ipm romania...

found out friday evening that i had my visa (yippeee!!) - after having checked a whole set of assignments at lightening fast speed, uploading the marks for the entire quarter, submitting one paper, and having packed my bags i set off for isloo. got there at around 3 am at night as always. spent all night (and most of the morning) trying to download the presentation on pakistan (emad: 10 MB???) and fixing the lc presentation.

got up saturday afternoon - packed my bags, made a few phone calls (happy birthday saifee!!), worried a lot about my connecting flight from istanbul to bucharest (they expect me to disembark, chk in and board in 50 minutes!!!) and left home at around 1 am saturday night (or sunday morning)...

next thing i know - i'm on the plane - settling in, trying to make out what the irish (or was she scottish) stewardess is trying to tell me about the baggage (amma/baba - they let me take the bag on board - yay!!) and deciding which movie to watch. a very weird dinner...(was that a kebab?!?) followed by an even more boring chick flick pretty much summed up the flight. got off in dubai around 7 am and got prepared to be amazed. after all - i had been led to believe it had one of the best duty free shops in the world!

however. since i still had to confirm that weird connecting flight from istanbul to bucharest - i headed off straight towards information and decided to look around afterwards. was told to go to gate number 40, ended up walking through to the end of the airport only to be a told by a distinctly rude airport employee that i was at the wrong counter and had to go to gate number 1!! walked back the entire length of the - by now - hateful airport (atleast you don't have to walk miles in isloo airport) i found out that once again i had been handed out wrong info. decided would not take any crap from anyone and headed towards information again! was told to go upstairs to customer services to confirm flight (why didnt someone tell me pehlay?) got there, had to walk around a bit to find the right counter but was finally told by a really sweet desi uncle in a nice office k i could call the tarom (the romanian airlines) office after 9.

desperately needed to sit down and rest so i went back downstairs and got a coffee (haven't slept properly in 2 nights come to think of it!) and realised i hadn't gotten enough dv tape for the camcorder. oh - and come to think of it - still had some exploring to do in the duty free shops. so i went downstairs and started to look around. stopped after 10 minutes having bought only a pack of dv tapes (they're cheaper here then in pk - yay!) and decided chking email was a much more interesting idea. and here i am! 10 hours into my journey - yet still in dubai!!

am going to go now - make the call to tarom, confirm flight, call up hassan bhai, maybe eat the free meal emirates is giving me - yay!! - and read my book. flight leaves here at 2:30 so still have a good 5 hours to go.

next stop - turkey, then i have to attempt to catch the flight to bucharest (keep your fingers crossed everyone) and will be at my final destination - IPM baby!! - by sometime tonight, inshallah! next update - as soon as i can chk my mail...!!