Cheerful students, Rapti bridge and the beautiful sunset

Back to work again. Actually the system is already functional, but we're tweaking the system to make it easier for students to operate.

During day, we opened the lab for a short demo for the teachers and students. And perhaps that was one of the best moments of my life. Our month long of work finally paid off. Seems like everybody is liking the system. The excitement among the students – i just can't explain it in words. Even the teachers were excited. There were some key points about our system to be excited over.

First of all, it's Linux based, so there's less change there'll ever be virus attack and very less change of system crash. Second thing, it's Nepali localized. Ask students whether to use the system in Nepali or English and they promptly say 'Nepali'. The teachers seemed excited about the Nepali language too. I even showed them the Romanized input system and they seem to like it. The keyboard layout and the magic of Unicode was more than excitement to them. Third thing was that we'd put the local cache of Wikipedia.org and HowStuffWorks.com, which seemed to be really a hit among the teachers.

But for students, games was what they liked most. The GCompris Suite was a hit. The students are really really bright here. They solve the puzzles in the GCompris Suite without problem. Really really bright students.

The most excited were we ourselves. Our months long work is really paying off. We later on also came to know that this is the first computer lab in a government school in the Central West of Nepal. And as far as i know this is the first Linux LTSP based lab in the whole Nepal. Felt like quite creating a history.

During evening, we went to Bhaluwang. The Rapti bridge was awesome. And the sunset was just marvelous. The orange shade was just too romantic for me to seriously miss my honey. The parrots flying over the bridge in such a wavy motion. The clear water. And the cool breeze. Boy, i'd been living in a hell and i even didn't know about it!

Back to school was hilarious. The bus had over speedy cassette player. The hindi song it played was soo squeaky and soo funny. I kept laughing all way long. Other guys were laughing to see me laugh.

Routine loadshedding. We went to the canteen where the people there made a fire. Was cold. Quite a relief.

Also called Rama dai (HeNN). He was very very excited when i told him what happened today. He urged me to email my experiences. But internet is a problem here. I was told that there's internet at Bhaluwang, but there's aint any. Now i've heard that there's internet at Lamahi, i gotta try it. During afternoon we also tried to access internet via local telephone line using Shishir's roaming password, but the telephone exchange here doesn't support internet.

During dinner we got to talk to Kamal dai. He runs the canteen. And he seemed to be such a wonderful guy. He seems few years older than us, but he's 31 years old and he's seen so much of things in life. He's a cook now, but previously he used to be an electrician and used to work at Gulf. He worked there for more than 5 years but returned back as the pay wasn't good. He told us so much things he's done. But the amazing part was that he's young and looks even younger. He was such a wonderful guy.