මාර පරාජය (Resounding Defeat)

I have a nice bunch of friends. Well, mostly nice but they - at least some of them - can be very nasty too. Let me introduce a few of them - all but one of them are from the same university I was at, and the 'but one' is a foreigner whose house is located halfway up the Mount Everest - to you which is necessary in order to tell you the story I'm about to tell you.

First there is Nee. A rugby fan, cricket tragic and a happily married father of four living in some unheard rural area of Australia. He's your pretty much average decent dude though unremarkable. Then there is Sayya who insists that we call him BS. I assure you BS doesn't stand for what you're thinking of right now. Now, if Nee is your normal dude, BS is at the other end of the spectrum; he's anything but normal. Born and raised in the hill capital of Sri Lanka, this dude at a very young age developed an uncanny ability to score as easily as another friend of mine whom I will introduce to you in a moment can gobble down anything with sugar in it. After a while, not just Kandy but the whole country was not big enough territory for BS so he decided to move on to bigger and better things. The territory I mean. Now under the guise of some unimportant but made to look important job he travels the world as he sees fit and 'scores' without fail wherever he goes. Remarkable dude he is. The man we all wish we were. Then comes A, the CEO of a leading web site in Sri Lanka whose greatest achievements to date remain tricking authorities to admit him to the prestigious university we went to and scoring a try in a game of touch-rugby at the said university. Then there is the 'but one' (there's only one T, you pervs!) mentioned above, let us call her B, who's so good at Sinhala she can fool Sri Lankans into thinking she's Sri Lankan. Last but certainly not least there is Looney. The same WWTCILB I told you about here. Now she's one of a kind. Her extraordinary feats include being the said WWTCILB, sleeping 16 hours a day, freezing shoes before putting them on even in winter and being able to consume - in a day - three times the amount of candy a normal person would in a week. Unfortunately for him Nee was not aware of this last fact until he found out about it the hard way. This is the story of how that happened.

All of us are regulars in G+ and fool around there a lot. Nee, being one of the two unremarkable dudes (the other one being A of course) among an awesome bunch as we are (Oh yeah I didn't tell you why I am awesome, but then again does it really need to be said? You all know I am, right?), wasn't feeling particularly happy about it. The fact that he was in the same side of the fence as A didn't help his confidence either which is quite understandable. Grass on the other side was indeed greener for him. So one fine day he decided enough is enough and that he should join the ranks of us immortals. His intentions were good, but the method he chose was, well, a poor choice. He decided that he would challenge Looney to a cookie eating contest to see who can eat the most in a given time and emerge victoriously on this side of the fence. Yes, cookies aren't candy, but they are somewhat sweet-ish and that's more than enough for Looney. Poor Nee, was the first thought that came to my mind. But this unprecedented sweet-ish-things-consumption of Looney was unknown to BS as well as A, and they were rooting for Nee to win the contest. I knew better and advised Nee to consider another time but he was having none of it. I decided to let him go bang the head in the wall. It was agreed upon that to spice up the contest A would also compete while I, BS and B will be the impartial judges. But B also wanted to participate so it was left for me and BS to organize the whole thing. However at the last minute B dropped out because she had finished all the cookies she had in her house and she was not going to be able to climb down Mount Everest and come back in time. Then we had to kick A out because despite being a CEO he did not want to spend a few bucks on cookies and started demanding judges provide him with them. This is not a place for the cheap so out went A.

Agreed date and time arrived pretty soon and we all gathered in one Hangout in G+ to start the highly anticipated event. Nee was still very confident of his victory and was sledging Looney even before the contest started. That was to be his demise though. We started the contest soon, and Nee was still sledging all the way while Looney was quietly going on about her business. But then, unexpectedly to me at least, Nee was getting ahead of the number of cookies and after the 10 minutes we decided upon he was on 16 cookies to Looney's 12. Looked like that Nee had finally crossed the fence, but unfortunately for him there was one last twist in the tale; the cookies Looney had brought were much heavier and bigger compared to the ones Nee had brought. Our calculations revealed that Looney, staying true to her self, had eaten more than one and a half times what Nee had had. Fate had let the poor fella down once again. There he was beaten and confidence shattered destined to be where A is for the rest of his life. Such is the cruelty of life he must have thought. But as I see it, he has only himself to blame for had he asked me, I would have told him the secret of beating Looney.

He should have opted for a cookie-not-eating contest; she wouldn't have lasted five seconds.

Of Friends and Circles

Do you have a circle of trust, or more accurately, circles of trust? I think we all do. They are concentric circles right? That is they all share the same centre point but are of different radius. Normally the outer most circle contains most of the people you know, obviously other than the ones you don't trust. They are outside the outer most circle, in case you're wondering where they are. Then, the ones you trust a bit more, among those people are in the next inner circle, and so on. The inner most circle contains the people you truly trust, the ones you trust your life with. Bigger the inner most circle, luckier you are, it is said, though if your girlfriend/boyfriend/husband/wife happens not to be in it while others are, your luck might change to no luck at all before you know it. So obviously you need to be careful so as to with whom you share your circle information.

Usually I'm very much an outgoing person, somebody who can get along with almost anyone bar the odd lunatic, perhaps because the north poles of two magnets cannot be brought together. Ever. I do have a lot of friends, and I easily make friends too, everywhere I go. But, among them, there are only a handful, very few people, whom I really trust and for whom I'd do anything. In other words, my so called inner circle is very small. They don't come easily, sometimes it takes years to trust someone, to be able to call them true friends. And you should not try to haste it. Once I learned the hard way why you shouldn't treat them that way until you really get to know them. Because, once you trust someone that much it is hard and painful when they finally chose to show that they are not really that trustworthy.

Gosh I'm straying away. Right, back on track. What I wanted to say is, those great friends don't come easily and once they do, you better not let them fall apart. However great friends they are, still they're human and humans do make mistakes. And they are bound to hurt you, maybe not intentionally, but still they will. At least most of them. Somewhere along the line. If and when they do, if you are prepared to be tolerant, if you are prepared to accept that those mistakes are not intentional, if you are prepared to forgive and move along, then most probably you'll be able to keep your inner circle from being reduced. Sometimes I feel that I'm not tolerant enough, maybe I am or maybe I'm not, it's just a feeling that I get. Who knows.

Also it'd be a great thing to actually let them know, rather than keeping it to yourself that how much you value your friends. Just imagine what your life would be without those few people you really care for. And, I wish that none of you will have to endure that, but you might not get another chance to tell them that. Don't let yourself regret it for the rest of your life. So go ahead, pick up the phone, or email them, or whatever the way just take a minute to tell them what you feel about them and what they are worth to you.

Those few people truly make my life worth living, and for that I am so grateful to them. So, in a way, this post is for them, for making my life a better one. Thank you guys, for being there for me all the time, not just in joy but also in sorrow. You are truly special.

Oh, and everyone, a happy week ahead!

Real friends are worth...

...their weight in Gold.

No I'm not trying to say that you must try to have as much obese friends as possible, though even if you do that's OK. Neither do I imply that you need to get a whole bunch of average sized friends. But hey, having a few real friends, people who can make you smile even when the things look totally hopeless, IS bliss. Trust me.

Last night I was home at about 9 p.m. after a pretty long day at work. Yes dammit, working on a Sinhala New Year day is bad enough, but it is worse when you think of all the good food you could have eaten were you back home and all the fun you could have had. And things get even worse when you have a friend who is kind enough to remind you about all that and then also remind you that you can't have them. At least I'm glad that friend can't have them either. Ha!

Anyway, I started watching the latest episode of Heroes out of utter boredom. Oh yes, Heroes has become so boring these days I watch it only out of habit. Besides, in the latest episode Angella Petrelli forms another company so we're back to square one. *Sigh*. When will the cheerleader save the world so we can relax. Never, I suppose.

OK so I wasted the whole previous chapter telling you useless things about Heroes. Oh by the way, did I spoil it for the guys who didn't watch it yet? Cool.

Right. I was watching Heroes, trying to forget the good times I could have had were I back in Paradise. And it took me three-and-a-half-hours to watch just that one episode! Yes, almost all the good buddies, from all over the world did not forget to drop in - not literally - and say hi, send me their wishes, just to remind me that they do care. It was really nice, and made me realize that I am not alone...

I also learned that watching a TV series, or a movie or whatever on a festive day, specially if you are not in Sri Lanka is not really a good thing. It's a bit hard to keep track of what happened a few minutes ago. Also I learned that chatting with six people at the same time - three on Skype, two on Yahoo and one on FB - while on a conference call on Skype with two other people, while also trying to reply to status messages and group threads on FB, not to mention the comments on blogs, is not really a good idea.

But having a bunch of so nice friends, on the other hand, is indeed a bliss. Simple pleasures like that do make you smile, and they do remind you that life is worth living...

Thank you all my dear friends!

What do you do...

... when you can't thank someone enough?

Of course you write a blog post knowing that someone reads it.
Ha! The genius in me!

Thank you my friend.

YOU'RE SIMPLY THE BEST!

Made friends with Steve Waugh!

OK, not in the sense 'friends' friends. But he was like my sole companion for the last week. And it was one hell of a week as well.

Right, enough riddles. The thing was, my laptop DVD ROM broke down so I had to send it for repair. Hence full five days without the computer and internet, in turn, meaning, cut off from the rest of the world! Yeah, that was sort of my only way of keeping in touch with the others.

Luckily, I had Out of my comfort zone, the autobiography of Steve Waugh. It is such a great read that you really do feel what it is like to be a Test cricketer. Well I will write something about it after I finish. That's how I got to know him, and so made friends with Steve Waugh...