I write this at the start of a hot, close night in Colombo, on the tenth floor, with the ceiling fans spinning so hard that surely this whole apartment will slowly lift right off the top of the building.
As the apartment lifts clear and loose plaster spills into the street like confetti, there will be […]
Elenore couldn’t handle it anymore. Her spells just didn’t work out the way she wanted them to and she could scarcely come to terms with the fact that she was a failed ‘correspondence course’ witch. The Wimp had also been rather down in the dumps of late - probably, she thought, because he so looked […]
This is pretty weird. Gmail is known for its Spam protection, and the spam filter in my gmail works NO worked just fine. Recently i’ve been getting random spam emails popping in my inbox, but then i filter it as Spam and it’s gone. but what do i do if …
Any satisfactory answer to this question must examine, and consider the root causes for this problem; however, the solution must be sensitive to the numerous complexities brought about by the conflict itself. In the case of Sri Lanka, it would be naive examine this problem from a purely pre-1983 perspective.
The fundamental cause for this conflict […]
So what are you? A Buddhist, a Christian, a Catholic, a Muslim or someone that “belongs” to another religion? Or are you an Atheist? What made you become the person you are today, atheist or otherwise? Will you be willing to defend your belief…
ahmm. So they picked a moment when I had 10 data sheets and 2 presentations opened to give us a power cut. i am not sure who i am blaming but i need to blame someone. The government as useless as they are. I can think of one person i would have b…
Mervyn Silva are popular minister who all ministers wish all minister and gangsters alike with to emulate, has caught him self in a nasty accident in Dehiattakandiya. One passanger, identified as the Chairman of the Kelania Pradeshiya Sabha by name Seevali Kelanitilake has died on the spot. several others are injurred too.
The popular minister has […]
Described as the “Sirens of Style” I had a lovely time meeting with and photographing Darshi, Purnima, Sharmini and Yoland.
Director Prasanna Vithanage returned from Chennai, India this week with the first rough edit of “Akasa Kusum.” A. Sreekar Prasad, who also co-produced, edited the movie, cutting the film to a compact 95 minutes. He worked with Vithanage over a period…
Being quite an internet-holic I have been doing many google searches for Diaspora generated literature during the past couple of weeks as an attempt towards identifying an issue to stimulate a healthy and productive discussion on SahaSamvada. Firstly w…
I have tasted only the chocolate cake, and it is great! Its very light, and fresh (our office ordered from them). I don’t think they have an outlet as such for you to just go and buy one piece, but you can order a one pound cake - which means 10 pieces.
They need about a […]
With over 175,000 blogs created everyday you need to do something to stand out from the rest.One great way to do this is to add a favicon in your blog. If you are not aware of what a favicon is its a small 16 x16 image that you can use beside url’s , RSS feeds […]
they are fighting fora political mandate;although one says its for a homelandand the other says its for peace.
one is hiding behind a warso we won’t ask for anything more,and the other is selling false dreamsso no one will hear the helpless screams.
if we keep believingevery nonsensejust because its on the newsthere’ll be nothing left to fight for,and no independent views.
i was reading a news piece (Daily Mirror, 28th Apr,2008 Front page) on the recent LTTE air raid targetted at the military in the Welioya region and as always it’s interesting to note the government response to the affair:1. “no one was injured and no d…
I like cheese. Well not the smelly blue cheese kind of thing but I like kraft cheddar. Friend from UK was down and she was going on and on about her wine and cheese sonot to be outdone I said I also like wine and cheese. Think I was trying to show of…
Thought I’d have some fun and make a list of my idea of the 10 Most Beautiful Women in the World! Now when I say in the WORLD don’t take it too literally… obviously I don’t know every woman in the world so of course these are just my favourites amongst well known international personalities. […]
Had to go for a wedding of my mom’s cook’s daughter last week. My cook had got a good proposal for her daughter and the girl is going abroad. The only thing was the girl had to convert to get married. She is a born Hindu. My mom was a bit upset …
Well not really a sample.It’s the video for “Porcelain Heart”from Opeth’s forthcoming album “Watershed”.Be we go into anything else I’ll tell you one thing “I love it!!!”
I also loved their previously released track “Lotus Eater”.Click here to listen/download it.Well here’s the thing.Across the Internet I’ve seen many sites claiming Opeth’s new stuff is not as good […]
Pure Passion brings you from Sri Lanka – the Paradise Isle of exquisite gems, an exclusive range of hand crafted designer jewelry. An innovative merging of shapes and textures and vibrant colors explode in blends of riotous or quaint harmony.
Last four months I was very busy with my University studies. We was ask to do 2 Projects and a Research.
Even I couldn’t find out sometimes to do my personal projects and extra professional studies.
After long absence, I’m back to my blogging world!
Join with Mithuru Mithuri to express your self with other friends. This is wonderful chance to make new friends. Increase your number of friends and win gift vouchers. The top member with highest number of friend will win 1000 LKR worth gift voucher, t…
The 21-year-old model-actress beat out the likes of Angelina Jolie(No. 12), Rihanna (No. 14), Kim Kardashian(No. 17), Paris Hilton(No. 77) and last year’s champion, Jessica Alba(No. 3).
http://www.lankanewspapers.com/news/2008/4/27297_image_headline.html
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Courtesey:http://www.island.lk/2008/04/29/news6.html
Duminda pledges to have road rehabilitated
From Anuradhapura Spl. Corr Percy Kuruneru
Minister of Mineral Oil Resources Development Duminda Dissanayake assured the residents of Tantirimale, who have been engaged […]
http://www.lankanewspapers.com/news/2008/4/27281_image_headline.html
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Hallelujah! Eureka! and what not… It’s my 200th post… wow! Have I been writing so much?… I wonder sometimes…. Then again, it’s always been great to write and share things about my life with all of you.. and it’s inexplicably awesome to have yo…
Hallelujah! Eureka! and what not… It’s my 200th post… wow! Have I been writing so much?… I wonder sometimes…. Then again, it’s always been great to write and share things about my life with all of you.. and it’s inexplicably awesome to have yo…
ශ්රී ලංකාව සහ ඉරානය අතර පුළුල් ආරක්ෂක සහයෝගීතාවයක් ඇති කර ගැනීමෙන් දෙරටේ ආරක්ෂාව සැළසෙනු ඇතැයි ඉරාන ජනාධිපති මහමුඩ් ආමඩින්ජාඩ් ඊයේ…
Courtesey: http://www.dailymirror.lk/DM_BLOG/Sections/frmNewsDetailView.aspx?ARTID=13125
English as a Life Skill set to increase jobs in IT sector
By Dilrukshi FernandoOver 200,000 students are ballooning into an anti-establishment each year under the public school system, according to Enterprise, Development and Investment Promotion Minister Dr. Sarath Amunugama.
The minister’s comments came at a Presidential Task Force Initiative “English as a Life Skill”, Business […]
[TamilNet, Tuesday, 29 April 2008, 01:00 GMT]TamilNet: Sri Lanka Army Destroyed at MUHAMAALAI in a Fierce Battle. LTTE military Spokesman Irasaiah Illantharyian confirms to TamilNet that they did Wipe out the Entire SLA in a 10 hour gunfight that began…
ඉස්ලාමීය ඉරාන ජනරජයේ ජනාධිපති ආචාර්ය මොහොමද් අහමදිනිජාඩ් මහතා දෙදින නිළ සංචාරයක් සඳහා ඊයේ පස්වරුවේ දිවයිනට පැමිණියේය. ශ්රී ලංකා ජනාධිපති මහින්ද…
Cricinfo: Watching Sri Lanka’s Ajantha Mendis bowl is like trying to hold a conversation with a naturally quiet person in a noisy pub. What was that again, Ajantha? Didn’t quite catch that - can you repeat it? Sorry pal, I thought you said something else. Hey, can we go outside? Can’t hear myself think in here.
Mendis’s run-up is plain to the point of innocence, but his fingers are all subtlety, inscrutably resistant to sharing their secrets. The batsman is left groping, searching for cues and clues. Eh? Come again? What was that? Can you give me that once more? And finally: what happened?
His mixture of legbreaks, offbreaks, doosras, googlies and topspinners is a perplexity for statisticians too. Cricinfo is calling him “right-arm slow-medium” at the moment, but cricketers translate “right-arm slow-medium” as “bowls in the nets if he’s lucky”. If he plays county cricket, Playfair will have to consider a designation like ROBLB or RSM@#&%?!
Others have already settled on the designation “mystery spinner”, the epithet conferred almost 60 years ago on the Australian Jack Iverson. Mendis and he certainly seem to share prodigiously strong middle fingers. The ball settled into Iverson’s grip like a marble for the squirting. Mendis, likewise, looks simply to caress the ball as he propels it, barely involving the palm of his hand at all, and holding one particular variation as delicately as an entomological specimen. Both bowlers possess the cardinal virtue of accuracy, and a liking for long spells.
Where they differ seems to be in variety and spin. Iverson spun his stock ball, a googly, massively, but his variations considerably less: batsmen finally figured on playing him as an offbreak bowler, albeit one who looked like he was bowling legbreaks. Mendis doesn’t spin any of his options enormously; it is the combination of them, and the difficulty distinguishing one from the other, that makes him a handful.
There is always excitement when a bowler like Mendis appears. Batsmen scratch their heads. Captains and coaches confabulate. Cricket’s telephone exchange buzzes.
The original “mystery ball”, and still perhaps the most delicious, is the googly itself, the offbreak delivered by the legbreak action conceived on his family billiards table before being hazarded on the sward at Lord’s by BJT Bosanquet - and thus sometimes known as the “bosie”, and also the “wrong ‘un”. It’s somehow fitting that such a double agent of a delivery should have multiple aliases.
At first the googly posed more preposterous difficulties than its progenitor: the first to take a first-class wicket bounced four times. But it soon swept the world: the South African XI of a century ago included no fewer than four specialist purveyors, and the Australian team of 1910-11 featured perhaps the best exponent of all. Certainly it was the view of Johnnie Moyes, who saw all its antipodean advocates, Arthur Mailey, Clarrie Grimmett and Bill O’Reilly included, that no Australian mastered the googly more thoroughly than “Ranji” Hordern.
[Hordern] was without doubt an amazing bowler. He took a long run, brought his arm right over, was a length as well as a spin bowler, and of medium pace. He didn’t seem to be flighting the ball, yet did so, as the batsman discovered when he tried to move down the pitch to him. That wasn’t easy as Hordern was slightly faster through the air, but the temptation was there, as I found to my cost in Victor Trumper’s benefit game, only to hear Sammy Carter say, “Got you, son”… Sometimes you could see the tip of the little finger sticking up skyward like a periscope of a submarine, but only if you were concentrating on it. If you did see it, you recognised the approaching “bosie”.
The first googly in Australia bowled Victor Trumper; a googly was also the last ball to defeat Donald Bradman in a Test match. Simply by existing, it had an effect on cricket’s ecosystem. “If this sort of bowling becomes general I’m packing my bags,” threatened Archie MacLaren, before deciding he could live with it. It even enjoyed an oriental translation into the “chinaman”.
No other delivery, in fact, has had quite the same impact on cricket, and by never really being improved on, it also caused cricket to revert to being a batsman’s game. In an incisive 1950 critique of Bradman’s impact on cricket, the Birmingham Post’s cricket correspondent WE Hall observed.
In due course we shall come to see Bradman as an inevitable part of the evolution of the game. From Grace’s integration of forward and back-play the art of batting advanced until, in [Jack] Hobbs, a technique was perfected to master the “new” bowling, as it has been called. It was the last of the qualitative changes in cricket, a fact realised by one writer who said that the game needed a new type of ball to do what the “googly” once did. But there has been no new type of ball, and the only development left to batsmen between the wars was the quantitative one which followed, as surely as mass production followed the start of the Industrial Revolution.
Of course, mystery bowling is classically an individual pursuit, the result of lone experiment and lateral thought. Iverson is the archetype, his bowling having originated in a lifetime of nervous finger flicking with a table tennis ball; likewise were Iverson’s protégé Johnny Gleeson, double-dealing Sonny Ramadhin, and whizz-banging Bhagwat Chandrasekhar self-taught cricketers.
Ramadhin and Chandra made the most of their bowling’s hidden depths. Delivering a stock ball that spun from the off, both buttoned their sleeves at the wrist, as though to deflect the curious glare. Ramadhin bowled his offbreak with the middle finger down rather than across the seam, to sometimes startling effect. Ken Archer described playing with Ramadhin for a Commonwealth XI in September 1954 at seaside Hastings, when the bowler discovered that his quicker one seamed away with an ounce of extra effort; he could hardly bowl for his delighted laughter. Chandra’s right arm was so withered from childhood polio that he could hardly hold a cup of tea to his lips. But with it he bowled googlies and legbreaks that seemed to set his whole body whirring like a child’s spinning top. And like no other bowler, he haunted Viv Richards.
In typical Sri Lankan fashion - about a month late and for a few more than one hour. Ok so it was an island-wide power failure. Given the frequency of these failures, (multiple times a month where I live) the folks at Greenpeace or WWF should nominate the Ceylon Electricity Board for the Nobel Prize this year.
To me the whole Earth Hour idea is symbolically a catastrophe, and today this reminded me of a post in Cafe Hayek on the subject. Here’s a key excerpt from a letter written to WWF:
You and members of your organization worry that industrialization and economic growth are harming the earth’s environment. I worry that the intensifying hysteria about the state of the environment - and that the resulting hostility to economic growth - might harm humankind’s prospects for comfortable, healthy, enjoyable, and long lives.
So I commend you on your “Earth Hour” effort. Persuading people across the globe to turn off lights for one hour supplies the perfect symbol for modern environmentalism: a collective effort to return humankind to the dark ages.
i have always had some problems with modern art. although i can appreciate most of it, there have been times when i’ve felt that the term ‘modern art’ is just a way out for talentless hacks. a way to sell anything, no matter how wild or unartistic. when someone farts paint onto a canvas […]
Last weekend was without a doubt the worst of my life. It was also when a few firsts in my life took place. It was: The first time I went without solid food for more that 24 hours.The first time I was hospitalized.The first time I was given an IV…
Windows මෙහෙයුම් පද්ධතියට අදාලා දෝෂයක් නිසා Firefox 3 හි සිංහල ස්ථාපනය ඉවත් කරන මෙන් Mozilla කන්ඩායම මේ දැන් ඉ…
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad reached Sri Lanka on April 28th for a two-day state visit. Sri Lanka is the first stop of his first Asian tour.
President Ahamedinejad and President Rajapaksa will be laying the foundation stone for the Uma Oya Hydro Power project, on April 29 at Wellawaya in Monaragala district. Iran had agreed to grant $450 million to finance the project.
My mother in law, age 55 is from Kalliyaddy, Mannar, (an LTTE controlled area) came to live with her daughter, who is married to me in Sinnakarishal, Pesalai on 15.01.08. Kalliyady is in LTTE controlled area with around 500 families. Life there has been extremely difficult for her and during the latter stages even more […]
So, after running my most successful blog contest, I am ready to unveil the winners of the five contest prizes worth over $250! With more than 200 entries, here are the luck people who won the April contest!
The WINNERS
The blog traffic pack from Traf…
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