Day Four was a jam-packed day. Once again, we started off with a hearty breakfast in school – I cannot stress how amazing their canteen is. Today was rice with meatball soup. Absolutely delicious, I have no idea what kind of wizardry goes on in the kitchen.
A bus ride to Wat Rang Sane Nakorn Chan School took 30 mins. Upon arrival, we had a quick briefing and split into our respective teams. My team consisted of 5 SUTD students and 2 Thai students.
A local electrician did a quick demo of what we had to do, and then we were off. The morning was spent removing the old installations, check ing the old battery status and solar panels. Each group had around 5 boxes to complete, and we had limited tools, so efficient splitting of work was imperative to ensure we got the job done on time.
We took a break for lunch, before setting up the new boxes that we were going to install. Drilling holes for cables, wiring the new lightbulbs, charge controllers and batteries was honestly quite fun and very hands-on. The mounting of the boxes was probably the toughest part, and only one ladder and one drill per team meant that that rate of work slowed down quite dramatically. Fortunately, our group had Melvin who was amazing at this kind of stuff and we finished quite fast, before helping others.
Around 6pm, we left the school to go back for dinner. A prof and facilitator stayed behind to check on the lights – and fortunately, our hard work paid off – everything worked out well and all the lights lit up at night! Mission Success!
After dinner, Melvin noticed that today was the first clear night and asked if there was a rooftop nearby. The Thai students brought us up and we were greeted with a beautiful, starry night. The pictures don’t do it justice. It was really quite beautiful and we were taught some simple constellations and names of stars by Melvin.
After stargazing for around 30 minutes, we went back down and heard someone singing nearby. Curiosity piqued, we went to check it out and spent a further 45 minutes playing and appreciating music with the local Thai students and learning their traditional instruments.
A wonderful way to end off a productive day. :>
