Straight Outta Manipal: Internet, Combo Card & Medicare Facilities

One of the most important things in a hostel is the internet connection. Manipal’s Internet is provided by I-on (http://i-on.in/). Routers are available in all hostels and in some areas around the campus. In some hostels, you have routers in every room, whereas in others, you have one common router for 2 or more rooms. Places where you have one router per room gives a higher speed obviously. Less the number of router per room, lower the speed usually (obviously). The speeds vary from block to block.

You are given 30 GB free internet usage every month. Recently, they have introduced a much faster 5MbPS plan where for 600 bucks, you could get 60 GB extra. That’s Rs 20 for 2 Gb per day, pretty cheap if you ask me. Also, let’s say you want just 30 Gb data, buy the plan halfway through the month and you have to pay 400 for 40 Gb (you get the idea) But the best part of the Manipal Internet Connection is that it’s not censored. There are no firewalls, no restrictions whatsoever. Don’t listen to what anyone tell you, you can download movies from piratebay, or watch anything else, no one cares.

Speed is decent in every block, the difference comes on the basis of where is your room located and other factors like the number of people using internet at that particular time.

The Combo Card for which you’ll register for during your Counselling is your all purpose Access Card that doubles up as your Identity Card, and your ICICI Debit Card. It also entitles you to free health care from Kasturba Hospital. Though this benefit is not without its risks. Around KMC, the view is great. The hospital has a separate area for Student Consultation which helps you bypass the huge general queue and you can sit in a nice quiet AC room and watch the Discovery channel. Also, preference is given to students of MAHE so that’s awesome. The doctors are excellent too. The care is great. The free and swift ambulance ride from your hostel is excellent.

kmchospital-emergency

But here’s the sad part – Hope this never happens to you but if you end up in the care of an intern, things could go crazy wrong. There are many stories, I don’t know whether all of them are true, but I do know that once a group of interns, after prolonged discussion, wrote me a total of 1250 mg of paracetamol in a single dose. I’m pretty glad I used common sense and didn’t burn my liver, so be careful out there. You see a doctor, you’re fine. You see an intern standing with a doctor, you are still fine (though it feels awkward when you are sitting with a doctor and you have many interns staring at you), but if you see only an intern, you better use that brain of yours and all the biology you ever learnt.

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