Wednesday, June 17, 2015

The Best Summer(s) Of My Life

I think I already mentioned how awesome and life-changing the summer at CERN was for me. Probably numerous times. I just realized life doesn’t get much cooler than exploring the fabric of the universe and making anti-matter. (And making ice-cream with liquid nitrogen of course :)) It’s like living in a sci-fi movie.

Now when we were leaving CERN last year, a lot of us admitted that this was the best summer of our lives... So far. And this "so far" makes all the difference. The question that is left unanswered after being a Summer Student is: What the hell can I do to keep my life this awesome?


I already have the answer for this summer. In short, Robert, Jakub, and I are driving 16,000 kilometers from Europe to Mongolia in 15 years old car :) It should take about 6 weeks or something. Don’t worry, I’ll share the experience with you just like with CERN :) More info coming soon.

Now let the adventure begin!

Tuesday, June 16, 2015

Why Are There Too Many Cool Things I Want To Do?

Let me share one of my first world problems. There's no CERN for me this summer. And it's all my fault. I was looking forward to working on logbook, learning to play the ukulele, and drinking French wine with my friends I haven’t seen for a while…




In short, I am staying in Prague because of my internship at McKinsey. The project I work on is longer than expected and I ended up choosing staying here. That means I will work on my thesis later, even though it probably means in Prague and not at CERN.

Why do I do that? The thing is I feel I wasn't born to be a developer. I would learn a lot at CERN, but it would be mostly being a better coder. At McKinsey, I am learning to drive change. So that I can run the world one day. (Muahahahahaha :))

And then I'm generally bad at doing one thing after another, so I'm trying to break the pattern here and finish one thing and then focus completely on the next one. As I have plans for this summer I cannot postpone, I will work on my thesis in the fall. 

I will do my best to see you guys anyway as soon as I have some time. Take care until then! 

Monday, June 15, 2015

Sofia in Prague aka “Oh, This Is Beautiful – Picture Time!”

A couple of weeks ago, my beloved and crazy Sofia announced me she’s coming to Prague in the beginning of June. Luckily enough, the time worked for me too so we knew another great adventure was ahead.

Sofia forwarded me her flight ticket and we exchanged phone numbers and then we didn’t have time to talk at all. So on the day she was supposed to come I woke up, hangover, and headed to the airport to pick her up, feeling very unsure about whether she’s actually on her way or not. And then she was there :)

We had a blast. It felt like we met yesterday but there was just so much more to share from the last year. I am so happy to have met Sofia and keep being inspired by her :) This young lady not only is killing her studies in the Netherlands but also has a startup with a product that sounds like from Star Trek to me. Ask her directly for more info. So for now she’s staying in the Netherlands and will keep doing cool stuff and changing the world.



Then we shared a ton of personal stuff, dreams, plans, stories, experiences… We also ended up walking around the Prague castle and the Old Town and taking a lot of naps :) Sofia invited her friend Paul to Prague who brought his son with him and the guys shared some more touristy information about Prague with us and also made us go to see some art. And of course we ate a lot of dumplings and drank a lot of Czech beer :) And took way too many selfies with Sofia :)

I felt like after a week of holidays after this weekend spent in my own city. Thank you guys for everything. Hope to see you in Geneva or the Netherlands!

Monday, January 26, 2015

Openlab 2014 Video

The openlab 2014 video is finally finished! You can have a look at all of us trying to be serious :) It's great to see almost all the guys again. It's like time travel :)

Plus if you're touched by the message of the video and want to apply, go ahead.


Thursday, January 22, 2015

Application Advice For The Future Summer Students

Because I got a number of emails asking for some advice regarding the application for the CERN Summer Student and openlab programs, I concluded it would be nice to put a summary here.

So I asked my dear friends from openlab for advice and we came up with these key points:

1 - Find what you would like to work on at CERN, google what technologies they use and emphasize your knowledge of them in your CV. It might be good to be interested in some of the Oracle technologies, since it is one of the companies that fund the project.

2 - Include the right keywords: javascript, Hadoop, python, what you know and want to use.

3 - Have publicly available code on github. As much as possible. It's a great way to link your skills to experience and work you've done.

You can also find some information in Czech on Peter's blog.

If you have a more specific question, shoot me an email. Now you go and apply :)

Good luck!