A Long Deserved Update

Phew! A lot has happened in the past week and a half since I last updated the blog. I’ve really tried to post one update a day, but with the amount of work I’ve had coupled with the slow internet these past few days, this hasn’t been possible. Rather than going back and retroactively writing a story in the present tense for those days, I’ll instead post a long update in this entry, with all the work that I’ve done and all the photos that I’ve taken. Here goes…

The last update was on the 8th of November. My Dad was still in Nepal (that was his last day), and we had just arrived back in Kathmandu from Pokhara two days earlier. Since then, there has been an excellent amount of progress on this project: the next day, we started hearing back from component manufacturers in Shenzhen (I had sent out a number of emails the day before we left to go to Pokhara). While it started as a slow trickle of emails from a few companies here and there, but within a few days there was a huge number of quotes and offers that I could compare against each other and go with the best price. I also registered an account on the commerce giants Alibaba and GlobalSources to directly interface with manufacturers and distributors who weren’t responding via email, and this worked really well — Alibaba has a built-in chat function that supports Mandarin characters, so I am proud to say I ordered 30 hard drives without an utterance of English from a manufacturer who only knew Mandarin and Cantonese. If I told that to any of my Mandarin teachers of the past eight shameful years, I’m pretty sure they flat out wouldn’t believe me…but it was a great way to actually test my skills in conversational Chinese. Unfortunately, I never found an Asia-based distributor for the motherboards I need for this project, but I got a great bulk price through the distributor I’ve been talking to in the US, and they are coming through UPS Super Saver some time next week.

There are a number of hoops and hurdles when dealing with commerce in Nepal. First off, individuals cannot import components: it must be in the name of a registered company (in our case, High Tech Pioneer Pvt Ltd). Secondly, there is a large tax to deal with — first an import tax, and then a sales tax. Combined, this can exceed 30% of the value of the goods. Thirdly, they even tax shipping! Because this project is starting to feel a bit stretched for time, I asked for shipping by air freight: cheaper than UPS or DHL, but still far more expensive than the slower bulk / freight alternatives. In some cases, this means paying $400 USD for shipping alone, and with the taxes being inclusive of shipping (and telegraphic transfer bank fees — anything that shows on the invoice), it is adding something around 45% on top of the cost of the computers. Yikes.

With that said, the past week has been excellent in terms of productivity and progress. I have sent out the telegraphic transfers to all the computer component manufacturers except the RAM manufacturer — I’m doing that tomorrow with Nani. Speaking of which, without Nani this would have been impossible to coordinate! The necessary paperwork is all in Nepali, so her help has proved invaluable. Thanks Nani!

We’ve also had some great discussions about the business model we use to get these computers in as many schools as possible. Currently, the project is donor sponsored: the cost of each computer is paid in full by kind donations from friends across the world. However, I posed the idea that we could switch to a donor subsidized business model: I was reading up on the role of computers in Nepali schools, and it turns out that the government has mandated that all students in class five and above must have computer classes available for them. Public schools have to provide this for their students, and the government has stated that the best practice to implement this would be to have public schools charge an additional 100 Rs (around $1.50 USD) per student for the service, with the schools choosing their own computers on the free market. Considering some schools have hundreds of students class five and above, some schools do have a reasonable budget. The computers are slightly more expensive than the refurbished Pentium IIIs and Pentium 4s that most schools are currently using, but they are far faster, have significantly more hard drive space, they draw 12V DC instead of 110-230V AC, and they draw a tenth of the power (in Watts). Rather than spending $200 from Donor X to purchase one computer, giving that computer to a school which would otherwise be paying $150 for one, we can use Donor X’s money to subsidize four computers, bringing them down to the going rate of your standard computer on the market. The schools get a far better computer than the alternatives (in terms of performance and power consumption / uptime) for the same price, students have better access to computers, plus the donor’s money is still spent on the goal of providing information technology to all. Of course, schools which cannot afford a computer can still have free computers donated (such as the orphanage, which is not technically a government school, but still has a need for computers), but for those who can afford the computers in part or in full, subsidizing the computers with money from donors seems much more logical.

Now for some photos!

The past few weeks have seen some political unrest in Nepal, shutting off roads and drawing thousands to the streets, singing and dancing and playing instrument and cheering and waving flags — I’ve only seen protests on two separate occasions, and they were both peaceful, but apparently a few protests around Nepal have ended with tear gas being shot into crowds. Here are a few of the photos I took covering the protests.

This is one of the main roads, usually with bumper-to-bumper traffic.

Not the best photo, but its the only photo I have of these busses used to rally support for the Maoists.

More protestors arriving at the demonstration

I also managed to edit those time lapse videos I’ve been shooting together in to a short movie today. Here’s the result.

The next day was Muni’s son’s birthday, so we went to the orphanage to distribute some crackers and fruit. We realized that in addition to computers, these kids need sandals. I’ve found a store nearby with enough in stock, so when we go to the orphanage to give them the computers, we’ll also give them sandals.

The road outside of the orphanage is being paved. On one hand, this means there won’t be as much dust in the air, which will be good for the kids. However, this probably means that property rates in this area will be rising — it’s a double edged sword. Some more bad news, unfortunately — the mare (younger horse) was struck by a truck last week. It died on the side of the road with the kids watching; the truck driver didn’t even stop.

For the past few nights, I managed to watch the meteor storms. The night of the 16th I was out from 8:00PM until 3:00AM. It was completely cloudy and I couldn’t even see stars, but I had my laptop with me on the roof so I managed to get a lot of work done while waiting to see if it would clear up. The night of the 17th I went up to the roof after dinner, around 7:00PM or so, to see a full nights sky without a single cloud. There was still a significant amount of light pollution (looking straight up, the sky was dark, but as I looked towards the horizon the accumulation of smog and light pollution gave the sky a orange haze). I had Stellarium open on my laptop, and I was looking around the nights sky at all the constellations and stars. It’s really relaxing to track a satellite from one side of the sky to the other, and it was a great way to relax after a few days of hard work. As Regulus was rising, I left my camera taking 15″ exposures one second apart and I went inside to get a new battery and warm up for ten minutes. As I came back upstairs, I found the sky completely covered in clouds! Regulus forms the bottom-right point of the constellation Leo, around which the meteors are centered. Right as the show was about to start, mother nature called in sick! Another night without a meteor sighting. I left my camera going and started carrying things downstairs to my room (why did I feel the need to bring an office chair up on the roof? Comfy though…)

Upon checking my photos later that night, I saw a photo with a meteor! I had left my camera pointed East, and I guess a meteor was bright enough to show up through the cloud cover? The camera was still pointed in the direction of the constellation Leo, so it’s possible.

Click for the 1280 x 800 desktop sized version

I’ll try and get more updates up in the future, it will certainly be easier now that I’ve sent out the telegraphic transfers — that’s a huge load off my chest. Sorry for the long delay!

That’s all for now.
Charles