Archive for May, 2007
Wednesday, May 30th, 2007
It was about 8 PM today, and I was just going through my normal-day to day stuff when suddenly there was a large nouse which sounded like gun fire. I rushed out to see what was happening, as everybody was shouting something to the effect of ‘Attack! Attack!’. The people who were outside told me that two low-flying aircrafts just passed on top of where we were in the direction of the sea. The whole night-sky is now illuminated by yellow flairs seemingly coming from the direction of the Airport.
People started making few phone calls, to get to know what happened, and to see where everybody was. The flairs in the mean time just stood there, calmly dropping off. I managed to click a few pictures ( found here)
Apparently thoppigala is under-attack, and everybody was theorizing that the flying tigers have responded.
But soon, the confirmation came from a few ‘highly placed sources.’ it was just a ‘test’. Apparently the boys at the air port were giving the new Minister Chamal Rajapakse a show, of “how everything’s supposed to work” on a Poya day. The flair-show lasted for about 8-10 minutes.
Yet another day in the paradise isle.
Update 9.45ish : Yet another Flair thing.. An early christmas of sorts.
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Wednesday, May 30th, 2007
Joining the ongoing debate of blogging and anonymity, Prof. VK Samsung, the great Granpa of ICT in Sri Lanka, recently expressed his ideas to the Colombo correspondent of Jupiter-TV, the largest TV network in planet Jupiter. Excerpts: Jupiter-TV: Prof….
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Wednesday, May 30th, 2007
The Chinese stock market fell by more than 6% today, presumably due to the increase in stamp duty (by the Chinese government) to 0.3% from 0.1%.
Are investors over reacting to this additional cost? Does this signify a correction in the market (using the increase in stamp duty as an excuse)? Will this spread around to [...]
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Wednesday, May 30th, 2007
What will the future media landscape look like? How will Web 2.0 effect reporting and how will future media be consumed? What products and tools will journalists and other creators use? PodTech takes some of the big questions to ScobleShow’s Robert Scoble, Google Vice President Marissa Mayer and Web Strategist Jeremiah Owyang.
Here’s a video I [...]
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Wednesday, May 30th, 2007
Sally’s sending off:Here’s the mix:10 English & Scotts, 3 Germans, 2 Italians, 1 Polish, 1 Brazilian, 1 Peruvian and 1 Sri Lankan behind camera.
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Wednesday, May 30th, 2007
Is it just me or does anyone else think that time is going a bit too fast? Man it feels like a coupla week ago that I was getting wasted on the New Years Eve celebrations, but in reality 5 months have gone by. Where the hell did it all go? No wonder pe…
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Wednesday, May 30th, 2007
People always ask me why I came back to Sri Lanka. Lately they ask why I stay. The first question is easy. I came back because of the CFA. Sri Lanka, with peace, has a boundless future - with more opportunity than I’d have in the US or Canada. The second question is harder. I guess I stay because I like it here. Or something. Daily life in Sri Lanka isn’t bad. The people are interesting, things are cheap. There’s achcharu on the street and if you get fed up you can drive to the beach. Still, there’s this bubbling tension under the surface and you get a sixth twitch that things can explode. Either the government or the LTTE or somebody does something crazy every single week, and it gets old. And these are structural problems. It’s like having your plumbing go screwy, or your hard drive crash. As a normal human I just want to throw up my hands and go ‘is this my problem?’. I have enough trouble growing up and finding a matching pair of socks. In Sri Lanka, however, it is my problem.
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Wednesday, May 30th, 2007
I read this post by Sach and discovered that she is the daughter of a Doctor. I did the clever mental processing required and figured that the medical parent is probably Sri Lankan. Like I am prone to do about wholly irrelevant things I pondered for a …
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Wednesday, May 30th, 2007
ICE WaRM offers a scholarship programme to attract high quality international students to education and training in water resources management, delivered by ICE WaRM partner institutions.The ICE WaRM Scholarship Programme aims to: provide high ca…
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Wednesday, May 30th, 2007
A good economist is a lot like inflation – difficult to keep down. And Harsha de Silva, Lead Economist, LIRNEasia, was as irrepressible as they come when The Sunday Times FT cornered him on the sidelines of a public event for an exclusive chat.During…
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Wednesday, May 30th, 2007
The 1990s were marked by a series of crises that posed a challenge to the international financial and monetary system. These crises made it obvious that international capital flows bring concomitant risks, besides the visible benefits.The relationship …
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Wednesday, May 30th, 2007
many people will tell me i have not yet earned the right to write this post. but i think i have. and this is story of my life. no one else thinks i’m old enough, ever. but i do.
for as long as i can remember, i have wanted to be older. just older. maybe [...]
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Wednesday, May 30th, 2007
This letter to the editor is from a Jamaican newspaper. The content, however, is very relevant to us in Sri Lanka.
The Editor, Sir:
How can we, in clear conscience, begrudge a few million dollars more for pre-tertiary education when we have chronically neglected quality education for so long while we splurge on far less important matters, [...]
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Wednesday, May 30th, 2007
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Wednesday, May 30th, 2007
every story has two sides like of a coin. most of us don look on both sides. some prefer to stick on one side. this in a wy can be better off, but sometimes, when no one knows wht happens actually its easier to jump into conclusion. but we all know there is there always two sides to anythin. recently i’ve been having a lot of storm. and it just keeps comin n comin without any ending. be it with
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Wednesday, May 30th, 2007
Open for your own interpretation! I got this through a mail, and thought I’d share it.
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Wednesday, May 30th, 2007
Everything you always wanted to tell ur girl but never could..well somethin like that….
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Wednesday, May 30th, 2007
ok guys this is IT!!!!! this dude is like fuckin got his words packed in perfectly… now to me…. this is good poetry in all sense…
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Wednesday, May 30th, 2007
Prema Cooray, Chairman – Sri Lanka Convention Bureau, describes India as “the obvious place to go to promote tourism”. He will be leading a team to that country to tap the corporate meetings and conferences potential there. Prior to his forthcomi…
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Wednesday, May 30th, 2007
I’m back here from the future. doncha believe? it’s true… i swear. I was typing a blog entry & suddenly I understood everything is cahnging around me & at last I got a high-tech surround. I was wondering what’s going on & checked for the date. It was far away from 2007.
I looked at the computer [...]
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Wednesday, May 30th, 2007
We have periodically carried stories on non-traditional uses of mobiles. Here is one about buying accident insurance that are bought and paid for through the mobiles.
LANKA BUSINESS ONLINE - LBO
The accident insurance cover package premiums are priced between five and 20 rupees which can be paid at any Dialog reload centre in Sri [...]
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Wednesday, May 30th, 2007
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Wednesday, May 30th, 2007
The loooong awaited album by a bunch of guys who reallly won the hearts of people…. They’re a (C)Rap–Rock band who really made a scene… People of all ages, fans of all genres; not only metal or Rock fans.. Hip-Hop and Pop fans equally like them!!…
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Wednesday, May 30th, 2007
Tourism does not appear in the national accounts because it is a ‘demand-side activity’. Unlike manufacturing and agriculture (both supply-side), demand-side activities are defined in terms of who consumes the product. When any industry sells to a …
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Wednesday, May 30th, 2007
The World Tourism Organisation (UNWTO) conducted a workshop on Tourism Statistics & Tourism Satellite Account (TSA) this week. The participants included eleven foreign delegates from six countries. In his welcome speech at the inaugural ceremony, R…
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Wednesday, May 30th, 2007
I accidentally found this babul joint at the bamba junction one late night. and the shit they got is like off da scale man!!! it actually makes you lose ur balance!… love dat shit…anyways the most delicious “vita” iv ever had was at Greendlands… …
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Tuesday, May 29th, 2007
first of all i would like to clarify that the above title has absolutely no sexual connotations. and those of you who had no such connotations in mind, ‘awwww bless your hearts’ like someone I know says. (smiley, if you are reading this, see how you’ve become quotable)
this is about poking a needle into my body, something i find to be extremely pleasurable.
i like physical pain. always have. i
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Tuesday, May 29th, 2007
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Tuesday, May 29th, 2007
The number of websites spreading badware (spyware, malware, and deceptive adware) is rising in an alarming rate; in many cases, the websites are otherwise victims of malicious hacking. Badware is malicious application that tracks your online behavior a…
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Tuesday, May 29th, 2007
The Indian mobile market has added 20.55 million new customers in the first four months of 2007 - less than the 20.96 million recorded in the same period in 2006. There are two reasons for this shortfall.
Firstly, in April 2006 Reliance Communications made an adjustment to the way it counted mobile subscribers, including its fixed-wireless customers in the figures [...]
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Tuesday, May 29th, 2007
The stunning architecture of Kandalama Hotel has been described as Geoffrey Bawa’s ‘best expression’. Testifying to the genius of the man, Prema Cooray recollects his first impressions of the site, “When I landed by helicopter with Geoffrey Baw…
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Tuesday, May 29th, 2007
The Dragon, a drama written by the late Russian playwright Eugene Schwartz, is a modern day political fairytale. It tells the story of Lancelot, who on his quest to slay the dragon, stumbles upon a community governed by a hierarchy of bureaucratic clowns who are using the dragon to cover up their own desire for [...]
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Tuesday, May 29th, 2007
Nip slip courtesy of Picasso, alternatively a good reason not to go to the beach in Spain
There I was sitting in a Korean BBQ restaurant waiting for what I sincerely hoped was not the neighborhood pooch and instead some deliciously marinated beef to broil when I glanced at the wide screen [...]
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Tuesday, May 29th, 2007
අද ලයිෆ්හැකර් කියවන විටදී දුටු විශේෂ දෙයක්. ඔබේ යූඑස්බී කවුළුව මගින් නැවත ආරෝපණය කළ හැකි බැටරි! …
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Tuesday, May 29th, 2007
The heading “Tamils don’t belong to Sri lanka, they should fight in Tamilnadu- Rathana thera” in lankaEnews website is a slight mistranslation from the Sinhalese.The monk is implying that Tamils has their origins in Tamilnadu and Sri Lanka is the home …
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Tuesday, May 29th, 2007
Following up to Google Mobile Applications I thought I’d check out how Yahoo was doing in the mobile web department. I have to say Yahoo looks pretty decent and well thought out with their mobile portal.
The place to start exploring is the Yahoo! Mobile website. There are 2 main ways you can access Yahoo! Mobile [...]
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Tuesday, May 29th, 2007
In 2006, ASRS provided direct electronic access to its database through the ASRS web site at http://asrs.arc.nasa. gov. Users of ASRS data can perform their own database searches, download incident records, and have immediate access to a valuable sourc…
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Tuesday, May 29th, 2007
Yes I know it’s old news.. but I finally got to catch the rerun of the rerun of Miss Universe. What stood out was Miss USA’s woes.
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Tuesday, May 29th, 2007
Yesterday I received my promotion letter to Associate Technical Lead, as usual back dated to April 01st.I joined Virtusa on 01st of July 2004 as an Associate Software Engineer, had my bad times, good times, low performance times, high performance times…
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Tuesday, May 29th, 2007
Some of my recent posts on Sirasa and its conduct attracted mixed responses from a wide group of readers. To my fancy, this turned out to be a good topic to do some more digging, search for more facts and initiate discussions on. Especially, the email …
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Tuesday, May 29th, 2007
There is a famous Sri Lankan saying “වඳුරා ට දැලි-පිහිය ලැබුනා වගේ”, (like a monkey got hold of a razor knife), indiscriminate chopping and slashing with no care about what its doing or who gets hurt, or …
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Tuesday, May 29th, 2007
There is a great deal of similarity between Sinhala Unicode (~ SLS 1134) and Sinhala Hodiya (alphabet).
Sidath Sangarawa, one of the oldest texts on Sinhala grammar written over 2000 years ago, lists 10 vowels and 20 consonants (see footnote 1), but t…
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Tuesday, May 29th, 2007
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Tuesday, May 29th, 2007
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Tuesday, May 29th, 2007
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