Rangeen Chara

Being away from Nepal is always difficult but even more so during the festival season. With Dashain in the door-step, I decided to post this article to share my experience of making Dashain enjoyable in different ways.

There are many Nepalese Associations that organize Dashain Special program to bring together Nepalese community and celebrate togetherness. This is especially true in big cities. Check out the web-site of the Nepalese association active in your area to find out what program they are organizing.

People enjoying 2009 Dashain Picnic in Seattle, USA

In smaller cities, the story is a little different. There are no association as such to organize such programs but I have seen that families that have been able to establish themselves well often invite Nepalese around the area for a special get-together. If you are relatively new to the area, you should find out if there is anything of the sort being organized in your area. If you are more or less established in your area, do consider organizing something as that would be a good networking experience. Potluck or a picnic with donation may be the way to go if you do not want to stretch your expenses much!

Dashain 2007 program at Dr. Prakash Neupane's residence in Jefferson City, Missouri, USA

Those of you in college/University can make it a really good experience by organizing Nepal Nite or something similar. I know that school and work schedule make it almost impossible but then having fun during Dashain is worth the extra effort.

If you are alone in a city or just a single Nepalese family in the area then you may consider visiting a new place during Dashain. Exploring new places is always fun and that should make your dashain memorable.

If you have some other interesting plans for Dashain, please let us know. Also, do send your pictures to share your Dashain experience with us.

Useful Information celebrating dashain outside nepal, dashain 2009, dashain 2066, nepali association, nepali festival

As per our on going effort to serve the Nepalese community, we today released HelloNepal phone service for Rangeen Chara members in US and Canada. We had previously provided HelloNepal calling-credit to selected members for testing purposes. The feedback from the testing phase has been incorporated in the current version.

One of the problems Nepalese living outside Nepal have been facing for years is the unreliable phone services from Nepal. The international rates from the telecommunication providers are very expensive whereas the calling card services to Nepal are unreliable. There have been cases where the purchased credit is exhausted without being connected to Nepal even once. HelloNepal is the result of our months long effort to solve this problem and we believe that this service will prove to be useful to the Nepalese community worldwide.

The new generation phone!

Starting from 08/23/2009, Rangeen Chara members in the US and Canada can make calls to Kathmandu valley landline numbers at the rate of 7.9 cents per minute. Once we successfully run the service for about a month, we will be providing the service to other districts and mobile phones in Nepal. We are working hard to extend this service to members outside US and Canada as well.

HelloNepal is a phone-to-phone service. A computer (or mobile devices that can open the Hellonepal web-site) is needed to request the call. Once the call request is made, you do not need a computer to continue talking.

To make a call using HelloNepal, you need to enter your number and the number you wish to call. HelloNepal then calls your number. When you answer the phone, HelloNepal puts you on hold and dials the other number for you. By using this mechanism, we solve a number of problems:
1. The call is cheaper than other calling-cards.
2. No need to worry about local access number or 1-800 numbers. We call your number!
3. The call quality is better using this technique.
4. You can keep-track of the calls and see the charges immediately after the call.
5. You can purchase your credits online.

We are excited about this release and are waiting for responses from our users. HelloNepal is no doubt the best system to call Nepal; with your feedback, it will continue getting better.

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Exactly one year has passed since I made the first post. A lot has changed in Rangeen Chara since then; the best part being the fact that we now are a family of 785 Nepali netizens. That is on an average two new members every day which is remarkable given that the first six months were spent mostly in development! The credit for this success goes to those of you who have loved Rangeen Chara and have spread the word around.

The year behind has helped us a lot in seeing the year ahead. Love and support from members has encouraged us to work hard to bring more features to the community. We are determined to tackle problems; one at a time.

Here are some statistics about the Website for the past year:

Total posts: 36
Comments Posted: 251
Members: 785
Total SMS Messages Sent: 6,167

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