Unbiased? Who?

If you hear something you like to hear it's unbiased. If not, biased. And that's all there is to it, folks.

Later

England Wins, But So Do We!

1979, 1987, 1992 and 2004. The four previous times the English team made it into the final of a global cricket tournament and got hammered. So if you had your doubts this time, you should be excused. The chances were they would fuck it up and hand the Aussies another trophy to add to their trophy cabinet which already is brimming with a gazillion trophies. But it wasn't to be - England played brilliant cricket and totally outplayed the Aussies and were the worthy winners. I bet our own lovely Kalu Suddha, Pseudo Random is partying all over the place probably wearing an England jersey and a Sri Lankan hat. Spare a thought for the Aussies too. They played brilliant cricket and just strolled their way into the final with ease only to repeat the last year's T20 WC finalists' fate; Sri Lanka won all the matches up to the final and lost the one that mattered the most. Maybe losing a couple of games on the way isn't bad after all.

However, I'm not a big T20 fan. For me the best analogy to describe T20 is porn. You don't need to be an actor of the quality of Tom Hanks or Denzel Washington to act in porn and similarly you don't need the skill and genius of Brian Lara or Sachin Tendulkar to play T20. You don't really need a plot for a porn movie - it's just wham bam and so is T20. Porn is for only one thing and by next day you've already forgotten what you've watch last night. So is T20 cricket - while you will talk about Lara's legendary match winnings innings against Aussies even hundred years later you've already forgotten who won the last year's T20 WC. Finally, you don't criticize porn, and so you shouldn't T20. It just is, but that's it. It doesn't have the grace of Test cricket.

So, while this unimportant T20 match was being played in West Indies, there was another very important match - two actually - was going on in Japan this weekend. Yes, you guessed it correct, those were the two games which yours truly played in. If you remember we had a fine start to the tournament last week, and it continued to be so when we thrashed a hapless Indian team on Saturday. Too bad I couldn't make much of a contribution with the bat this time but we put on a formidable 204 in 40 overs before routing the Indians for a paltry 87. It was good, but the evening party was better. We headed to one of the team members' apartment that night, cooked some Sri Lankan food and the night was fun. However, next day, it was our turn to get routed by a Pakistani team for 119 runs. They won in the end but we gave a good fight and took 6 wicket. To be honest after being all out for 119 we were always going to lose it but losing like we did was, in my book, alright. Going down without a fight is what I can't take. It's not just about cricket though; being out there doing something you really like, hanging out with a bunch of really awesome guys, having fun being in the middle of Sri Lankans after a stressful week at work with the Japs, that's what's it is all about. It's good workout for you body, but it's even better for you mind.

In a nutshell, cricket is my punching bag.

woes of an iPod owner

i have an iPod. and i meant iPod, not iPhone or iPad, but what's the difference really? iPhone is an iPod that can make calls while an iPad is an iPod magnified ten times so the oldies and people with chubby fingers can use it easily. but i digress. what i was saying was, i have an iPod which is somewhat old - like close to 18 months or so, and it had an earlier, not so fancy operating system running on it. still i liked it - the touch system is, well, sexy and the sound quality is really good. plus you can play shitload of games on it and read a lot of books. so, to and from work yours truly can usually be seen listening to something while reading a book on it. but for all its coolness, sometimes iPod sucks. i mean it's so sophisticated but you can't do multitasking on it. if you were reading a book and you want to change the song you are listening to you have to exit the book and go to music. or else, if the iPod screen is off, to change the song you have to slide unlock it and change the song. time and again i wished they had simple next/previous buttons, but seems it's not an option in a touch screen device. or they seem to think that way.

then, in the later operating systems they have this cool 'shake' feature. if you need to change the song you just give it a gentle shake and it goes to the next item in the play list. wow, i thought. there ends all my problems and the iPod achieves perfection. now all i have to do is buy the newest os and shake shake and shake. read and shake. shake is all i have to do. the iPod i mean. so i spent the few bucks they wanted me to and got the new os.

the next day i was on the train listening to something while reading a book. then after a while britney started singing so i gave it a shake. the iPod i mean. nothing. i gave it another shake, a bit harder this time. still nothing. wtf! third one was a pretty violent shake and still it is bluntly refusing to shuffle. this was a couple of months back, during the winter where you wear winter jackets and your hands are in your pockets at all times. so i guess shaking your hands inside your pockets must not have looked... right. couple of japs near me moving away suggested this so i took the fella out (i mean the iPod) and unlocked it by sliding. and gave it a gentle shake again and voila, it shuffles! i wasn't sure whether i should cry or laugh. if you add a shaking feature so that we don't have to use the screen, but in order for it to work we have to use the screen to unlock the device, it kind of defeats the purpose i guess.

good job steve jobs. maybe you should change your name to steve job.

I'm back, and so is Cricket!

Hello people!

How have you guys (and girls) been? Doing good I suppose. Damn I have been neglecting this blog of late a lot, for which I feel SO guilty. I mean, hell, this was - and is - an important part of my life and I shouldn't be so lazy to chuck in a post or two every week. But then again, you see, in my defense it was spring holidays and we all know that Blogging is to be done on working days. So you could say that I was just abiding the rules.

Anyway, the spring break which is called the 'Golden Week' here in Japan was a welcome break. I have no idea why it is called such but have a sneaky suspicion that Google might know. Wise fella, he is. Wonder if the feminists out there would threaten me with a lawsuit if I didn't correct myself and call Google a she. Beats me why people want think of all the majestic inanimate things as female; be it a country, ship or a even a car. Oh well.

Getting back on topic. The Golden Week was fun and relaxing. First I had some good long hours of sleep which is a must I'm sure you all will agree. We also had a barbecue and ate so much dead animals that I didn't touch anymore for almost a week. It wasn't just the barbecue; we also played some softball cricket which I regretted the next day so much. After so many months of winter which means doing nothing, it was the first day we really went out and played any sport so the whole body was aching the next day. Oh and the Poker that night too was fun. Wonder how long will it take for me to win my first WSOP bracelet.

And then, yesterday, it was time for some real hard ball cricket. The cricket season here in Japan got underway which was something I was so looking forward to. We traveled to Shizuoka some 200km or so away, and I managed to take a cool shot of Mt. Fuji from the car. She (ahem!) was looking majestic as ever, and see the picture if you're not sure. Anyway, we got there in time - to the ground that is, not to Mt. Fuji - and got to bat first. I was to bat at 3, and was in the middle in the second over. Perhaps we were a bit rusty, lack of match practice or whatever it is but we were soon 40 something for 4 and 76/6 a while later. I managed to hang in and score a satisfactory 91 while we manged to put up a challenging 195 in 40 overs. It was in fact a real good score considering our very good bowling attack and we ended up winning comfortably by sixty odd runs. It is always great to start the season with a win and we have two more games next weekend. However, I need to work on my fitness. After like 75 or 80 runs I could hardly stand, let alone bat. Now I know why Arjuna 'walked' half his runs and why somebody else ran for him half the innings he batted. Wise fella he was.

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.