AIPMT counselling procdure (my experience at aipmt counselling) at Chennai

I attended 2nd round of the counseling of AIPMT from Chennai on 11th August 2011. The first round was over very early and the second round took so long to begin. And for that reason many students were absent for allotment. My allotment was in the afternoon session from 2 pm to 6pm from National Institute of Sidha, Tamparam. Here's how it went

9th August
At night we boarded a super fast train to Chennai Central from Calicut station.

10th August
Reached Chennai Central around 8 AM, had breakfast and spent some time there till 11:15. Then went to Chennai Park (Chennai Poongavan) railway station and boarded an electric train to Tambaram (ticket cost:₹7)
It took around 45 minutes for the train to take us there.
Later I discovered that a friend of mine came to thambaram from chennai by auto rickshaw and gave 400 rupees!
(Rule #1: Avoid auto rickshaw)
The suburban train rocks!
From the railway station, we had to reach Hotel Henkala. The auto drivers asked 50 rupees saying they had to go round round round to cross the road (because the road is divided without leaving any gap and so the vehicles can't cross the road) But then we crossed the road on foot :D (jumping over the 2 feet high divider). On the other side right in front the board of the hotel was shining! 2 minutes walk (cost: Rs 0)
If you're planning to stay at tambaram search for aruna residency. It is cheaper than Henkala

Had lunch and then had half a day left. So we decided to go to Marina beach by bus. Took a 21 G bus from Tambaram and it took a looong grueling one and a half hours to reach there which meant the sun had set and it was near total darkness.. So we went to the memorials of MGR and Anna Durai (Anna was born on 15-9-1909 sharing the birthday with my closest friend). It rained slightly but the ever lit lamps didn't get put out.

And then we made the funniest mistake. We took a bus back! It was rush hour and the bus was in no rush. To add insult to injury it went only till Guindy. AND there was a 21G Tambaram bus plying right in front of the bus we got in. But we stayed on, got down at Guindy and then started running for buses. One wouldn't stop. The other wouldn't have its door open. And the third one would be ordinary bus (not fast). But finally we got into a 1B bus and it took us straight to our place. Taking around 2 hours in total the bus journey was awfully slow compared to the suburban train.
(Rule #2: Avoid road, use rail)

And finally around 10PM we went to a browsing centre, was happy to see the shopkeeper talking in malayalam through the phone. And after 5 minutes of the phone conversation he said to the waiting us that the shop is closed for the day. :P
So, we went to the hotel, slept peacefully, without knowing which college had reached 0 vacancy the day.

August 11 (the day)
We had discovered that National Institute of Sidha at Tambaram Sanitorium was very close to Tambaram. So we had nothing to do in the morning time except wait. We went to a cafe and found that there was vacancy at Mysore, Kilpauk, Madurai, etc and finalized that order.
And then we stayed in the hotel room watching an old and stupid Mohanlal movie, Agnidevan.
At around 1230 we vacated the hotel room and had lunch. After that we asked and auto driver how much he'd ask for a trip to NIS. He said 60 and we walked away into a bus paying the minimum charge 3 to get there. :D

At last we reached the counselling centre at about 1.30. And while I was talking with other kids who were either waiting for their turn or waiting for the allotment letter I came to know that every certificate had to be xeroxed and attested!! (Rule #3: Read the instructions slowly!!!)
So we ran out, got photostats from a nearby shop (time 2:00) and then started waiting for some faculty at the National Institute of Sidha to turn up at the teaching block.
And finally around 2.20 someone came in and made me happy by gladly attesting the photostats

ha!

And at 2.30 they called the first batch of students after lunch and it included among others me

There were several rounds of verification of the certificates I had taken.
And I had not taken the 10th standard MARKLIST (because, as you guessed, it was not mentioned in the list of certificates to be taken) and that gave me a lot of nervous moments.

Finally, the room where my 6 years and more will be decided.
There were about 10 candidates seated, among them those who finally became my best friends at college. And, there were many tv screens anteriorly which showed the vacancy of each college. (just the vacancy. And there was NO information booklet/pamphlet regarding the bond/fee structure at various colleges. This confused me a lot, because the details regarding Mysore Medical College, which I wanted was not put in the website at all)

And we get a sheet of paper with carbon copying mechanism attached in which we are supposed to write down what we're about to say into the microphone to the counselor sitting in Delhi (people in Delhi can do it directly)
"I, Akshay S Dinesh, choose MBBS course, in Mysore Medical College, Mysore (college code: KA04)"
and repeat that, with "Confirmed!" appended.

That's it! In 2 minutes, you select everything!

If you really wanna feel the adrenaline gushing, do not decide upon which college to choose till you're the next person to confirm your choice!


Note: Candidates who did not bring enough certificates, were allowed to choose a seat, but they wouldn't get the confirmation letter until they brought the certificates back from home or school or wherever it's lost



(And months after all this, I got the provincial certificate from CBSE, which I had requested for thinking I wouldn't get the XII Pass Certificate in time)

[LINK TO SOLUTION] Create WiFi wireless hotspot in ubuntu for connecting android phones

[Save a lot of time update:  Here's a solution that works given by vineethakartha: Sharing Internet over Wifi Between Ubuntu and Android]

[Update: For people who reached here to get airdroid working, there is an easier way! Scroll down all the way to the updated section to read that]
[Second and more important update: This technique isn't working. My hunch is that it's got something to do with DHCP server. But despite spending hours on it, I haven't got to make it work. And I'm sorry]

Android phones cannot find ubuntu's hotspot or wireless connection
(At least my HTC explorer with android 2.3.5 with my Ubuntu 11.10 and ath9k AR9285 wireless adaptor)

But as you know, I got it working (after a veryyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy long google research with no time to do it, actually)

I had to do this for setting up airdroid on my ubuntu. airdroid is an awesome application to manage android phones from ubuntu linux, by the way.
And configuring airdroid means that you've got a pain in the ass because, airdroid needs that the laptop and the phone be connected to the same wifi network, and when I create a wifi hotspot from ubuntu, using the default options, android doesn't detect it because it's ad-hoc and when i change it to infrastructure, android still doesn't detect it.



All the story aside, let's get into the code.

sudo apt-get install hostapd

#this is the killer! hostapd is designed for this job alone

sudo apt-get install dhcp3-server

#I'm not sure whether this is required, but I installed it reading some guide. Try skipping this step and let me know if it's redundant

(A small digression,
I had tried

sudo iwconfig wlan0 mode master

and got

Error for wireless request "Set Mode" (8B06) :
    SET failed on device wlan0 ; Invalid argument.

But, as you guessed, persistence wins!)

That's when I headed to the hostapd documentation I linked to already, and found the simple configuration instructions.

Create a configuration file hostapd.conf anywhere

sudo gedit hostapd.conf

 Fill it with the following

interface=wlan0
driver=nl80211
ssid=Any_SSID_name
hw_mode=g
channel=1
macaddr_acl=0
auth_algs=1
ignore_broadcast_ssid=0
wpa=2
wpa_passphrase=Any_password
wpa_key_mgmt=WPA-PSK
wpa_pairwise=TKIP
rsn_pairwise=CCMP

The driver, if you noticed, is not athk9, though that's the driver for my wireless adapter. This is just a reference for hostapd to know which mode to use.
Then, run hostapd with that configuration file.

sudo hostapd ./hostapd.conf

That's it! Go to your wifi settings in your android phone, and you'll instantly see the ssid coming up!




Updated Section I know this is stupid, but, for airdroid users, all this hassle is not required. You can just do the reverse - make your android phone the hotspot and let the ubuntu system connect to the phone. ONLY that you should be lucky enough to remember to press the menu button on the airdroid home screen from the android app. And you see the tethering and hotspot option, you press that button and lo! You get the url to visit, instantly!!!

UPDATES, UPDATES, MORE UPDATES : check out this post which probably explains more things to do in this solution.

 Sharing Internet over Wifi Between Ubuntu and Android tells you the further steps that need to be followed, including the dhcp configuration