What's up with Hatim?

Yesterday was the last date to apply for BEST courses. These are short courses offered by universities in EU as weeklong fun/learning activities and mainliy offered by Engineering Universities. Event though there were many courses to choose from one could only apply for three courses.

I applied to two courses, PARobotIcS and Rome against the Machine. The results of selection will be in by Jan 15th 2008. Let's see how I fare in the selection process. I thogh I share a question from one of the applications on my blog. The question and it's answer as follows

We know that you have the exact quantity of plutonium needed to activate our DeLorean time machine, you have to find a way to bring it to us in Rome, avoiding security. Please use your fantasy and let us smile!

"(I am )Assuming that I have masted Dr. Brown's (Doc's) design of the flux capacitor and the plutonium based reactor I can easily make changes to the time machine. But with exact amount of plutonium for one temporal jump I have the potential problem of not have 2.1 gigawatts of electricity to jump back to the present. So I have two options at hand, first I have to come up with the same plan which worked on Oct 15, 1955 in Hillvalley for for Doc and Morty. But I have to find precise lightning strikes with in the city of Rome. I tried to look it up but didn't find any thing precise enough. So instead of running towards a lightning strike, why not run and make the lightning strike on the DeLorean. This would need a bit of change in design as lightning could strike any where possibly on the surface of the car. Then I would need to drive back in time lets say 1929 (so I still can get fuel if I need and still have some roads to drive up to 88 m/h) and drive around in Rome at night hoping lightning strikes the DeLorean. Of course this plan has a very big flaw that in 1929 there will not be Internet so I would get bored to death in the case I have to drive for a longer period of time.

Second option is to befriend James Bond and convince him to get my DeLorean fixed from 'Q' branch in the same way as he had his Lotus Esprit fixed (one which would convert as a submarine). So all I would need is to load the car on a ferry bound to some where near Rome and dive it in the sea when shore comes near and surface at an appropriate time and place. So I guess I would have to wait till the next time James is in town here in Gothenburg.Sweden (he must have some Swedish girlfriends I suppose). The only variable here is tracking his Swedish girlfriend. I think I can attract lightning more effectively though"

I did the mistake of not looking up what was actually happening in 1929 in Rome as I just guessed a year and planted it in. But atleast in the 1920s lead added gasoline was available.

I remember that I first saw back to the future in 1994, renting from Officers Mess Movie club in Wah when me and my sister were visiting our Dad. Actually in that one week we saw all kinds of Trilogies including Aliens and StarWars for the first time. That was perhaps my SciFi media frenzy.

I look back and realize that at that point I really wanted to be like Doc. Aloof and always in his world, accomplishing scientific things and not worrying about other matters in life, where as Marty was the normal kid with social life, taste for music and fashion sense. But in the end travelling through time Doc finds his own sense of normalcy (and a family). There are some real life lessons which one can learn in this movie.

• Your parents were perhaps way lot cooler in their time (before you were born)
• than they are now and it's actually sort of good for you (they nag you and scold you, because they love you)
• You can do what ever you want to do, you just have to believe in your self.
• It doesnt matter what your destiny is, it's the journey that makes you the person you are

Do I still want to be Doc, perhaps no, but I love his transformation.

This is one question which was not on my mind when I was applying to grad schools in Sweden. I gave up an opportunity to go to germany so I could persue higher education in Sweden, on the sole reason that I wont need to learn a foreign language. This is to some extent true, I don't need to learn much swedish language for my daily use, and especially for my classes. But it seems that I will never feel at home here in Sweden unless i learn swedish or atleast some basics.

So here is my list of pros and cons of learning swedish, learning swedish will

• be a good thing on my resume
• make my daily life (shopping, going around, socializing with people) a lot more easier
• make me appreciate local culture and customs a bit more

But at the same time it will

• take alot of time from the actual things which i need for my resume (like uber programming)
• not be a very practical foreigen language to learn (better would be German, Chinese or Spanish) for long term career prospectives
• not be an easy goal to get a grasp on this language in mere months and I may abandon this project as it will not be bearing any results easily

I have not entirely made up my mind regarding this, but I would definetly be looking into some computer based aides and daily use vocabulary etc and then perhaps move on to grammer and towards a more structured learning methodology. I may end up going to the swedish speaking cafe and practice language there in coming months or so.

Owning a complete professional piano has been one my dreams. I have owed keyboards in the past (Casio and Yamaha PSR-640) but never a true hammer graded piano with 88 keys and 3 pedals. So I finally got the courage to buy my self a Yamaha P-85. Actually I went to get in some lower end model (Yamaha YDP-S30) but then I decided to get a better sounding model as I plan to keep this for the next 3-4 years. This machine is very simple and elegent and sounds great. I also bought pedals and stand for this machine. I am starting to devoute more time to piano practice as well. I bought it from 4Sound Gothenburg (I got a reasonable deal which included pedals for free) and a friend of mine helped me haul the three big packs on bus. Here are some pics ofthis awsome machine.

I am posting this entry after first 1.5 week of classes. As of now I have already started working in group for my Agile Devlopment Course. The project is to apply Agile Devlopment and extreme programming practices while devloping a student project called Vivace. It's a MIDI editor made in Java. Studying extreme programming and agile devlopment formally is new thing for me and I hope it would help me in better understanding of these topics becuase in practice we rarely get to do this right (we all brew in our own recepies which make the whole process so hetrogenous).

As for my other course of Algorithms, we have already skipped all the Mathematics and already gone on to discuss realworld algorithms. I have not yet bought the book though as I plan to read excrepts of it from Google books and probably borrow the book from library for missin pages.

On Sep 1st 2008 I have started a new chapter in my life, Grad School. I look back and think that it took almost the double amount of time for me to get to this point. Many of my peers started Grad School back in Fall of 2004. I have had my ups and downs in life but this is definetly an up. My program was greeted by the faculty head and then by the program director. Later we were greeted by CEO of Chalmers University. It was truly reaffirming that Chalmers was a correct choice for all of us when she counted all the positive aspects of Chalmers. Here at Chalmers they take student input very seriously and change the workings of university based on that. The CEO especially mentioned that there would be absolutly no compromise on equality and every one would get the same level of attention which they truly deserve.

After all the talks it was time for me to get keys to my new room. Here are some pics which i snapped before moving in. It's an OK sized room and I am glad that I got it on time. After this I completed my registration and all the related activities. As of now I have already attended atleast 2 lectures of both of the courses I have to take this study period (ie for next two months). One is Algorithms and other is Agile Devlopement Methodologies. The latter is more of a team/lab work than a course (so it would be just like working for a company).

I came to Gothenburg on 25th only to attend some CIRC activities. CIRC is a volunteer organization here at Chalmers campus whose aim is to help international students adjust to Swedish/European culture. I have so far attended their Campus tour and Phadders evening (small silly fun and games with a senior student). I am planning to go to their city tour and to Leisberg park tour this weekend.

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 a room 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) and I also had a cron script running looking for a new room postings every 15 minutes. 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.

Normally I would not be celebrating my birthday as such. But this time it was different. I woke up and decided to stop and the bakery before going to office. Bought two small cakes and thought to get done with giving a small feast to my office mates. I came in and gave the cakes to the cook who works at my office.

At around 11:15 my office manager said we are having a party. I thought it was strange that I had brought just two small cakes, perhaps some thing else is going on as well. When I went upstairs I saw a big cake (along with two small ones). Over there was written "Happy 25th Birthday, Shahzada Hatim". Now I was surprised. I didn't realize that my Dad secretly sent the cake and some edibles to my office. We had a small office party. Here are some pics of that party.

Click here for more pics

 

My uncle who was in recovery from bypass has finally been discharged from the hospital. He had a rough ride while in recovery. Apparently some water accumated around one of his lung and it was very hard for him to breathe. It took some time for the doctors to figure out what was wrong with him and finally they did a small procedure to drain out the excessive water (which came out to alarmingly near one and a quater liter). He is still recovering from the operation and has grown considerably weak. It is just a reminder that we are all what we eat, and one must take care of one's diet to be in best of health.

Today I recieved my IELTS results, and I was astonished to see how I had performed. I was expectin an overall score of 8, where as I got a 7. The most surprising result was of my speaking test , 6.5/9.0. Apparently my english is more sound in familiar situation and my communication may cause misunderstandings in some scenarios (according to IELTS band ratings). I think I need to bush up on my sentence structure. Effective communication skills teach that content of a sentence is more important than in which accent it is delivered (provided one does not just butcher the language with a thick accent). I also need to make my accent more neutral, because people who are used to british accent may find it hard to understand my slightly mid western american accent (which I picked up while my stay in Nebraska). Let me add one more goal to 43 things, ie speak flawless english.

My uncle and all his immmediate family were in town this Sunday. He got admitted in to AFIC in prepration of his heart bypass operation. I had previously heard the word bypass, but never knew what it really meant. It involves cutting veins from some other part of the body and planting them near heart where blockages are present. It is a very delicate procedure. The operation was successful, but recovery is still progressing. Hopefully it would be all fine. All of my cousins including one who lives in UK have come to town and are staying at our place. AFIC (armed forced institute of cardiology)is probably the best hospital in Pakistan, dealing with heart patients.

I happened to give my IELTS speaking test today. It happened in one of the various Motels on club road in Islamabad. There were atleast a dozen people over there along with me for their tests. It seems alot of people are planning to go for higher education and employment opportunities in first world countires (where IELTS is a very basic requirement). I think the test was easy, although I probably could have answered few questions slightly better. But this has nothing to do with my english speaking skils. It's because of my crazy thought patttern when I am speaking on general topics ;)

My Dad decided to be generous to me and give me Honda Civic for my useage ,although I doubt it will be the case as things unfold. Even if he is not using it in the future, I would probably be not able to afford such a fuel expensive car. But in any case we are planning to get the Civic converted on CNG. One concern that I had was that since this car is automatic transmission, it will losse its performance edge. But come to think of it, other than the extra pounds of CNG kit which sits in the trunk, the car will run about the same if it is run on fuel.

So on my way back from GIKI early morning last thursday I brought in the Civic. I have to admit, you don't know what kind of piece of trash you are driving, unless you get to drive some thing better. Lets hope I get rid of the Suzuki soon. 

I will post pics of CNG conversion. We are planning to use the kit of our <sarcasm>beloved</sarcasm> Vox Wagon (aka Foxy)  

This Wednesday I took off from my office and  I went to GIKI after a gap of one year. That place is still the same but atleast I am not there any more :). I travelled via the Peshawer motorway for the first time. It took me and my (Dad's) driver unexpectedly longer to reach GIKI (about 2:15 hours) so I guess the older route is much shorther. I went straight to the Accounts office to get some of the money  ,which GIKI owed me (aroud 7000Rs), back. Unfortunately for me this task is still incomplete as there still need to be few signatures on the file. I later gave that file to Harry ( a batch 12 buddy of mine who is a TA in Math department).

Later I had the chance to meet few of my teachers, I went to see my Dean who was pleased to know that I am working hard (or atleast pretending to be :). One of other highlights of my trip was that I finally got my degree. I some how decided to not go on my convocation (on which my parents were disappointed, but at that time I just didn't want to go). So there was a small moment where I felt like a graduate (I have yet to ever wear a gown and throw a cap, I hope I will be able to do this one day from some other place).

I also met a kid cousin of mine who happens to be in GIKI freshman year. I didn't get the time to go to Hostels. Later I and my driver went to Abbottabad through scary route of Sri Kot at night. Thankfully we reached my family home safely and in time. (This is another thing taht I got some minor scolding from my mom when she came to know that I came vai the mountains)

 

After staying downstairs for almost one year and with a vacant room upstairs in our rented house I was finally persuaded by my dad to move upstairs. Its a bigger room with more cloth hanging space and bigger bathroom. I will try to post pictures of it tomorrow (hopefully after tidying it up). 

[Edit, Post Pics] 

Like any sunday I was given atleast 2-3 taks pertaining to home repairs, which usually comprises of getting few things fixed here and there. This weekend there was an unusual repair concern. During lunch (while there were people outside repainring a water heater) my dad found that there was some thing happeing to paper painting that he had brought from China. I immediately recognized it as fungi. We looked at the back of the frame and it was very obvious. But the interesting thing was that how fungi grew here so fast and was able to penetrate inside the building.

The problem with that particular wall was that it was still mosit from the consturction done almost 2 years ago. In areas like Aboottabad, it may take years before moisture completely goes out from concrete pourings.

 Any who we got it under control, but it seems that we may need to inspect pictures after every 15 days or so.

My Kahloo (my mom's eldest sister's husband) a retired Army officer and a seasoned vetnerarian was in town to get his hear checked up (same uncle and aunt who was along with my family for Umrah trip). I was surprised to know that he had a heart problem as he seemed so fit. He would beat us all during tawafs. Any who he came along with his eldest son (also an Army officer). It was good that they atleast got it checked up, as normally people don't take this kind of stuff seriously in Pakistan. I shared his engiography result CD on my website so perhaps other people may download it as well.

I am planning to get both of my parents tested against possible heart and other problems. It will no be easy but the sooner the better. Infact I should get my self check up as well. 

Update : It seems that my uncle would be back in town again for further checkups, so I am planning to shift upstairs in our rented house 

I have to register for IELTS in order to apply for admission in a Masters Programme in Europe. I am targetting Sweden, Finland, Norway and Germany. I may also look into Netherlands and Switzeland but so far Sweden is my top choice. Belgium is also another choice but I haven't really explored it so far. I submitted the required fee (around 146$) to the Standard Chartered Bank F-7 Markaz (Jinnah Super) branch. I got the form but screwed it up while filling. Tomorrow I am hoping to fill up a new form and submit it to the British Council for a December 1st test date. I am still not sure how It will work out for submitting the test results to Sweden (I suspect that IELTS reults are not sent to Institute, like TOEFL, but they are confirmed by the Institutes them selves)

 Update : I have gotten the date of 15th Dec 2007 for my IELTS test. I could have gotten Dec 1st, but I hand submitted my documents a bit late.

Last night emergency was declared in Pakistan. It was not surprising, but surely was disappointing. The premise for declaring emergency was increase de-stability of Pakistan, but this had more to do with disagreements between the Supreme Court and the executive branch of the governemnt. All tv channels have been shut down and there is a media black out in the country. While writing this blog entry I don't have access to the internet and I hope that internet is not blocked out as well*.

When emergency was declared I was near the Parliment, teaching Linux to MAJU employees. Needless to mention that my parents some how felt I was out of home (they being in another city)and called me up to get back.

*(Internet is up and running in Pakistan, thank God).

After my car's accident back in July I have had to endure many things from it. Its compressor ball bearing got jammed making its fanbelt stuck. It's head light switch got loose one day, draining all the battery power. On top of that I got a really retarded electrician to look at it, who convinced me to replace my battery (which was 2 years old,but was just discharged). Even after I got a new battery I was getting fumes from my steering assembly (there was some  shortcircuiting). Then to top it all, as I had lost my central locking remote control, the car was put on some funky mechanism by the electrecian which would make the engine stop stop if any one opened a lock. I got all these problems fixed one by one over course of last month. But it has taught me one thing, once a car gets into a major accident, it starts loosing it's self.

My first actual task for the ERP application is to finalize the design of Graphical Modeler. This task involves understanding the complete user requirements, making their UML diagrams and documenting use cases. This particular exercise brought me back to learn UML after a long time. Last time I touched UML in detail was in 2002 in my OOP course. So I got a book called () th help me out in this.

UML is some thing which is to be taken lightly. You cannot draw all diagrams for a particular problem and you cannot nail the design in one go. It's a process which is very iterative. The end product is a design which is re-factored over many times from the original design. It is good to keep one's design simple, but I think this statement is overstated as well. Elegant designs are some times complex (for example there are complex systems which keep us alive while we are flying, and did i mention complex). Any who ISA-95 has 4 different basic models on top of which other models are built (namely personnel , equipment, material, process-segment).

We first started with most simple of them called the Personnel Model. As from a programmer point of view (and that too of an OO language) the crown jewel of all the UML design activity is a class diagram. Fortunately (or unfortunately) class diagrams are already suggested in the standard. In normal circumstances we reach to the class diagram through a methodological way, in which we happen to generate all other sorts of diagrams. But since we already had the class diagram the process becomes a bit fuzzy (since all other diagrams now have to suite the class diagram). But all in all I got to have 3 weeks of design only :)

Update: it seems that design phase will go on for some more period of time as well.