Lets ramble about the British now!!

I was told time and again before leaving, to blog about all my new experiences blah blah .. but these last few days, I have had so many incidents and thoughts that I have no idea where to begin and go where ... So, I will just note down point wise, in some random order, some of my observations :).

£. Why am I using a sterling sign to mark my points? Just because it is available on the keyboard! I could understand the Japs using a keyboard with different config, I could understand the Swiss using a different config keyboard (because they use french/german) .. but why do even the British have a different keyboard to that which we use?? All the special characters are in weird positions .. ¬ is in the place of ~, @ exchanges the position with " , have new editions like £ and € etc ..

£. The weather (yeay .. I got to talk abt that :D) is capricious, I have seen for myself what they mean by 'its sunny one moment and the next minute its raining!!' And there is always a cool wind blowing .. and this is summer here btw. Such a weather would have been awesome in Hyd .. not here :P And the best weather is not when it is cloudy and rainy .. but when it is sunny and there is this chilly breeze blowing .. then its just awesome.

£. Why do the manufacturers here price their items so atrociously? I can understand something priced £ 2.50, or even £ 2.99 but why in the name of watever, would some item be priced £ 2.37 ? Or 1.84? or 3.62? or 2.17? Firstly, it makes calculating difficult, yeah the cashier would use their billing machines, but what about poor me who wants to have an estimate of the amount I am buying? And after every transaction, I am flooded with change i.e little one-pennies, littler 5-penny coins, large 2-penny coins etc. Also, the shop people here arent as courteuous, they do say thank-you etc but not with the same kind of smile that I had been accustomed to in Japan or Swiss.

£. Talking about university issues, I can access my home directory at the dept file server through a Windows, Linux or even Solaris environment. That is I can open the txt file both through notepad, vim etc. Now thats awesome :D

£. Swipe your way! For everything you need your smart card (thats what Id cards are called these days). It is your access to the library, the city buses, your dept building .. everything. And anyone could have got my Id card with his/her photo if only they knew my student ID number and had asked for the card before I did. Because, all through the process of clicking my photo to giving me the card, they never asked for any kind of identification. They would just ask for the ID number, and then obtain my details through their database and process the request. Never checking whether the person in front of them is indeed the person who he claims to be.

£. The little of the city that I have seen is picturesque, with those houses and lawns just as described in those Enid Blyton books ;) Am yet to visit the 'city center', that is, the main area of the city. Its all green and pleasant now, I guess I will have to wait for the winter to see the other side.

£. The roads are narrow, (wrt Hyd standards) even the main roads are just wide enough for two buses to pass each other. But then everyone moves in such orderly fashion, its no problem at all. Ofcourse it is so easy to manage a 2lakh population city.

£. Currently, I have the feeling that the university is in China because it is vacation time and most of the students go home except the research-postgrads or the chinese :D.

£. I am already accustomed to the Brit accent and seem to be developing one myself :-s. Also, its a strange feeling when every research paper that you glance through has a reference to some paper by your phd guide :-s

I am not tired of mentioning again that I live in a flat with 7 bedrooms of which 6 are currently unoccupied. Initially I was feeling kinda lonely and wished there were others to talk to. Now that I have made acquaintances (mostly indians) in and around my flat, I dont want to meet them and prefer to be left alone! I cant understand myself! I am a loner who desires company? Strange guy I am ...