EuroTrip - Day 24

Calls to India at 70 paisa/minute

When I reached Paris, as expected out of every student who is going abroad for the first time, I called home from the airport itself. The call from my matrix sim costed me 0.65 BRP (British Pounds) per minute. In Indian currency terms it would translate to something like Rs. 50/min.

Before leaving for Paris, I had checked the ISD rates offered by all mobile operators and had found out that the cheapest was our own BSNL at somewhere around Rs. 6.4/min. The rule of the game was that everyone who is near and dear to me will need to call me. So that the poor guy me sitting in Paris does not need to pay hefty mobile bills (I still need to pay 0.05 BRP/min for incoming calls)

Calling cards offer cheaper rates with a promised call time of around 250 minutes on a 5.5 Euro calling card. The calls need to be made from a public booth, if you don't have a landline phone at your home. With so much hassle, the real issue is that the 250 minutes talk time is never yours. The hidden terms and conditions make it almost impossible. What you get is what your luck allows you to. Not the best thing to do when you are so far away from home.

And then started the search for the cheaper ways to call India. With PooCh (a big family and 3 girl 'friends' to take care of), HotTiii (family and friends) and TARDi (thank god his girl is in Europe only, so only family and friends) and yours truely PritS (who supposedly did not call his girl for more than a week after having arrived in Europe, and talks to home only twice a week) the search was bound to be a big one. We checked everything from Skype to Freecalls to SmartVoip to finally Nymgo. You tell us, we find out about it. And with the help of our friendly dbable, the feedback and reviews can be arranged in a very short notice.

Now the name of the game is Nymgo. With call charges are somewhere around 70 paisa/min and an excellent voice quality, it also gives added advantage of being able to make calls from my mobile (Nokia E63 - thanks a lot SidJ) and PooCh. The SIP settings have been updated on the phone and now I can make calls directly from it. The only catch is that it works only when we are in our home. So the new rule is that if it is Tue or Wed, and not our college hours - just try to give missed call and expect a call back from me. :D

This is most of what we did in last couple of days. Classes were as usual fun though it is very difficult to avoid getting dozed off in the post lunch classes. Somehow, these firang (or are we firang here?)students don't seem to have this habit. Pata nahi kya khate hai ye log lunch me. I can crib about them some more, but let me not do that. Time to make some more calls. See you around...