Normally we stand up together with the sun at about 06.00 in the morning. This seems quite early, but actually is the best time of the day regarding the temperature...
We live in the campus of Kamworks, which was built for the Dutch students and also sometimes to teach a a group of possible new Cambodian entrepreneurs for the new shops. Till last Sunday we had the campus for ourselves (11 Dutch students), but on sunday 18!!! Cambodian entrepreneurs arrived for a course of four weeks!!! This made our campus a bit overcrowded and we have already moved our workspace to a bedroom...
Kamworks is placed in Sre Ampil, a rural village in the middle of nowhere, about 40 km from Phom Penh. A sand road will lead you from the main road to Kamworks and the Campus. Always when we walk or cycle on this road, all the children call ‘Hello, Hello..’ as if they saw white people for the first time in their lives...
It is also a nice mindsetter to be here. In the Neterlands you take everything for granted, but now we are here, it is a very common situation that we do not have water, internet or energy. Last weekend, we stayed at the Campus to work (we have had a very long trip the weekend before), but for a large part of the weekend we didn’t have water in half of the building and we did not have internet. Everything will be so wonderfull again when we are back in the Netherlands...
At 09.30 we always have tea time and we dink some coffee and tea in a kiosk and we can discuss some things which Arjen (Manager of Kamworks) or with the other staf of Kamworks.
At 12.00 we have lunch. Because Cambodia was a colony of the French, we can eat the French breads every day in the morning and at lunch. For the filling we can buy eggs, fruits and vegatables on the steets next to the Campus or buy peanutbutter, pate, jam or tuna in the international supermarkets in Phnom Penh (but.. 1.5 hour away...). This week we started to also have a warm lunch at the orphanage, just like the diner in the evenings...
Sometimes it is really hard to keep awake after the lunch and we take a small nap...
The last week the SPD people (Ana and Loucas) were busy with doing more interviews and trying to find out more about the market and a good way to reach the people with our new product. The IPD people (Steffi and Doortje) have been working on sketching ideas for specific subproblems (how to's...) and did some electronic tests to find out more about the needed energy input and light output of the system....
Today we had our deadline for the idea generation phase and so we had the last 2 days some nice things to do in the evinings... But it worked out and we are very convenient with our result and conclusions... Up to the next phase!!!
Testing the charging speed of this home-made low-cost PV panel...
Making a LED light of 3.2 Volt work on only a 1.2 Volt battery.... How many hours could one LED work on a battery that was charged for one day in the sun on a low-cost PV panel?
At about 17.00 we sometimes go out for a short trip before dinner at 18.00. Since a few days we have a few motorbikes and normal bicycles with which we can discover the surroundings...
At 18.00 we have dinner at the orphanage, next to Kamworks. The meals are very good and mostly consists of rice with some filled cucumbers or tomatoes, potatoes, fish (cheaper than meat) and/ or chicken. As a desert we always get a bunch of fresh fruits, very good as well!
At about 18.30 also all the childen of the orphanage arive at the dinerplace and always start with a very nice song to thank for their meal...
After diner, we often get back to our computers (yes, we are really addicted :) ) for about 1 hour and then we still have some time left for relaxing. Most of the time we do some game or watch a movie with a big part of the group. It is a really nice combination between hard working times and good relaxing times!
But.... We don't make it too late... the next day starts again with the sunrise at 06.00....... =)
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