Yoga!

That’s all for now.
Charles

I guess this is just a little mini-update, because that is the only real news from today. I will talk about what we ordered this week, however, as I think it is important. I ordered the components for thirty more computers on this low-cost low-power computer project. The final setup that will be given to schools is a 945GSEJT motherboard, 2GB RAM, 250GB 2.5″ SATA HDD, WiFi, custom-built cases and custom-built monitors. The cases are larger than the other computers I’ve used, but they are a quarter of the price. They can also support 3.5″ HDDs (which are cheaper but require more power) and DVD burners, if the schools require them. The monitors were designed to my specifications by a Chinese company: they feature 12V DC input, VGA input and a 3.5mm speaker jack for the integrated speakers. They also have a headphone jack which will mute the speakers when a student uses headphones. I’m not sure if I will use this feature, but it is handy to have it.

Rather than distributing all 35 computers to one school, we are going to have a number of pilot programs in different schools, so that we can get feedback based on how these computers perform in different areas of Nepal: how do they perform off-grid? How do they perform inside of Kathmandu? How can the software or operating system be changed and improved? Did any of the schools prefer to use Ubuntu, or should we use Windows? Distributing five or six computers to six or seven schools is far better than distributing all of them to just one.

Shyami is turning into quite the model. He is always asking me "kyamera?" "picture?"

Over the next few days, I will be finishing up the work done on the software side of things in anticipation of the arrival of the hardware. Keeping busy!

That’s all for now.
Charles

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

These pieces of carbon copy paper are for collecting interest on the loans from clients.

After this, dad and Muni went to do some sightseeing. I returned home and started to get some work done on the emails. Every time I’m about to place an order on the motherboards, I hear from a new distributor or a new lead that could get these components into Nepal for a cheaper price. It looks like I’ll be biting the bullet and ordering the parts for twenty computers on Friday, but with that said, there have been some interesting developments recently so I may be getting larger quantities soon — we’ll see how that goes! I also worked on setting up the educational content — it’s all going very well. I’d also like to thank Mr. and Mrs. May for their help getting word of my project out there; they helped me find an additional five donors today. I’m glad the donations have not stopped yet, it’s great knowing the difference we will make in schools around Nepal together. Thanks everyone!

That’s all for now.
Charles

One of the families who have a stall in a large vegetable market thanks to Charumati

One of the vendors offered us milk chai (tea made without water, only milk). Quite an honor!

"Babu" means "baby" in Nepalese. Namaste babu!

After this we thanked the chairman and drove north to visit a temple for lunch.

After the temple we stopped for some lunch nearby.

That’s all for now.
Charles

Eight hours. Fun.

There were numerous break downs, causing two hours in delays.

Dad took this photo at a rest stop. Nice!

A layer of smog above Kathmandu valley.

Cleveland's Sweets & Cake

Another picture taken by dad.

An open-air dentist on the streets of Kathmandu

Other than the long bus ride, nothing really happened today. With that said, thanks for all the birthday wishes, everyone!

That’s all for now.
Charles

Thanks, dad! This photo is great.

After taking these sunrise photos, we had a quick breakfast and said our goodbyes to the other tourists. By the time we left, we had managed to talk a lot and get to know each other: the wife in the Swiss family works for the World Wildlife Fund and had some suggestions for fundraising techniques. Dad and I also traded some light-hearted barbs, much to the amusement of the other guests: having just told the other travelers about waking up to see a halo of sunlight on my face, the Swiss woman said “Like Jesus!”, to which my dad responded, “oh please…my son is far from Jesus”. I replied, “you are absolutely correct…after all, my father is far from God”. It was great sitting around and having a good time with a large group of people for the first time in a few months. After a few more arguments amongst the ten of us (from Microsoft versus OSX, to better ways to teach in Nepali schools, to alternative fund raising methods for my project), Krishna, dad and I set off for Panchasse. Panch in Nepalese (and Hindi) means five, and asse means paths. The name “five paths” comes from the fact that Panchasse has paths which can access many towns in surrounding areas, from Pokhara to smaller regional villages. We took the scenic route down to the valley, affording us the opportunity to take photos along the way.

The golden rays of the sun had all but vanished by the time we got going

Nothing like summiting a mountain over the course of two days and 30KM to realize a helicopter could travel the same distance in three or four minutes. Kind of ruins the feeling, but so what, right?

The View From Panchasse

Krishna offered to carry the tripod. Thanks Krishna!

We passed through a number of villages, one had this quarry where all work was done by hand.

After this, we arrived back in Pokhara for some much needed rest and relaxation before our bus ride back to Kathmandu early the next morning.

That’s all for now.
Charles

The road we got dropped off on.

It was pretty much instantly a mess: we realized we had forgotten to bring sleeping bags, the backpack dad bought the night before instantly ripped open due to a faulty zipper, and a water bottle fell out and burst, all within maybe five minutes of starting the trek. Yikes. We kept going, however, and we were quickly rewarded with stunning views of the valley below.

Around the first hour or so, I realized it was a mistake to bring all the camera equipment again. The three lenses, the dSLR and the tripod were just ridiculously heavy (I’m still sore two days later). We met some school children who were surprised to see us — I got the feeling not many trekkers came through this way. A few of the kids wanted to race, so I reluctantly said “teen…dui…et!” (my attempt at counting backwards in Nepalese) and we took off. It was an even race in that I immediately took the lead, but quickly the weight of the camera bag caught up to me and I was reduced to a quivering ball of jelly. Within a few seconds the kids caught up to me and ran laughing down the path, eventually stopping to turn around and view a sorry sight of a foreigner panting his way up the dirt road. They waited for me, and we walked together until they reached the entrance for their school. I shook their hands and they left for classes.

Krishna, dad and I continued up the mountain, stopping every few moments for a rest and a water break. Here are some of the photos I took.

Eventually we left the open-air trail and ascended into a thick forest. We could hear farmers whooping and singing on either side of the path, talking as they gathered food for their livestock. At some points, the forest was so lush that it was hard to tell where the path was. Krishna occasionally asked the villagers (by shouting off into the forest, hoping for a response) which way the path went. Luckily, we never got lost (although at one point we had to back track for a minute or two).

Eventually we left the forest and reached the ridge line once more. It’s surprising how quickly the fauna changes on one 15KM hike: we even saw cacti at one point! After a few more hours hiking, we turned the bend to see a cow glaring at us. The cow, Krishna said, belonged to the owner of the guest house we’d be staying at: we had arrived.

This photo is dedicated to my mom, who would have loved the wide changes in fauna we saw in Nepal

Unlike the trail we hiked, the guest house we stayed at had a number of tourists. There were four Israelis, a Swiss family and an older Frenchman. We had a nice chat, and by some strange occurrence of fate, it turns out that one of the Israelis worked in Vermont. Surprising, I thought, what are the chances? After all, he was from a family of farmers in Israel, and Vermont is a state with a lot of farm activity, but maybe he was in one of the larger areas such as Burlington or Montpelier. Nope. He worked at a farm in Caledonia County. Another coincidence, I thought, but then again, this county is home to St. Johnsbury. Another big name in Vermont, not that surprising. After a little more prodding, though, our new friend recalled the place he had worked: East Burke. Not even the town of Burke proper, no: the village of East Burke. The very same place I worked this summer to pay for my trip to Nepal; a rural area in northeastern Vermont with only six hundred inhabitants. What are the chances that 0.3% of the workforce of a small village in a small New England state will meet up together at a guest house 35KM from Pokhara? Quite large, apparently.

Krishna rests at the guest house after the long trek.

Krishna and I helped the owner of the guest house gather vegetables for her buffalo.

After some more chatting — and an invitation to play hakky-sak, which I honored for a few minutes before apologizing for my lack of tact and agility and excusing myself from the game — I noticed that the sun was starting to set. I setup the camera and tripod, and set up a timelapse which ran until dark. The timelapse looks great (it is of the top-left peak in the above photo, called either ‘Fish Tail’ or ‘Machhapuchhare’), but I decided that I won’t post any more individual timelapse videos until I complete the video I am working on of all the timelapses so far, matched with music. Seven second clips without audio aren’t very representative of the beauty I’ve found in Nepal, so I’ll wait until the video is done before posting any more! After the timelapse, the sun had set and it started to get cold. Before the moon rose, I saw the amazing view of mountains with the stars shining high in the sky. The moon was full that night, however, so the stars weren’t fully visible, but the air was clear and the sight was spectacular.

Click this photo for a link to the 1280 x 800 desktop size version.

Clouds moved in, but I managed a shot of Pokhara under the stars.

Taken as the moon was still low in the sky

After this photo, I went to bed — it was going to be another early start the next day, and I was incredibly tired from the long hike.

That’s all for now.
Charles

Click for the full 1500 x 1000 image.

The kids attend an assembly at the start of the school day. What a view!

Dad talking with the vice principal of the school

As we  were leaving, the others went on and I stayed with the school’s computer teacher. He had already shown me the laptops HKIS donated while talking with the school’s principal, but he also wanted to show me the school’s existing computer lab, which has a number of computers and monitors already. However, the UPS shown here can only power the computers for ten minutes once the electricity shuts off (the computer draws 350W). During the winter season, they often go weeks without enough electricity to even turn the computers on. One solution would be to either donate or sell ten or so computers to this school and bring these ATX tower computers down from the mountain into Pokhara or Kathmandu where the electricity grids are slightly more reliable. It’s a shame the school can’t make better usage of the computers they already have, considering they have a teacher knowledgeable on basic usage of Windows XP and skills in programming (he teaches students Java and Basic, if I understood correctly).

Click for the full 3778 x 1000 image.

After the visit, we drove back to Pokhara to visit another school before we returned to meet Jagan for the technology demo. In addition to the laptops HKIS left, there was a pamphlet with information about Mr. Friedericks, Ms. Manuel, and all the students from the HKIS interim posted on the wall above the laptops. So surreal to see the News and Views / Broadcast Journalism wall mural … in Nepal. The computers are still working and in use at this school, although one of the batteries is not charging properly, and the 20GB hard drives are nearly full. I’ll see if I can clone all the data from the existing drives onto new ones before I leave Nepal, as I am considering coming back to Pokhara — there is a lot of work to be done here!

After this we returned to Jagan’s workshop for the tech demo, which went very well. The questions were interesting and I received a number of business cards from computer professionals wanting to get in touch with me once the presentation was over.

Thanks to dad for taking this picture, although Ubuntu on the projector would have been more representative of the project: Win7 is only on here to show that it can run.

After the tech demo, dad and I returned to the hotel to prepare for the trek we are going on tomorrow (which reminds me, what am I doing up at 11:00?!). We will be incommunicado throughout tomorrow, arriving back in Pokhara late Thursday night (taking a bus back into Kathmandu Friday morning, bright and early!)

That’s all for now.
Charles

He then took me to a computer repair center he operates which also seems to be quite popular: the floor had a number of people working on it who were efficiently fixing client’s computers. We sat down for a few minutes to talk about the computer project I am working on in Nepal (I had been awkwardly carrying around a keyboard, mouse, power cable and computer through the streets of Pokhara up until this point). I talked about the history of the project, starting from my senior project at HKIS up until the present date; the solutions we had to a number of IT problems in Nepal as well as the hurdles that lay ahead. Jagan is very knowledgeable in the computer market today, so getting feedback was excellent. He seems to be interested in the project, especially the commercial side of things. We discussed using profits made from retail sale of the computers to help fund computers donated to schools around Nepal. Jagan not only has a successful business but an interest in giving back to society (we are arranging a trip to the school he went to as a child, it is on the peak across from the ridge line we summited yesterday).

After this Jagan took us to meet Kiran. Kiran owns and operates a textile store, a textile material shop, and a very successful mineral water bottling operation in Western Nepal (the water we bought to take on the hike yesterday was actually the brand made by Kiran’s company). Kiran, dad and I enjoyed talking about information technology and computers in Nepal over a cup of chai (during which the power cut off). Kiran invited dad and I to be guests at a local Rotary International meeting that night, to which we gladly agreed.

After meeting up with a mutual friend of Jagan and Kiran, we went to a lakeside hotel for the Rotary International meeting. While the meeting was in Nepali, we were asked to write our names and occupation on a sheet of paper. I wrote “Charles Watson, student” and passed it to the district governor, and listened intently to the conversations happening in Nepali, without a clue of what was going on. Suddenly, I realized they had switched to English just as they said “Steven and Charles Watson” with a brief round of applause, and invited us to give a few words. Dad talked about his job in Hong Kong and I talked about the rationale behind the project in Nepal; a unique market in the technology market today. Big box manufacturers worry generally about speed and cost, not power consumption — the electrical grids in places like South Korea, Taiwan and America are developed to the point where electrical consumption (in desktops) is not really considered. The only model of computers where electrical consumption is considered would be the laptop sector, a market which also places a premium on miniaturization, weight and portability (driving up cost at equal performance with desktop machines). Because of the failure of big box computer manufacturers to design a computer that would fill the niche market of Nepal, specifically the educational sector, it was up to the individuals — whether they were recent high school graduates or Rotarians with thirty years of experience in the computer industry — to step up to the plate and design and implement a computer custom tailored to Nepal.

Because of the interest in the project, Jagan has organized a tech demo tomorrow after lunch, with a number of Rotarians expressing interest in attending. This will be an excellent way to spread awareness of the current state of the technology market; the Rotarians in attendence expressed doubt that I could bring new computers to Nepal for any less than $500 USD (for reference, I am estimating the per-unit cost of these computers to be around $250, including shipping and taxes, without monitor mouse and keyboard).

After the Rotary International meeting, we met with Jagan and Kiran’s wives and went out to dinner at the “Nutty Nuts Cafe”. It was the only fine dining establishment I have ever been the patron of which featured Dreamwork movie screenshots as wall art. My favorite was the still frame from the somewhat recent “Bee Movie”, starring Jerry Seinfeld.

After dinner we got a ride back to the hotel from Jagan for a late night’s sleep. As we climbed the stairs to the hotel room, I was excited about the tech demo tomorrow; brainstorming in my head all the points I’d like to make and the features I’d like to present. We’ll see how it goes!

That’s all for now.
Charles