Blog

I am back home. Finally! A break from the boring lectures, creepy professors and not to say the terrible food! This brief week-long Dol (or Holi) holiday comes as a blessing. A little late, and I would have lost all taste sensibilities.

Happy new year folks! BSNL has kept their promise. I am getting more than 1700 kbps of speed. Here is a screenshot of uTorrent. Incredible. I am just witnessing an overnight revolution in Indian broadband!

It has been a few months here in NBMC and it’s time I blogged about our college campus. Well, our college is situated far from the madding crowd in the outskirts of Siliguri, about 7 km from town proper. Here we get a breathtaking view of the mountains and on a clear day, the Kanchenjungha can be seen. The campus is spread over a very large area. The college and hospital buildings are two-storeyed and most of it are connected by very long corridors.

The government has made it mandatory for all medical students to serve in the rural areas for one year after internship in an attempt to ensure a steady flow of physicians to the remote villages where doctors are usually hesitant to go. This means that after the five-and-a-half years of MBBS (4.5 years study + 1 year internship) we will have to go to a Primary Health Centre in some remote corner of the state.

When I first came to my college at the time of admission, I had no idea where it is located. So I am giving a location guide of the campus.

North Bengal Medical College is located in Sushrutanagar, to the west of Siliguri, connected to the town by the 3rd Mahananda bridge. Sushrutanagar, otherwise referred to as ‘medical’ by the local people, is more or less 5 km from the Siliguri town proper.

Trains

The nearest big station is New Jalpaiguri (NJP) that connects North Bengal with the rest of the country. With the extension of broad-gauge railway track to the Siliguri Junction station, people can now travel directly to the heart of the city without having to alight at New Jalpaiguri.

Some of the trains plying are:

Darjeeling Mail – 7 days
Teesta Torsa Express – 7 days
Kanchankanya Express – Tuesday, Thursday, Friday, Sunday
Kanchanjanga Express – 7 days
Kamrup Express – 7 days
Guwahati Express – Tuesday
UttarBanga Express – Monday, Wednesday, Saturday
Saraighat Express – Monday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Sunday

Bus

The Tenzing Norgay Central Bus Terminal is the major bus stop wherefrom state-owned NBSTC, CSTC and private operators runs rocket buses to Kolkata and other areas. The few air-conditioned sleeper Volvo buses plying in the route provide a very comfortable journey but come at a price.

Airlines

The following airways operate from Bagdogra, a suburb 12 km away from Siliguri.

Jet Airways
Indian
Air Deccan
SpiceJet
Kingfisher Airlines

Fare

For railway fares, refer to the IRCTC website.

The fare of the North Bengal State Transport Corporation run rocket bus is Rs. 250. CSTC bus fare is Rs. 235. A ride in an AC bus by CSTC costs Rs. 280. Private rocket buses rates vary a lot from time to time, season to season. Private operators may charge less during off seasons.

For airline fares, refer to the respective company websites.

Road

City autos are the chief means of local transport. The traffic rule is to take 6 passengers though drivers flout rules taking from 8 to upto 13 passengers. Bus service is not well developed.

There is however no direct NJP-Medical College route. Either one has to reserve an auto for about Rs. 120 or
1. Go upto Venus More in auto and then catch another Medical College-bound auto from there.

2. Go upto Noukaghat More in auto and then catch another Medical College-bound auto from there.

3. Bus passengers alighting at the bus terminal will have to go by auto. If direct autos are not available then go to AirView More by rickshaw and then catch a Medical College-bound auto.

4. Airlines passengers landing at Bagdogra will have to catch one of the Bagdogra-Medical College autos. If, in any case, direct autos are not available then go upto Shibmandir and from there catch another auto to Medical College.

Shibmandir, a suburb of Siliguri, is where the North Bengal University is located. It is about 4 km from Medical College and accessible by auto.

In all my school years it never really struck me that I can actually get books from the bookstalls along the footpaths of Golpark. As this revelation dawned on me, I have been a regular customer there. The books there are a steal if you can strike a good deal.

You may choose to buy or borrow. I of course choose the latter. For FPS by Chetan Bhagat and another novel by Sidney Sheldon, (It’s not that I am a great Sheldon fan. I have never read Sheldon before and wanted to try) I was charged Rs. 110. On returning them I got back Rs. 85! The books are either secondhand purchases or illegal prints. While reading the Sheldon book, I found several pages missing in two places which was really disturbing. I had to download a PDF to read the missing parts.

When I borrowed Angels & Demons and Outbreak, I had to pay by Rs. 150 which I din’t expect. The books I returned have already made Rs. 85 and I needed to cough up 65 rupees more which I didn’t have. Taken aback, I asked the man to exclude one book stating my problem. He then asked me how much I had and satisfied himself with the lone fifty-rupees-note I had, leaving me walking my way back home.

Last week, I got Digital Fortress and The Other Side of Me. I am still reading them.

Cross-posted on Bong Buzz

Do you listen to a lot of music? Then you must be telling your friends more often than not what you are listening to. There are cool ways you can let the world know what music you are playing — online.

With the help of plugins you can display the current track you are playing in the status message of your messenger. The pic below shows my status in Windows Live Messenger.

Yahoo Messenger Plugins:

• Windows Media Player ystatus
• Winamp YMS Status Changer

Windows Live Messenger:

• Windows Media Player: In-built
• Winamp: MSN Messenger 7 Current Playing Song Works with Windows Live Messenger Beta as well

Trillian:

• Winamp MyTrillianStatus

So much for chat clients. You may also want to display your latest audio addiction on your blog. Thanks to social music sites like Last.fm you can do that with ease. Download and install the Audioscrobbler plugin for your media player software. Select a nice design for your music chart, get the required html code and put in on your site. You can also use it as your forum or e-mail signature. You are all set now — hit ‘play’.

And yeah, don’t forget to set your time zone in Last.fm site preferences for accurate audio-scroblling. Bring out the latent audio scrobbler in you. 😆

I have just given my site a complete design overhaul. There may be some glitches here and there yet to be fixed. Do tell me if you you notice anything. Also, tell me how it looks in your browser esp. if you have 800×600 screen area. And don’t forget to add your comments on the new design — whether you like it or not. Tell me how long it is taking to load.

I may add some more things in the sidebars today. And yeah I know I’ll have to fix the corners. 😛

P.S: I am yet to design a new favicon. Till then, the old one will be there.

My database went kaput. I could not fix it and restored a backup taken a few days back. In doing so, I lost some comments and some votes. 🙁

Lesson learnt: Take backup of database as often as possible. Every alternate day at least, if not daily.

Avro makes instant messaging in Bengali child’s play. MSN Messenger (I have tested Windows Messenger Live) and Trillian works great with Bangla text. You can simultaneously key in text in both English and Bengali – changing the input language seamlessly at the press of F12 hotkey.

It has not been possibe to write Banlga in Yahoo Messenger directly. But can be achieved indirectly through use of Avro’s ‘Through clipboard’ mode — just remember not to use the right ‘shift’ key while typing in clipboard mode.