Whats up with Hatim!

I have recieved my stamped residence permit today. I spent a good deal of time yesterday trying to trace it. By calling the Embassy, FedEx and even going to the Embassy. The lady who talked to me from the Swedish embassy was very bitchy. I in fact needed my passport for another journey late this month so I was concerned that Swedish embassy is sitting on it for a while. I an extremely bitchy tone she said that if you need your visa right now I can send it to you unstamped. I said no thank you as I didn't want to risk delaying the process.

Today I got this on my FedEx status

So I went to FedEx office to pickup my visa. There was a very small queu of people recieving visas back. My visa has been granted from Aug 1 2008 till Oct 1 2009. After getting visa , accomodation and plane ticket now the only thing left is packing.

Since I got admitted for my masters program I have applied for Swedish visa (also known as residence permit) and prepared my self for booking accommodation air line tickets etc. I have yet to start doing my packing and it's just 6 weeks till I leave.I applied for my residence permit on May 19th and was given an interview date of June 9th. Around July 8th upon inquiring from the Embassy I got to know that I was granted my visa. I have yet to get my passport back with the RP stamped in it.

I shall be flying from Lahore to Gothenburg via Frankfurt on Lufthansa airlines in last week of August. I got the ticket for around 47000 Rs . (around 430 Euro). I was also able to book an  from chalmersstudentbostader. Their international student apartment booking is password protected and is usually pretty swamped when there is a chance that apartments would be posted. I used a trick to book my apartment (it has to do with how a simple Java EE application is hosted,normally its running at port 8080 and its proxied from port 80 to this place, instead of using no port in URL, which implies HTTP port 80, I used HTTP port 8080). Then after booking the apartment I filled my contract and with help of a friend submitted my deposit.

Though I have arranged for my accommodation, I have yet to get a temp accommodation for the few days I shall be not in my booked room.

There are excellent resources for Pakistani students at PakSirZameen.net (which is maintained by a highly motivated pakistani guy, in Linkoping Sweden). It also has a list of different mailing lists of Pakistani student associations across Sweden.This site helped me a lot. It also inspired me to open up my own chat room for incoming Pakistani students to Sweden.

On this previous monday I recieved my Google Summer of Code payment card. Its a Master Card from some finance related company run by General Electric. It does not have my name on it, instead it has a number and GSOC 2008 Stundet written on it. The card had no value on it and had a number written on it to enable it. It was a US 1-800 number. I had a hunch that skype should let me call 1-800 numbers for free, and a google search confirmed it. I activated my card at no cost :).

I have started preping for my forthcoming stay in Sweden (I am quite hopeful about the visa). Since there is no tution in Sweden so the biggest expense one has to bear is accomodation, clothes and books. I registered my self to one of the housing comapnies in Gothenburg few days after I recieved my admission offer. The rents begin at around 280 Euros / month (including electricity and internet). I am targetting for an apprtment complex which is very near to the university and is frequented by international students.

As for clothes I am hoping to get some clothes stiched up within coming few months. I will rely alot on Jeans and Tshirts :) but would definetly get a black 3 piece suite. Sweden is a very very cold country so I need to buckle up (I also need some good shoes).

As for books I am on the lookout to buy them from here, but it seems very few books will be available in Pakistan. I will try to put a list of all the required books for software engineering and technology on my blog soon.

Since I recieved my admission letter from Chalmers University, Software Engineering Masters program, I have been preping to apply for visa. This year's visa process for studies in Sweden for Pakistani students has few changes. First of all one would need to apply through Visa drop box (which is essentially Gerry's/FedEx office). They handle visa documents and fee. Swedish Embassy charges 10500 Rs (roughly 100 Euros) in form of Bank deposit and visa drop box further charges 1000 Rs (10 Euros) cash. I also got my pictures snapped from a studio in F-6 Super, they knew exactly how to snap  the pic. The toughest past was to get a Bank Statement, I had to borrow some money from my parents and buy Euros of it. Euro is becoming expensive by the day. They have other requirements filled in on Embassys's website. One thing which people don't know is that all photocopies should be on complete A4 page and should not be torn in any way.

I went to FedEx Gerrys office on Thursday (before I submitted my docs) only to find out that they only accept documents from Mon-Wed , 9 am-12 pm which is really a pain. So finally I reached the visa drop box office, this Monday early morning. There was atleast one more student there before me, also applying for Visa. After submitting my documents I was given a date of June 9th for intreview. Hopefully it will be a breeze :)

I am already looking out for cheap air travel from Pakistan to Sweden. It seems that one has to reach Sweden directly or has to fly through France, Netherlands or Germany for some new European Immigration procedure. I am eyeing on a late bird Luftansa from Lahore on Aug 25th now, costing me about 490 Euros. Not bad for half way around the world eh.

This year I had applied to admission to various programs in Sweden and have been waiting anxiously for their result. Today I was delighted to find out that I had been admitted to Chalmers University of Technology for MS in Software Engineering. This year the admission process of MS in Sweden had beeen centerlized by the swedish authorities by the use of webbased application system which distributted scanned copies of admission results to all the universities. I applied to 8 different programs, following is a list of those programs.

This year's admission process was a tense and competetive one. It started in Dec of 2007 with the announcement of programs and online registration for web based application at studera.nu. I chose the programs based on my interests, chances of getting a scholarship and reputation of the University (I also made sure that I ended up in Stockholm or Gothenberg). I had applied online in time, but my documents almost missed the deadline (they reached on Feb 15th). I sent my documents a bit late (on Feb 10th) via FedEx and i was promised by the FedEx guy that it will be on its destination in 72 hours. My documents reached Stockholm rather quickly but they were supposed to go to a very unknown town in middle of nowhere (Stromsund where VHS ,the company which manages studera process, is situated). Needless to say that I spent some tense days in Feburary thinking that I had missed the deadline and blown my chances of admission this year. And if my docs had not made it in time that might have been the case.

Then it was a long wait till Mid of march till it was confirmed that all my documents had been recieved and had been sent to the Universities for review. When the time line of April 17th approached Studera suddenly decided to delay the process till 29th April. They again delayed the process till May 8th. Every one I know was extremely frusturated with this delay. I found some comfort in a facebook discussion forum (which was previously a blog entry for a romanian guy. On small scandal on this forum was that  some how an Excel sheet of the admission record for Chalmers got leaked on the internet. It really didnt contain much but it was a leak, it was removed quickly from the board. I came to know that people from all over the world had applied to universities and it feels like that this international representation would be strong in the programs them selves as well, which is a good thing.

I was suspecting that my result would be out by May 8th Sweden time but I was deligted to check my studera status as accpted today. I am suppose to start with classes on Sep 1st this year. Hopefully securing a visa will not be a problem as I have already started work on that issue. This is second good news for me this year after my selection in summer of code for the OpenNMS project. I am not very hopeful for SI scholarship for which I am eligible due to my current program, but you never know till its finalized. Also I wont be applying to any more Grad Schools this year as I had initially planned.

I had been planning to sell my (crappy)Suzuki Alto VXR ,2003 to some (un)-lucky shopper. I had already put up an ad on the back of my car and received many calls. I was hoping to get 350,000 Rupees out of this car. Eventually I sold it for 338,000 Rs (roughly 200$ less than my asking price), but I think it was a good deal. The car had an accident and was not in the best of shapes but it looked ok. I will be using my Dad's Honda Civic from now ;).

A friend of mine got married this month. His marriage brought unnecessary pressure from my parents on the subject of my own sentecning :) I told them there is time for it and ofcourse I don't have time to find the girl (with all the procastinating I do). Any who this was the first ever complete Pakistani marriage I have attended in my life. I went to a pre-Mehndi function, Mehndi, Barrat and Walima. The highlights were meeting few friends after 5 years and sharing old memories.

Here are some pics from different events.

I went home to Abbottabad this weekend to help out my Dad with some construction work. Apprently the quality of constuction of our house roof was of bad quality. The architect of the house had not concieved that this house would witness alot of snow in the winters as it did this year. The whole roof had started leaking and the carpet in my room had gone all wet. So my dad decided to redo the roof. First he got hold of a roof treatment company which makes the roofs impenetrable to water. Then the tougher part was to cement all the roof, We called up 25 day labrours. First thing in the monrning before they even start working is that they ask for breakfast. I ran to the local Tandoor to get 35 naans for them to be served with tea. Then they started their work.

I was amzaed to see how these guys worked. They had formed their specialities. One guy operated the machine, other guys poured in sand, cement and crushed rockes to form concrete. Few other people formed a supply chain and one mason did the actual filling. The whole roof was done in a matter of 4 hours. There was one hitch when it started raining in the middle of it, but it only lasted about 15 minutes. I will post few snaps of the construction work here.

I was suppose to leave for home on Saturday afternoon and I knew that it would be a mess. Every time its election season in Pakistan there is always a shortage of transport. I went to Daweoo bus station hoping to get a seat on chance. I was not surprised to see the station full of passengers. I knew that I wont be able to get any thing by midnight. So I decided to sit out for Saturday. I went back to my house and stayed there for the night. I spent the night browsing and watching TV. I am thinking of proposing an advanced ticketing system to Sammi Daweeo, this is just a though experiment for now but it may turn into a reality. I was thinking of ticketing which involves electronic displays and National ID card numbers (or perhaps cell phone number based). I got the last bus going out next day. Needless to say that its preety hectic to travel on Bu sin Pakistan, even if its Daweoo.