Week 4

Week 4 began with a performance review. Our Scrum Master Daan was positively surprised by the progress of my project and gave me some new tasks for the week. My main task was to create a new section in our meetings to handle tasks/actions that could be forwarded to other users and linked to different meetings. I managed to get everything working, although I’m still waiting to hear if the results match expectations.

This week wasn’t a typical one, because on Wednesday I had the opportunity to attend a conference focused on openEHR and its implementation within Wem. The seminar lasted the whole day and was interesting. It's always rewarding to get a better understanding of how things work behind the scenes. Since openEHR standards are widely used in Finland, it was great to hear that other parts of Europe are beginning to adopt them as well.

The event was held at a training center owned by Maarsingh & van Steijn, located in the peaceful Dutch countryside. After the seminar ended, most of our team caught a train back. One of my coworkers, Kylian, showed me around Leeuwarden for a little while, and we ended the evening with burgers at a local restaurant by the canal. The weather was sunny and surprisingly warm, which made it a perfect ending to the day.

The rest of the week was mostly spent refining the new task-forwarding feature. At first getting the correct data to display was tricky, but after digging through other parts of the program I finally found the solution.

My plan for Friday was to sleep in and pack for a weekend trip to Bremen with Arttu and Riku. However, I had completely forgotten that I needed to go in to receive my final grades. Mr. Koopal, my supervisor and the person in charge of grading, was heading to the United States so I had to be there before he left. What should have been a slow morning turned into a productive one. I’m happy with how the grading went and appreciated the feedback. It also reminded me that there's always room for growth.

After returning home, I packed my things for the trip. Since the cleaners had just arrived at my accommodation, I went to a nearby restaurant for a quick bite. Then I biked to the bus station to head to Drachten, where we arrived about three hours before our Flixbus departure. We had a small mix-up and accidentally got on the wrong bus, but we realized quickly and made it to the correct stop in time.

The journey to Bremen took a little over three hours, with a checkpoint stop at the German border for passport control. Everything went smoothly, and soon we were standing in front of our hotel in Bremen.

We went to sleep soon after arriving, and Saturday was spent exploring the city on foot. We visited local landmarks, tried different foods from street vendors, and soaked up the atmosphere. As a light-hearted note, we all agreed the best part of our trip was its shower, which was definitely a step up from what we have in the Netherlands.

Picture of the Bremen cathedral

We left on Sunday morning and the trip back was uneventful. After returning to my accommodation, I took the rest of the day to relax and recover. Monday marks the second part of Liberation Day here in the Netherlands. Hopefully I’ll have the energy to join in on the local festivities and make the most of it.