Something about Orissa

I found various audio and video reports about Orissa from the BBC World Service which I thought might interest everyone. These were first posted earlier this year when BBC took a train around India for 18-days covering 6,000k  as part of its coverage of the Indian Elections.

Orissa's quest for water

Tribal India cut-off from election

Passing through

Sights and sounds of Bhubaneshwar's Lingaraj temple

Indian Railways

Gadgets for coping with the inevitable power cuts

I have been hearing about the frequency and length of power cuts in Orissa from other volunteers, so at the risk of ending up with a bag full of gadgets and very few clothes i order to keep within what I have heard is a very strict Air India's baggage allowance, I thought that I better expand my collection of rechargeable objects. Those of you who have travelled vicariously with me before will remember that I am a well out of the closet gadget fan and I use them. I have long had a PowerMonkey, Power Gorilla and Solar Gorrilla which have all served me well in various places from the middle of the Pacific ocean to the deep Sahara.


I've had small wind up torches in the past and never been really satisfied with them, they kept breaking or just dying competely on me, so I decided to go to the expert and have purchased a Trevor Baylis wind up torch and lantern. They appear to have good, solid wind up mechanisms, no flimsy turning handles here! So I am hopefull they will stand the test of time.

According to the specs the lantern will blast out the equivalent of 5-LED of light for 4 hours on full charge. That should be enough to cook dinner with, and generally see me through an evening. One minute of hand winding is said to give 30 minutes of light - which seems like a not bad ratio to me. It has a car adptor for charging and, yes, my Power Gorilla can charge via it. I've already tested it out. In additon, the lantern has a hidden handle to let you hang it from a supplied ceiling hook, or it can be used upright on a table. Seems a pretty versitile beast.

With regard to the torch the specs say 5-LED worth of light for 8 hours on a full charge, with 1 minute of winding gives 25 minutes of light. The torch can also charge a mobile phone - what can't these days! and also has a head torch contraption which plugs into the main torch body. I suppose that's for when I go caving again!  Or for hands free encounters on the route home! This might have been useful for volunteer MikeT who tells on his blog how he had to grapple with household locks in the dark recently after a night out on the town in Koraput!

Seeing through disconnection

I had two main tasks to complete today as part of my leaving preparations. First, arrange to terminate my telephone and broadband, and second, visit the opticians.

(1) Why is is so expensive to disconnect one's telephonic equipment?

In today's modern world we have landlines, broadband, mobile phones, set top boxes etc etc. I've just been arranging disconnection of my broadband. Aaargghh, I hate packages! In order to get broadband I have to have a landline. This is because mobile broadband doesn't quite reach here as mobile reception is poor. As part of my broadband package I get a set top box, which I only use in place of a video recorder, and a mobile, which I use only when I am away from home. It is one of those 18 month contract things - there never seems to be a real alternative to contractual periods, why?. At least with just mobile telephones you can pay as you go. My standby mobile is just that - an old phone, that no one else wants, even those services which advertise big bucks for your old mobile will only give me £1 for this one. The up side is that no one will want to steal it as it has no resale value.

Anyway one of my jobs today was to organise my disconnection for the grand telephonic network.