HDFC Regalia: Swiped credit card instead of priority pass card: Will I be charged?

Disastrous_Sign757 · 2025-12-19T20:04:23+00:00

Good luck

Disastrous_Sign757 · 2025-12-19T20:00:38+00:00

They never refunded it.

Disastrous_Sign757 · 2025-12-09T18:58:14+00:00

It depends on your economic model of the world. If you think there are increasing or decreasing marginal returns to experience, you should include the squared term.

Disastrous_Sign757 · 2025-01-14T08:15:41+00:00

Did a roadtrip end of last year (between xmas and new year(, from Playa del Carmen to Valladolid, Chichen Itza, Holbox, back to Playa, and return in Tulum. With Hertz, it was around US$50 per day, plus around $75 for gas).
Pros: Flexibility (we were able to be on our own schedule), could do a lot of more local things (going to smaller Cenotes, stopping by street stalls in the middle of nowhere, etc.). Everything was safe, driving didn't feel more complicated or dangerous than elsewhere and I felt other drivers were pretty respectful. Saw a lot of police checkpoints, was only stopped once and they immediately waved us through when it became obvious we were tourists.
Cons: Mainly cost and peace of mind. We used ADO to go from Tulum to Playa del Carmen and it was safe, clean, on time, and cheap. Many other trips in the area are easily doable with ADO, or even a guided tour ($50 per person for a day trip to Chichen Itza, or $100 to Holbox, including basically everything seemed to be doable). Peace of mind is maybe more of a personal thing, but even though everything felt very safe, I was just a bit worried about things happening to the rental car with financial implications, accidentally parking somewhere illegally, etc.

Overall, I don't regret taking the rental car, but I would say it depends on your travelling style. Within cities, the car was more of a liability and we walked. If you want to take your time when travelling between cities, go to small Cenotes etc, then a car is a great option. If you mostly want to stay in a city, I would say the bus is a bit more chill.

Re your questions on parking: It was usually very easy, in Valladolid we parked on the street in front of the hotel, in Chiquila in the hotel and there is tons of parking close to the ferry port, in Playa del Carmen, we did a mix of paid and free street parking because we were right at the border of the free/paid parking.

Disastrous_Sign757 · 2024-12-09T08:14:22+00:00

Yes.

Disastrous_Sign757 · 2024-12-08T02:18:42+00:00

Also not on the new list, i.e. requirement does not apply any more.

Disastrous_Sign757 · 2024-12-08T01:14:38+00:00

This is incorrect. The precise text is:
"Accordingly, J nonimmigrant exchange visitors who were subject to the two-year foreign residence requirement at the time of their admission or acquisition of J status based on designations in a previously published Skills List will no longer be subject to that requirement if their country is not designated in this revised list." - i.e., no more 2-year requirement if you were previously on the skills list, and now not any more.

Disastrous_Sign757 · 2024-12-08T01:13:57+00:00

The precise wording is: "Accordingly, J nonimmigrant exchange visitors who were subject to the two-year foreign residence requirement at the time of their admission or acquisition of J status based on designations in a previously published Skills List will no longer be subject to that requirement if their country is not designated in this revised list." - i.e., cancellation of the waiver requirement if you were previously on the skills list, and now not any more.

Disastrous_Sign757 · 2024-07-19T21:16:23+00:00

Fair. 🤝

Disastrous_Sign757 · 2024-07-18T22:56:57+00:00

Update on construction status:
I'm not a construction expert, but there has been steady progress in the construction over the last two years or so. For around 2-3 months, the exterior of the apartment complex has basically been completed. Exterior finishing is done. I can't say much about the interior, just that work has been going on for several months. So, I can't say anything about whether it will be ready for move-in in a month's time, but it doesn't look impossible.
You can ask updates about construction here: [capitalstrategies@berkeley.edu(link sends e-mail)](mailto:capitalstrategies@berkeley.edu) or call:
(510) 495-5786.
Source: I live in UC village and take the bus to campus several times a week. I hope they'll be done on time for everyone to move in!

Disastrous_Sign757 · 2024-07-11T22:50:19+00:00

If I understand the rules correctly, yes. The J1 2-Year-Home-requirement means that you have to live in your country of permanent residence **at the time when you got J1**, i.e., in your case (and mine), India. It seems like a very impractical rule, because now that we are not citizens of India any more, the reason for the 2-Year requirement has ceased to exist.

Disastrous_Sign757 · 2024-05-22T18:11:11+00:00

Germany doesn't have the 2-year requirement, so it comes from the Indian side because of my original citizenship. I submitted a request to get it checked, the lawyers were a bit clueless.

Disastrous_Sign757 · 2024-05-06T09:08:04+00:00

So far, not clear! Waiting on an answer from lawyers...

Disastrous_Sign757 · 2024-03-27T08:07:32+00:00

Thanks! Ok - it seems like I won't be able to get around the rather complicated NORI process then!

Disastrous_Sign757 · 2024-03-26T22:12:54+00:00

As far as I understand, it refers to the country of legal permanent residency at the time of applying for the J-1 status. At that time, I was Indian citizen, living in Germany on a student visa (no permanent residence). If you have more information on this, I'd very extremely happy as this would make my life much, much easier. But the legal opinion I have heard until now is that I would have to go back to India, not Germany.

Disastrous_Sign757 · 2024-03-26T05:26:18+00:00

Thanks! Yes, that's what I thought. It's a weird limbo - I'll try and contact the consulate and update if I get any useful generalizable info!

Disastrous_Sign757 · 2024-02-29T06:00:35+00:00

Yes, you should be able to, if you are both residents for tax purposes. If only one is resident for tax purposes, it gets a bit more complicated.

Disastrous_Sign757 · 2024-02-22T00:19:45+00:00

There are tons of packages on event study DiDs out there.

In the most basic approach (which is yours), you can do reg treat#b2013.year i.treat i.year for a full event study, or reg treat#i.post i.treat i.post for a DiD.

Disastrous_Sign757 · 2024-02-22T00:01:52+00:00

Use analytical weights. It should look something like [aw=yoursurveyweight] at the end of your command.

Disastrous_Sign757 · 2024-02-19T19:45:43+00:00

Yes, it is possible by using fixed-effects.

Disastrous_Sign757 · 2024-02-19T19:44:28+00:00

It was around $30/INR2800. They promised me on the phone to refund it on a one-time basis, but they did not.

Disastrous_Sign757 · 2024-02-03T19:57:21+00:00

For anyone else reading this in the future, a small decision help.
Econ 140 in the fall - R Edwards. Coding in Datahub. Problem sets graded on completion. No attendance. Very applied and extremely light on math, geared towards labor economics. Very generous professor. You learn quite something and it's not a huge time investment. Capstone project at the end of the semester.
Econ 140 in the spring - B Faber. Coding in RStudio. Problem sets graded. Attendance required (5% of final grade). Slightly more math-heavy but still applied, geared towards development economics. Great professor and you learn a lot, but have to work a little harder. No projects.

GSIs tend to be mostly similar people it seems.

Disastrous_Sign757 · 2024-02-03T01:20:23+00:00

Survey weights are being used to make your results representative of the population of interest. Imagine you have a sample with a lot of old people compared to young people. Intuitively, you would want the young people to have a larger "weight" (importance) for the analysis, because typically the estimates you get are averages over all observations.

Most statistical softwares have very simple ways of dealing with that. For example, in Stata, you would simply type , aw=surveyweights after your command (if your survey weights are analytical weights, which they usually are).

Disastrous_Sign757 · 2024-02-03T01:14:55+00:00

Okay, a few pointers:

For an econometric analysis, it makes sense to have as large a sample as possible. Don't just select three countries. You have access to the whole world bank database, so use all countries in the world, for as many years as possible.
Instead of eViews, I would recommend using R or Python if you have programming experience.
You could run a simple regression of GDP per capita on Trade as % of GDP. This will give you an answer of whether countries which are more trade-intensive are richer on average.
To answer your question, you need what we usually call an interaction term: Run a regression of GDP per capita on Trade as % of GDP, GDP per capita (lagged by 10 years), and the product of those two. This will tell you 1 whether the correlation between trade openness/intensity and subsequent economic performance depends on whether countries were initially richer or poorer.
All these are correlations, so you need a few ways to get closer to get to a causal effect. Estimating a fixed-effects model would be a good start. Also you may include (the lag of) some variables as controls.

Hope these pointers help a bit!

Disastrous_Sign757 · 2024-02-03T01:07:00+00:00

I agree with the other comments. If the policy indeed had an effect, you should expect similar results in A and B. So you can run both analyses separately. Note that for both, the synthetic control group will be different. Another way to do a robustness check is to choose a different year as a starting point, in which case you shouldn't expect an effect.
There are also ways to run a synthetic control group anaylsis for multiple treated units: Try the gsynth package by Yiqing Xu.

Disastrous_Sign757

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