The Nerve Wrecking Visa Experience

How would you feel if you are in this situation.

You are one of the select folks worldwide to be invited to participate in the Creative Commons Summit at Dubrovnik, Croatia.

You receive full scholarship. Your flight, accommodation and food are taken care of.

Your flight leaves tonight, in a few hours time.

And here you are sitting at home, twiddling your thumbs and gnawing you teeth, because your Visa stamped passport hasn’t reached you yet!

Hear my story.

Two weeks ago, I flew to Delhi to apply for my Croatian Visa. The visa interview was a breeze. In fact, it lasted less than 2 minutes. All my papers were perfect : the invitation letter, the flight schedule, my e-tickets, bank balance, my office leave letter, and a very long visa application form with 40 questions duly answered.

Like I said, it took only 2 minutes for the interview. They asked me to pay the fees which I promptly did. And then, the bomb was dropped. It would take anywhere from a week to 20 days for my visa to be processed.

Oops!

And so, I crossed my fingers hoping the visa would come on time. Days slowly passed by and the anxiety began to grow. Three days ago, I began to lose hope. It was demoralizing losing an opportunity to rub shoulders with the best minds in the world. I tried hard not to show the disappointment.

I began making plans for the week ahead. The best way to forget something is to immerse yourself in other interesting things.

Today afternoon, the courier guy knocked on my door with a packet that I had been envisioning it in my dreams : The passport with the Croatian visa stamped. Tonight is my flight and I receive the visa just hours before.

If there was an expression for joyous relief, you could have clearly caught it in my face.

A huge dollop of appreciation to Tomislav Medak, part of the organizing team at Croatia who tirelessly worked with the immigration authorities to speeden up the process.

It’s going to be an awesome event and I hope to bring back and share the spirit of free Internet.

Ultimate Frisbee on Saturdays at the Beach

I was super excited when I got an email announcing that a bunch of guys have started Ultimate Frisbee at the Elliots beach. I read more about the game and was super excited. The team plays every Saturday at 5:15 am at the Elliots Beach, Besant Nagar.

Ultimate Frisbee is an exciting sport that mixes the best features of sports such as Soccer, Basketball, American Football and Netball into an elegantly simple yet fascinating and demanding game.

I missed this Saturday’s game because of PodWorks. Will miss the next week’s one as well because I will be in Dubrovnik. Can’t wait to get back and get started with the game.

I’ve been eager to get busy with a game and this fits in perfectly with my plan. Ultimate Frisbee on Saturday mornings and Marathon practice on Sunday mornings. Perfect.

At Chennai, the initiative for Ultimate Frisbee is by Narayan, who is a BITisan and ISBian. If you want to join up, subscribe to the mailing list.

PodWorks, the Podcasting Workshop is Tomorrow

For those who can’t make it, we trying our best to get Live Web Streaming done, so you can catch some of the happenings. Check back at www.PodWorks.in for instructions.

The IRC chatroom will be available. You can watch what folks at the event are discussing at http://www.PodWorks.in/chat . And yes, you can participate in the chatroom as well.

Tomorrow, June 9th, is going to be about Audio Podcasting and Sunday, June 10th, is going to be on Video Podcasting.

Press Conference is arranged on June 9th at 11:00 AM. The press coverage so far has been awesome. Kartik Subramanian from Hindu had a fantastic writeup on Page 2. The rest of the publications that has covered the events are Rediff, BudinessWire, IndiaInfo, MyIris, Sify, IANS, Yahoo!, CyberMedia, NDTV Profit & The Telegraph.

The Police are creating a hassle with permission for the BeachHouse party. Apparently, there’s been some ugly events that happened last month and the police have put a strong curb on any party happening on the ECR. We are looking at ironing things out and putting them in order.

Less than half day to go for the event. The team is pumped up. Should be fun.

Will be be in Delhi Today & Tomorrow. Want to Meet Up?

I’m open for coffee or dinner tonight. I’ll be there on Monday & Tuesday. If you have the time and interested in meeting up, that’d be nice. You can email me or call me at 098415 97744.

Map of Our Sunday Morning Running Route

KK and Ram, our running mates, have helped put this together.

For those who are familiar with Madras, here’s the route: C.P.Ramaswamy Road (Alwarpet), Greenways Road, Adyar Bridge, Theosophical Society, Besant Nagar Beach, Tidel Park, Madhya Kailash, Anna University, Kotturpuram Bridge, Madras Boat Club, Park Sheraton Hotel, Back to C.P.Ramaswamy Road.

It’s a 16 kms route. We run tomorrow morning at 5:00 AM…and all Sunday mornings. If you want to join in, call me at 98415 97744.