We have 30 out of 32 of the participants matched for the
Prague, Grenoble, Hamburg, and Dublin SEED term. The last two
mentoring pairs are in conversations and I hope to hear confirmation
on those matches soon. I am very pleased to see four of our mentors
this term are SEED alumni themselves!
My visa for Russia finally arrived on 3 January. This took seven
weeks from sending off the passport to getting it back with the new
visa. The actual visa has two parts:
- The usual full page form pasted into my passport – very official
looking and using Cyrillic letters I can’t read so I can only hope it is OK. - A 3rd generation photocopy hand cut folded over piece of paper
stapled to the next passport page for use in multiple entries. I only
have a single entry visa but I am told by someone who commutes to Russia to
leave the paper in even if no one asks for it. I made copies just in case
it falls out.
We are all ready for our next SEED term: Russia and Israel. I will be
visiting St. Petersburg and Tel Aviv later this month. Sun CTO Greg
Papadopoulos will send out the announcement email to the two sites on
Monday. (The Russians are out on winter break this week.) Tanya
Jankot has all of the web-based application materials ready and tested
and good to go. I still need to get confirmation on what days and times I
am making the presentations to the Russian and Israeli
Engineering staff and management groups
but I hope to get word on that next week. I have requested badge access
and a secondary login account in advance so I can start work as soon as
I get there.
I called the Travel Medicine department of the medical clinic and they
said that since I have current Hepatitis-A and Tetanus shots, I do
not need any more inoculations to travel to Russia or Israel. John and
I are looking forward to the trip. We are already watching the
weather reports to see what we should pack. St. Petersburg is overcast
this week with temperatures of 26-35 degrees F. Tel Aviv is
clear with a chance of rain this week with temperatures of 64-69 degrees F.
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