The first single I ever bought, on 45 Vinyl no less, was a track called Electricity by a band called Orchestral Manouvres in the Dark.  This is a great song by a great band by the way, I realise I must add them to my Facebook page.  Anyways, I remember vividly walking home with this record, bought with my own pocket money.  Only part way home, the thing slipped out of its sleeve and began rolling back down the hill.  No damage done as it turned out as I ran and caught it before it went down a drain or rolled all the way back to the shop but still a vivid memory.

Living in Nepal is not 100% unlike this experience.  The Electrcity is dodgy and many of the things one does here on an everyday level can feel like Orchestral Manouvres in the Dark.  You also seem to have to chance after the ordninary on a quite regular basis as it behaves unexpectedly and somehow gets away from you.  Sigh. 

What am I on about?  Well, I have been promising for some time to post about the powercuts (called ‘Load Shedding’ here, a nice euphanism), and how they have been influencing my use of digital media in general and the Internet in particular.

Before leaving the UK I signed up to being an STA Explorer for STA Travel and very happily, as they are a great company.  They book travel, insurance and etc for the under 26’s and full-time students (which is how I snuck in).  You may well have heard of them but if you haven’t check out their website (http://www.statravel.co.uk/) for more info.

Anyways, STA Travel set me up with my flights and insurance and advised me how to save money while doing so, (which was refreshing to say the least).  They also gave me the clearest advice I have ever had before setting out on a journey.  They pride themselves on having agents who are knowledgeable about the different regions the people in their target audience travel to and from my experience it would seem this is so.  I realise this is unashamed plug, but I give praise where it is due and its definitely due here.

So I signed up to be an STA Explorer.  Being a bit of a geek I thought it would be interesting to access a wider range of online media than I have to date and also to do so in foreign climes.  I also am keen to explore ways of keeping in touch with people back home too, so win-win.

However, though I knew about the powercuts before I got here, they escalated in number and duration about a week after I arrived.  And therin lies the problem.  The people here are currently working to run shops, schools, banks, resturants and other businesses, not to mention their homes and family lives, with around 35+ hours of powercuts per week, most often in the evenings but at other times of day as well.

There is a schedule issued and the ‘Load Shedding’ mainly seems to stick to this but I personally have seen a restuarant owner nearly in tears at her empty restaurant because tourists don’t like eating or sitting in a place lit only by candlelight and therefore simply don’t turn up. This lady was Tibetan, one of the many Tibetans who live here in Boudha because of the Stupa and Monasteries, but this effects everyone in the country.  3 or so years ago, there weren’t the powercuts this lady said, but now more and more and ‘what to do?’

In this, I realise I am part of the problem.  Though I live here now, I am an Yingie (tourist/foreigner) and I myself use a lot of power.  I type on my laptop, expect to run my water boiler (all 6 litres of it), my rice cooker, charge camera batteries and etc etc every single day.  With the current capacity of Nepal’s electricity generation this just isn’t sustainable and its getting worse.  Increasing urbanisination means that all of us here are becoming more power-hungry all the time, as elsewhere.

The West might get there again you know, if we keep designing new and more powerful gadgets all the time…

So let’s be clear I am not finger-pointing here, unless it is at myself, but the situation is far ideal.  And of course, the Internet is nowhere with no power.  Interesting that and true.

A local Internet Cafe I go to at the Stupa (Cosmos Cyber, nice people and good steady, fast connection for Nepal), runs about eight to ten truck batteries in a system called a UPS – an Uninterrupted Power Supply, which mostly works but requires a wiring system 1960’s Nasa would be proud of.  Plus, somehow, sitting there in the dark, lit by only our computer screens and faced with the pospect of a torch-lit walk home, the Internet seems slower, less important and far less appealing trust me…

The other everning we were sitting in our meditation class and the power went out.  It was scheduled but still one forgets when one is busy…  And so we just sat there in the dark listening to the Lopon (a teaching monk who has studied for 13 years but is still qualifying for another 3 years to be a full Khenpo).  We were barely able to see each other, never mind the teacher, and were left scrambling for torches to read the text.

It’s tricky.

You have to plan ahead.  So I boil my water boiler when I know there’s power so that I have safe drinking water for the next few hours or the next day.

The power also has regular dips and spikes when it is on.  So, if you come here, DON’T plug your laptop or any expensive, irreplaceable equipment directly into the mains.  One student here did that and overnight a power-surge fried a brand-new $500 laptop.  Not good!    You need to get a voltage regulator instead, a little box about the size of a small car battery, which keeps the power steady (and don’t pay more than about 1000-2000 Nepali rupees for one as I did!  Ooops, oh well…

I have heard many quite involved and intense conversations here among students and faculty about how to set up a UPS at home.  It seems that with one truck battery (which is roughly the size of one drawer of a filing cabinet), you would be able to run 1 computer and 3 light bulbs, or a fridge.

Hmmmmm.  To eat cold food or write your essay.  Now that’s a tricky one!

People generally are pretty calm really even though it does get in the way considerably.  I am just about old enough (ahem), to remember the powercuts and the three day week in the UK in the mid-seventies and people then really kicked up a stink.  So…

But there is now one light in all this (pardon the pun)!  Our little outdoor cafe here at the Shedra has gone wireless (thanks guys) and the speed aint half bad, so… perhaps you might hear more from me in future and not all about the powercuts either! 

Wooooh!

Better go – have to meet my Tibetan language tutor in 5 minutes.

Namaste!