Saturday, December 29, 2012

A few things that made my 2012 interesting..

Nightly walk in Lisboa
Time has come to say good bye to the year 2012. I was keeping my blog updated on the with regular updates. Year 2012 - a year of changes summarizes the first two trimesters of the year. This year was truly remarkable, and probably it was one of the 3 best years so far (the other two were years 2010 and 2004). Now time to look into some random things that made me 2012 a unique year.

1. Broken resolutions
Yes, those resolutions which rarely works. Not to stay up too late, not to spend much time on the Internet, .. these resolutions! :P

2. Successful goals
Surprisingly, 2012 turned to be a very successful year. It didn't start pretty well, to be honest. Learned more realities of life throughout the year. :D

3. Movies in Colombo
Oh.. too many of them this year.. :D

4. Nightly walks 
I always enjoyed a long walk, in the nights. ^ ^

5. Busy days getting the documents ready for the Portuguese visa
It was not fun. However, now all it gives is nice memories.

6. Arakashan Road, Pahar Ganj, New Delhi, India.
When I said I am going to stay in a place called Pahar Ganj during my visit to India, some guys who are from New Delhi were scaring me saying Pahar Ganj is a dangerous place. I myself noticed that the place is dodgy, as an over-crowded place next to the central railway station. Staying there for a few days gave me a more insight of New Delhi.

7. Trip by HoHo bus in New Delhi 
It was interesting (in a strange way) to travel alone to tourist attractions, such as Qutub Minar.

8. Three-wheeler negotiations in New Delhi 
New Delhi by tuk-tuk was fun!

9. Exploring Colombo 
Sometimes we don't really get the chance to explore the city that we live in. It was this year, when I really explored more of my city. :D

10. Random Shopping
And exploring Colombo city!

11. Summer in Lisbon
Summer experience in Lisbon is really great.

12. Yellow bus travel in Lisbon 
"Yellow bus" is a convenient way to explore Lisbon, in 48 hours, for 25 Euros. Visited many interesting places such as Lisboa Oceanario.

13. Shuttle travels to Taguspark campus!
An interesting routine activity

14. Lunch at Taguspark canteen.
It was a time of friendship and chats!

15. Dinner for 4.45 Euro at Açúcar & Canela, Lisboa.
How many times in this small bakery/restaurant?

16. My weekly blog posts on my stay here in Lisbon. 
Interestingly, the blog views got to a peak in the month of October. Moments with Twitter.. and Moments with Twitter - II became two of the mostly viewed posts, all time.

17. Living away from home and the country for the first time.
I am doing awesome too.

18. Nights at Bairro Alto and Cais do Sodre.
Such magical nights!

19. Group discussions for P2P exams!
Oh, those exams!

20. Getting soaked in the wild rainy days in New Delhi during the second visit.
Unexpectedly strong rains.

21. Gurudwara Bangla Sahib. 
Going to a temple of another faith that I was never aware of, turns to be interesting, like exploring a new world. This year, I went to many places of worship, of different faiths, including Central Mosque of Lisbon.

22. Visit to Munneswaram and the other surrounding Hindu temples. 
It felt great to have such a religious trip with family, after a long time, without much preparation.

23. Beach Wadiya of Wellawatte. 
Never mind the big fat rat.. :D

24. Emirates! I like the airlines, and Dubai Airport. 
This was not my first time though.

25. Letters from KTH
It was surely one of the highlights of the year. Letters regarding EMDC was always promising and made me smile big.

26. GSoC Awareness sessions all over the island
We did it big for GSoC 2012. More evangelization!

27. Optimism 
Not that 2012 was full of good events. It had its own share of negative events and depressing moments. I feel, it was me being optimistic, made me take some brave decisions to withstand the currents, which eventually turned as the right decisions. :-)

28. Crazy friends
I am surrounded by them here. So no comments on this right now. :D

29. Portuguese classes. 
I rarely did the homework. I should have put more effort. However, we have completed the Portuguese A1 level now. :)

30. Being a student once more, after two years. 
Makes me feel younger! EMDC, IST, and Lisbon - It is a cool combination.. :D

We are going to Madrid, Barcelona, and Nuria in Spain the coming February for the EMDC winter event. Apart from this, I have plans to visit home next year. Finally to KTH, Stockholm for the second year. 2013 seems more promising. Thanks for reading my list until the end. If you are really interested, you may also read the blog posts on my other years as well. Happy new year everyone.

Lisbon - Week18

[29/12/2012] - The festival season, and Lisbon is celebrating. And now we feel the need to start studying for the upcoming exams, which commence by the 7th of January, next year. Exams - a great way to start the new year. We were still spending time going to shopping centers (Colombo, El Corte Ingles, and Centro Vasco da Gama) and watching movies.. :D

oh, and time to welcome the year 2013 now. :-)

Saturday, December 22, 2012

Lisbon - Week17

[22/12/2012] - Lisbon is getting into the festival season. We are finally having the Christmas break. Our exams start on the 7th of January. We have got the time table for the second semester already. The below modules will probably be the subjects for the next semester.
SDTF64 - Fault-Tolerant Distributed Systems    
PADI764 - Middleware for Distributed Internet Applications
CMov764 - Mobile Computing    
AVExe364 - Virtual Execution Environments

[21/12/2012] - I got the residence permit from SEF. We also have already bought the flight tickets to Madrid and Barcelona, for the EMDC winter event 2013.

[20/12/2012] - We are done with all the project demos, discussions, as well as the Security presentation on SeCrawler, which is a role-aware Secured Crawler, based on Crawler4j library.


Friday, December 14, 2012

YaCy Introductory presentation for P2P module

Lisbon - Week16
[14/12/2012] - One of the busiest days. We submitted 3 final projects today, of Cloud Computing, P2P, and Security modules. You may have a look at the project.
[10/12/2012] Today we did an introductory presentation to the YaCy Decentralized Web Search - The Peer-to-Peer Search Engine, for the P2P module. The presentation we did can be found here.

Saturday, December 8, 2012

Lisbon - Week15

[08/12/2012] - The project deadlines are approaching the coming week. Everyone is getting busier. A few interesting events did occur during this time span.

[07/08/2012] - Tivemos o exame de português hoje. Eu estou contente que eu não desisti. Muito graças ao nosso professora por seus cuidados. I feel a bit guilty of not putting enough effort on learning Portuguese so far. I have loads of Portuguese speaking friends - I speak in English with all of them, so far. :)

[05/12/2012] - We get a student visa for 3 months, when we fly to Portugal. However, we are supposed to be present for an interview at SEF to obtain a residence card, usually covers a period of a year, for the Erasmus Mundus students, as we are going to study here for a year. SEF can be reached by metro. From the metro station Porque, turn right (when facing away from the entrance) and walk to #20. The interviews start at 8.30. I reached SEF by 8.20 and had to stay for 1.5 hours to complete the interview. It is better to reach around 8 am to be the first in the queue, and leave early.

Documents to take to SEF (information provided by IST)
1.      Passport;

2.      Proof of Residency;
One way do make  proof of Residency
                                                       I.            Declaration passed by your landlord;
                                                     II.            A copy of the identity card from your landlord (SEF needs to check if the signature on the declaration passed by our landlord is the same);
                                                   III.            A copy of the deed to the house (For SEF to check if the house is really the propriety of the person who is passing the declaration).

Or
Other way do make  proof of Residency
Certificate of Residence passed by the  parish council (you landlord will assist you  in doing this.

Or
If you are in a residence
You must tell me in which one so I can include it in the declaration, therefore you don’t need to do the steps before described

3.      Proof of means of livelihood
If you have Scholarship, the documents that prove you are receiving it.
If not, a copy of your bank account transactions for the past six months.

4.      Declaration elaborated by your institution (A formal letter/document provided by IST, in our case.)

5.      A proof that you have health insurance

Sunday, December 2, 2012

Lisbon - Week14

[01/12/2012] - We are getting closer to the final project deadlines, as the month of December reaches. I was bored and needed a change. Hence visited Colombo, Centro Comercial (metro station is Colegio Militar), bought Nexus7 tablet from Worten, and came back home. :)


Pensão Amor, which used to be a strip club at the former red light district of Cais do Sodré, in the historic times, is now a regular bar and a tourist attraction of Cais do Sodré, selling quality drinks as a bar. However, the price is more expensive the amount than that you would find in the neighbourhood. Interestingly, it is crowded as it still holds the images and architectural marvels of its past pride. Check their website for some old live cams captured on the bar and the neighbourhood. We paid a quick visit to this place.