Lisbon - Week3

[15/09/2012] we were able to meet each other following the same course, and break ice this week. We received our admission letter signed by the EMDC coordinators from KTH, along with the insurance for the year. We also had a welcome reception by NMCI, and received a welcome kit that included a local SIM, with the operator Moche. Our lectures begin the coming Monday, the 17th of September.

We got the time table!

The modules for the first semester will be, Peer-to-peer Systems and Overlay Networks (Codenamed "SERS"), Cloud Computing (CN), Network and Computer Security (SIRS), and Parallel and Distributed Computing (CPD). We will have the lectures and lab sessions of SERS and CN on Mondays and Wednesdays at the Tagus Park campus of Instituto Superior Tecnico, where the SIRS and CPD will be on Tuesdays and Thursdays at the Alameda - Lisbon campus. Both campuses are connected by the IST shuttle service, for the students' transport.

Museu de Marinha

We paid a visit to Museu de Marinha (Photos). It is a wonderful place. It is free for entrance on Sundays, 10 a.m. - 2 p.m. Make sure to enter the ticket counter before 2 p.m., and get the ticket, free!

Cascais

Sunset at Cascais

Cascais and Estoril are two of the mostly praised beaches in Lisbon. We walked from Cascais to Estoril (Photos). Seagulls everywhere! The Sunset was scenic. The beach water was cold, probably because we are reaching the end of the summer, and autumn is coming to us! I was able to notice the oil wastes leaking from the sailing boats polluting the sea water.

Sintra

The train travel to Sintra (Photos) was remarkable. Our 35 Euro monthly charge of the travel card covers only the Lisbon area. Hence we had to buy the train tickets (one-day) for Cascais and Sintra, as they are not under Lisbon urban area that is covered, though they are still in Greater Lisbon. The forests and environment of Sintra reminded me Sri Lanka, and its forestation in the places like Ohiya. I had grilled octopus at the restaurant of Pena Castle - Sintra. It was delicious!

ESN Card

Students are really interested in getting the ESN (Erasmus Students Network) and Erasmus Lisboa cards. ESN card is 5 Euro/month, and Erasmus Lisboa is 10 Euro/month. Both come with exciting offers, free parties, and discounted trips. We joined ESN. It was a long queue with students from different countries!

Connecting with family

Museu de Marinha

Studying abroad teaches some life lessons, while also letting us learn to survive in a new environment, alone. Communication with friends and those with an access to the Internet is always easy for me, as I am online, almost always, when I am home. But calling my parents who do not appear online much was always a bit expensive. Skype came to help at this point. I credited my Skype account with 10 Euro. It also charged an additional 1.5 Euro, as a tax, which is applicable only to the countries of European Union. Since I am from Portugal, I had to pay the additional amount! It costs 0.121 Euro/minute to call Sri Lanka. I found the country-specific monthly skype credit option cheaper. You can buy 60 minutes of skype credits for Sri Lanka, for a month, for just 6.29 USD (4.79 Euro). This is just 0.08 Euro/minute. I will go for this option henceforth.

Our lectures start the day after tomorrow. I have stayed at Lisbon for almost a month, without any lectures. Now the real schedule begins! You can expect more blog posts on the course works in Llovizna very soon. :) Bom fim-de-semana!

Why you should avoid traveler's cheques?

View from Oceanario de Lisboa

I was so much into traveler's cheques, as they are safe, and in addition, their advantages are preached a lot. However, after having difficulty in encashing them in Lisbon, and spending a lot of money for this, I realized, it is a good idea to avoid it, unless you are flying with a considerably high amount of money. Your passport and a return ticket are required to obtain a standard traveler's cheque from a bank. I learned from HSBC, Colombo-06 that the maximum I can take to New Delhi from Colombo was traveler's cheque worth of 1000 Euro, when I tried to purchase 2000 Euro of traveler's cheques. To purchase the traveler's cheque of 1000 Euro (168,280 LKR), I had to pay an additional amount of around 15 Euro (2524 LKR). Since even to change the currency, we need to pay almost the same amount. Hence I don't consider this an additional expense, as my alternative would be to take the cash with me, in Euro.

However, after having difficulty in encashing them in Lisbon, and spending a lot of money for this, I realized, it is a good idea to avoid it, unless you are flying with a considerably high amount of money. Your passport and a return ticket are required to obtain a standard traveler's cheque from a bank. I learned from HSBC, Colombo-06 that the maximum I can take to New Delhi from Colombo was traveler's cheque worth of 1000 Euro, when I tried to purchase 2000 Euro of traveler's cheques. To purchase the traveler's cheque of 1000 Euro (168,280 LKR), I had to pay an additional amount of around 15 Euro (2524 LKR). Since even to change the currency, we need to pay almost the same amount. Hence I don't consider this an additional expense, as my alternative would be to take the cash with me, in Euro.Now, I am with the traveler's cheques worth 1000 Euro (100Euro * 10), in Lisbon, trying to encash them.

Interestingly, among the branches of 3 banks in IST, BPI and Santander Totta clearly declined to encash. They mentioned that they had stopped using it! Thank God, Caixa Geral de Depositos, the third bank in the campus, agreed to encash. The bank officer noted that he hadn't seen a traveler's cheque for months! I have to pay a comissao of 33.65 Euro and Imposto s/commissao of 1.35 Euro, making it 35 Euro of total commission. Deducting this from the amount of 1000 Euro, I was paid 965 Euro. Please note that the traveler's cheques are already in Euro. So this 35 Euro was a waste of money that I had to spend just because of my unwanted attraction towards the traveler's cheques. To repeat what I mentioned before, avoid traveler's cheques, unless you are planning to travel to a city full of thieves!

Now, I am with the traveler's cheques worth 1000 Euro (100Euro * 10), in Lisbon, trying to encash them. Interestingly, among the branches of 3 banks in IST, BPI and Santander Totta clearly declined to encash. They mentioned that they had stopped using it! Thank God, Caixa Geral de Depositos, the third bank in the campus, agreed to encash. The bank officer noted that he hadn't seen a traveler's cheque for months! I had to pay a comissao of 33.65 Euro and Imposto s/commissao of 1.35 Euro, making it 35 Euro of total commission (3.5%). Deducting this from the amount of 1000 Euro, I was paid 965 Euro. Please note that the traveler's cheques are already in Euro. So this 35 Euro was a waste of money that I had to spend just because of my unwanted attraction towards the traveler's cheques. To repeat what I mentioned before, avoid traveler's cheques to save your time and money, unless you are planning to travel to a city full of thieves, or if you have already confirmed that the country/city you are visiting is traveler's-cheque-friendly, and they change them at the major banks or shopping centers for free or for a minimal charge.

An update on 30/12/2012: "With effect from 1 January 2013, The Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation Limited "(Bank)" will discontinue the sale of Travellers' Cheques service, while the encashment / payment of Travellers' Cheques service will not be affected."
That is a message from my Sri Lankan bank. It seems that traveller's Cheques are becoming old-style.

Lisbon - Week2

25 de Abril Bridge

[07/09/2012] - I was saying to myself, that I won't be able to continue Llovizna as a travel blog, though I wanted to reposition it. Contrary to my own disbelief, I am here summarizing the week2.

Travel Card

Getting a travel card to travel across Lisbon was surely an important and urgent task for us to do. We took it in the "urgent" option, which is option C. We got the card the same day, after waiting for 3 hours in the queue. We just needed to take a photograph and passport with us. We had to pay 12 Euro for this. Under the normal service, it takes up to 10 days for the card to be released. We charged the card for one month (35 Euro), for the Lisbon urban area, so that we can move anywhere in Lisbon in Metro, bus, or any such public transport.

Metros

Castelo de S.Jorge

Metros are pretty frequent in Lisbon, and is the mostly recommended medium to travel - buses are not that frequent, compared to metro. Our station Arroios is located between Anjos and Alameda, on the way to Rossio from Alameda.

Bank Account

Next we had to open a bank account. IST has branches of three banks. We were encouraged to open an account at BPI, where we can open a current account free of charge.

NMCI │ Núcleo de Mobilidade e Cooperação Internacional

I submitted the filled admission form, photographs, and the passport scanned copy, by hand. Got some leaflets.

Yellow Bus

Yellow bus is the most convenient way to explore Lisbon. It is identical to the HoHo bus we saw in New Delhi in the way it operates. The only difference is, the Yellow bus provides 4 routes, where we can explore all 4 of them. There are alternate services similar to Yellow Bus too. One such service titled "Lisbon Sightseeing" offers this for 24 hours. But since we got 48 hours, we were able to travel 3 days! (Saturday evening, Sunday whole day, and Monday morning). The 4 routes are Tagus tour, Olisipo tour, Tram tour by the hills, and Belem tour. These tours start and end at Rossio. We took metro from our station Arroios to Rossio. Keep your yellow bus ticket safe forever, as if you produce the card when you want to buy them for the second time, you will get a 50% off, straightly. Isn't that just awesome? :)

Sightseeing in Lisbon

A crab in Oceanario Lisboa

The yellow bus Olisipo and Tagus tour are on a double decker bus, which has an open upper floor for us to sit and enjoy Lisbon. We visited Belem on the Tagus route. Belem is awesome, by the banks of Rio Tejo (Tagus River). It has a museum of weapons inside the riverside fort - Santa Maria de Belém (5 Euro) - (Photos). I loved the lemon tea by the river side. The "25th of April" bridge reminds San Fransisco.

Estrela

Basilica de Estrela and the park in Estrela are surely not-to-miss (Photos). A tram tour from there is a good option. Trams are pretty slow, and since they share the same route as the ground transport, they often have to wait till the traffic clears up.

Oceanario

Lisbon Aquarium (Oceanário de Lisboa) (16 Euro) (Photos) is a must-visit, on Olisipo tour (Photos). It provides a nice view of the longest bridge of Lisbon - The Vasco da Gama Bridge (Portuguese: Ponte Vasco da Gama). 

Sao Jorge Castle

Sao Jorge castle (9 Euro) (Photos) is yet another interesting place, where one can geta bird's eye view of the entire Lisbon. As it is a hilly place connected by a narrow road, the mini bus connects it - but not the regular big buses.

IST

We have 9 students following EMDC at IST. Most of them have already arrived at Lisbon, and we are meeting each other, and breaking ice already. Seems the upcoming days will be more fun.

Lisbon - Week1

It is one week since I arrived at Lisbon (the 23rd of August)! I have started settling down. Since I got two Portuguese speaking apartment mates, and a friendly Portuguese landlord, I am pretty sure, I will be able to learn Portuguese pretty quick. It is my first time staying away from home for a long period. My longest was the recent stay of 10 days in New Delhi.

I was the first to arrive. Since this is a vacation time, the university, including the university bank branches, is closed almost completely. Probably since this is the end of summer, the weather in Lisbon doesn't feel like a summer, rather it was mildly cold with 20°c, along with long days. The Sun sets around the 8.20 p.m.

We were able to grab some useful and interesting tips from the landlord. In the supermarkets, the brands marked as "%" are the own brands of the super market, and are generally cheaper, though are of the same quality as the others. Pingo Doce and Minipreco, the two super market chains of Lisbon, provide the economic options.

We will be provided with a SIM for our phones by the university, where we will be able to call anyone in the university network free of charge. That will surely be fun, as we will be calling our friends free! Apart from the regular grocery shopping, we also did minor road trips. The upcoming days will surely be more interesting, I feel. :) boa noite!

Year 2012 - a year of changes

Opposite to IST, Alameda, Lisbon

Time has gone pretty fast. When I was selected to follow the Erasmus Mundus European Master in Distributed Computing (EMDC) in the first half of this year, going to Lisbon seems to be far away. But sorry for repeating the phrase again - time has gone pretty fast. I was selected to DMKM (Erasmus Mundus Master Course in Data Mining and Knowledge Management) as well, where the first year will be at University of Lyon Lumière Lyon 2 in France and the second at University Polithenica of Bucharest in Romania. Distributed Computing and Data Mining both are my research interests. Considering the advantages of both the courses, finally I decided to follow EMDC. I quickly accepted the offer for EMDC, and started working on that.

Getting the Portugal study visa of course needed a considerable effort. It also made me travel twice to New Delhi. I utilized my first trip to New Delhi in summer as a sight-seeing tour in New Delhi. It was a great experience, including the negotiations with the three-wheeler drivers. The second trip made me float. I was even worried whether my travel documents got wet by the heavy showers, on my way to the Portugal Embassy in Chanakyapuri. Thanks to God, my bag was strong enough not to let the water in.

I was working at WSO2 for the last 2 years, and it was my job since I graduated. Interestingly I was an intern too at WSO2. It was a great learning experience, as my first job. For some unknown reason, the Emirates decided to send me in the business class, though I had bought a ticket for the economic class. That gave me a positive feeling (Feeling lucky.. :D)

Lisbon seems pretty cool, and started to settle down here. Along with these changes, Llovizna too is facing a few changes (may I say, improvements?) I foresee, the completely new set of blog posts dominating the blog, along with my traditional mixture of technical and personal posts. I see a few posts on my experience on studying abroad, and related tours. Hope that will make Llovizna sexier. ;) To match with this, I have enabled the Google ads into my blog, as I feel they give provide some advertisements that are related and useful to the readers. For example, I could see the advertisements of the European scholarship programs in the blog post that mentions about the European Study visa. Hope the overall reader experience is made more positive.

I hope the upcoming days will be more exciting, as the course is starting on the 17th of September. I will keep the readers updated on this. Tenha um bom dia!