The End

Every good thing must come to an end. Dare I say it, this blog was good while it lasted; it lived with me through good times and bad, helped me express myself, and hopefully, provided some enjoyment to those others who read it.

All that started after I moved to Japan with the beginning of a new life. Now that that chapter is about to be closed, and while good things are in waiting, it is time to give some closure to this blog as well.

So, thank you all who stuck by me and this blog for... sticking by. You've been awesome!

Farewell!

Sach's Ultimate Non-Personal Bucket List

We all have those personal desires we so hope would come true; we would like to get 'busy' with the hot waitress at Starbucks, date that hot guy you can never take your eyes off, own all the video games every made, get married and have 11 babies - wait, no, NOBODY should want that - or find all by yourself a unified theory of everything, depending on what your thing is.

But for me, there are other things that I would so dearly love to see come true before I die and thought I'd write them down. So here goes, Sach's Ultimate Non-Personal Bucket List.

1. A Supernova Explosion
Know Betelgeuse? The big red star in Orion's right shoulder? Yes that's a big ass star so much so that were it at the center of the Solar System its surface would extend to almost the orbit of Jupiter. And it's so big for a reason: the star has so much mass it burned up all its energy very quickly and is swollen to its red giant stage. Now all is set up for what is probably the coolest (not exactly the right choice of words though, given it's anything but cool over there) event in the night sky that we'd be able to see. Betelgeuse will eventually explode in a supernova, something that's so fiercely bright it can outshine an entire galaxy for a brief period, and given that it's only 640 light years from us, we should be able to see it with our naked eyes during the day. Nobody knows when it will happen, it could be in a million years, few centuries, decades or even tomorrow. I dearly hope it's tomorrow.


2. Artificial Intelligence
Not the Siri kind but the real deal. We've all heard about it, the Hollywood always think it'll spell doom for us, the Sci-Fi writers are marginally better and yet we have no idea how close or far away it would be. When it comes to technology, I think I have a soft spot, so I always like to give it the benefit of the doubt. I suppose we have to figure out what consciousness is if we are ever to construct an AI, and that's no mean feat; we probably know much more about Pluto than our own consciousness. But who are we to say that it won't evolve on it's own without any of us knowing?


3. Bring back the Dinos
If you were a kid and you didn't like dinosaurs there's something wrong with you. Like seriously. For all practical purposes it could be made a mental health test for children: you don't like the dinos, you get thrown in the mental asylum. But the fact is that even after you are grown up, which most men aren't, chances are you still like them. Big time. In all honesty it probably isn't a very good idea to bring them back, they had their shot and had to be wiped out to make way for us so humans walking alongside them dinos is just not meant to be unless you also believe the earth is 6,000 years old. But I'll be damned if I could bring them back and didn't.


4. Reboot the Space Program
I want to see a human on Mars! In the 60s if they could send humans to moon using microprocessors less powerful than my mobile phone today, we most certainly are capable of sending few people to Mras if we put our minds into it. Minds and money. How sad is it that the America's annual defense budget is larger than that of next ten countries' put together? So we are definitely capable of it, it's just we've got our priorities wrong, not just wrong but very wrong. But dreams are free and I dream the day we send someone to Mars. It'll be doubly sweet if it's a woman so they'll have to come up with something better than "it's a giant leap for mankind".


5. A World Without Religion
Organized religion to be specific. I have good reason to hope for it: most of the wars we fought throughout our human history had something to do with religion, whenever religion gathered even a little bit of power people were made to suffer, and science was made to go into hiding dragging whole civilizations back centuries, and despite the popular belief when there's religion doesn't have authority on morality (rather, morality precedes religion) and worst of all, nothing divide people like religion do. Like Steven Weinberg once so eloquently put it, "Religion is an insult to human dignity. With or without it you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion."


6. Flying Cars
Hollywood promised us them by the 1980s. Seriously, where the hell are these!?!?!?!?

And finally, with a drum-roll and all...

7. Life Elsewhere!
Yes that deserved a drum-roll and an exclamation mark. It doesn't have to be fancy aliens with warp drives, I don't want spaceships, hell they can be exceptionally dumb for all I care, I'll just take single celled extraterrestrial life as long as it's... life. Should we discover single celled most primitive life hidden beneath the Martian polar ice caps or underground oceans in Europa, it's gong to be the most profound discovery in the history of humankind. The implications of extraterrestrial life will reach far and wide, eventually, and it will force us to think again about our whole perspective of the universe while answering one of the oldest questions we ever asked; are we alone? It'll be insanely interesting to know about their biology, whether DNA based life is the only way around the problem of life (if the first form of extraterrestrial life we find is also DNA based, it's very unlikely that it's by chance, life will have to need DNA), whether it's also carbon based, will they share any similarities to terrestrial life. The list goes on. And with the amount of access we have to the outside world today, compared to a decade ago, we're in for a treat. Also, should we discover a different life form within our own Solar System, that'll all but confirm that the universe is teeming with life, that it's more common that Twilight jokes.

While we're here, let me speculate a bit more. If we ever discover intelligent life, that'll be ten times awesome not to mention outrageously lucky. The universe is so hopelessly vast, unless wormhole like traveling is a possibility, there is a good chance that we'll never come in contact with other intelligent species during the entire duration of our species even if the universe is teeming with life. If we do make contact, it could very much be some sort of radio communication at first at least, like what's in Carl Sagan's Contact. Primes FTW! Or in the extremely unlikely event, if they appeared next to earth someday I wouldn't complain. Despite what Hollywood's hell bent on convincing us, I think they wouldn't really want to laser us to death or something. For starters, if they are capable of interstellar travel that would at least suggest they are a species capable of getting their shit together - unlike us - and thus they'd probably be friendly. At least until we start firing our nukes at them. But if we somehow were able to get past that, and establish some form of communication (they could very well be a species who communicate using echolocation like the bats) who fascinating would it be to learn from them. I'd have millions of questions; what's your biology, is it carbon based, did you discover the origins of life in your planet, what's your culture like, do you have something akin to religion or beliefs, how does your economy work, governance, is there something like the concept of countries, do you have music and art, have you met still other aliens, if so are there any hermaphrodites among them, are you hermaphrodites, do you have sports, will you stand a decent chance in cricket? Oh I could go on.

Seriously, I could live with not having all the other six if I could have just one single celled alien. I could just die in peace.

Get your shit together, Men!

November 25th was the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women. That's pretty sad; the fact that in this and day and age we still need such a day. If you're not convinced, try replacing 'women' with 'blacks' or 'Jews' and say it aloud, and you'll realize how horrible it sounds. Unfortunately, it doesn't have the same ring to it when it comes to violence against women. When in fact it should be as horrible if not more. This is half the population on earth we're talking about.

Apollo program was ahead of its time. When the NASA was funded and the moon program was launched (despite it being a political game) we didn't have the technology to take a human being to moon and bring back in one piece, yet within a decade we had achieved that extraordinary feat. It was truly a triumph of not just America but the whole world, of all the people who ever lived. We needed every bit of knowledge and wisdom we as a species had gathered for millennia across cultures to make it happen. It was the culmination our species' brilliance; we were no longer bound by the planet we were born in. And yet in that historic moment we chose to utter the sad words "that's one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind" and thus spit on the faces of half the entire species who contributed to that victory. One could argue that it isn't proper literary device to say 'humankind', but bollocks to that. If it isn't proper, it's time we make it proper. Language changes more than most and why are we still stuck with mankind instead of humankind and he instead of he or she? Just like calling a black person 'nigger' is something to be ashamed of today, same should go with 'he' and 'mankind'.

The history of how men have treated women throughout the history across pretty much all cultures is something to be embarrassed about. Up until less than a century ago women were more or less glorified incubators all over the world. There were exceptions, but that's kind of is the point. All that was expected of them was to breed like rabbits and raise the bunch of them. Education was limited to only that which she needed to take care of her man and the children. Voting was out of the question. Even the progressive fields like science horribly discriminated against women. Of 826 individual Nobel Prize winners between 1901 and 2011, only 43 - a depressing 5% - are women. If the achievements of NASA are a celebration of how exceedingly brilliant we can be as a species - to burrow from Christopher Hitchens - the plight of women is a sad reminder that we are only a half a chromosome away from chimpanzees.

But past is past, and there's not a thing we can do about it except to learn from it. Which brings us to the point of this rant (pretty lot of words to get to the point, yeah, but that's why this is a rant) that it's a sad day when we need a day to educate people not to hit women. That's like having a day to tell people not to murder or steal. But that's the kind of world we live in even today; according to a 2013 WHO global study, 35% of women worldwide have experienced either physical and/or sexual violence. The figure raises to above 70% in some nations. Worst of all a large portion of this abuse is coming from their own partners. This happens irrespective of whether it's a developed world country or a third world nation, and it's only worse in the latter; in most of the the third world countries women put up with the abuse because the culture is such that a divorced woman is permanently damaged goods. In some parts of the world people are still being trafficked into prostitution and forced labor, a more than 80% of it being women. 80 percent of victims of hand-held weapons in war are women. About 17% of the world adult population is still illiterate, and a staggering 2/3 of it - which amounts to more than 500 million people - are women.

All that needs to change and that's not up for debate.

It's a universal rule of moral code that you take care of the weak, not abuse them, and women are physically weak. While women are in no way intellectually inferior to men (sometimes, you can make a good case for the other way round, though) the society is such that chances are they are not in a position to use their full potential. Even today, the powers that be are men, and it is upon them to set things right. Only if men take the initiative - not because they are superior but because they are in a position of power - the change can be made; in all honesty, some men aren't aware and some simply don't care. And this is a small attempt to make them aware - at least - if not care.

Farewell, KS!

This blog completed five years of its existence about three or four days ago. I meant to put up a customary post about it's been that long and how I don't blog enough anymore. Perhaps fittingly I even forgot to do that so I said screw it and decided not to. Later yesterday, though, I was reading through my RSS feed and found a post from Magerata after about couple of years or so, so I gleefully headed there only to be shocked and depressed about the death of Kalu Sudda, or KS as we used to call him.

So yeah, screw the happy birthday post, this is for you, KS.

I've got to admit I was never the best pals with him. Nonetheless we had a few memorable chats during those days especially with the connection we had; I was living in Japan and his wife is Japanese and he had a great love for Japan. He used to talk so fondly of his wife, Miss Fukuoka, who had actually learnt of the existence of his blog only few days ago as it seems and was kind enough to let us know. Apparently it has been about four years since KS passed away.

As it happens, I still remember the last conversation we had, and it was about the very sea voyage that would turn out to be his last! I've always wanted to spend a few weeks on the sea and he was telling me that we should make it happen sometime. Then he said 'see you' but the bugger never kept his word. Life really isn't fair sometimes.

All I can say is he was a fun bloke and the world will be poorer without him. May you rest in peace, KS.

MIXEDRICE

Don't think I was going to bore you about my culinary skills although I must say they are pretty good. Even if I say so myself. This is about something much more timely, topical and dare I say, necessary.

I love our good old Paradise, but, sometimes the stuff that's going on there is just ridiculous and embarrassing. You probably know what I'm talking about by now, but in case you don't, I'm so pissed and embarrassed about these bigots who have sprung up in Sri Lanka of late who are trying to oppress other people's rights to live peacefully just because they happened to be of other faiths and/or races.

So I and a bunch of good friends of mine have put together a web site and a social media campaign in order to invite you all to participate in some sort of discussion and let the world see that not all of us are fools. We just don't want to sit around and watch while these douchebags ruin our motherland and the love we have for it.

Mixedrice, not about rice.

Please visit the site, subscribe via e-mail, like us on Facebook, follow us on Twitter and help us spread the word. Even more importantly, please join us to take a stand against the forces that threaten the unity and peace in our motherland.

Evil Humanlike Aliens. Seriously?

What is Hollywood's obsession with 'evil' aliens? And what's with almost all Hollywood's 'intelligent' aliens having some kind of resemblance to humans? In fact this doesn't limit to Hollywood. Even most of the Sci-Fi writers are culprits of being stuck in this template so to speak.

One could argue that a rocky planet, as opposed to a gassy one, is a must for life. One could also argue that having a set of free limbs is a necessity to evolve into being called intelligent. Or having a fairly large brain or being able to work with fire. But really, those are weak arguments for they are based on the assumption that life in the universe is life as we know it. However when you think of the scale and the diversity of the universe there is no reason why life elsewhere should be life as we know it. And theoretically there is no reason why life elsewhere should bear even the remotest resemblance to us let alone looking just like us. Think about it; all life on earth is related. Not just you and me, if we go far back enough we can find a common ancestor of you and the alpha male of a lion pride in Serengeti or of me and the first dinosaur to die on that unfortunate (or, rather fortunate) day where a meteor wiped them all out. Point is, all life on earth is related on some level and yet they look so much different to each other. Think of a cheetah, a dragonfly, a jellyfish, an amoeba, a bird, a dolphin, a tapeworm, a wasp, a spider and a woman. They look so different they might as well be from different planets. So why should we bear the remotest resemblance to aliens whom we have no relation whatsoever with?

I have a theory as to why.

I think the reason is that Hollywood and Sci-Fi writers take the easy way out. It is indeed such a difficult job to construct a new life form from scratch just by using your imagination. If you don't believe me, try describing an animal to a person whom never have seen it just by using words. You'll find that a mighty difficult job. I know I have. Conjuring up an alien is far more difficult. It's much easier to go with the shape you know best, stick an antenna here, change color there, a bigger head perhaps, probably bald as well and you're good to go. Alternate would be to think right from the beginning. What kind of a planet they live on? What is their biochemistry? What do they breath? Do they breath at all? Are they also DNA based or is it something entirely different? Would they fit the scaled we know of or would they be giants? Or microscopic for that matter. Will they have something equivalent of language as we know it or would they communicated in an entirely different way? Would they be single entities or would it be a collective intelligence? Would we even recognize it as life if we encountered it? Think of a tapeworm and a human, only, this time we are the tapeworm and aliens are the human. I'm pretty sure the tapeworm has no idea whatsoever who and what a human is. Who are we to argue that we are any different confronted with an intelligent alien race? There are all kinds of questions like these that the writers don't bother to answer. It's much easier to go with the little green men.

The evil aliens of Hollywood is also due to this lack of imagination. It is far more easier to think of evil aliens who wants to kill you for no apparent reason and then fight them back than think of doing something constructive with them. After all you'd think that a species capable of traveling all this stellar distance is intelligent enough to put petty wars behind them. Technically earth should be of no interest to them. The earth is made out of most common stuff in the universe, and with the data we have now scientists think it is very likely that the planets outnumber stars in the universe. That's a lot of planets if you ask me and law of the averages says that there should be gazillion earths out there. Why should our earth be of so importance to them? Only plausible reason I can think of is as a research project for an alien PhD student. Lab rats might come to some people's minds, but really, I'm willing to take the risk. Maybe I'm an optimist but I'd like to think they'd be more civilized than evil warmongers the Hollywood like to portray them as. If we ever come into contact with intelligent aliens chances are that we'll probably learn something from them. In fact it's highly unlikely that they'll fly here in fleets of their super fast disc-like (why is it always a disc?) spaceships anyway. I'm not counting the possibility of interstellar travel out, just that it's more likely we'll come into contact with life elsewhere with something like radio signals first.

So, Hollywood, and writers, I'm not impressed. Give me something better next time.

FOUR YEARS

It's been 4 years, folks.

That is all.

First time in a Brothel

It has been a while since you guys had a slice of my life. Ugh, that didn't sound right. What I mean is that it has been a while since I wrote something about my life. While things are mostly boring and mundane over here sometimes they do get spiced up, and when they do, they really do. This is the story of how I went looking for brothels in Tokyo and almost ended up with a prostitute. Well it looks a silly sentence for you go looking for brothels in order to find prostitutes, but there's a catch so read on. In case my children or their potential partners come across this post when they do a background check before the arranged marriage, note that the keyword here is almost. By the way, why I thought my children, if I had any, would need arranged marriages, baffles myself. I have no idea.

So couple of months back, there I was happily munching on a particularly good cookie while staring at the computer screen, i.e., browsing the Internet. Because that's what we software engineers do when we come home after staring at a screen for about 10 hours at work. Anyway, my Skype went 'blongg' and there was a chat from an old mate who lives abroad. Well the mate isn't particularly old, our friendship is. For reasons you will understand in a minute, I need to keep the identity of this friend concealed, so let me call him, let me think about it... Aladdin. Suffice to know that he lives in another country. Turns out he was thinking of spending a few days in Japan en route to somewhere from somewhere else. So Aladdin and I made plans to meet up since it's been a while since we saw each other and all.

Fast forward a couple of months, the bugger arrived in Japan. But we didn't meet at once for he had planned his trip so that he would arrive in Osaka (which is a few hundred kilometers south of Tokyo), travel around there with some of his relatives, then head towards Tokyo where he will eventually leave from. So after his stay in Osaka, Aladdin finally arrived in Tokyo a couple of days ago. I met up with him that evening, took him to see the Tokyo Tower and then had a good old Japanese dinner with a beer catching up with each other's news. It was good to see him after a long time (well, I didn't think the same next day though) and finally I took him to his hotel and we said goodbye. But it wasn't the final goodbye because we arranged to meet up the next day for a beer as well as he was to leave Japan on Saturday and didn't have much to do till then.

Next day we met up as decided and I took him to see the Shibuya junction (this is probably the only road crossing in the entire world that tourists go to see), then a bit of this and that before heading towards a sort of famous bar where you can get foreign beer. We ordered a couple of Guinness with 'Fish and Fries' and were chilling when Aladdin started a very odd conversation.

Aladdin : Dude... erm.. you see I need to ask you something... I dunno if you know... I mean maybe I should have told you before...
Me : Man, what the hell, are you going to propose to me or what? Don't fret if so, ask me out like a man.
A : Oh please... I have better better taste than that.
A : But it's kind of something like that too. I mean...
Me (very concerned) : ....
A : Umm... do you like know any place around here... erm... I can like hook up with... you know... an escort or whatever you call that here?
Me : HOW THE FUCK ARE THOSE TWO THE SAME?
A : Okay maybe they aren't. Shut up that's not the point. Do you know any?
Me : You think I'm a pimp or what? Or that I frequent Tokyo brothels?
A : Oh okay sorry man...
Me (laughing) : Just kidding dude. Are you sure about this?
A : Yes you fuck, Jesus I thought I offended you. These Jap chicks are cute.  Can you...?
Me : Well, I don't know any but if you really want to... I think I know where to look.

Now I'm not a fan of hookers, never been with one and never will be (I swear, my future daughter in law) but that's just me. If anybody wants to go to a prostitute that's quite fine by me. I'm not like the people who think two other men getting married affect their own marriage. I don't judge people. And to see the cup half full, some poor Japanese girl gets a few thousand bucks too. So I said yeah, and though I've never been to a brothel before I knew generally where to look for one. There are a couple of famous areas in and around Tokyo where you can supposedly get 'full service' if you know what I mean. Prostitution being illegal in Japan, they generally disguise it under various kind of massages so that's where you want to go. I took out the iPad and a couple of searches with safe search off told us the details we needed to know. Internet FTW! So we finished our beers and got on a train.

Several minutes later we got off the train in a station in the area where we needed to go. Normally if I want directions here I ask a Jap, but that was out of the question this time. However, Internet FTW again! This time Google maps told me where to go and a couple of minutes later we ended up facing a bit dodgy looking street. Usually, in evenings, business streets in city areas in Japan are buzzing with all kinds of people. You have colorful blinking lights, shop owners - especially in restaurants - employ people to go outside the shop with a menu and shout to attract people, you have street vendors; simply put an atmosphere I suspect you would not see in most if not all the other developed nations. These streets are like improved versions of Pettah if you catch my drift. But this street was a bit different. It had all the above but it also had a range of shops with advertising boards of bikini clad pretty chicks, and a bunch of thug-ish looking guys in front of every one of them, trying to snatch clients for their 'massage parlours'. Not to mention a couple of girls at the doors dressed not very different to those in the pictures. However, there's a catch. I've often heard that not every such place take foreigners in so I was kind of reluctant because though chances of that happening are very rare, getting stabbed in the back of a dodgy ally in Japan was not my favorite way to die. I also had a feeling this would not sit well with people close to me once I'm dead, especially with me not being able to tell them the story and all. So we walked to the end of the street, Aladdin ogling at the chicks and me listening to what the goons were shouting. I realized that a few guys asked us to come in too so we turned back and chose one shop my 'desperate' friend fancied. 

Then I realized that there was another problem.

Aladdin doesn't speak a word of Japanese. And I was pretty sure the Japs who were there don't speak a word of English. Now this was a problem that I hadn't counted on. My initial plan was to leave the bugger there but now that option was fast flying out of the window. And almost immediately he realized it too.

A : Umm... so... how does this work now?
Me : You son of a bitch, now do I have to go inside with you too?
A (grinning like an idiot) : Can you?

 By now the goons around us were also looking at us like are you going to go in or what?

A : Oh well. Waren ithin. Mee haraka.

So for the first time in my life I stepped inside a brothel, even if it was a disguised one. I must admit here that I was kind of curious to know how this thing works as well, so actually I didn't mind. One of the two hotties at the door led us into a nicely lit room with a comfy sofa and a few flower vases, and beckoned us to sit. We did as asked and she brought us some Japanese tea. Looks like they are classy even at a brothel. While we were sipping the tea I explained to her that my friend doesn't speak Japanese so that I will have to translate to him everything and help him out. She was cool with that. The type of 'massage' they provide is called 'Soapland' (Google, with safe search off, if you want to know further details which I'm not going to go into here) which apparently is very popular in Japan. She went on to explain that we first needed to pick the 'course', meaning length of time, and then pay the relevant amount. We did so, then she said we can pick the girl if we wished so, to which Aladdin responded with an eager nod so we said yes. And then she went inside an adjacent room and a moment later returned with an album full of photos of ladies in clothes that left very little for imagination. However, here it popped up in my mind that slave trade must not have been very different from this except for the fact that the slaves were not wiling and that there were no photos back then. This just felt wrong. Anyway, Aladdin picked the girl he liked and he was led towards a corridor out of the room.

Then the cutie turned to me and said,

"So... would you also like to take the same course?"
Me (confused) : What?
Cutie : Umm... would you like the same course?

 Then I realized that I never told her that only my friend was going get the massage, not me.

Me : Oh... I'm sorry... it was only for my friend.
Cutie : Oh... I thought you just wanted to first send your friend in and then pick one for you. Are you sure?

This was not at all what I had in mind an hour ago when my godforsaken friend asked for some help and I decided to help out a 'bro'. This whole bro-code thing is overrated I tell you.

Me : Yeah... I'm sure.

Then I realized that I couldn't arrange to meet up with Aladdin once he's finished and I most certainly did not want to stay in there for an hour. So I asked her if she could tell him to come to a nearby coffee shop which was at the start of the street and she said she could do that. So then she proceeded to lead me to the door where she bid me farewell with a typical Japanese "bye byeee" and a wave.

I stepped onto the street and upon seeing me leave one of the earlier mentioned goons turned towards me.

Goon : "Sir, what happened? Are you leaving?"
Me : Umm.. erm... never mind.

Explaining the whole story to a random pimp on a street seemed too much of a hassle, and even if I did the chances were that I was going to come out looking a bit silly anyway. I just shook my head and turned to leave.

That, my friends, was how I almost ended up with a prostitute. Or as they call them, a 'massage therapist'.

Thank you for that small step, Neil.

That small step did mark a great moment in our history, we were no longer bound by our own planet. 

Thank you Neil, may you rest in peace.

End of Vacation : The Good, the Bad and the Worst

The Good

• You actually get to do some productive work instead of sitting on your bum all day. Doesn't probably apply if you live in the good ol' Paradise, but other than that, yes it's applicable. And it's a good thing.

• Get back in the Internet. I suppose this is more of a personal habit. When on vacation I don't do much social networking, forums or even other Internet activities. So it's time to get back in touch with the world out there.

• Less stuffing yourself up with food. You stay at home, you eat like a pig. A lot of junk food too. No chance of that now.

• Get back into blogging.

The Bad 

• While you actually get to do some work, not doing it. At least for a few days. Rendering the first point of 'good', null.

• Get back in the Internet. The world out there is stupid anyway, why would you want to get back in?

• Less stuffing yourself up with food. Ah, all those tasty hamburgers, steak, donuts and ice cream. Not to mention beer.

• Get back into blogging. Because you should be working instead.

The Worst 

• Feeling, at the first alarm, like snoozing it and go back to precious sleep.

• Actually doing it.

• Feeling, at the second alarm, like smashing the godforsaken alarm into pieces and then killing yourself. It's a good thing I live alone, or else the sequence would be smashing the alarm into pieces, killing the other person in the room and then killing yourself.

• Having to get up and go to work instead of doing either of the above.

• Once at work, feeling like killing everybody around you before killing yourself. Seriously, who invented work?

Bitching Time

Yo peeps how have you been? I know you missed me terribly, sorry about that. But worry not, yours truly is here with a lot this time. A lot of bitching that is so get ready to listen. Let me bitch about things in an orderly manner, in point form, then.

1. Olympic Games are awesome. Their coverage sucks. Living 9 hours in front of London means that I miss most of the top action unless I'm willing to doze off at work and risk my job. So the next best option is catching up with highlights, but guess what, the goddamn official YouTube Olympic channel thinks that they should only be available to UK and US. Not just YouTube, pretty much every source is the same. What the fuck? Isn't Olympic is a global event, probably the most famous and loved of them all? Shouldn't everybody get to see it without ridiculous country restrictions? I can understand if they want to put country restrictions to TV shows and such, but for Olympics? For Olympic highlights? You gotta be fucking kidding me. I could of course use a proxy, but that's too much trouble so I turned to the ever so faithful torrents and voila, there's just about everything. I downloaded a 1.4GB clip of Usain Bolt's 100m dash just for the fun of it. Take that, London. But then again you can't have very high expectations of organizers who chose a sketch of a man-on-man blow job as the Olympic logo.
   
2. This isn't bitching, rather the opposite of it, but Bolt is awesome isn't he? This is probably the post #12,849,234 about him on the Internet, but hey, when I retell the stories of the great man to my grandchildren I better have some proof.
   
3. American (and British) media can be such douchebags at times. The way they went on and on about that awesome little girl Ye Shewen (not exactly little though) of China is sick. Yes I get it you used to be the kings in the pool, you probably still are, but when she kicked ass the way she did, give her some respect. If she was proven to be doping, good, knock yourselves out, but she was cleared twice ffs! I read some disturbing stories about how she was trained, the ruling party even confiscated her cellphone allowing her to use it only in weekends, which sucks, but that's a different story. That's no excuse for accusing her of doping when she was simply brilliant. Of course there is the possibility that she (just like any other athlete) could be found guilty in future, but reserve your scathing remarks for then. Until then, STFU. It's not as if America has a clean record in this regard anyway.
   
4. Talking about America, it really sucks. The bastards once refused me a tourist VISA - for which I really hate them - and I was like really? You really think that I'm going to leave such a good job and a life here in Japan, one of the most convenient places to live in whole world, and jump ship there in America? Seriously? Such vanity.
   
5. I have been thinking of a move to Australia for some time now but unfortunately that's what it's all been about too; thinking. Sometimes I can be so lazy. I really need to get a move on things, and with 9 days of summer vacation coming up I think I will finally be able to do that. Hope I won't get all lazy and leave it till too late.
   
6. Living abroad means you can end up with lot of free time on your hands and nothing to do with it. I don't make friends easily and even if I did there aren't many whom I can be true friends with anyway. So I tend to spend my time at home a lot, of which a whole lot dedicated to watching and reading. I love learning new stuff, the latest fascination being biology. Living in the country with the second fastest Internet in the world has its advantageous, one of which is being able to download gigabytes of stuff within hours. So I do download a lot indeed (not what you think though, perverts), mostly documentaries. Biology is my new passion, but I've been a huge astronomy enthusiast for a long time, and then I have general interest in science as well, and I can and have dedicated a lot of time to learn such things. So much so that, I took a general science quiz sort of thing the other day and ended up with a pretty high score which is a high percentile. Which got me thinking that it's kind of sad in a way; I don't have a life.
   
7. The week before a long vacation really sucks. In sucky-ness, it is only second to the week after a long vacation I guess. Argh, enough already.

Perception

Once, the great British philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein was having a conversation with a friend.

Wittgenstein : Tell me, why do people always say that it was natural for men to assume that the sun went around the earth rather than the earth was rotating?

Friend : Well, obviously, because it just looks as if the sun is going around the earth.

Wittgenstein : Well, what do you think it would look like if the earth was rotating?

This conversation, just like the Upside Down Map, always managed to give me quite an eerie feeling every time I think about it. After all, we know that the concepts of 'up' and 'down' doesn't have meanings when it comes to earth, yet the said map kind of makes me feel strange whenever I look at it. Similarly, while it is perfectly reasonable to assume that sun goes around the earth because it looks that way, we never stop to think of the other possibility, that it would look exactly the same if the earth rotated. In fact, that is exactly what it does, only nobody bothered to think of it that way for a very very long time.

This is why I have a framed photo of the said map in my room, and also why I will never forget the above conversation. Those always keep reminding me that things are not always what they seem and that after all, perception is everything.

Goodbye Friend

He was Jude, but we used to call him JNF, which were his initials.

I don't remember the day we first met, but he was a guy from the Tamil class in our grade at St. Anthony's, and we probably knew each other for about 25 years. We were not the closest of friends,  but we at times ran into each other even after we left school and parted our ways, especially at Big Matches and rugby matches. 

However our friendship renewed when he joined an online forum which was like a cyber home for me for years. There he was a favorite member, he used to troll at times just for fun, and he had an uncanny ability to come up with funny one liners. It is a cricket forum and we quietly shared our joy at coming from a school that produced Murali, the greatest Sri Lankan sportsman ever. We had our differences too; I'm a hardcore atheist and he was as religious as they come, and we had some lengthy arguments about God. But above all, we loved him for the nice guy he was.

We'll miss you bro.

Egg Laying Humans

Imagine for a moment that humans were not mammals but an egg-laying class. Not reptilian though for that would bring in a whole set of new problems to the equation that gets in the way, what with being cold blooded and all. Instead imagine that these hypothetical humans were of a new class that are warm blooded, posses all the qualities of mammals except for the fact that they lay eggs instead of giving birth to an infant.

Now that would be disturbing yet fascinating, wouldn't it?

For starters, a few days after the conception the mother would lay a huge ass egg. Judging by the size of a normal new born baby the egg would have to be about a foot  and a bit in diameter. To add a bit of fun imagine that white parents' eggs would be white, black parents' eggs would be black, the Indians would lay brown eggs and the Asians sort of yellowish ones. Interracial marriages would generate more interesting patterns if one would let the imagination run wild a bit. A white dad and a black mom can expect to have sort of brownish eggs or else perhaps a patter of black and white dots or Zebra lines. Imagine how cool that would be. Asians and blacks; a yellow and black pattern. Asians and Indians; yellow and brown like a Giraffe. Or just plain beige sort of color. The parents would probably keep the shell as a souvenir after the hatching, and perhaps present the child with it when he or she comes of age. Along with family portraits the walls of houses would also have framed egg shells. In short, the possibilities are endless.

Just as the couples these days run to the hospital when the contractions start, the mom and dad would rush to the hospital where the mom will spend few days before and after the laying of the egg. The moment of laying the egg would probably be as hard as a childbirth or possibly harder.  Once the egg is laid, the nurses will take it into their care, will check all the vitals by poking all kind of techie instruments into it and give an assessment on the health of the 'baby'. And then, possibly after cleaning it and wrapping it in a warm cloth the egg would be handed to the mother who is full of maternal love by now.

And then only will the real pregnancy start.

In early days where the technology was not so advanced the mother would have kept the egg with her at all times while the father and other relatives would provide for her 24/7. Just like the moms in universe go to regular checkups when they are pregnant, the moms in that imaginary universe would take their unhatched eggs to the clinics to regular checkups to ensure the health of the unborn baby. She would keep the egg close to her body and keep it warm till the baby is born for real which would be in about four or five months. This would have been a real difficult time in the early days of humankind with the need to keep the egg warm and away from water. Hence, just as the fatalities were so high at childbirth in the old days in this universe, only a few eggs would have gone on to produce a child in that imaginary universe. But with the advancement of the society and the advancement of science this would have been made easier for the parents. With the invention of air conditioning devices and such the mother would have been relieved of the hectic duties and the parents would have been able to stick the egg inside a some kind of hatching device and let it do the work. Of course the society would be divided on this matter; some would claim that even if the child is not yet born it is important that the mother be with the egg at all times providing maternal care while the others would argue that it's time to do away with the stupidities and embrace technology.

Finally, a choice between a male or female child would be a piece of cake, at least with the advancement of technology. Like Turtle eggs would produce male of female hatchlings depending on the warmth (or lack thereof) it received before hatching, so would the human eggs. If you needed a son all you have to do is stick the egg in an oven, or if you needed a daughter just stick it inside a fridge. This would have given the term 'family planning' a whole new meaning.

Think about it.

Drunk Cricket Post

Disclaimer : This post was done in an extremely drunk state (the lack of spelling errors is completely thanks to the spell checker) and thus may contain factual errors.

Today is Happy Friday. I don't think I need to explain why a Friday should be named 'happy'. So, today is the Happy Friday and after making myself a delicious dinner I went a step further and made myself a Martini cocktail (with some Grey Goose Vodka and Olives) and sat down to watch the highlights of the first Test between Sri Lanka and England at Galle. Which is pure bliss.

You see, living in Japan is very bad news if you are a Test cricket fan and if the Test matches you are interested in happens to be in the subcontinent. Because that means you get to see live only the third session after coming home from work, and that is if you are lucky enough to be able to leave work at 6 p.m. I was indeed lucky enough to be able to do that, but still being the ultimate Test cricket fan that I am, being able to see only the third session live is just not enough. So, if I can't catch the live action, I must at least see the full highlights when I can, and what better to do on a 'Happy Friday' evening than to catch up with some Test cricket action (especially if it happens to be a match that Sri Lanka won) while sipping a perfect Martini.

So then let me get into the cricket a bit. And that inevitably means talking about a certain off-spinner though it's been a while since he decided to call it quits. Yes you guessed it right, I am talking about Murali the Great. A lot has been said about how we, Sri Lanka, was unable to be a force in Test cricket since the retirement of Murali, but in my opinion that is just stating the obvious. That man is without a shadow of a doubt is one of the greatest bowlers in the 130-ish year long history of Test cricket, and his absence won't go unnoticed even if he happened to be a member of Bradman's invincibles, the mighty Windies of the 70s or Steve Waugh's awesome Aussies of recent years. So what chance does Sri Lanka, merely an okay Test team, stand once he retire? Obviously we were going to suck at Test cricket for a while.

Which is why this victory makes so much more invaluable. While I am a great fan of Murali (and having had the privilege of seeing him doing great things even before he played for Sri Lanka) I still think it was the right decision for him to quit cricket, and that we must move forward without him. Great players come and go, but the game remains as great as ever, and we must face that reality. So, when Rangana Herath, a mere mortal compared to Murali,  take 12 wickets in one match and win us a match it only made my happy, not just happy, but like more happy than to see Murali doing it. That sounds almost like a contradiction, but it's not. It's a given that Murali is a genius,  but the point is that it's easy for a genius to win us a match than for a mere mortal. And that makes me happy because, well, cricket must move on even when the greats of the game says goodbye, and from the looks of it, it does. So getting back to the match, it was solid as steel performance from Herath, and it makes me even more happier that he was only a part of the whole story. It was more like a true team performance. In the first innings it was all about Mahela; when he scored his 100 it was brilliant, but his last 80 runs which he practically added with the last two wickets was stuff of the legend. I rate this innings by Mahela as one of his best along with his 100 at Lords, or his first 100 at Galle where nobody else got a fifty, or his fourth innings 100 versus Saffers where we chased down a mammoth 350 (which to date remains the 6th highest successful run chase ever in Test cricket (this, as I stated in the disclaimer at the start of the post, could be wrong) if I am not mistaken) where he was simply brilliant. And equally is important the sixty odd runs the other Jayawardene, namely Prasanna, added in the second innings. In truth, while Herath took 12 wickets in the match there is not a single performance you can single out as the most crucial. I think it's bollocks that people who give away Man of the Match awards think that they have to give them away to only one man per match. How can you decide between MJ's 180, PJ's 60 or Herath's 12 wickets? I can't. Maybe they should start giving away the 'Man of the Match' award to more than one players.

Anyway, (by now, I have completely forgotten the start of this post, so I'm going to conclude it the way I want without bothering to read it twice) what I wanted to say is that I'm so fucking happy that we are able to win Test matches without Murali. I love the man to bits, but still we need to move on, and what better way to do that than by winning Test matches, especially against the number one ranked Test team in the world though the said rankings are often meaningless.

Well done guys, I guess.

Happy New Year Folks!

Sydney Fireworks, New Year's Eve

At 39,000 Feet

At 39,000 feet and somewhere over South Pacific that is. Almost 3 in the morning, Sydney time. 

Did I tell you I hate flying? Well I fucken hate it even more now. I'm at the window seat and in addition the aisle is vacant too. Yet after trying every imaginable position - which included normal seating position, curled up in two seats head to the window side and the other way around, facing seat back, the other way, up, etc - now I'm back to the original and sleepless. 

Luckily I have the iPod - ever the faithful companion - with me. I have a feeling it knows me so well somehow. I kid you not, for about an hour it's continually playing my most favorite tracks even though it's set to random mode. Yes, most of the songs you put in your iPod are favorites, but it's been playing undoubtedly the best of the lot. Such a comforting feeling at this otherwise miserable moment. If this iPod was a girl I would marry her right now. 

Alright then, there's nothing else to whine about.  I've still got four and a bit hours to go and I'm debating whether I should brush my teeth on board or not. I must say I'm leaning towards 'later'. Don't judge me, I'm only human! Anyway once I land I shall do that and also find a WiFi and hit the post button. 

On other news, yesterday (or today depending on where you are) was (is) my mom's birthday which she shares with Jesus. Happy Birthday mom! 

Update : So I'm hitting the post button.

Sydney here I come!

I most definitely am not talking about a girl named Sydney and going to her. I will actually be going to Sydney, the Aussie city tomorrow though it'll be the Boxing Day when I actually arrive there. Which means twenty or so hours of on-the-road which isn't exactly the correct term but you know what I mean. Though I love travelling flying is the most disliked part of it. Even though it's unavoidable. I really do wish we had Harry Potter style disapparate and apparate technology. However it's a small price to pay compared to the awesomeness of travelling, so no complaints really. Just bitching.

I've not made very many specific plans though. Except the Australia vs India Sydney Test on 3rd January. Someone I know rolled her eyes complete 360 degrees hearing that I'll be going to a cricket match and sit there for 8 hours on my vacation. But she's such a cricket tragic what else can you expect? Anyway, this is one golden opportunity for me to see the legends of the game like Ponting, Sachin, Dravid and VVS probably for the last time. Not gonna miss it. I do wish Ponting would score a 100 there. Would be an added bonus if Sachin gets out in the nineties again.

Other than that I'm planning on going whale watching though not yet sure when and where. Probably because I'm staying at my sister's place (not my own, but probably better than my own if I had one) so guess I'm trusting her and her hubby to take me around. The only other fixed item in the list is the fireworks on new year's eve at Sydney Harbor. In between I guess I'll go here and there seeing stuff; probably Opera House, Harbor, some Kangaroos (hopefully eat one too) and, er, I don't know, I'll tell you when I know. I don't think I would be doing a post-a-day travel diary this time like I did for the Beijing tour, but hopefully I would get to write something of my accounts there. I don't think it would be as much adventurous as Beijing but you never know. Fingers crossed!

Okay then, later peeps!

Inspiring

I don't often post YouTube vids, but this I just had to share. She's such an inspirational and brave (you got to be brave to do what she did) woman. Loved every bit of this.

Murali the Thief

In yet another one of his boring and meaningless articles, our articulate-with-the-bat, not-so-with-the-words ex-captain Mahela has insisted the need to play our own brand of cricket in order to achieve success in South Africa. If I got one rupee for every time I hear our cricketers talk about this so called our own brand of cricket I would be filthy rich. Only I don't and so I'm not. The point is none of them seem to understand that this phrase has become such a cliche now.

Everybody seems to talk about it but nobody seems able to do it. It's like nobody knows where to find it anymore. The only possible explanation for this is somebody stole it. Our guys were playing this our own brand of cricket so happily, world was all rosy and sweet, and then all of a sudden, BOOM! Gone. Vanished. Now they have a problem. They are nothing without it. Success is only a distant dream. But of course they can't reveal it's gone; how can you come out and say this valued treasure is gone just like that? It would be like the king going out to the public and saying "I'm sorry guys, I seem to have lost the crown." Or Pamela Anderson announcing she seems to have lost her fake boobs last night. Not gonna happen.

What would the king/Pamela do in this dire situation? He/she would probably make a fake crown/ fake fake boobs for the time being, use it/them pretending everything's fine while fanatically search for the real thing(s). This pretty much is what our poor cricketers are doing right now. They are writing an unnecessarily large amount of articles explaining the need to play our own brand of cricket while on the lookout for the real thing. Hoping, praying, they would come across it. And then they can start playing the real our own brand of cricket and attribute the current poor patch to a glitch in the matrix. Or something like that. Bottom line is somebody stole it and the poor guys are desperate now.

So I decided to get to the bottom of this shit and find out what happened.

First thing to do, re-trace the steps. Find out what went wrong, when and where. Obviously the right thing to do would be to go back to the last time we were playing this our own brand of cricket. Last significant (actually, any kind of) Test success; July 2010, against India. Last significant ODI success; reaching the World Cup final, April 2011. However those two events are some 8 months apart. While we looked like the desperate king/Pamela in Tests since July 2010 we still seemed okay in ODIs till April 2011. The only logical conclusion; we had not one but two our own brands of cricket one for each format. We lost the Test version back in July 2010, the ODI version April 2011. Now what is the other significant thing that happened in relation to our cricket on both these occasion? Of course. One off spinner called it quits in Test in 2010, and ODIs in 2011. It all fits, doesn't it? Everybody doesn't have access to king's crown/Pamela's boobs though one could argue that the latter is subject to dispute. However, chances are that only someone who's close enough can steal them. It's the same with our own brand of cricket. It's got to be somebody who had pretty good access to it. And who has better access to it than the very players who play the game with it? Dressing room is where they probably keep the our own brand of cricket and after the last time this player has access to it the our own brand of cricket vanishes. Same happens April 2011; he quits cricket, we lose our own brand of cricket. Coincidence? I think not.

I always thought that fellow was a bit dodgy but this proves it beyond doubt. Yes, yes, he pretty much raised that our own brand of cricket baby by himself, but who is he to think that he owns it? Give it back, Murali, they need it!