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...!!

IPM Romania

heyyyyyyyyyyyyyy - guess where i am??

as u've probably guessed - i got to romania fine. caught the instanbul-bucharest connection easily and have jst arrived. am settling into the hotel - everyone here is sooo great. president elections going on right now so havent met tori ppl but have met the other indian delegates and the cc for the conference and they're jst awesome. have been assigned a room with tori right now. jst thought i'd update everyone...

btw - its not that cold here. the hotel is boiling hot!! and outside its as cold as isloo is...

here's something i found extremely hilarious when i joined lums...don't try any of them though - your roommate will throw you out :P

natcong '05

just got back from another crazy trip to india and although my flu is still going strong and mind is still trying to purge all the crazy jives/roll-calls learnt at the 7 days spent in "rupis resorts" i feel this sudden urge to write down everything in case i wake up tomorrow with no memory of my craziest trip so far.

i still can't forget the pre-trip madness i had to endure at the indian high commission, struggling to get visa's for 9 people on the last working day before the conference. any trip that started off this crazy to begin with could only get worse.

the journey there consisted of a very jam packed "samjhota express" which we had been told would arrive the same day in delhi - yeah right!! - after close to 30 hours on the train we realised that nothing was going to go the way it was planned and gave ourselves upto a trip that would definitely count as an adventure...

the bus trip from delhi to udaipur was no less colorful...not only did we see very "public" bacthrooms...we also managed to see our very first indian "phadda", a very mean bus conductor and bus seats that can only be described as caves...!!

finally, arrival in udaipur - 24 hours late...entered the venue to find eveyone all dressed up in their best formals getting ready to go into plenary - looking like the dirtbags we were after 53 hours of train, bus, cycle rickshaw, jeep and auto rides we definitely needed a change in clothing (not to mention hot showers) before we could make an official appearance in front of @ in india.

the rest of the trip was pretty tame considering all that we had gone through already. just some misplaced passports, stolen blankets and about 50 du people driving us crazy by their "excess knowledge" of card games at the railway station...

all i can say is - sometimes...i wish i could afford the bloody plane!!