Indian phones

I need to figure out how to call an Indian phone. I know, i know, half of you are laughing, really how hard can it be...Aha, that's where half of you are mistaken. Now, first you need to get a sim card, for that you need a proof of residency...yeah and most of us were complaining about the US where you need a SSN or deposit $500...well here, $500 won't do (ok, i didn't try bribing the sim card guy, maybe $500 would have done the trick, but then again, they probably just would have given me the sim card and then close the account 4 days later when they would have done an address check on me)...so yes, first a sim card. That was not too much of a problem, since someone was kind enough to go to the trouble to get one for me. So I have the sim card, i also have a phone that works over here (merci papa!)...simple. You put the sim card in the phone...so far, even i can do this. Now comes the tricky part. What if the phone runs out of battery. Oh, no problem, i even thought about bringing my charger (yes, i also know this will surprise some of you, so far I haven't forgotten anything in Belgium :-)), and even better, it seems that the Indian plugs are the same as the Belgian ones...i like this place more and more...but we are moving away from the topic. Charging my phone. Pfuh, easy, you just plug it in. Sure, but then it seems you have to switch on the plug...strange. And how do i know when it is switched on. You try, or you remember the position, but i am bad at remembering, so i try over and over, till it works. So, now the phone says it is charging, cool, i can go to bed, sleep and have a charged phone in the morning. AHA! Wrong again. It seems somehow in my sleep, the plug stopped working. No more electricity out of that plug. Did i break it? Oh, maybe it is because i turned off the light. No light, no electricity? Hmmm, don't know, what i do know is no electricity, no charging of battery, and no battery, no alarm. But then there is always the school band (? this is Linus plausible explanantion :-) ) that plays every morning at the same time to wake me up and realize my phone is dead. At first I thought the phone had a problem. Maybe the Belgian charger wasn't compatible after all. No, no, charger is fine, back to my initial assumption, it's the plug!
So, I switch plugs, and it works. Now comes the tricky part: make a phone call. It's always a random guess whether you need to add a zero or not. Again, i here some of you think: well, it can't be that hard, if it doesn't ring, you add (or remove) the zero, sure...except that there is no such thing as just a ring tone. Sometimes there is, but then it suddenly stops and you get disconnected. Sometimes it's Tina Turner singing the Eye of the Tiger. When it's Tina, i just call again, but oops, it seems that Tina sings when my caller has hung up on me on purpose because he is in a meeting, so he doesn't quite appreciate me calling Tina about 10 times in 15 minutes. My excuses to him, but i like Tina (and I haven't figured out the proper way to call in India!)