Let's be a little considerate people!

I was going to write just another one of those useless random posts today because, if not for any other reason, I haven't written anything for some time now. But at the last moment I thought I'd actually write something useful instead of showering you with my posts with such dry humor. This is not exactly something I wrote either; rather it is a very appropriate and timely article written by one of our fellow Sinhala bloggers who calls himself 'Pitastharaya-2'.

This is the link to the original article, and I urge all of you guys and girls to head over there and take a couple of minutes to read it. And spread the word as much as possible - put it as a FB status, Tweet it or even do the same I'm doing here. I'm sure you'll agree it's a worthy cause.

For you people out there who doesn't read Sinhala, I'll try to loosely translate it, just the gist of it. And I'll try to keep it as short as possible so as to not destroy it's meaning and show my ineptness at translating.

Behavior of many thousands of visitors from South to the North of late, particularly to Jaffna, has been very concerning and painful to the Tamils who are living there. For example the wells in Kovil areas are considered to be sacred by the Tamils, hence they do not use them for acts such as washing or bathing. However, most of the Sinhalese are not aware of this, hence they've been doing these thing of late. Also, if you walk in front of a Kovil you are expected to walk in such a way so that your right hand side will always be facing the Kovil. This too is something most of the Sinhalese are not aware of - despite it being a custom in Buddhist Temples - this and have been violating. Also, some of the military officials in those areas have been asking favors from the Tamil residents of these areas whether they could provide accommodation for few days for the said officials' relatives / friends who will visit North.

Personally I didn't know many of these things either, and I do believe that if those people who travel there were aware, they would have been more considerate of the feelings of the Tamils too. So, the best we can do is to spread awareness and cause less heartache to those people as well as do something really meaningful to the unity between the two races. These might seem insignificant, but in truth these small things are what lead to bigger conflicts. If we could get so outraged because some random artist had a Buddha statue in one of his music videos, Tamils over there certainly have a right to get outraged too. It's only lucky they haven't - at least not yet. So let's be a little considerate people.

Please spread the word!

What I Miss the Most

Friends. The few wonderful friends I left behind. Just hanging around talking nonsense was... fun.

Kandy. Hanging around there with the above said friends, practically doing nothing was like spiritual healing or something.

SL rugby season. Was a huge fan and watch every single club season starting from 1990 to 2007. From the days when KandySC was like the Bangladesh of Test cricket to today where they are the mighty Aussies. Then I missed everything since.

Playing rugby. Touch rugby though. At Pera, used to play at least one day a week - usually more - for about four hours. Those were the days.

Beaches. The awesomeness.

Campus life. A usual day would be like getting up at 7 or 8, be there at the campus around 10 for breakfast. Play one or many of the card games like Poker, 304, Spades, Hearts, Bridge or even 'Booru' when things came to that. Or head to Gym, play some Badminton, Carom or whatever else. Back to canteen, more card games. Or head to hostel rooms and play video games, watch Anarkalli's back in Sinhala Karaoke songs or just talk about the hot chicks in new batches while having a cig or two. Then kottu from nearby Night Kadey and head home. Ah... that was life.

Getting piss drunk for no reason. Specially in hostel rooms so that you don't have to worry about getting home presentably.

Food. Sri Lankan food that is.

'Book shopping'. Loved going to bookstores and browsing through the many a thousand books pretending to wanting to buy them. Because I hardly had enough money to actually buy what I wanted, which usually meant the whole book store.


Oh well, I could just have said I miss the paradise, couldn't I? I tell you people, the ones who are still in paradise, don't take for granted the things you have. You never know what you had until you miss them.

To be or not to be?

Anonymous that is.

I'm half anonymous when it comes to blogging. People who follow my blog but do not know me in real life know certain amount of things about me including my first name. They probably know where I'm from, where I am now and what I do, where I studied and some more. But they don't know my other name and many other information, not to mention how I look like, so unless someone does an NB guess it'll stay the same. Then there are another few wonderful people whom I got to know through blogging who now are in my FB, Twitter, Picasa, Flickr and other such networks. They of course have seen me, know more than those others do but that's OK because I added them on those networks because I do trust them in the first place. However I still haven't had the pleasure of meeting any bloggers, thus I think I still have got some level of anonymity among all bloggers.

Then, on the other side of the coin are the people I actually know in person. Friends, family, colleagues and even perhaps enemies though I'd like to think I don't have any. Those are the people I encounter day to day and to them I'm totally a known entity (obviously) though my blog wasn't at first. My blog was anonymous to them. Then, one by one they got to know that I have a blog mainly through FB and to a lesser extent by other ways. Most of them don't follow my blog, some read it from time to time and it's nice to know that a few of them actually read every one of my posts.

However, this in itself has presented me with a problem. A problem in the sense, the fact that those people who know me reading what I write has affected my writing. To be precise, it has affected what I write. When I started blogging I had no idea whatsoever I'd continue for this long or what I'll write about. I just wrote and some of you wonderful people on Kottu read and encouraged me. Nobody really knew me, so I just kept on writing whatever I wanted, about anyone I preferred. Concealing their identity of course. But now, since most of my real life friends know I blog, I simply can't write just about anything. Even if I tried to conceal the identity of someone, it's only a matter of time before someone put the things together. And not just about others, this has prevented me from writing what I want to write about myself as well. If you are one of the few who kept reading me from the beginning you'd know what I mean. I've been blogging less and less about me and the others around me while random posts have increased. I don't know if it's a good thing or not, but it certainly has restricted me.

Why did I let them know, you might ask. Good point, and to be brutally honest guess I loved the attention. It's fair too, I guess. There's no point in writing if you don't want anybody to read - you might as well write it on a piece of paper and burn it. Anyway, the thing is, on one hand there is the Lankanosphere to whom I can write just about anything. On the other hand there is the nice bunch of people I know, to whom I can not divulge everything about me. Funny isn't it? You are at ease saying anything you want to a bunch of strangers (in a way, at least) while you're not so comfortable about it when it comes to friends and family - the very people you love and care about the most. But I digress. As I was saying, now this has become a dilemma. By no way I mean that I don't want my friends to read what I write - as much as I did back then I still want them to read me, I know it's true deep down inside. Yet there is the problem that those very people prevent me from writing freely.

What should I do? Should I quit blogging? Or should I close down this blog and start one which is truly anonymous? Or should I admit that this is part and parcel of the whole thing, and continue blogging restraining myself? Or should I throw all caution to the wind and write whatever I want?

I just don't know.

Happy New Year Peeps!

So I haven't posted anything for a week. It's not because I'm having 'Avurudu Vacation' though - I'm not such a lucky soul and will be at work tomorrow. It's rather due to a combination of boredom, having better things to do and not having anything to blog about. Plus I have blogger's block which merely means I just can't get myself for writing something but putting it this way makes it sound cooler. No?

Anyway, happy holidays for you luckier fellows and wish all you people a very happy and prosperous new year!

ඔබ සැමට සුබ නව වසරක් වේවා!

Let's Tease Your Brain

While I was browsing the Internet randomly last night I came upon this logic and math puzzle site. Here are a few relatively easy but fun puzzles to solve. Here are a couple of them, localized to fit us paradise islanders. See if you guys can solve them in quick time and let me know the answers. I'll publish all the comments after a couple of days.

(1)
The newly made crown of the King Rajapakse was stolen even before he got to set his hands on it and was furious beyond imagination. His royal police set to work immediately and apprehended five suspects in no time and were questioned. Each of them gave two statements, and a heavenly voice told the chief investigator that exactly one statement by each one of them was false, while the other was true. Following are the statements given by each of the suspects.

Ranil:
It wasn't Somawansha
It was Mangala

Mangala:
It wasn't Wimal
It wasn't Somawansha

Wimal:
It was Somawansha
It wasn't Ranil

Rathnasiri:
It was Wimal
It was Mangala

Somawansha:
It was Rathnasiri
It wasn't Ranil

Who stole the crown?


(2)
The next time, throne of the King was stolen. Usual procedure followed, and this time six suspects were apprehended. This time only four people dared to lie, and each of the four people who lied told only one false statement each. All the other statements were true. Following are the statements.

Mervin said:
It wasn't Ranil
It wasn't Wimal
It wasn't Rathnasiri

Ranil said:
It wasn't Mervin
It wasn't Mangala
It wasn't Rathnasiri

Mangala said:
It wasn't Ranil
It wasn't Somawansha
It wasn't Rathnasiri

Wimal said:
It wasn't Mervin
It wasn't Somawansha
It wasn't Mangala

Rathnasiri said:
It wasn't Mangala
It wasn't Wimal
It wasn't Somawansha

Somawansha said:
It wasn't Mangala
It wasn't Wimal
It wasn't Mervin

Who stole the throne? To give you a little clue, though this may seem difficult than the previous one, it is not. It might even take less time than the previous one.

Centre for Monitoring Election Violence?

I have a problem with this Centre for Monitoring Election Violence. More precisely, with the name they've chosen to adopt. Read it a second time: Centre for Monitoring Election Violence. It suggests that election violence does happen and they attempt to 'monitor' it. Now I'm not being naive (read foolish also) to suggest that there is no election violence, but when supposedly a neutral organization such as this has a name of this sort, it is questionable. At least for me. Because it is accepted in science that when an experiment is conducted it is necessary for the experimenter to not expect a certain result. It is commonly agreed upon that if the researcher expects a certain result then the actual results tend to go that way - such is the human nature. That is why that when it comes to large scale important researches often the designer of the experiment differs from the one that carries it out and then a third party observes the results and make conclusions - to stop the research being biased towards a certain result.

Some time back, in Britain if I'm not mistaken, when black people were still considered to be 'uncivilized', there was the question of whether the white people are really smarter than the blacks. Sorry guys I've forgotten most of the details such as when and where it was or who did the experiment, but in short it was like this. The theory was that the size of the brain decides the level of intelligence, thus the race who has bigger brains should be more intelligent. The decided method to test this was to choose several skulls of people of each race and stuff them with grain and then measure the volume of grain in each skull. This was performed on several randomly selected skulls (by a white man, obviously) and the results clearly showed that the white people had bigger skulls, thus bigger brains and higher intelligence. However, it was later revealed that the experimenter had - unintentionally - compressed and stuffed more grain into white people's skulls. In short, though the experiment was seemingly to find out who's more intelligent, it was in fact an experiment to prove that the white men were more intelligent. There lied the difference.

I find the situation somewhat similar here with the Centre for Monitoring Election Violence. It is quite possible that they didn't think it through a lot, but if this is their mindset then it is also possible that it may affect the observations they make. You never know.

The Invention of Lying

In the hands of a more able writer + director, this would have been one of the greatest movies of all times. It is such a brilliant idea that you could have done almost anything with it, yet they chose to make a lame ass third grade Hollywood romantic flick.

The story in short is that in a world where all the humans tell nothing but the truth (not out of choice but because of their nature) one man develops the ability to lie. Then he uses it to first save his apartment, then the job but does not lie to the love of his life even when it matters. Predictably she, at the end, realizes he's a wonderful guy and ends up marrying him. Meh.

Imagine what you could have done if you were the only man who could lie in a world full of honest chaps. People believing every word you say without the slightest of doubts! Now that's crazy, but also you could take over the world pretty much in a day or two.

Who says lying is bad?