Travelling and Mi

Allan Gardens

2014-02-17T14:37:00.000-08:00

Yup... it has been a long time since I posted my blog here.. guess over time life gets too normal and are not special anymore. However that doesn't mean I haven't done anything in the mean time. Haha and off course I can't remember all anymore.. But I will try to write done what I did since January 25, because that's the last time I posted something. I promise I will keep it short ;)

On January 25th, I saw my good friend JS again. We had a nice beer, most expensive beer (Westvleteren La Trappe) at the bar Sin and Redemption (see my food map). That weekend I went to Allan Gardens and met up with the people from my meet up group. The gardens were nice and we spotted an eagle right after he had attacked a squirrel. After the gardens we went to eat at Spring Sushi, which was packed, but good and filling. Sushi was ordered on iPads and the food was then brought to your table. Since we were with a big group we did not have to wait, even though there was already a long line.

Meeting up with old friends

TO sky line

Must be nice during summer...

Allan Gardens

My new meet up friends

Snow

Time to explore!

2014-01-25T11:06:00.001-08:00

It is still cold here. The temperature itself is not so bad, -20 is ok. But the winds in Toronto are very strong and blows the cold air everywhere. The other the I finally had (or took?) the time to walk around a bit in the city and went to the harbour side to take some pictures. I was actually already too late and missed the sunset. But I was still able to take some nice once.

My placement is going well. Last week I had a meeting with my mentor and supervisor from back home and we were able to finalize my work plan, so I would not have problems with that anymore. Hopefully I will be able to do everything in time... I only have about 5 months left (until June) since I would like to travel around in Canada and the USA in July, before I will fly back again to Holland (end of July).

To get out more and explore the city, meet new people and do stuff I signed up for meetup.com. Meet up is a great website where you can join several groups of your interest, who plan a lot of stuff to do every week or month. From going to the movies, doing Karaoke, visit museums etc. In that way you can easily meet new people, make new friends and explore the city or country at the same time. Most groups are a mix of people who came to study or work in Canada - like me or just real torontonians, who like to hang out. Tomorrow I will have my first meet up at Allans garden. I don't really care about the garden that much, but it is over 100 years old and will show me some history of Toronto! Moreover I get to meet around 30 new people who I will probably hang out more. I will bring my camera, so you guys can expect some pictures for sure!

So, if you travel - or just at home - and want to go out, sign up for meetup now! It is free!

Cheers!

CN Tower

Rogers Centre

Old VIA train

Train museum

Steam whistle brewing

Rogers Centre close up

Financial distric

again

Home of the Blue Jays!

Rain! :-(

Mozilla FireFoxOS

2014-01-16T21:41:00.000-08:00

Last week I was at the Mozilla Community Space for a presentation about FireFoxOS. A colleague and I went there mainly to check out the office space and have some feed (admission fee was only 5$). The office was cool and specious - check out the pictures - but I found the talk itself not that interesting. Frédéric Harper (FireFox developer who previously worked at microsoft) presented this new startup FireFox OS (or also called "Boot to Gecko") however, he didn't tell me much new and therefore the presentation was kinda boring.. Live presentation of the platform and development failed (as it always does at does moments, right?) which didn't help making the presentation more exciting

However the product itself is cool. FireFoxOS is based on HTML5, JavaScript and CSS and anybody who knows these (scripting)languages can develop applications for this new platform using the FireFoxOS API. Building an application means that you have an application for both the web (FireFox browser - and others) and for the FirFoxOS mobile phones. Apps can be deployed through the app market or from your own server, however different security levels are assigned and if you deploy your app through the market more people will likely use your application. Making money on your web-app is likely not the case, because as you know FireFox is a community-based platform.

If you want to check out the presentation you can find it here.
More information about the OS can be found here.

Blog 2

2014-01-13T16:53:00.000-08:00

Now I had seen the Christmas trees I decided to get sick, right before the actual Christmas. But I didn't miss out much, because that was right at the time, when the famous ice storm hit Toronto and caused a power outage for a big part of the city. By now you probably all have heard and seen the images, and videos of people who had to live for days without power.. Luckily I didn't have any power outage, that's why I did not found out about the whole storm until the next monday.

My friend K. who I haven't seen since summer 2011, had invited me over for her Christmas dinner with her family on tuesday night, so I could experience a real Canadian Christmas dinner! Since I couldn't show up with empty hands, I decided to make real Dutch oliebollen (Or "Oily balls" ;-), which wasn't hard (nor as messy) but just took me a couple of hours. I made about 80-100 of them.. So maybe next time I should make a little bit less. But K's family said they liked it, so that was good! The dinner was lovely, we had real Turkey and her family was very nice and somehow Santa Claus came by, because there was even a present for me under the tree! Thanks Santa!

On Boxing day I went to visit another friend and her family in Windsor (on the border with Detroit) and spend there a couple of days. They had waited for me to have the real family Christmas dinner and also that one was a treat! And somehow Santa came by again and gave me some nice pj's and a French coffee maker! Thanks again Santa! The other days, we just relaxed, hung around in Windsor area and had a real good Pita bread & Poutine at Pita grill, check out my food map to get the location!
I spent my new years eve at a bar in Windsor. It was different and quiet without all the fireworks (we are used to that in Holland) but it was still fun! Hello 2014!

On January first I took the train back to Toronto, but first a small journey to P?? and on the second I had to work again...

Santa's sleigh at Yonge St.

Waiting for the dough to rise

Oily balls

Staring at the U.S. border - Detroit at the background

Can you see the bridge to the USA?

What can I say?

Jup! They do have a drive in pharmacy here

New years eve at a Windsor bar

Some Dutch clogs hanging in the tree

My french coffee maker

Just a quick journey to Paris!

Oh Toronto, what are you beautiful

Ice cream... and

cold....

Wow.. Finally... - Part 1

2014-01-09T16:08:00.002-08:00

Finally.. I checked it... and my last post was almost a month ago - 9 days... The emails and messages, from friends and family started to increase, which usually means you have to start working again, and keep writing on that blog... So here it is.. Since it has been almost three weeks and a lot has happened since then I will divide this blog in separate parts, so it won't be TLTR (Too Long Too Read...)

Last year, when it was still 2013, one of my colleagues invited me to come with her and a couple of other people on a X-Mas tree tour to watch the trees and and take pictures (in front) of them. I said yes, because I was looking forward to see how Canadians celebrate their Christmas and because it is a travelers-rule to (almost) always say YES to things, so you will get to meet new people and experience new things.

"Always say YES when you are travelling"

It was cold outside and I didn't know where to go (and it was supposed to take a couple of hours) so I made sure I had warm clothes on and went. When meeting at the starting point it turned out that almost everybody canceled because of the "bad" weather, it was just a little bit cold... (Since I have been in Toronto, I found out people like to complain about the weather and the cold.. So it is not only the Dutch who complain about the weather all the time!) But it turned out I had to much clothes on, because everything was inside of the longest underground shopping center in the world called PATH, with 29km of pedestrian tunnels and 1200 shops beneath the financial district's office towers in Downtown Toronto and which was opened in 1987 (More info: Wiki and PathMap). After having seen most of the biggest christmas trees and decoration we walked to a little Belgian restaurant called Le Petit Déjeuner (See also my food&drinks map). But unfortunately it was closed that day... So we had dinner at the Marché (Which is like a La Place in The Netherlands) right next to the Hockey Hall of Fame, which is also on my bucket list.

End of part one - If you are Dutch, if you can read Dutch or want to learn Dutch then also check out my other blog posts (obviously in Dutch) at the website of Furore which sponsored me, allowing me to do this placement, so a big Shout Out to them!! You can find them by clicking on their logo in the right menu on this blog.

This is the result of the Christmas Tree Hunt:

Snow!

2013-12-18T20:40:00.000-08:00

Last week's monday was the first week that the new developer started. A cool young chinese guy, who came to support the JMIR team. I do not have to work with him, but it is cool to have a new colleague. =)

Christmas is definitely a big thing in Canada and people put a lot of time in decorating everything, buying gifts and celebrating the holidays! Both the new guy and I were therefor lucky, because we got to meet a lot more people from the department than just the JMIR team, since we had a christmas holiday party. The theme of the party was "A night at the grammys" (it should have been a lunch at the grammys since it started at noon) and a lot of people were dressed up in suits and nice dresses. Instead of the regular catering (something went wrong with the order) everybody brought their own (homemade or purchased food) and we had a great lunch while watching at the self-made "grammy-worth" movies. After the lunch and the grammy-awards we played several games as teams competing against others. The party was traditionally ended with a gift exchange (with stealing), that however took a little bit too long and was not so much fun, since the group was too big...

The next day (friday) we went out for lunch with a couple of people of the JMIR team. Unfortunately not everybody was able to come along, however the food was good! We ate at a Chinese restaurant close to work. Unfortunately I don't have pictures, but you can check it out on my foodmap, it is called "Hong Shing".

That weekend Toronto and the rest of Southern Ontario was hit by a snow storm, changing the whole city in winter wonderland! Road conditions became poor. However it was beautiful outside and I actually enjoyed it all as did some of the Canadians, who immediately went Hockeying (Ice Hockey!) and drifting (see vid). Unfortunately the snow snow is almost gone again.... but I might actually still have a chance for a white Christmas, because we are expecting snow again this weekend! (Which is actually rare in TO for this time of the year, as I am told.)

Although I don't mind the cold (you get used to it.. ) and I am packed in my clothes (my nice famous Canada scarf and black Northface jacket) the cold still got to me since I have pharyngitis, but that could also be due to a lack of vitamins and eating too much pizza etc. :-p

Oh and for the AMC peeps: AMC is not as bad as it seems like, the hospitals in TO could look even more dreadful, although the Wilson Center is supposed to be something big.. But I haven't checked it out yet.

Dreadful hallway

Lunch

Christmas Holiday party

First bit of snow - view from the office

Real snow

Winter wonderland

Snowy roads

Sneaky pic of ice hockey ppl

Not sneaky anymore

Thats how you work out in CA

Snowy Highway

To fight the snow?

Drifting

Snowy TO at night

It is not as bad as it seems like i.e. you get used to it = )

I added a new page to my blog!

2013-12-11T20:35:00.000-08:00

Since my blog more and more starts to look like a food blog than a what do I do in CA blog, I decided to add a interactive map of Toronto on my blog with a bunch of places where I should eat or drink according to my good friend C or already have eaten.

Check it out under "Food and drinks map".

FYI: I ate pizza today and yesterday too! Twice! = 0

First Monday at The Office

2013-12-09T18:33:00.000-08:00

Time for a new blogpost I would say!

Last Tuesday, I started my day at The Office at 10am (great time right?) and met with my new colleagues of the JMIR-team (JMIR = Journal of Medical Internet Research) at the Centre of Global eHealth Innovation. The JMIR team exists of 7 people with different backgrounds and functions and none of them (besides the professor) is a researcher in this field, which basically means I have to figure out things myself or discuss them with the professor. My work during the first couple of days mainly consisted of figuring out exactly what my research will be about, reading about my research topic "Quality assessment of mobile health apps", performing a literature study and writing of my research proposal and work plan. I have my own specious desk in one of the cubicles at the department. I never thought I would be working in an office at an cubicle, but I have to admit, I kind of like it, mainly also because of my specious desk.

In the weekend I took the time to explore China town a bit and to go into every store without buying anything ("Kijken, kijken, niet kopen") and found out that they sell 6 delicious buns for only 3CAD really close by. =) But don't worry mum, I still also cook my own dinner and eat veggies and salad!
I did not do much more besides resting (I'm still tired of who knows what?) and pulling a wardrobe into my bedroom so I could finally clean up my mess and did not have to live anymore from my backpack. =)

Today it was my first Monday at The Office, and it was a Monday I would say... (everybody knows what that means...). On top of that I had to start the day with a lil' bit of snow or "dust" as the locals say, since it was no more than just a tiny little layer.

Nevertheless, I still got some work done today and finally have my own badge, so I can enter The Office without having to wait for someone! Anyways... I note, that I don't write as much on this blog as I wished I would... Sorry guys that totally has to do with the fact that I live so close to The Office. Before I came to Canada, I thought I would post something everyday, pics of funny things I would have seen on my way to The Office, but now I live on only ten minutes walking distance from The Office and not much has happened yet.

Well that was it for today..I have Christmas Holiday party coming up on Thursday and we will go out for lunch with the JMIR-team on Friday, so I will probably have some new pictures by next weekend!

On my way to The Office

The Office

JMIR

My specious desk

My specious desk 2

Delicious Buns

Look Mum!

Oh wardrobe!

Cooking my own meal = cheap!

Veggies

The result

"Dust"

Yep - that's me...

On my way home

My first week

2013-12-02T18:45:00.000-08:00

Wow. ok. Now it has been a long time since I posted something. Why it is actually not my fault, because I tried to post something when I was still at Schiphol airport, but somehow it did not work. Anyway, here we are, in Canada.

It all went so fast my last week in the Netherlands. As you know I had still had to attend to two conferences, say goodbye to family and friends and also prepare my trip in the mean time!

I will give you a quick overview of the things that happened in the last week.

Thursday
I woke up at 5am and was at the MIC 2013 conference in Veldhoven. In the afternoon, unfortunately I literally had to run away to catch my train so I wouldn't be late for my band practice later that night, but therefore was not able to say a proper goodbye to everybody who was there, I am sorry guys wished I could have stayed longer, but no worries, I will be back!

So after I run away from the conference, I took the train to my last rehearsal of the ensemble Roman Ensemble who play balkan music! (www.romanensemble.nl) What I thought to be a sad last night with my musical family turned out to become a surprise party, when Roman Oro (www.romanoro.nl) came marching in while playing on their instruments. What a surprise! And that was only the beginning... Not only they played for me, but I was also exalted to honorary! After the drinks at the music school we went out and danced until the early hours, until I literally had been up for 24 hours with only 7 hours of sleep in three days. It was a blast guys, thanks!

Weekends
On friday I went met MI Consultancy and ate delicious chicken legs! The rest of the days were reserved for preparation cleaning the room, dinner with friends and boring stuff.

Monday
Of course I couldn't leave the Netherlands without seeing the Nightwatch and the newly renovated Rijksmuseum first, so I went there with my dad on my last day in Holland, at least thats what I thought... Because when I got into town it turned out that my uncle had come over all the way from Belgium to see me and wave me a goodbye, or as he says "To make sure I am really gone".
Later that night we had my last dinner in The Netherlands and also my brother and his girlfriend came over to say goodbye.

Yum!

Selfie!

Who is that?

Last meal.

Tuesday
The next morning it was time to leave Holland, I packed my stuff and went. My dad brought me to the airport, where I met with my uncle and.... Wouter and Guy! Wouter and Guy had decided that it was not ok the way I left the conference the Thursday before and that they wanted to say a proper goodbye, so they came to the airport. Thanks guys I really appreciated it! :-)
And there I went, across the borders, on my way to Canada! My flight with KLM was pleasant although I would have liked more room for my legs. After 8 hours I finally landed on Pearson Toronto Airport and went to the Hotel, closeby where I spent my first night. During that night I had my first bit of snow, which was gone soon enough again.

My flight!

Byebye!

First Canadian dinner

Snow!?

Wednesday
The next day I went downtown to my hostel (Planet Travellers at College Str.) which is a great place to stay at for a couple of days. I had booked the hostel until December 1st and therefore needed to find a place before then. The same day I already opened a bank account and got my Canadian phone number, so I was able to call the landlords about the rooms.

Timbits!

Thursday, Friday, Saturday
The next couple of days walked across town looking for places and finally found one, on 10 min. walk from the University and close to China Town. Of course during these days I made new friends at the hostel too and on saturday we went out to have a drink at one of the bars near. Since my room was unfurnished I had to buy a bed to sleep on and decided to buy a queen size air mattress.

Dinner 2: Subway...

Dinner 3: One of the best burgers I ever had!

Old factories

TO street

Nice weather

Nice weather 2

CN Tower

Dinner 4: Poutine! Yum!

TO by night

Eaton Centre

Same street different day

Where is the top of the tower?

rain...

TO by night

Out with new friends from the hostel

Canadian pride: Hockey!

Dinner 5 & 6 - First meal at new place: potatoes and chicken

Sunday
Checked out of the hostel and moved in into my new place. Unfortunately because they did some renovation everything was dusty and I had to clean the place first. But looks good now :)

My queen size air mattress

Monday
I met with my supervisor and discussed what I will do the next couple of months during my internship.

That's where I will be the next couple of months

Week of conferences

2013-11-19T02:42:00.000-08:00

This week will be a week of conferences. I am already at the doorstep for leaving to Canada, but will first attend to two conferences. Hopefully I will find some time to report on them this weekend and otherwise when I am on the plane.

Wednesday I will attend to the Mobile Healthcare congress. It is the second Dutch national congress in the field of mHealth or mobile Health held in the Jaarbeurs Utrecht, this year it is all about chances of the use of mHealth in healthcare and a lot of leading speakers will present their view and expectations. For more information and registration see http://www.m-health-expo.nl/en

On thursday I will attend to the MIC conference together with my fellow Medical informatic students. This year the MIC is held for the thirtieth time and at the same time IHE Netherlands has her tenth congress with the theme Better care with less. For more information see: http://www.mic2013.nl/

Come back later, to check out how I experienced both conferences!

Farewell Netherlands, Canada here I come!

2013-11-18T03:15:00.002-08:00

It finally happened! I booked my flight and will leave November 26 (which is in a week from now, soon ehh..!) I will fly with KLM and have a direct flight from Schiphol (1:25pm local time) to Toronto.

I still have a lots to do though... I cleaned up my room the whole weekend, packed my stuff in boxes and figured out what to bring and what not (I have to pack for two seasons, because I will not be back until July 31. :- ) I can't wait to start this new adventure!

The picture below is one of the pictures I found while cleaning up my room. It is the KLM - Oeverzwaluw - date and photographer are unknown. Luckily I do not have to fly in that for eight hours, although it would be kinda cool! :)

Canada here I come! But where can I stay?

2013-10-24T02:10:00.001-07:00

It is official! I received a letter from the Canadian embassy that my application to study in Canada has been approved! This means I am finally able to pack my backpack (packlist), jump on a plane to Toronto and cross the borders of Canada. A dream come true. :)

Housing

Unfortunately I cannot really do that. I still have to finish up my work here and prepare the last few things before I can go abroad. And I have to arrange housing of course! I need to find a place to live before I can enter the borders and book my plane ticket! Housing in TO seems to be expensive and it is hard to find a good place (for only 8 months). Luckily there are some good websites I can look at to find a good place. A few friends told me to check out these places (updated):

If you have any more websites I can look at please let me know! Or if you know someone (who knows someone, who knows someone...) who might have a place for me where I can stay for a couple of months, I am happy to hear that also!

As of the location my friend told me to stay away from east of Jarvis downtown.. I don't know if that's a bad place, but listen to the locals right? ;)

Bed Bug registry

Another thing my friends told me is to check out the bed bug registry! That's the BEST tip ever. I really don't want those guys at my apartment/room....

Once you have them, you can't get rid of them anymore. If you don't know what they are take a look at the picture. I took a photo of it, at one of my travels and then I run away. LOL

So if you know anything about a bed bug free room or apartment in Toronto, please send me a (personal) message!

Bye bye innovation and medical app developers

2013-10-18T01:42:00.000-07:00

As I mentioned in my earlier blog I am going to Canada. The subject of my placement in Canada is mHealth apps and their quality. mHealth apps? Yes mHealth apps, the abbreviation of mobile Health apps. mHealth is constantly growing business within the field of e-Health (electronic? enhanced? enabled? who knows?). And more and more mobile health applications are available in the different app stores. But the quality of most of these apps is not guaranteed and current regulations are outdated.

Legal and regulatory issues

The other day I was at a Seminar held by Axon lawyers in Amsterdam about Medical software and mHealth apps and their current legal and regulatory issues (Seminar brochure). The European Union decided that the current regulations need to change:

For medicinal products and medical devices
For collection and processing of health data

For every medical device (and yes medical software and apps are seen as a medical device) a CE marking needs to be obtained first before companies can sell their app on the market. In June 2013 the Dutch Inspectorate for Health care announced that it will enforce medical device legislation against companies with non-compliant software. And that’s what I found striking…

In order to obtain the CE marking you have to meet certain requirements, which cost both money and time, with the result that innovation will disappear. What is so beautiful about the app-building world is that everybody can do it! Every company or person with a great idea, can develop an application and sell it in one or multiple app store(s). But, smaller (1-person) companies will not have time nor the money to meet these requirements. Less companies or individuals will start building medical apps, innovation will decline and in the end only larger companies will be able to afford to go through the whole process of obtaining a CE marking.

Develop elsewhere

It is on the other hand hard to say how the IGZ will control all the apps that are available in the app stores. Officially when someone wants to sell their app in the appstore and make it available in a certain country, they have to meet the local requirements. But what if that app is made available from outside the Netherlands/Europe? Can they still force companies to obtain a CE marking? Or will they force Apple and Google to refuse selling those applications on the Dutch/European market? If not, we can always start a company outside The Netherlands and still sell our apps here ;-)

Public pressure

Patients have the right to choose their own care and decline if they not want to use it, but not the right to choose between different apps? It's like the IGZ is forcing doctors to force care on patients, even though the patients don't want to receive that specific care. Only in this case the IGZ is forcing developers to obtain a CE market, destroy the market and leave patients with no choice than to choose for apps developed by big companies.

I think it would be better if the CE marking for apps would be promoted more instead of enforcing it. And users do have a responsibility on their own too. If they are not sure, they can always go to their doctor to verify if they can use a certain app or look if their intended app to use is on one of the white lists with – by doctors – reviewed and rated apps. In this way there will remain space for innovation, while quality is covered more and more. People love their health, so they also want quality for their applications and go through those lists themselves. Other developers will then automatically follow due to public pressure.

What do you think?

Travelling in the winter requires a good backpack!

2013-10-12T12:20:00.005-07:00

First post

2013-10-09T15:38:00.001-07:00

First I would like to wish everybody a nice, healthy 2013, with lots of travelling and new experiences!

To be honest I am not used to write blogs about my daily business and life. Off course like almost everybody else I have facebook and linkedIn, but I mainly use it to see what other people post on there and to keep in contact with my friends who do not live in The Netherlands.

If you do not know me but like to know who you are dealing with: I am a student in my twenties and I am currently doing the master Medical informatics at the University of Amsterdam. (Please leave a comment if you wish to know more about my study.)

My blog name is referring to three things: Travelling, Mi (Medical Informatics) and (of course) me. The main reason why I started this blog is to share my experiences with the world. And to share the struggle of planning an internship abroad.
I am planning on posting nice, fun, interesting and handy stuff on my blog during my preparations and my placement, as well as pictures and short summaries of my daily life in Canada

My post will probably be most helpful to those who are planning to go to Canada, but hopefully also to others.

Already in February of this year I tried to start this blog, but not much was going on back then yet. Back then I just started sorting out some stuff, looked up information and was trying to contact the Professor abroad to make plans for my placement, but unfortunately both he and I were also busy with other things at that moment. Now however, I do have things to write about and lot's of things have happened since then, so check out my blog in the next couple of days!