Rourkela.com

2007-06-13T22:36:00.000+05:30

The big problem Rourkelaties faces today is the odd time of Sambalpur Express. To go Balangir, you need to wake up at 3AM, go to railway station and notice that the train is late by 3 hours. While coming from Korpaut side, your whole night is wasted waiting for the arrival of the train. Why can't we have a pair of train with suitable time connecting Rourkela and Titilagarh?

2007-06-13T22:30:00.000+05:30

We had a really tough summer this year. In the past fortnight, it was unbearable. What was commendable was that we never problem with electricity. Since last 2 -3 days it is raining, creating a humid weather which is much worse than intense summer. On top of this, we have acute problem with electricity. Two hours of scheduled power cut has been introduced. On top of this, we have several cuts for the whole of the day. Today, the power was never there for more than 45 minutes till 6PM. After this it has stabilized a bit. It is really painful to see your working hours being wasted in such manner.

2007-04-20T17:00:00.000+05:30

Hi Everyone. It has been a long time since my last post. Much has happened in the city.

The most that concern all of us is the checking of helmet and seat belt by police in Rourkela. There has been a strict checking for the head gear for two wheeler rider since last few months. I did pay a penalty on more than one occasion.

The most important and visible change during this drive was the honesty by the department. You can not get away without paying a fine.

This also raises a very important and fundamental question. Do we need these checking on the streets where the speed can not be more than 20 kms. in the busy main road of the town. Also no one checks for these in the main high way. Also some one was quoting statistics to make a point that there has been very few cases of road accident in the city. Most of the accident takes place in the highway. However, these checking has seen the bank balance of the police dept. soaring.

Without question, the move is good for the citizens, it should be ensured that the checking should be done on the highway and also other law relating to traffic is enforced such as light condition, polluting vehicle etc. Only then we will have the true benefit of such rules and their enforcement.

2006-08-29T17:13:00.001+05:30

Cheers. The central Govt has decided to set up two IIT in the State of Orissa. This is really commendable after the assuranace by the PM that a NIS will be set up in Bhubaneswar very soon.

Only afraid, when these development will be reflected in the maps of Western Orissa which is lagging far behind in all respect.

2006-08-29T17:13:00.000+05:30

It was a long overdue visit to Indra Gandhi Park in the evening this Sunday. The sound and light musical fountain put up by SAIL is really good and enjoyable. Unfortunately, I forget to take my camera and further left my mobile in the car. Hope to visit soon again to capture some photo and publish it on the main web site too.

2006-05-24T22:26:00.000+05:30

Living in Rourkela for the past two weeks have been extremly difficult. There were no power for three nights. During day time it is highly irratic. The working hours has reduced considerably.

No power means no computer, no fan, no water and no work.

The late eveing storm and the power failure has become a routine.

It is sad, industrial town such as Rourkela should have such kind of fate. I failed again and again on many committments. It is really shameful. Why WESCO can not orgainse things better ???

2006-05-05T15:30:00.000+05:30

Polish missionary dies in Orissa

Bhubaneswar: Polish missionary Marian Zelazek, who spent over half a century in Orissa and cared for thousands of leprosy patients, has died at the age of 78.

Zelazek, who was short listed for the Nobel peace prize twice and had won the hearts of millions of people in the state through his dedication and service, died Sunday afternoon from a heart attack, officials said Monday.

The Christian missionary, who had arrived in Rourkela in the state in 1950, complained of cardiac pain in the afternoon at Karunalaya (literally, abode of mercy), the leprosy home he set up at Puri, 56 km from here. He died on way to the local hospital.

Zelazek, who was born on Jan 30, 1918, joined missionaries of the Gymnasium of the Divine Word charity and was sent to work in Rourkela. For the next 25 years, he worked as a teacher and a priest in the adjoining Sundargarh district in western Orissa, providing education to poor tribals and serving them in other ways.

He set up Ishopanthi Ashram and Karunalaya in 1975 on the outskirts of Puri and was serving leprosy patients.

He was short listed for the Nobel peace prize in 2003 and 2003.

He never tried to convert people residing in his ashram. He instead built Hindu temples inside his ashram to allow its residents to practice their own religion.

"We feel like the sky has fallen on us," said leprosy patient Satrughan Hota, 70, who has been living at Karunalaya for the last 24 years.

2006-05-03T18:34:00.000+05:30

Finally we are in the grip of summer. Late evning rains and cloud brings some relief. But it is really hot in the afternoon.

Power supply is manageable but there are significant drop in the voltage specailly in the evening hours. This make it difficult to Run Ac. The thin tube light does not light up. Surprisngly, the thick the old model of TV goes on well. I do not know the exact reasons but it appears it is wise to buy the old type of tube light.

2006-05-03T18:31:00.000+05:30

Speaking about internet connection, i remember making a post about Cable connection. I applied for one and also downgraded by Dataone connection.

One fine morning, my son complained that when he opened google it is directed to google hongkong site and not India site. I was surprised to hear that. I found that ip is not registered in India and hence google takes the connection as orignating from Hongkong.

There were several issues with the connection. I hope they solve it rather quickly.

2006-05-03T18:25:00.000+05:30

Recently, I was assigned a professional job which made me travel to not less than four districts of Orissa. I visited Jharsuguda, Bolangir, Boudh, Sonepur and Phulbani district.

The status of development in these areas were really shocking. Even in Bolangir, I observed that buying capacity of people has not increased much. There has been some development in Boudh and SOnepur by way of construction of Govt. quarters. Roads has been improved. The bridge connecting boudh with Sambalpur has made a difference in the life of the people.

What was shocking is the status of Phulbani. Even in the district headquarter, you can not get a decent place for sit and dine. The basic infrastructure is simply not available. There are no adequate lighting in the bus stand. The reasons is not served by Railways. Some times it is difficult to get even a bottle of genuine mineral water.

Although, Phulbani has been in news for many years, the status of development of a head quarter which is a very old town was an eye opening and equally shocking.

God give governement some thought for development of the area.

2006-02-24T15:08:00.000+05:30

For the railway budget, I missed one thing. It has provision for doubling the line between Sambalpur - Titlagarh (148 km) which should go a long way to ease traffic congestion on the route.

2006-02-24T15:00:00.000+05:30

It has been a long time since I made a posting. Just busy in work.

Railway budget is one of the most watchful happenings in Orissa. It gives you an insight of new train which are mercilessly very few in this are. This year was no exception. For Rourkela, this means very few additions, only extension of Puri-Sambalpur passenger to Rourkela, and MAY be newly announced TATA-Yaswantpur and Howrah Mumbai express may go via Rourkela. An increase in frquency of Hatia-LTT to two days in a week.

So there is not much to cheer about the railway budget, as usual.

2006-01-08T09:34:00.000+05:30

There was yet another Bandh (Strike) yesterday. The impact was total. I was travelling back to Rourkela from Hyderabad via Kolkatta yesterday. Totally unaware of the strike call I boarded the train at 6:35 at Kolkatta. On the way I learnt about the bandh. I was totally confused. In fact, I had my own heart support for bandh and was aware that the impact will be total. It was for a cause of humanity. There can not be a greater crime than killing innocent and poor people for NO fault of theirs.

Till Bisra (about 10km) from Rourkela, the train proceeded smoothly. It was detained at Bisra for about 4 hours. We have no option but to wait. There was no food available to feed the crowded train. There were more than 3ooo student who were to set to appear for an interview / examination at Bilaspur. Ispat, was terminated at Manoharpur and we boarded South Bihar express there. There were no information at the station and no vendors. The small quantity of muri was sold in about 10 minutes. Finally, at about 6 pm the strike was off and we were back home.

While we can continue to debate on the legality or ethical issues concerned about the bandh, this is definately a good way of showing your concern. Otherwise, Government does not listen. ??

2005-12-30T09:31:00.000+05:30

December 24th/25th is always a special event in Rourkela. The district has a lot of christian population even in villages. Chirstmas is celeberated with much fun fare in the entire district.

For Rourkela, this is the day of Lion's Fete which is organised every year near RGH. It is surely enjoyed by the people much. In the winter it is perfect a outing location. There are a lot of food stalls and other exhibitors. The inner theme is collecting fund for charitable activities of Lions.

The Fete is not known for its quality of food stalls but the kind of crowd that assembles and enjoy the events. Almost the entire Rourkela goes there. The teenagers even starts preparing for their dresses weeks before.

It would have been truly lovable if the quality of foods can be improved to an extent.

2005-12-21T09:40:00.000+05:30

It has been a long time since I made a post here. I was travelling. I went to Hyderabad and Ahemdabad on business trips. What I noticed is the significant changes in weather in all these places. In Rourkela, cold wave is sweeping the city. Press reports suggest that situation in Western Orissa in places like Jharsuguda, Sambalpur, Bargarh situation is no good and the temperature is about 6*C to 8*c.

This is really cold. You need warm clothes all the times. Difficult weather.

2005-12-07T19:29:00.000+05:30

Ortel has been offering cable internet connection for the past few weeks. Looking at the positive feedback from user in BBSR and Cuttack, I decided to go for a connection and choose Home Pro with a speed of 512kbps. I already have a DataOne Connection. The connection was given today and the speed was really amazing. I downloaded a file of 120mb in under 19 minutes. That is really a good speed. How is the experience of other users ?? May be some one can share in the forums. I intend to downgrade Dataone connection to a lower traiff area once I have the confidence in Ortel internet connection. The higher speed also means a lot more download and I do not know when the limit of 3gb will be over. They have free download time from 1 in night to 7 in the morning and also uploads are not counted in the bandwidth. Hence uploading rourkela.com will be almost free. We can grow the site as we wish, more songs, more pictures. Let us watch and see how the connection fares over a period of time.

2005-12-06T19:10:00.000+05:30

Recently I visited a lot of places inlcuding many metros of India such as Chandigarh, Noida, Hyderabad etc. Their development made me sit up and look at the development of Rourkela. The city, truly stands nowhere if we compare modernity. We do not have a single shopping mall, multiplexes etc. etc. The city really needs them. It is also to be seen how successful will be these facilities in the city considering the expensive tickets.

Business oppurtunity also are less in the city so is the purchasing power of the common man. Will the government sit and look up at what is wrong and where we are lacking ?????

2005-12-06T19:02:00.000+05:30

As I was developing rourkela.com, I observed that most of the ads generated by google only relates to martimonial. This perhaps indicates the extent to which people depend on net these days for finding matches for their children. At the same time, it also indicates that there is not much advertisers for the keywords used in the main page which is somewhat disappointing.

Speaking of google, the site has a lot of features from google including the latest show piece bought by google called google analytics. It helps you know the places from which people are browsing your web site.

After a week of implementing analytics, it turns out very interesting statistics about rourkela.com People are visiting from the places I have never heard of. The power of internet is really amazing. This is when I have not started advertising the site. We have visitors from magnitogorsk, many places from Germany including Milan, Berlin, La Paz, Brasailia, etc. etc.
We hope to improve the site further to make these visit worthy.

Really impressive is the power of google analytics.

2005-11-15T19:56:00.000+05:30

RSP authorities have since taken many steps to beautify the city. There are many new lights / statute in the city. The lights present a very beautiful and pleasent atmoshpere. Thanks a lot RSP for doing this. We have photographed a few such circle in the city. This is the main circle at the traffic gate. This is a real beauty in the night with beautiful lighting impact. In the next few days, we shall publish a few more photos. s

2005-11-12T19:24:00.000+05:30

As i created this new blog using google tools, I just searched on the blogger.com for any other rourkela related blogs.

Surprise, I found a great maintained blogs of Ispat General Hospital, Rourkela. The blogs has realy high quality pictures.

Intresting, is it not?

visit the blogs here http://ighrkl.blogspot.com/

2005-11-12T18:59:00.000+05:30

I got a pleasent email from IRCTC that from 15th August, 2005, Rourkela has been added to the list of the town from where tickets can be booked online.

I was looking for the service for a long time. Finally I had ocassion to book a few ticket. It was a very good site where I can save the names of the passengers and book the ticket on the press of a click

The government has still not permitted for e-ticket on all the routes and it is currently available on few selected rajdhani express. The ticket arrived in 3 days time by courrier. It was really a very smooth affair. The choice given for booking the ticket was more wider than normally available in the counter.

I am sure, more and more, public from Rourkela will enjoy this excellent facility.

2005-11-06T19:02:00.000+05:30

I finally was able to visit Bhanja Bhawan today, the last day of the Vedvayas Nritya Mahostav. There was a huge gatherings. The perfomer scheduled for today were from Bangalore and due to cancellation of many train they could not make it.

Nonetheless, the speeches made by the Minister of Tourism and also the organiser were enjoyable. The event is being regularly covered by the media including ETV Orissa.

2005-11-02T19:01:00.000+05:30

Rourkela celebrates Diwali with much fun-fare and a lot of crackers every year. This year was no different. My family did not celebrated Diwali due to dealth of Umesh my nephew and my elder brother Dr J R Lath.

Chat Puja is also a much celebrated event in the city. Many of workers from Bihar enjoy them for quite a few days.

The traffic during these days are quite congested. I observed in the town that the roads are also not cleaned and area near the food market of daily market area was full of garbage. May be the local authorities will give some attention to it.

2005-10-22T18:56:00.000+05:30

Who believes, after Puja, we have the rain with the intensity and frequency of a mansoon rain. It has deeply effected the festive mode of the people

Roads, parks etc. which are suppose to be very good at this season is full of mud and rain water.

Hope this weather improves in the next few days and before Deepawali.

As for Deepawali, this year the english medium schools have holidays in between the examination. However, diwali coming in between the examination, will spoil the mood and enjoyment of a child. Also those who goes out in Diwali to thier native place, will have to be in the city.

2005-10-10T19:00:00.000+05:30

It was good to be back at Rourkela. In the evening as I switched on the TV, I was surprised to find yet another contestants from Rourkela making it to the hot seat and the second lady from rourkela.

P. Pushpa Kumari did not perform very well. But her presence was indeed a pleasure to notice.

I also checked up about the Puja days and was told that this year it was a bit subdued as compared to earlier year.

My visits outside Rourkela has been hampering updating of the web site. Let us see when this really starts up.