Online Stalking

Rain. Constant rain. Pouring down on earth making everything else insignificant. The whole world is dark, cold and wet. I'm on my cozy and comfortable bed with a warm coffee in hand. The aroma of the coffee is a... pleasure. Slowly sipping it down while being wrapped up in a comforter, on the bed, is heaven. The oh so cozy bed. Life is wonderful, life is a pleasure. I'm in that state where you're neither awake nor asleep. I hear the constant roar of the rain, the refreshing smell of the earth that just absorbed it's first drops of water for a while, and rain is what's all around me. I can feel the rain. Oblivious to everything else, I'm indulged in this wonderful feeling not wanting to escape it ever.

*Blonnngg*

Skype. Someone wants to chat with me, when I'm in this Zen state if you will, of all times. Reluctant to escape this heaven, for a moment I contemplate ignoring it. However, not wanting to miss a chat that is important, I slowly turn around.

Instead, a dude says Hiiii!

From experience I know that these 'HI's that has multiple 'i's in them are never a good sign. In fact, it's usually a tell tale sign that the bugger had assumed I'm a chick. Perhaps with good reason too, because I haven't specified my gender in my Skype account and my name can be taken as either male or female. First I'm thinking of telling him to fuck off and get back to where I was, but on second thoughts, I reply.

Hi...

So... how r u doin?

Err... excuse me, do we know each other?

ASL?

WOW, slow down mister! I asked whether we know each other.

no i wud like to knw u. whats ur asl?

Why should I tell you that?

u're a girl right?

Let's say so for the time being.

whr do u live?

Why do you want to know?

I wud like to knw more abt u

But we don't know anything about us to begin with!

u can tell me abt u more

Is that a question or a statement?

what?

Is that a question or a statement?

why r u talkin like that?

Like what?

u seems angry

I'm not. But what's your problem with vowels?

what problem?

And capitals too.

I don't undrstand u

OK, why can't you type the vowels properly?

ok..

Can you type the vowels properly?

yes..

Show me

wht do u want me to write

You can start by typing that.

lol Ok

what do you want me to write

Almost there

You missed capitalization at the beginning and this at the end: "?"

:D

What do you want me to write?

See, now that wasn't really hard was it?

lol OK so tell me abt u

Aaaaargh! WHERE ARE THE VOWELS?

kk sorry

So tell me about you

You first.

Ok I'm D. I live in SL....

This goes on for a while and I manage to know a lot about the poor bugger. Without telling much about me at all though I constantly had to remind the bugger about vowels. But then it starts to get a bit annoying, when he starts to refer to me as 'Sachi' and I realize it's not going to be long before he professes his undying love to me or something. I decide to break the harsh truth.

Anyway, D, I'm getting bored. I must get going.

kk so you coming online tomorrow?

No moron I'm not coming online tomorrow and even if I did I won't be talking to you.

Sorry?

See, you jackass, I'm a guy and unless you're gay and I'm gay, there's no point in talking anymore. I don't know about you but I'm not, so, get lost loser!

Then I'm hit by a barrage of curse words, without vowels of course. I block the moron and turn to go back to my Zen state only to find that the rain is seized and the mood isn't there anymore. Crap. I blame the age of information. Or whatever.

How Do You Write?

Back in the day I often wondered how those dudes write books actually write them? I didn't mean by that whether they use a pen or a pencil, or a computer if you're a techie type. What I meant is, how do they come up with these stories? Do they write them based on their personal experience? Maybe some do, but surely not all. Ask J.K. Rowling if you don't know what I mean. But the point is, does those stories appear in their heads somehow all of a sudden, or do they build up in their minds over time? Even more importantly, do you develop the plot along the way with only a brief theme in hand? Or do you have the skeleton, if you will, in your head first up and just use the events to dress up the story? Those are but a mere snippet of the thoughts galore that was over pouring my brain after reading a book back in the day.

Then I got into blogging, which means writing, and I was surprised.

Bar incidents that happen to me or the occasional well-researched topic, I hardly know what I'll be writing when I start a post. If it is an incident that happened, then I know the beginning, flow and the end, so I dress up the story with words and maybe throw in a couple of imaginary incidents just for the effect. Or if I research on something before I write, then I know what I'm gonna write about and how I'm gonna write that. Sometimes, while I'm on the train, having lunch or even reading something a thought may pop up in my head. Then I think about it, and perhaps try to develop a post in my mind; something like this should be the opening para, I shall write about this, this and this. And if I conclude it this way, it'll have a nice feel to it. By the time I sit down to write, I have this sort of skeleton in mind, and turn it to words. But other than that, most of the time I just open a notepad (Bill's notepad that is - I have only two handwritten blog posts to my credit, ever) and start typing. Just whatever comes to my mind, they will be transformed to words and typed. I add things along the way, and sometimes posts turn out to be something completely different to what I intended at the start. For instance, this post. I was feeling homesick, and had nothing better to do at that time so just started typing whatever comes to my mind and it ended up being a post. Funniest thing is, there have been times that when I had absolutely nothing to write about so opened up the notepad, typed a random key without looking, and then continued from there. Like this one.

So, how do you write?

A Night With Jolie

Cricinfo is the big daddy of cricket sites though I sometimes like to call it crapinfo for good reasons. But it is an inarguable matter much like the fact that King Mahinda is, well, the king of the paradise island. So getting something you write published on cricinfo is like, say, getting an invitation to dine with the king himself or better yet a night with Angelina Jolie while Brad Pitt is in no sight. If you're a dude that is. A non-gay dude, I might add.

However, what I'm trying to say is that my friend Damith, who's also a member of the good 'ol Lankanosphere, has gotten a night with Jolie. In other words they've published one of his pieces on cricinfo and it's pretty cool I must add, believe it even though he's my friend and I say it. Check it out guys, if you haven't already. Also see this, this and this which are few of his posts I've thoroughly enjoyed over the years. Specially the one about Mendis got me cracking up right from the start.

I highly recommend you read them and even follow him, by which I mean merely to follow his blog - don't go stalking the dude people. But then I'm not going to tell you that he lives in Sydney so you guys know where to find him, so guess it's not going to be a problem anyway.

Quickest Insurance Claim

Longing for Paradise

My relationship with the paradise is a love-hate relationship of sorts. OK make it lovelove-hate because my love for it far outweighs the hatred. If there is any. But the point is, as much as I love it sometime I get fed up with the things there, how things work - or how they don't work, to be more precise - and countless elements that are so ready to piss you off. It's dirty, life is not easy and things never work the way you think they will over there. But one thing you can't accuse it of is life being uneventful.

Take Japan instead.

Things are so nice and orderly. Everything works the way they are supposed to work. Trains come and go on time. There are no sudden breakdowns of electricity. The place is clean - no dust, no mud. People are nice to you, it rains when the weather forecast tells you it will rain and you can order everything online. In short, life's so easy over here. But it sucks in adventure element. I can pretty much tell you how my year is going to turn out in 2010; it'll be the same monotonous crap until the end of March. Then the spring will come, and with it flowers and nice weather. I'll happily trot around with my camera in hand, and the FB profile will have a couple of new albums afterwards. Will follow that with about a week long holiday in May, we'll arrange a BBQ with friends and a lot more sleep. Then nothing of interest until August where I'll get Summer holidays. Off to somewhere, hopefully, for a week or two and then back at work in no time. Cricket would have begun, but that's about the only thing I'd have left with for the whole summer. Come the Autumn, there will be Autumn leaves (obvious, isn't it?) and another photo album. Then back to goddamn winter and hopefully a trip back home in December. That's about it, and it will work out exactly the way I have said here.

But this would have been a whole lot different if I were in Paradise. There are no seasons of course, but say, the rainy season could very well start with a three month draught and a power cut. There will be no power most of the time and candle lit dinner table (not for romantic reasons, obviously) conversations will be full of dissing the government. Meanwhile there will be a couple of strikes and a protest ending few people getting killed. By the police. Leaving us with ample things to talk about. And the planned trip to Galle will have to be cancelled because the hired van guy had some other last minute arrangements, but it will happen two months later on a Saturday after discussing it over booze on Friday night. Probably by bus or better yet, train, which will be delayed and cause the two day trip to be a three day one. Meanwhile, my laptop will break down but there will be no place to get it repaired. However, few calls to friends will end up with me and one of the said friends taking it apart and fixing it without a cent being spent as opposed to 10K you'd have to spend in Japan. I will go to university grounds every other weekend and play touch rugby with some known but mostly unknown people, and will make new friends. Booze with friend will be lot more fun, and sometimes will have to walk 10 miles because you missed the last bus and there is no cash in hand for a tuk-tuk. Parties will actually be fun, and there will be Baila tunes to dance to. And the food; OK, I stop there.

Yes, I'm seriously homesick all of a sudden.

Why I Gave Up Physics

High Gravity Zone

For years scientists have been trying to find a way to create low or even zero for that matter, gravity zones but to no avail. Their search continues, but in the meantime nobody really bothered to find high gravity zones on earth. What their use is, even I'm not sure of, though of course I'm no scientist by any means. However, I'm glad to reveal to all you folks that there is one such zone in my very room. In fact, there has been one in almost everywhere I lived - you could even say that it follows me.

This zone has some very interesting qualities. First and the obvious is that if you happens to be in this zone it is almost impossible to escape it for gravity is much higher than the other places. You need a lot of strength and will power if you are to escape it. Many a time I almost escape it, only to fall back even harder. Then, it's gravity varies depending on the time of the day or even time of the year. Usually the highest readings were obtained on mornings, of which the maximum was recorded on freezing winter mornings. Lowest readings can be obtained in very hot summer mid days. This zone has been living with me for so long, it knows me so well. Therefore, it varies it's gravity according to my mood even; if I am in a particularly jovial mood, and wants to be out, it will more often than not lower it's gravity and let me do as I please. On the other hand, if I'm bored, tired, got some cleaning to do or has an exam coming up it will increase it's gravity immensely, pulling me towards it if I happen to be in the vicinity. Not only that; I start to watch a movie or grab a book, it definitely increases it's gravity pulling me in within seconds.

Still no idea as to what it is? Really? OK then, it is my bed.

Blog Post on a Leaflet

Yesterday as well as the day before I was out at an exhibition with my team at work. Of course it was work-related, hence boring, useless, driving you up walls etc. So instead I wrote a blog post sitting at a cafe there. I typed it for you, and here it is along with a picture of the original one.

I'm at an exhibition for two days running now. No I didn't eat, poop and then sleep on a table there for two days as someone would wrongly have imagined. It's just I had to visit it, on business capacity no less, which merely means my whole team went there and because they couldn't leave me at office alone they took me along as well. Come to think of it they could very well have left me to do my usual work - which of course include blogging, reading blogs and such time wasting stuff - but must have felt envious of me so took me along. Bastards.

I mean, THIS SUCKS! Being at office battling with codes is so much better than this shit. It's heaven! I know I'll be cursing work from tomorrow on again, but right now it seems thousand times better. All you have here is a bunch of Japs telling another bunch of Japs about the supposedly cool stuff (OK, they are cool, but really, meh) they've made, and the ones listening go WOW (in Japanese of course) ones every two sentences. It's fun to watch for a while, they you grow tired of it. Sure there are pretty chicks with layers of make-up as thick as a centimeter or two, all smiley, asking you to take a leaflet or two and offering you gifts if you do a survey. I evaded many, but eventually agreed to do one just for the sake of it. After finishing it I was given a small gift which consisted of a promotional CD, a little notepad and a bloody mirror that comes along with make-up sets! That was the end of me doing surveys.

So eventually I had nothing to do, so bored, not to mention hungry so headed to a cafe inside the exhibition hall. Which is where I am right now, with the steaming Cocoa I ordered. Writing this of course, which I guess is about to be finished because there isn't anything else to write. I will probably type this and hit the 'Publish' button tomorrow, from the heaven that is my workplace!


Have a rocking weekend all!

Weekend, Awards and Some More

If it was to be put in the order in which things happened, the titled should have been like Weekend, Some More and Awards but something tells me that it doesn't really fit. So I went for the title as it is now, though I'm going to tell you about Awards bit first.

So I've won the award for the Best Overseas Blog in RDs Blog Awards this year. OH.MY.GOD! That feels good. As you obviously know this blog is pretty much my rantings, useless ones at that, very crudely put together too, but to think someone thinks it's worth of some kind of award is, well, nice. Thanks RD and thanks everyone else too.

Moving onto the weekend, as much as you wish at work that you were home doing nothing, it is equally a pain sitting around doing nothing during weekends. But that was what I was left to do during the last weekend. Last two in fact. This time of the year being winter doesn't help at all. Otherwise you could have gone out and tried your luck with a Jap chick or a lottery at least, though you'd think you've got better odds at the latter. Anyway, the point is, this is when you truly feel how awesome the paradise island we hail from is. Indi's posts about southern beaches or whale watching doesn't help either.

OK then, let's move onto the some more part. I was so bored to the point of slicing my own wrists just to observe the pattern I would bleed (OK that's so gross, but see I wanted to highlight the point I was making) when a friend came to the rescue. He had said something about the latest Survivor series, and that brought back memories. It was when I was still in school I first watched it and had more or less forgotten about it since then. I straightaway downloaded the latest, season 19 that is, and started watching. When I watched it first all those years ago, I was damn impressed about it, but now I have my doubts. Of course it is still great reality TV, but I doubt if it is as legit as they claim it is. How people won games were quite brilliant for TV, but too dramatic to be real. I mean, come on, right people win at the right time just to twist the plot! Two chicks have a conversation - not particularly close two either - and one breaks down in front of the camera. Seriously? That looked SO not real. And according to them they are not allowed to bring stuff like razors. Fittingly all men have beards couple of weeks into the game. Fine. Except for the fact that women have clean shaven armpits and hair-free legs even after 39 friggin' days!

I tell you it's scripted.