On Thursday I finally signed my contract. Apparently I could choose how many hours a week I work and receive an appropriate reduction/increase in leave, but I’ve been signed up for a 40 hour week whether I like it or not. I now have 227 hours of leave to use before Christmas, so I’m trying to think of things I can take leave for (and also have the money to do). I can trade some of my leave to buy a bike, so I might do that. It’s all too complicated.
On Friday I attended the university’s Introduction Day for new international staff. This is run four times a year and there were about 20 people at this one, mostly PhD students and a few postdocs/researchers. A few different people gave presentations on the university, how to find housing, and the role of the Personnel department. For morning tea we were treated to beschuit met muisjes (which I’ve had before, but didn’t want to write about until I had a photo, although there’s always Wikipedia) and then we went on a tour of the campus. We had lunch on the top floor of the main building which has good views over the campus.
We also got a showbag with flyers and pamphlets in it. There was a large box of goodies in the bag that Dutch employees don’t get — it’s exclusively for international employees, not only at TU/e but also Philips and other tech companies in the region. One of the booklets contained a huge amount of information that I really could have used before I left home. I wonder how much it would cost to send a small package of material to new foreign employees before they arrived — it would be so helpful.
At one point our host put up a slide showing a pie chart of where foreign employees come from. It was divided into:
- Neighbours: Belgium, Germany, UK
- Other European countries and former USSR
- North America
- Central and South America
- Asia
- Africa
Notice somewhere missing? Unless of course we were lumped into Asia. In the afternoon we were all emailed a link to the slides for future reference and Australia/Oceania has now been added to the pie. Apparently we make up 1% of foreign scientific staff, and foreign scientific staff make up 28% of all scientific staff, and I think there’s about 3000 scientific staff in total. So there’s a handful of Oceaniacs working at the uni.
2 Comments
June 17, 2007 at 10:30 am
40 hour work week?! It’s supposed to be a university lifestyle!
June 17, 2007 at 7:46 pm
Did I not mention the almost 8 weeks of leave (after Christmas leave has been deducted) I get every year? I don’t see you getting 8 weeks of leave at Melbourne