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