varsity sports are in the U.S. People who are looking to go pro in something don't go to college. Instead, they will attend a sports school to further their development in the sport their interest. I guess that makes sense, but I couldn't imagine going to college somewhere without the huge rivalries between schools merely due to their athletic programs. On a side note, I hear Purdue basketball's doing pretty good this year. I hope you kids still at Purdue are going to those games. I'm cheering for us over here (not that I can see the games but I watch the highlights on ESPN). That's another thing, I guess ESPN doesn't exist over here. I can not imagine a world without ESPN. Well, back to my point, without all of these programs that inspire school spirit and build university culture, alumni don't really care about their university too much after college and give back the ridiculous sums of money like they do in the U.S. Instead, the government does! Better? Worse? Not necessarily...just different...

der andere Praktikant

Last Thursday I met another intern at Rolls-Royce who happened to also be from the Netherlands. His name is Ton and he is also working for my boss doing some different CFD work. It turns out that when I started, I actually took his spot because there wasn't any other room in the office, but he was moved to somewhere else relatively close so it was no problem. Ton's native language is also Dutch, but he likes to speak English rather than German because it's difficult to switch back and forth. It was very interesting talking to Ton about Germany and Berlin because he too is somewhat a foreigner here.

We ended up going out together over the weekend along with Joe, the other kid from GEARE who lives in Berlin. First, we went from bar to bar, talking about random things and then we went to this place that Ton knew of called Kulturbraurei. I guess this used to be one of the largest breweries in Germany but after it got shut down, they converted it into a bunch of bars and restaurants. Here's a picture of it, but it's hard to see because it was dark out. We ended up going to a club here called Club 23 (original huh?) We didn't get there until about 1:00 AM and the line still took us about an hour to get through... Germans really like to go out late... The place was a stereotypical insane German disco with four floors and LOTS of crazy techno. They also had some other rooms with hip hop/R&B and also another room with "classic rock"-ish American music. We had a great time dancing the night away with hundreds and hundreds of other Germans. I didn't leave till about 5:00 and slept through my train stop on the way home making the whole trip take another 2 hours. At 7:00 AM I finally got home and fell asleep to the sounds of birds chirping outside...

R&T @ RRD - Rolls-Royce Deutschland

This week I started work with Rolls-Royce Deutschland. It is located in a little town called Dahlewitz waaaaaay far south from Berlin (actually located in Brandenburg). I have about a 1 hour train/bus ride each way to and from work. I guess I get to be a commuter for a while... My work is going to involve the same sort of things that I did last summer in Indianapolis working for Rolls-Royce North America. I'm going to be performing CFD (Computational Fluid Dynamics) on combustors for gas turbine engines. By the way, Rolls-Royce does NOT make cars anymore. They moved out of that business a long time ago and gave the name to BMW. Rolls-Royce is technically in the market of making gas-turbine engines, mostly turbojets and turboprops for aircraft. So when I say I work on a combustor, it's the part of the engine where the fuel mixes with the gas and burns, creating LOTS of energy. Anyways, my job is to try to help the team that improves the program which models the combustor. I'm doing this by setting up a grid with all of the geometry of the combustor and then describing what is happening at all of the boundaries. Then, I run the code and obtain lots of data. If my data matches what scientists think actually happens in the combustor, then I have good results. This type of work is very interesting as it allows me to purely learn about what goes on in combustors without having to have any prior knowledge. I run my code and "discover" all of the inter-workings of these very advanced combustors. It's pretty cool stuff and I think it's definitely going to help me prepare for some type of aero work in the future.

The office space is very nice with huge windows overlooking the rest of the factory. It's very open and you can see all of the other people working in your team at the same time (unlike my narrow little cubicle I had in Indy...) There's also free coffee that you can drink all day long! This will really help my work skills... My boss seems really nice and I was able to talk with him for a long time about my project and other random computer stuff. He's originally from the Netherlands and his native language is Dutch, but his English and his German are both really good. He seems like he's a very smart guy and I think that I'll be able to learn a lot from him. I guess I'm going to see how much I can pick up during my three months here...

Living in Friedenau

Sunday night I moved into my new room in Friedenau. The neighborhood is straight out of suburbia but German style. Everywhere you look, there are four or five story apartment buildings that look like giant houses lining the roads. Each apartment is some middle class family's home sweet home. In the mornings, there hundreds of little kids walking around with their big backpacks going to school. Some of these kids look like they could be four or five, but here they are, walking down the street and sometimes taking trains with no adult supervision at all! I guess that means this is at least a safe neighborhood. It's really funny to hear these little kids speaking German to each other because when I hear them talk, I know that they are probably better speakers than me! I don't think I've ever been able to translate what these little kids are talking about... There's also a lot of people that bike around this neighborhood. I've really gotta be careful about getting in their way because they WILL plow you down. If you hear a little *ding ding* of a bell and you happen to be standing on a bike path, WATCH OUT!

My New Room!!!

A bit o' banter with the Irish and the Ausies

Now, I have to talk about the bar scene... The Friday I was there I ended up going to the pub downstairs from our hostel. There, we met a ton of young people. We talked about the differences in culture between all our different countries (by discussing the ins and outs of finding a girlfriend...) and drank rather heavily... The bar was showing on a big screen a mix of Tarzan/caveman/pornography that was rather disturbing but as the night progressed it became increasingly funny. Later, we set out to go to the bars with some Ausie girls only to get lost in Alexanderplatz and end up eating McDonalds...

For the rest of the day Joe and I ended up hanging out with the Irish girls and having an incredible time. We public transported all around the city and saw all kinds of cool things. First, we took a tour of an old German bunker that was used during the world war too. The most fun part was that the whole thing was in German... For the rest of the day we walked around trying to see everything we could in this huge city of Berlin. The Irish people were hilarious and I couldn't stop laughing when I had one of them say "Luck o' the Irish." We also learned some other Irish words like posh and banter... They were really some crazy people those Irish. We found a nice little restaurant in Eastern Berlin where we ate some vegetarian pizza-type stuff that was surprisingly delicious. Then, we walked along the wall and saw all the graffiti on it about freedom and oppression. I think the graffiti is the most interesting part about the Berlin wall because you can really see how the people in Berlin were feeling after it was torn down by the drawings that they made. Finally, we went back to the hostel because Joe and I had work in the morning and said goodbye to our new friends. But before we did that we decided we would plan a trip to come visit them for St. Patrick's Day. If that happens, I'm pretty sure it will be the most amazing trip in the whole world. Hopefully, we can get it all set up and make it work out. I'd really like to see those Irish again...