I'm tired of seeing that monstrosity on the top of my blog

Is it safe to assume that no one reads these anymore? That Kottu has finally moved on to the netherworld. That the old blogger crowd, now probably married and old enough to have multiple grandkids, no longer cares?

Good.

I love being busy, because it keeps the mind occupied, but I recently had quite a long exam season (abridged with Avurudu) and this left some time for thinkingz. Uh oh.

Profundity pundits on social media these days love to throw out phases like "if you love her, let her go know", but maybe sometimes the best course of action is to run away like the wind and let the ambiguity of "what if" keep you comfortable in those long, lonely nights?

Sappy shit, I know. This is why people lost their appetite and the blogosphere died in the first place. Oh well.

Methods of student protest betray stagnation and lack of ingenuity in local higher education system

The recent tear-gassing of a student protest has been the topic of much conversation, especially since the newly appointed government was seen as being much more student-friendly than the previous one.

Protests by students enrolled at state universities and higher education institutes are nothing new. Every year, these students cumulatively spend thousands of hours sitting/standing/walking/running from charging riot police in congested areas of Colombo. Ward Place, where the ministry of Higher Education is located, is the scene of near permanent sit-ins by students.

Primary, secondary and tertiary education is heavily subsidized in Sri Lanka. This has not prevented undergraduate students, selected for universities from impoverished backgrounds, from going through immense hardships to complete their education. The lack of funding has made research grants almost non-existent. The system is groaning from the stress it is under.

Yet when students react to their situation, it's often in a very confrontational and chaotic manner. Student protests gain the eyes and ears of the public, but not in a positive manner. The social standing of university students has diminished greatly among the general public. The view that they're a nuisance and lacking in discipline has become somewhat entrenched in the public consciousness.

New thinking and true creativeness is required from undergrads to get their message across. Instead of old, boring, disruptive, and potentially violent picketing and banner holding, novel methods of protest should be explored. Students should fight to win back the esteem that society generally holds such qualified and talented individuals in. They should show us why they're the exceptional one percenters who made it because they were at the right end of the bell curve.

Hong Kong students clean up after 2014 protests

ISIS and the modern, westernised girls who flock to it

The premise outlined in the title is all kinds of inexplicable. While trying to grasp the whole wtf aspect of it, this old quote from George Orwell's 1940 review of Mein Kampf stood out:

Also he has grasped the falsity of the hedonistic attitude to life. Nearly all western thought since the last war, certainly all "progressive" thought, has assumed tacitly that human beings desire nothing beyond ease, security and avoidance of pain. [...] Hitler, because in his own joyless mind he feels it with exceptional strength, knows that human beings don’t only want comfort, safety, short working-hours, hygiene, birth-control and, in general, common sense; they also, at least intermittently, want struggle and self-sacrifice [...] Whereas Socialism, and even capitalism in a more grudging way, have said to people "I offer you a good time," Hitler has said to them "I offer you struggle, danger and death," and as a result a whole nation flings itself at his feet.

Clay

The vessel is fragile.

It carries water, the only water you'll ever find. Without the water you cannot survive. No tea, no cooking, nothing doing.

The vessel is fragile.

You've wondered about the nature of the vessel and sometimes mused what would happen if you were to throw it away. You'd never have the guts though.

The vessel is fragile.

One of these days you'll hear a shattering sound and know it's all over. No more grand plans, no tea, no cooking, nothing doing.

People are talking

You know how these things happen when you least expect, right?

You return from a horrible and drawn out campaign of terror to put down that insurgency in the Caucasus to find out that her heart has turned colder than the Siberian winter.

Your first instinct is to call the Okhrana on all your bastard ministers and torture them till they confess. But then you sit down, pour yourself one and listen to some Lorde (because that's what royals are to do nowadays).

When people are talking, people are talking

Let 'em talk

What cats have taught me

I had been a dog person for as long as I can remember. There was a cat sometime in my early teens or something, but I don't even remember where we buried it after it died.

Then, everything changed when the Fire Nation attacked.

Cats—and I can't stress this enough—are selfish bastards. This makes them immediately relatable. They will naturally gravitate towards the person who is at the top of the domestic power hierarchy.

The cat gives you their attention when they feel like it: when they are hungry, scared or otherwise needy. You can't just waltz in and cuddle their royal fluff whenever you feel like it. Well, you can but it feels wrong.

You could lure them in with treats, but you feel like just giving them the treats and walking away. Cats condition you on how to love them.

And basically that's  what cats have taught me: that the love shouldn't be about you, it should be about the person that you are loving. They've taught me to be more considerate and look out for cues, and instilled in me a megalomaniacal yearning for world domination. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Passion

People always underestimate passion, or maybe it's just me. I take actually being fired up and excited about something for granted. Don't. When that passion leaves you, and you're hit with the searing and searching brightness of sober day, you'll wonder what the hell you're doing here with something you obviously have no love for.

Silence is snuggly

It really is, though.

You know how the best friends are the people with whom you can share long silences and it would be the most comfortable thing in the world?

Or how, in a conversation, you find yourself learning a lot of stuff and letting it all soak in, and you don't want to say anything because you'll add nothing of value to the conversation and "WHOAAA, DUDE" sounds wrong in the modern world of always-assume-sarcasm?

Or that joke about how light travels faster than sound, and some people appear bright before they open their mouths?

Silence is cool, yo. I wish more people were comfortable with it.

Love is a word

This is very crude, I blame it on not writing anything for ages.

Spend a lifetime with me? You know I can't marry you, love.

Not exactly what I meant. You can still experience a lifetime within a few days. Ah, fancy poetry to get me to put out?

Surely there's more to life than what consumerist propaganda has taught us? You sound like Harold now. Maybe there is hope still for marriage.

I'd much rather be grouped with Harold than accept that the pinnacle of human empathy and connection occurs during naked fumbling around. Such a travesty, no?

Don't tell me you haven't seen it with the cats dude! That look they give you... Of grudging but complete trust, the "you'll look after me, right?" eyes. Stoner.

Come on, you must h... Of course I have, asshat. For someone who claims to have fallen in love with me for the braaaaainz, you give me precious little credit. Look at you, appropriating my voice as an outlet for your own little insecurities. And now you're making me rant like an angsty teenager too. Bravo! I hope you feel good about yourself.

Um.

Oasis

This has been lying in an xcf (GIMP) file on my hard-drive with a last modified date of 03/03/2012, but is probably much older. Instead of completing it using GIMP as I must've originally intended, I shifted it to a vector graphic project due to my current love affair with Inkscape, and finished it off in a few hours today.

The original concept was much more ambitious, involving a lot more drawings and stuff, but in the months following the initial draft things happened and this seems more suitable now. :)

Lyrics by Noel Gallagher.

Histeria Colectiva

It's just another day in paradise when everyone gets worked up over *something* again. I mean, really. They say life on this island is chilled out but we need something to be collectively indignant at every now and then right? So I've decided to come up with a helpful list of things people are butthurt about and how to be less butthurt about these things. Yay!

The Sinhala Buddhists

Oh my. You guys are my favourites, maybe because I'm supposed to be one of you? You're 70% of the population, have held power since the "great revolution of 1956", but still have to put up with bad roads, bad education, contaminated medicine, corrupt politicians, and your daughters getting groped on the bus.

Butthurt Claim #1: Nobody Respects Meeeee!

This has been circulating over email recently too. If you ever find out a blog carrying said email, please link in the comments. Email is titled "Sinhalayage Hinamanaya" and is supposed to written by the JHU's Udaya Gammanpila. It is spot on in many regards.

The Sinhalese don't respect their culture, their language or their heritage. No, getting worked up when someone invades your cave temples isn't real respect. Girls think it's cool to speak in broken, accented Sinhala. Say a few words of English and you're the man. Are we really this bankrupt?

See, we used to have a lively, beautiful cultural scene going on. Then the JVP and the Government death mobs colluded to kill and destroy everyone and everything. Sinhala cinema is dead. Our greatest authors and songwriters are dead. Will there ever be another Premakeerthi De Alwis? Highly doubt it. Why?

Butthurt Claim #2: Our Education System Sucks!

Who runs your education system again? Oh right, the most incompetent government ever! Well done.

See, when Ceylon was still a colony, the Brits introduced missionary education to Sri Lanka. To get somewhere in life, and enter for example the prestigious civil service, one had to pass through one of these centres of Christian learning. This left the Sinhalese Buddhists out of good schools and good jobs. A lot of kids entering these institutions were pretty much forced to embrace Christianity.

And then a Buddhist revival of sorts happened. Henry Steel Olcott (the less I speak of his influences on Buddhism, the better) founded a number of Buddhist centres of education: Ananda, Mahinda, Dharmaraja etc. Piriven (institutes for monastic education for monks) such as Vidyodya and Vidyalankara flourished.

Then independence happened, the Sinhalese Buddhists had their people in government, and decided that the government was going to look after these institutions. And we know how that goes, right? Today Vidyodya and Vidyalankara are normal civilian universities and monks often follow normal degree programmes. This has led to a deterioration of the monastic standards of this country. The prestigious Buddhist schools are often battlegrounds between old boys seeking to preserve their status and traditions, and government appointed Principles and other administrative officers trying to enforce their will. Who stands to lose from this other than the Sinhalese Buddhist?

Butthurt Claim #3: We're Losing Our Majority

When half your kids are in Melbourne and don't intend on returning: of course you are. Fix your damn country!

Butthurt Claim #4:  They're RAPING MY DAUGHTER!

From Sinfest

There was a saying in old times that a girl dressed in ornaments and carrying a large gemstone in her hands could walk from one corner of the island to the other in the middle of the night and just arrive at the destination safely.

I mentioned Olcott up there. Look, the importation of puritan Victorian values has fucked up our moral compass. It didn't matter how long a girl's dress was, or even if she was topless.

"Still Not Asking For It"

The birth of a girl was celebrated. Unmarried girls had a share of their parents' inheritance equal to what a boy would get. Women were not property. Women *held* property. What happened?

Butthurt Claim #5: I'm Offended 

From Akon, to Buddha Bar, to tattoos. You guys are indignant at the slightest of things. It's like you're trying to emulate somebod... oh wait.

Look, nobody is obligated to tiptoe around your religious beliefs so as not to offend you. That's NOT how the world works. To quote Rowan Atkinson (widely known here for playing Mr. Bean):

To criticize a person for their race is manifestly irrational and ridiculous, but to criticize their religion, that is a right. That is a freedom. The freedom to criticize ideas, any ideas - even if they are sincerely held beliefs - is one of the fundamental freedoms of society. A law which attempts to say you can criticize and ridicule ideas as long as they are not religious ideas is a very peculiar law indeed.

If the Buddha flipped out every time someone tried to offend him, he would never have gotten around to preaching the Dhamma. Similarly, if you flip out every time someone "offends" your beliefs, you will never have time to practice the Dhamma. If you want to reply, reply with respect and loving kindness. Or just plain ignore it if they're just taunting you. Your actions in self-restraint and kindness speak more for the Dhamma than your words of defence ever will.

Think about it. What's more insulting to Buddhism? A tattoo of the Buddha or this:

Image from here

---

So, I think I'm done here. I could go on and on and on, but Ain't Nobody Got Time For That. Originally planned to cover the Muslims as well, but yeah. No. So for balance I'll finish with a joke:

A Muslim DIDN'T randomly get offended over something. 

There. Pitchforks are in the first room on the left. You can light up your torches in the kitchen. :P

Humano

Logic calls me forth, but biology holds me back.

I've been fascinated by the whole Soylent story. Unverified claims, of course, but if the man is telling the truth, he might've just made one of the biggest breakthroughs for the human race since we decided to come down from the trees and become omnivores.

I have never been a big fan of food. Lunch used to be a chore for me, back in the day. I'd stay at this home-daycare run by an aunty (my mom's friend's friend), and I'd be sitting there with my bath packet from home prodding away for 45 minutes, barely eating anything, until we all realise I'm not making much progress and I proceed to washing my hands (covered in dried indul at this point).

I don't have much to complain about my mortal frame (yet, touch wood!), and I'm happy being underweight, but if this thing can give me a fully balanced diet that makes my skin glow and concentration last for more than 15 seconds, then sign me up! :P

Feliz

I write this while on an old and rusty bus rattling its way across Kottawa's sleepy backwaters on a warm Sunday morning. The slight lump I feel in my throat seems to indicate an impending case of sore throat. This bus is moving at a commendable rate for a 336, or maybe writing this is way more fun than it seems. Bah time, forget about it. Being in a state of time warp-y consciousness a few too many times seems to have permanently altered my body clock.

Graduation was a swift affair. The "kids" were ruthlessly herded into an assembly line to be paraded, awarded and photographed. Men of greatness on the quest seeking maximum efficiency have no time to ponder such trivial things like human dignity.

And of such nature is the adventure that awaits me today. It might sound dead simple to the gullible man, but handing in a robe and collecting a transcript is not a task of O(1) complexity.

(Sorry if none of this makes any sense, by the way)

Edge cases

It's been a surreal couple of weeks, these past few. A few days back it was me trying to make a friend laugh as she was talking to a recruitment agent from Millennium IT (I am known for being a bastard like that). Today, it was me sitting almost alone in the canteen that the gang and I spent most of our first two years of uni at.

Metro is a different creature on weekends. The (four!) lifts are empty, the hallways are deserted, lecturers run about dressed in jeans and t-shirts, and the canteen shop is closed. A few awkward couples sit scattered around the place, sharing bath packets.

I'm in no mood for lunch, so quickly scavenge off the chicken and a few mouthfuls of rice before discarding everything into the bin. I know, I know. Bad. But I just can't. I haven't felt this alone in ages. My okay, yet distant new group-mates are upstairs git-merging a system that has and will never be completed. Our final year project supervisor is scheduled to meet us in fifteen minutes, so I hurry back upstairs.

Happier times at the canteen (pic by Meshak)

So, a year has been spent at Malabe, and I've only managed to visit Metro campus two or three times. Once  tried to unsuccessfully smuggle Himal and Raisa upstairs, but the security guards noticed. Hawkward. Malabe is huge, and free, and people sit for hours under trees happily gossiping and checking out potential mates. Metro is cosy, office-y, and located at the heart of Colombo, a stones throw away from every place you'd ever want to be (Galle Face? MC?). The life students here spend is pretty different to the life students in Malabe spend, and while I'm thankful about everything Metro had to offer, I think I might just like Malabe better. It's a camaraderie thing. Also the library is huge, awesome and has plug-points. :P

Our meeting with the supervisor is progressing with the usual hiccups. Ugly interfaces are berated, inconsistent button styles are pointed out, exceptions that only seem to occur when we show the system to someone pop up all over the face, and threats to fail everyone are made. A voice that sounds a lot like Miss A's (refer link at the beginning of the post) seems to waft in from an adjacent computer lab. Attempts made to locate her post-meeting are unsuccessful.

So, in a week, the lectures for this semester will end. And then a few more weeks will see the end of our final  examinations, and the conclusion of our degree programme. The last time I faced a life-changing event like this, I didn't even have this blog. It's been a while, and I do hope I've outgrown my panic attack days. :P

This sucks

Ohhh, I have a blog now? Whoa.

So my uni life's ending in a couple of weeks, and things have been hectic. Actually, that's an understatement. But yeah, you always manage to find some time to do the things that really matter, and that's what counts in the end, right? Unless I've been counting wrong all this time, and someone comes up to my deathbed and laughs his arse off at me.

Yeah, that's about it.

What?

Were you expecting something more? Coz I've got this for you:

Image of/by HootingAngie

Laters.

random post #62

Let's go back to one of the oldest tricks in my book of what to do when I have nothing to write about.

So, I'm going back to uni next week. Baller girl will be there, balling away. Here's a sketch of her that I drew one boring evening at the library:

And here's a story of how things will not work out between us:

"Fifty rupees. It'll make you feel better." said she. Reluctantly handing over the money, he went and sat by the window. The table hadn't been cleaned after its previous occupants had left. He had barely started playing with the straw (from a half-finished bottle of Pepsi) and the ketchup on the plate when she joined him, ice cream cone in hand. "But I have a cold!" he protested.

I found this in the drafts folder. Must've written it one one of those bad days when I was frustrated with everything. And just when you think of how she means nothing to you, and how you're sooooo over her, you see her sitting there at uni; her long hair waving in the breeze, her perfect pearl-white skin glowing in the morning sunlight, and her arms crossed like the total tomboy (yet elegant girl) that she is, and you're left doing this:

Blocked

It sucks, you know, not being able to sleep? I find myself awake at the most awkward of hours, staring blankly at the laptop screen. Three nights ago, I went to sleep at 3 AM. Two nights ago, I attempted to go to sleep earlier but was lying in bed unable to, and then I went into a sneezing frenzy and found it so difficult to breathe that tears were coming out of my eyes. This morning I awoke at around 2 AM, and I've been wide awake for the past 18 and a half hours.

Did I tell you how much I hate IDEs? I also hate languages that are no good without IDEs and import statements, like Java and C#. So this morning, 2 AM onwards, I was busily typing away everything in my mind inside a gedit window because I hate IDEs. And of course, once I'm done I open up the IDE to make sure all the imports are in place and everything is in a runnable state. 5 minutes to clean up all the code and make sure the imports are in place, and we're a go. Start up the SDK, wait for Android to boot up and eagerly unlock the screen on the old Gingerbread ROM. And then BAM, unexpected application error, force quit, and there goes hours of work.The exception thrown doesn't really help matters, and a solution seems out of reach.

So, spirit broken, I waste the rest of the day idly checking out what real programmers are up to on IRC, and switching tabs between that lethal mixture of facebook, gmail and reddit. Rinse, repeat. I swear I'm going to lose it one of these days.

Guys NEVER overreact. Ever.

It's been a while since I spent this much time doing something non-programming related. :) This comic was insanely hard to put together, though the end result is pretty simple. I have been doing some part-time relationship advice-giving in the last few days (I hear the loud "Oh-no!"s already! Haha) and this is stuff that this experience has brought back.

And yes, I do find it very ironic that me (and another friend of mine) are dishing out relationship advice when both of us have pretty much never actually been in a proper relationship, like ever. Awkward!

Anyway, the comic:

And that is how guys NEVER overreact. :D (And yes, that guy's using a MacBook! What has the world come to, no?)

Things left unsaid

I haven't even touched this thing in ages, have I? I miss the days when I could write something stupid and get a million comments. I miss being anonymous, being able to speak your mind, you know? There are so many things I want to shout out about, so many things that the blogosphere circa 2009 would've been able to help me with. Everything was so much better back then, and I'm not just saying that for nostalgia's sake. We were family, even though scattered around the world and never having met.

Getting back to the present, I've been done with the first semester of my last year for about 3 weeks now. The batch is all back home, de-stressing. Some of us (a tiny fraction, really) even went on a pretty awesome hike, more on that in another post. :)

By the way, I'm no fan of modern pop, but I rather like this "Call Me Maybe" tune. I'm even more of a fan of the memes that it has spawned.

There's even an epic one for the bronies (via Chathura):

Ah, on the topic of bronies, I don't think I mentioned this on the blog earlier, but I'm now a die-hard fan of the show. It's all Gehan's fault, really. :P And before you get into insults about my masculinity: the dark ages called, and they wanted their bigots back.

And in other news, I think that certain people need to be reminded that nothing pisses me off more than people who shove their religion in my face. See, I've avoided discussing topics of faith on this little blog of mine because I absolutely loathe discussing things like that in public. Nothing is more personal than your beliefs, and I respect people who understand that. Reminds me of this awesome SatW comic:

Anyway, I'm off for now. It was good to let all of that off. Hope I can continue this. :D

code

I've always admired artists. There's something magical in their ability, their gift to transform their innermost thoughts and feelings into something communicable, and in doing so convey and transmit those feelings to others. A painter packs emotion into every stroke of his brush, a poet into every syllable she writes, a bassist into every little quiver of his fingers. That is beauty, the conversion of something so abstract as a chain of thought into something tangible, something of substance.

I began this post with the word 'admire', but I feel now that it should've been 'envy' instead. You see, when one doesn't have such an ability to communicate his feelings with the world, one does tend to turn green.

And that's where code comes in. It is the simple building block with which I try to translate the workings of my mind into a form that others could experience. It is the brush with which I hope to paint out my dreams, my hopes, and my desires. It is the platform on which I try to explore the meaning of life and the universe.

Code is not art. It would be arrogant and dismissive of real artists to call it that. But code is simply what it is; a cane to support the rest of us non-artists in our search for a means by which to express ourselves. So be careful before you move that curly brace, you could be treading on someone's hopes and dreams. :)