Unpalatable food. More than just warm nights. Tight schedules. But it was alright.

It was a rainy Thursday morning when I reached my college, all set to move into the hostel. I had the whole day to myself, so I decided to take a little campus tour on my own. The rain had left quite a few puddles on the grounds, making it difficult to move around. I managed to find the library, and was delighted at the number of computers there. I even saw some of the senior students chatting and reading mail. At last, a place where I can blog for free, I thought. But bad news was headed right around the corner. There were only two computers free at the time, and both had Linux as the operating system. That didn't bother me much, I had some previous experience with Suse and Mandrake Linux versions. The problem was that I couldn't surf. Every time I tried to, I was asked a username and password. Hitting cancel didn't do any good either. I waited till one of the Windows PCs were free. But even in those I had the same problem. I couldn't even use Yahoo! Messenger.



I found the librarian and asked him what to do. The guy says to me that I need to register for an account to access the internet service they had. And registering costs money. WTF??!! This is a goddamn library! Every other college I know has a free internet service in their library! I finally got they guy to use his username and password so that I could browse. That was just a waste of time. They have this slow, OH SO slow internet, that even google.com only opened after 5 minutes. There was absolutely no way I was going to pay for internet like that. So I'm afraid I can't update this blog on a daily basis. But a library is meant for books, and in that aspect, it was well stocked. They even have a subscription to New Scientist! I spent some time refreshing my Photoshop skills with the books they had on it. So moving into a hostel does have its advantages, I guess.



I never used to crib about food. I didn't mind eating anything I could get my hands on at home, sometimes I didn't mind not eating at all. But after a day at the hostel, I was craving for better food. They make only the spicy and the sour types of food at the mess. Nothing sweet or even remotely tasty. Not even the water was good.



That night I got a permission slip and a gate pass so that I could get out of this miserable excuse for a hostel for the weekend. Saturdays aren't usually holidays, but thanks to Gandhi Jayanthi, the birthday of our beloved Mahatma Gandhi, this one was. Sleep was something difficult to achieve in the heat of that night. I was awake the next day at 6.35 AM, even though I had never woken up before 11.00 during my 6 month long holiday. The bathrooms had only cold water, which was ok with me considering the heat that morning. Took a quick bath, managed to swallow some cold rubber like dosas (termed "rice pancakes" by NRIs who've set up Indian Restaurants), and then I rushed to the first class of the morning. Mathematics wasn't as bad as I thought it would be. Physics turned out to be a disaster, and it used to be one of my favourite subjects. The professor was nowhere near to being amiable. He treated some of the students in my class as if he were a pezzonovante. I guess he could be called a .90 caliber bigshot considering that he's been teaching Physics for 20 years. But even such pezzonovantes should have limits. Later in the class, he tried to crack jokes to awaken the dormant part of the class, which consisted of everyone except the students seated at the first row. At least I think he did, for there wasn't even a murmur when he spoke.



The lunch break was for 30 minutes, one would think of that as adequate, but not for me, and other hostelites. Our mess is situated in the hostel buildings, which are quite far from the classrooms.



The last 3 periods were for Electrical and Electronic practicals. Since it was the first day, we had nothing to do for the most part. After that, I was home free. Went to my room, got my stuff, got the ticket for the bus and got the hell out of there. Unfortunately, the bus broke down in the middle of the way, and I had to improvise. I was starving when I finally reached home. But at least I did reach home.