Saket Vora

Woke up this morning and saw in my inbox that my housing has been confirmed for Sweden. Word. I have until July 4th to send in a deposit of 4600 SEK, which is ~$600. Whew.

This memory card has been a headache. Buy.com’s customer service sucks. They won’t provide a phone number, and unless I can start directing their emails to my work e-mail address, I can’t deal with it during the day. I’m gonna start giving them giving them bad ratings everywhere I can. I’ve ordered lots of stuff over the net, and nothing has arrived in such a condition.

Dave Matthews Band concert is on Wednesday…hope it doesn’t rain!

Peace.

Several good things to note today. Spent the weekend at the beach, so that was fun and relaxing. On Friday we called Manish the Travel Agent and booked our tickets. Finally! We are leaving August 4th, and family is coming back on June 15th. I will be catching a January 3rd flight out of Copenhagen. Upon returning at home, I discovered a priority mail from the Consulate General of Sweden in New York. Fearing that it was a denial or some problem with the paperwork, I tore it open only to find my passport inside. I flipped through the pages and there was the residence permit. Success! And it took only 2-3 weeks! They had been scaring me by saying it takes 6-8 weeks of processing. My camera’s memory card had also arrived, but I was extremely disappointed to find that the packaging was bent, the logo print scratched off, and the package in a generally sorry condition. I am going through the procedure of exchanging it. Caution to buyers: I used www.buy.com. You have been warned. As for my camera bag, I tried two Wolf Camera stores but alas, they failed to carry my particular model. So far I’m pleased with my camera. The weakness in portability is still a concern, but the severity of it will be dependent on the bag.

With the plane tickets settled, we are now focusing on hotels. We have found some apartments in Prague and Vienna that can be rented for 3 days at a very agreeable price, and will commence a dialogue with them in due course.

My camera arrived today. My family owns a Canon Powershot A40. 2 megapixels. 3x optical zoom. A little point-and-shoot. The new camera is a Canon Powershot S2 IS. 5 megapixles, 12x optical zoom, and more manual controls. I’m really enjoying it so far. I spent a month reviewing and researching before buying this camera. I can thank the internship I have now to help pay for it too!
The 512 MB card should come Friday…I hope.

Anyway. We’ve been dragging our feet on the whole Europe trip thing. We’ve got some price quotes for airfare and such, but as usual, everytime you peruse the Internet you’ll always find a slightly better deal. I’m at the point now where I just want to book what we’ve got. If it comes out $50-75 more per person, so be it. At least there’s the peace of mind that you’ve got something in your hand.

Anyway, sleep now.

Last Saturday I mailed off my residence permit application, along with my passport and a check for $147. Sigh. Oh, and nearly $30 for the express mail shipment. It reached the General Consulate of Sweden in New York at 8:45am Monday, so I’m hoping that the processing is speedy and fair.

The conversation around the house has shifted entirely to planning the pre-Sweden traveling. We are finally getting to the point where reservations can be made in the next 3 days. The plan so far:

Aug 04: RDU to Budapest
Aug 05: Budapest
Aug 06: Budapest
Aug 07: Budapest
Aug 08: Bratislava
Aug 09: Vienna
Aug 10: Vienna
Aug 11: Vienna (day trip to Graz?)
Aug 12: Prague
Aug 13: Prague
Aug 14: Prague
Aug 15: Prague to RDU Plane (Dad, Mom, Sachi, Sapana)
Aug 15: Prague to Copenhagen Train (Saket)
Aug 16: Copenhagen (Saket spends night), family arrives home
Aug 17: Saket arrives in Lund for Arrival Day.

I’m pushing Mom to get the plane tickets booked via the Indian travel agent. Hopefully that will get started today or tomorrow. Our hotels are the latest X-factor….we had a good call with Best Western and we might go with them. Surprisingly to us, Prague is gonna be most $$$, instead of Vienna as we had thought. We decided to nix visiting Berlin cause it just wasn’t worth it for the amount of money. So far this trip is coming to be approximately $11,500 (on the high side) for the entire family. Whew. At the moment my concern involves my luggage….for the traveling my family will be carrying only carry-on bags, but I’ll have my two suitcases for my entire semester in Lund. I’m exploring options of surface mail to Lund, so I just have to carry one suitcase, and that way will just get my winter clothing after I arrive in Lund. Or I can lug around the two suitcases. We’ll see.

The official acceptance paperwork has finally arrived from Sweden. It’s also disappointingly thin….no brochure or information packet about Lund or anything. Two copies of the acceptance letter, and one sheet telling me the status of the classes I signed up for.

The family (sans Sachi…who is hiding in her tent in Colorado from a hail storm), is now endlessly debating what to do in the time between August 4th and August 17th, when I’m due in Sweden. Some things that have been discussed:

• Should we go on a cruise?
• Do all five of us go? Three? Two?
• Do we do it all ourselves or find a package tour?
• Stick to the railways? A boat trip down the Danube? Rent a car?

So far, we’ve been in strong agreement on which part of Europe we’d like to see. Budapest, Vienna, and Prague are the big three cities. Bratislava, the capital of Slovakia, is on the way between Budapest and Vienna. Berlin is north of Prague and I’d like to see it for a day or two as well. I can’t wait till Brandyn comes back so I can see him again. I want to hit a coffee house and talk with him for several hours.

I’m also trying to get my residence permit paperwork together as quickly as possible. The problem is that the residence permit form requires information about date of entry into the ‘Schengen’ states, which includes Austria…so finalizing the trip itinery would be a good thing.
I’m almost thinking for booking my own trip so I’m set regardless of what my family decides. We’ll see.

Progress Energy internship going good so far. Sapana is busy at GSK. We’ve been playing a lot of bridge lately. I need to improve my card counting and seeing where finesses can be used. It’s tough.

More later.