Getting internet access, cell phone etc ...

These have become bit simpler these days, fortunately. I wanted to get the internet USB drive so that I have access to e-mails. Tried at one place and they wanted at least one proof like rental agreement and didn't have it. They were not ready to take the US passport but wait - the expired Indian passport copy was fine!!! 

Basically, for all of these connections, there is an application and that needs some proof (which is really a good thing they have done given all of these terrorist activities). However, shops do need cell these and expired copy of passport also worked! Once I had the USB card, connection was setup in few minutes - no configurtion was required except for looking for the network. Speed was pretty good - not good for full fledged work activities but was good enough for internet and check e-mails. I went with Tata Sky but these days AirTel advertises fater speed - not sure how consistently that works though...
       
For cell phone, fortunately, was able to manage with temporary arragement - there was a spare phone in the family and used that. Without cell phone, pretty much impossible to do anything here. Everywhere cell phone number is required and if that is another person's number, you would miss many imporatant calls. Once we got the permanent number, we had to go thru' the exercise of erasing the temp number, which wasn't that easy as well - school uniform folks kept on calling the old number even after we changed it several times and package was merrily sent back few times!

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