Better use of communication

    Almost all the universities/colleges has an international service desk with them. We can contact them directly and get help. I sent an email to the id mentioned in that asking for the point of contact in India. I am talking about university in Latvia here. They directed me towards a consultancy in Chennai and to my surprise they charge 65,000 INR for the entire process of admission which includes the VISA charges and some other charges, which I didn't cared to remember. I don't know about others, but I am very much against paying money to anyone who claims to get the job done (until there is no other way of getting the job done). The very first point of paying them for consultation and admission made me rethink and when I got an info from the contact abroad that there is high unemployment issue, I decided not to apply.
    
    Stopping digression, I have a Skype Id with me which I use for office communication mainly. I thought of searching through contacts who are already in Estonia in majority of the social networking sites. I want to tell you one thing here, I am not much inclined to social networking, so my search were clearly restricted to FB and LinkedIn. Then I suddenly remembered skype, and I thought why shouldn't I search for someone from Estonia and get some advice from them. I did find many contacts and then I filtered the contacts according to my convenience. Say for example, people from Estonia who has been migrated to other countries, I didn't prefer to contact them. I had a common message for all the requests it went something like this.


" Hi xxxxxxxx! I’d like to add you on Skype. I am planning to do my higher studies in xxxxx, looking for some information about life in xxxxx. Hope you can help me with this. Thanks in Advance xxxxxxxx."


     You know, not many contacted me in return. Some people who contacted me, gave me an idea about life there. Also I looked for advises from many blogs especially travel blogs etc. Surprisingly, I got in touch with someone from India and that too he was from the same univ to which I have been planning to apply. 
I would seriously advice to anyone who is willing to do anything at all, to make better use of the internet, it is not only for getting knowledge, but you don't know whom you will get in touch with sometimes who can turn the tables for you. 


Cheers to all who are planning to study abroad.

Search for an University

    Now that I have decided to study abroad, I have to search for an university that could take me. Of course the first priority is towards arranging funds for college, but I will leave that to a separate post. Since there was no opportunity of me getting into USA or Australia, main reason being, I have to show ~20 Lacs in my account. I totally can't afford that. Here, I would like to tell you about one of my friend who is happily married and living in Sweden. She shifted my mind towards EU. She is one of the great contributor in my decision for taking up studies abroad. I wanna thank her for that, and I certainly owe her. She is an recent immigrant to Sweden and she persuaded me in taking up Masters in Sweden. She also told me that Sweden was free of tuition fee in Universities up until 2011. Damn, I thought, I missed the opportunity of getting a degree free of cost. Now, when I was planning to go to Sweden for studies, the tuition fee when converted to Indian Rupee reaches ~18-20 Lacs. This clearly is beyond my budget.
     Well, the majority of the world has literally kicked me out in getting a foreign degree. I never quit searching the internet to look for any university (I am gonna call Univ hereafter, don't ask my why.) wherein the fee is affordable. I stumbled upon an education consultant who directed me towards Latvia. I also got an assurance that compared to other countries of the world, this place has comparatively lower tuition fee. Hmm...this looked promising until I found a person from the same univ telling me not to join. I will surely blog about this person and how I met him( Better Use of Communication ). The main reason being unemployment. There, Latvia kicked me out too. I was not disheartened. I asked him to suggest me some place else. 
     He suggested me to look for Estonia. I have heard of that place in my history classes. I clearly remember seeing this place when I was looking through the universities in Latvia. But back then I ignored it. May be because I was too scared to imagine myself in a new place not known to me. I started googling about Estonia. First thing that attracted me was that the Skype was developed here, I never knew that. Further browsing through loads of web pages gave me most of the times some positive things about this country. I thought its time to meet someone from this place (BUoC) to get to know about this place better.


Cheers

A Desire to Study Abroad

                Like many Indians(???) I too have a desire to settle abroad. I love the western lifestyle, I had been thinking this for quite sometime (actually for years) now. I had an opportunity to visit US once, it was a business trip and I was greatly influenced by the life there. The place where I went was not a rush-hour city, at-least it was not a city of mayhem. People being extra-ordinary friendly and leading a peaceful life (at least that is what I saw mostly). It was a real short-trip lasting only for a month. When I was back in Chennai, I had to go through some real tough times in my office(not so nostalgic), but I won't deny saying there were some real fun moments and I really got a great load of friends there. One of them ended being my roomy.
                             
       Let me come to the point, I decided to quit and look for some other job. I have a buddy, we go long back to 15 yrs or so, who is in Australia now and I would very often receive calls from him describing the life abroad. I thought, may be I should try getting a job abroad, and who knows, may be that is where my future awaits. By the time I thought of  looking for work abroad. The Australian Work Visa has been stopped for that year. I didn't care to research the reason behind it, heard about recessions and presumed that would be an apt reason. I don't want to quote USA here, since by the time I am writing this, it was real tough to even think of getting a work VISA. 

       I am not the kind of guy who does great in academics, I am an average student. It doesn't matter, whether you get a foreign degree or not, the moment you are registered to a foreign university, you become the star in the eyes of your surrounding. Relatives/Neighbors  in India hold a unique respect to one who is a foreign-return or is in abroad. I thought may be I should be earning some of that respect. Since I have quit now, I was seriously thinking of doing something worth my lifetime. 

Here starts my journey of studying abroad. 

Should I be even worried,since I have started this on Friday the 13th.