05 August: Groggy Sunday

Groggy Sunday
Today is very confusing day. Everyone but me leaves the house, and I have to do the finishing touch on the project:A together with watching over my mom's new groceries. Things get worse with the periodical short rain which makes me hurry to collect the clotheshorse now and then. The most annoying matter is the telephone calls about land selling that my mother is a middleman. I told her thousand times to call him back, but she never call. Thus, it ends up that he make a call in every hour to bug me. The day ends when I lost my temper and go to sleep. Yes, sleeping make me forget things. It is not useful to remember it though.

Courses in Bonn
Sandeep* forwarded an e-mail about course-accommodation relativeness in Aachen. In his e-mail the student of former cohort said that the first semester, we have to take German course which held in Aachen, but for net/media-centric people, we have to do the FIT lab in Bonn. He suggest us to take some courses at Edinburgh instead of Bonn since most courses in Aachen are better. These courses are the compulsory that have to be taken in Bonn:

• Bonn: Computer Graphics -> ED: Computer Graphics
  
• Bonn: OOSC -> ED: Software Architecture, Process and Management (SAPM)

As for German course, Tanin** had got some information from Pom***: The German course is also available in Bonn with some extra expense. I have to start planning for courses now.

* Sandeep is an EuMI student in my cohort. He is in net-centric Edinburgh-Trento.
** Tanin is my friend from Thailand who also an EuMI student with almost same configuration as mine except that his main university is Aachen.
***Pom is a student in EuMI in previous cohort. He is net-centric Aachen-Edinburgh.

Insurance for German visa

Tanin told me about the need of insurance in order to apply for German visa. Although I have not to worry about it now, I have got some information from a.Jaruroj regarding German insurance company.

• www.aok.de - this is related to the government (~ 40 - 50 € / month)
• www.wuerzburger.com - this is the private company (~ 30 € / month)
  

UPDATE: Pom* told Tanin that Erasmus Mundus have health insurance. There's no need to purchase more.

*Pom is an EuMI student from Thailand in 2006 cohort.

More information about Edinburgh

Insurance [Pre-arrival guide]

• Health insurance is not necessary. We are eligible for NHS service
• Personal item insurance is included in accommodation payment.
  
• Should have travel insurance for items.

Accommodation [Accommodation leaflet]

• University accommodation rents include all utility bills, cleaning, personal
  contents insurance, data and telephone facilities.
• By late July, I should received the accommodation offer. [ref]
  

Arrival

• There is welcome team at the airport on 8 - 9 September (red t-shirters). They will guide us to the bus into town and guide us from the bus station to the accommodation.
• All Non Commonwealth Students (other than EU, US and Japanese Nationals) who have been admitted to the UK for a period of more than 6 months, may be required to register with the police. The fee for registration is currently £34 per person. [ref]
  

Misc

• There are German language course available for £120 per semester. The course in the first semester starts on 25 Sep. [Modern Language Website]
  

More information

• Pre-arrival guide
  
• Pre-arrival Checklist for international Student
  

Started German Lessons

I've started German lessons with Deutsch für den Alltag Band 1 (Chulalongkorn Press) with a CD. The book aims to train the student to talk and have a daily-life phrases impressed along with cultural details.

I also downloaded the Tell me more CDs from bit-torrent. The tools there is quite helpful especially the pronunciation tools with shows the wave graph and evaluation.