The post office clerk: "Yes, the passports for today have arrived. There isn't yours ( Read more... )

So I'll still have to wait one more day--and since today is Thanksgiving, there is nothing I can do for now apart from feeling anxious. I suppose one of the purposes of the US visa application process is to screen out those with heart problems, lest they fall ill in the foreign land...

The past few days have been rather mixed. I've found some papers (namely, some properties about EXIT charts) extremely helpful to my current research work, and I finally sorted out most of the messy stuff about broadcast channels, dirty paper coding, duality, Thomlinson-Harashima, etc. Not being a believer of the TIMTOWTDI philosophy, I find it ( Read more... )

To the visa office, of course. The ten-minute call, at a cost of 6 yuan, yielded remarkably little information, except that the woman answering the phone sounds much like the Marilla in the Sullivan movies--which means that I can just barely understand what she is talking about.

Well, it is the mostly likely result anyway. But after getting up so early and spending over two hours waiting in four queues (while the interview with the visa officer only lasted for two minutes), I just feel tired.

I finished my literature survey, made the visa interview appointment, answered a slewload of questions from my labmates, and wrote three long inquiry emails in the process. All in one day. This means today is one of my accomplished days, which, alas, have become quite rare in the recent months ( Read more... )

I got it a day earlier than I had expected. It seems that the visa appointment cannot be made today though, but anyway, I'm now the owner of a passport. Yay ( Read more... )