The sheer determination to fix my laptop made me venture out of the campus. I had to take it to a shop in Santosh Nagar. The guy at the service center had given me very clear instructions on how to reach the place, which included details of the bus numbers. So a day before yesterday I made the trip to deposit my laptop at this place. What made the trip interesting is that I learned what it means to be paranoid. In order to reach Santosh Nagar one had to go through a central bus stop, namely Koti. This is one of those typical ‘Ranganathan street’ like place. I was just ‘paranoid’ while I waded through the crowd. While my eyes were trying to watch every person around me, my hands were clutching on to the laptop like a guy holding on to those blades of grasses, typically found at the edge of the cliff, before falling off it. The deed was done, both me and my laptop were safe, me at the university and the laptop at the service center. The laptop had been fixed and I was asked to collect it today. Having experienced the evening crowd (Uh!) on Monday, I planned today’s trip in the morning. There were two important things I learned today (I wonder if learnt is word…). One of them is “When you go to withdraw cash from the ATM, take the money from the machine as soon as you can”. The machine swallowed the cash I had just withdrawn! I had to make another withdrawal and proceed to the service center. At the service center I found a problem with the switch used to turn on the wireless. That was when I found out that this ‘Acer authorized service center’ was outsourcing its work. I was asked to travel along with one of their employees to the actual service center which was at Ameerpet. By the time I reached there, after having changed two buses, I had a mental image of what I would be seeing there. What was actually present was quite what I had expected. A small shop, located in a side lane, which said ‘Computer/Laptop service’. That was when I understood the entire modus operandi of this ’service center’. They had said they would be charging Rs.500 as service charge for just giving an estimate of how much it would cost to get it fixed. The Rs. 500 is for transporting the computer/laptop and getting it fixed! Lesson 2 : “There are these cheap easy ways of making money!”. The person who accompanied me told me how to reach HCU or Central University (Very few people recognize the place when one says UOH). So my trip on the map would be:
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And thank god for the lovely weather, it was cloudy almost the whole day. Cannot imagine how terrible it would have been with the sun scorching, as it did for the past few days. Once back at the university it was time to go to the bank linked to the ATM and fight for my cash. I did try, but was turned down by the cash officer, who said that, I must contact the bank where I have my account and ask them to contact this branch. I have asked my parents to take it up with the bank at Chennai and I am hoping to recover the cash soon. I think, I now understand how the transport system in this city works and believe I can go to any place using the public transport. Another nice thing about Hyderabad is that a lot of people understand Hindi. Well, some of them even seem to understand my ‘Telugu’ 
UOH: Trips to the city
UOH: Day 3
The day started with some effort from my roomy, Dijo, ( I live with two other people Dijo and Prakash) to go to the city and see Charminar. Both of us got ready but by the time we had breakfast we found out that the group of people who were planning to go had dropped the idea. Although Dijo was still enthusiastic about venturing out, I was very skeptical about having to go around a city without having any plans of how and where we were going to go. The fact that the pair of rechargeable batteries, that were meant for my camera, refused to work added to the reluctance to go out. So there we were with nothing to do, left in this deserted University. Both of us decided to head to the department and meet for lunch later. I set up a wiki-dot site so that I will be able to communicate better with my guide. Most of my time today was spent on setting it up. The site is where I keep a log, with more technical details, of whats happening in the academic part of the life here. Tried the food at the student’s canteen here. If any of you reading this blog, ever happen to come to HCU, do not even think about eating at the student’s canteen. Since I had not signed up for dinner and lunch I was forced to have dinner also at the same place, the food here is worse than what we used to get at the mess in BITS, Pilani. Never again will I refrain from signing up for food at ‘mess’ while I am here. The night sky seems to have shade of red, giving me the feeling that rains are just around the corner. The sea breeze which is a great respite to the summer’s heat in Chennai is one of the things I miss. Time during which I have not been struggling with equations was spent on chatting with people via Gmail chat and looking for places where I can fix my laptop. Google maps has been of great help in this process. Have zeroed in on one shop in Madhapur, which I will try to visit sometime tomorrow.
