Two Days to China: DNIS and Ramadan

It's finally confirmed, I am going to China!!
Our work in the Nile University got accepted in MobiCom 2009 which is going to take place in China this year. We thought about who would go to present the work and we came to decide that I would, Lucky me! (or that's how I thought at first)
The permissions:
Traveling for students in Egypt is not that easy. It's actually involves a lot of procedures and steps. First you'll have to make your passport which is the easy part. Then you'll have to get a "traveling permission" from both the University and the Ministry of Defense! The university permission is pretty easy you just submit your ID and get the permission the next day. The Ministry of Defense is the one that's worth mentioning.
As I have to serve a time in the military service, I have to get a permission before I travel until I am older than 30 or so I've heard. Because it's not an easy thing to get I thought I should try to get it before I pay for anything so I won't pay for things I won't use. When I got there (where you get the permission) it turned out that I should have the VISA of the country I am traveling to to get the permission!!!
And so I did, I got the Chinese VISA which required buying a returning tickets, and I payed for that too!
When I went for the permission for the second time, it took me about 2 hours to get it and it turned out that I can't travel after September, 15th!!!!!!!!
The summer ends on the 26th September I'll be back on the 26th, I am going to a conference which is a really big deal in so many ways, I have no idea why anyone should make such a constrain but I agreed to travel before September15th. That way I'll have to spend at least an extra 6 days which is not funded from the Nile University.
I had to rearrange my bookings and DNIS's deadlines and just about everything I had planned for that month. Thanks to the beaurocracy!
DNIS's surprises:
Everything in Testing, Demoing, Postering and taking the results was going great until we came back from NU. First we had to change one of the two laptops that we prepared for testing which had catastrophic results (incompatible windows version, incompatible hardware, unexpected bugs, etc).
The Benchmarks were coming up with frustrating results showing that we've done nothing at all!
And I had Software Freedom Day to work on along all of that.
2 Days to China:
Now it's only 2 days till I get there (إن شاء الله) I have my tickets, my hotel reservation, a work of 2 months and inexpressible excitement.

Comments

  1. MoUsTaFaSeptember 10, 2009 at 3:30 PM

    RABENA Yewafa2ak isA ya kebeer...
    w 5aly balek mn yong yang :D

    Best wishes to you, the team and DNIS

    ReplyDelete
  2. Ahmed KotbSeptember 11, 2009 at 6:59 PM

    god be with u

    ReplyDelete

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