Are ratings given by FIDE provisional?

I got my FIDE rating today, there my rating is mentioned and at the same time it is also mentioned as "Expected first rating".
Before they updated my actual rating today to the rating column, earlier only "Expected first rating" was given.

The FIDE officials told me that May 1st my rating will be reflected in ratings column too, it did. But the statement "Expected first rating" is still there.

What does it mean? Is it a provisional rating?

P.S: I read a post http://www.chess.com/forum/view/chess-openings/initial-rating where this person says he has a rating, (post is quite old) but now there is none. Is it a temporary rating? Looks like this player http://ratings.fide.com/card.phtml?event=14406489 sometimes back had a rating, but now is unrated. How come?

Yes, i can see now that "Expected first rating" is gone and only my actual rating is reflecting there, may be they were still updating the database, and i needed to be more patient.

But still my above query remains there, how come this person given in above link is now unrated?

Are these ratings provisional? I mean, if we don't play matches at regular intervals, will it be erased? Until at least we complete 30 rated games?