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.

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. :)

The post count matters.

Not really.

I planned to do a lot of blogging during this vacation, but things rarely go according to plan in the Chavieverse (oh no he didn't!) and those plans fell apart. But I'm going to write a brief recap of the things I did in these two months, so that I won't forget so that my post count goes up by one. :D

• Went to watch Elected, and almost saw PapareBoy beat someone up. Almost! :( Also met Tulie for the first time! :D

• Drew a webcomic after a loooong time, for Dee's TLC. Thanks again, Dee! :)

• Visited Meshak, he posted pictures and I posted crappoetry.

• Took some pics in Hanthana. Got ripped off by a leech (ironically on the same day that I read Amila's leech post!).

• Almost got to visit Pasikudah buh cancelled that to go watch Buddhi De Mel and Wagon Park instead. I don't regret it yet. :D

• Met the gang from school again. 

• Visited the best friend's place in Mathugama, after delaying it for like 3 years. Had another leech episode! :D

• Watched quite a few movies. Sita Sings The Blues is mind blowing for the fact that it was almost entirely created by a single animation artist named Nina Paley (also the first Creative Commons movie I've watched! Way to go copyleft!!!). Up, like WALL-E before it, just left a huge hole in my heart. Those Pixar guys really know how to tell a story, don't they?

• Started playing Civ 4, my first turn-based strategy game (Yes, I'm always late to the party!). Highly recommend it, though I'm still learning how to play it myself! :D

Computers (and I)

Computers crash at the most inconvenient of times: when a friend comes over and you need to copy something off his flash drive, or when you've got a report due the next day, or when you're expecting an important E-mail. I was tearing my hair out just over a month ago when my PC went down, and my mom was seriously questioning what they taught us at uni about fixing computers. That was one of those rare occasions when I felt like I had made a big mistake in picking the path that I have chosen.

I've got a really good friend from my A/L class, with whom I used to hang quite a lot at school. We'd be there in the computer periods, idling and checking out the latest Alienware laptops. He was into gaming and introduced me to Alienware, and signed me up for their E-mails, which I still get. So I met him at the reunion, and he delivered to me shocking news. He's in a uni in Malaysia and he was going to get himself a laptop, and he got himself a MACBOOK! EGAAAAD! A little hugeass part of me died. Apple, in my books, is the worst thing that ever happened to the computer trade. (Yeah, I hear you macs in the back piping in about how they never crash...) They're elitists, their software and hardware are as closed as can be, and they treat the customer like an idiot. I mean, look at the iPhone 4 and how they're handling the reception issues! "Don't hold it like that, hold it as if it's made out of human excrement.", old Steve Jobs said. Nice! N-I-C-E!!!

Talking about the computer trade, the computer trade in Sri Lanka makes me seriously want to lob a grenade up someone's rear quarters... And I mean seriously! A laptop that is worth roughly 65K LKR in the international market can be bought for a fabulously low price of 93K LKR from the local 'Authorised Distributors'. And I thought we didn't tax computers... meh. :/

P.s. Uni's back on from Monday. No more late nights. I am a little excited about it now, but all the drama that will invariably take place when it starts is going to test my enthusiasm. Orsum! :(

She's not emo, you are!

I was on the bus home after a stay at Meshak's place, and this came into my head when I was looking at this girl (she must have been about 17, although she looked older) who was talking to her mom, and this for some reason reminded me of a old old crush. And I hate crappoetry (although I think of this more as a song with a melody than a poem) as much as you do, but I'm going to do the dirty thing to up my post count. Apologies. :)

Note: 'She' is not a single person, but a mixture of all the girls that I was an #epicfail at getting. The first line is a shameless direct lift off 'Happiness is a Warm Gun' (a brilliant song, I must add) and NO I HAVE NEVER CRIED OVER A GIRL!!!1111 :P

She's not a girl who misses much,
And if she says so, it will be such,
There are the many,
Whose dreams she tossed like a penny.

And you should always be on guard,
She strikes without warning inside your heart,
Oh, I wonder if she knows
The pain she causes...

And in the morn, at the break of day,
You've forgot the things she had to say,
Last night when you had
Bit too long a convo.

The tears fall, your heart just aches,
You hide beneath the moody face,
And you hope aloud
She's ain't arsed enough to notice.

And as you lie yourself to sleep,
Inside your dreams she begins to weep,
And then you remember:
She's not a girl who misses much.

This post was in the pipeline for far too long

One of the first questions my friends at uni asked me when I joined was "So do you want to go abroad?". My answer usually is a no, unless I'm feeling particularly cynical. The reason is twofold: I hate the cold, and my skinny ass cannot take a cold shower on a warm April morning. The second is a sort of sense of duty, I guess.

The German adolescents after World War II blamed their parents for looking on silently while Hitler massacred 6 million innocents. Most segments of my own generation seem to feel the same towards our own parents, and how an unacceptable amount of bloodshed occurred under their watch. The parents have their typical Sri Lankan parent attitude about these kinds of questions, and avoid talking about these things as much as possible. They even have the nerve to talk about how good things were during our grandparents time! :/

But growing up, and slowly becoming aware of the real mechanics behind this illusion known as the Sri Lankan 'republic' and our supposedly 'democratic' society, we have to come to a conclusion that we always dreaded: We, and our parents before us, were pretty helpless. Nobody likes to accept that their parents were helpless. There's nothing in the world that Ammi and Thathi can't fix. But there is.

And I digress, as I always do. The ship has been wreaked under our 'rents watch. It is taking in water. But there's a lot of cargo in there to salvage, too numerous to be carried to safety. You face the great decision: Do you save what you can, abandon ship, and swim to certain safety? Or do you attempt what many would consider impossible, and try to repair the ship and save all the cargo? Do you escape with your memories of paradise, your photos, your mementoes? Or do you try to save paradise itself?

Edit: Of course there are a few wise/crazy fellows who jump into the stormy sea and swim to land, get resources from there, and leave the safety of said land and come back to repair the ship. Those are a truly brave/insane bunch, risking the lives they've built up and everything they have to save a sinking ship.

Please Note: I hope nobody takes this post the wrong way. This was not meant as an attack on people who may have chosen the first path. I have many good friends and people I love dearly who have chosen that path, and I still love them dearly and respect their choice. I am merely trying to justify insanity, the attempts of some many to swim against the hard current. I hope you, the reader, understands this...

:)

You'll start writing a blog!

I know! The guy who can barely type a letter out in an hour at 16 will be writing posts, long ones sometimes... it's going to be an amazing experience, so I suggest that you start right away, and stick to your real name. When your friends find out, it'll be a lot less embarrassing than trying to explain 'Chavie'... :P Oh, and use Blogger, not Wordpress. Remember that 13-year-old web designer you killed with a shovel and buried in the garden? Well he's gonna have a whale of a time messing with the CSS! ;)

Love your friends, you know how lucky you are to have people like that. They've stuck with you through thick and thin and you could certainly appreciate them a bit more. And FFS, be good to your little cousin bro! You haven't got much time. In 2 years he'll leave for Ingerlaand and you won't get to see him for 2 more years. You know what a pain he can be at times, but remember that he loves you, that you're his one and only Aiya, and that he'd be the closest thing you'd ever have to a brother. So drop the attitude, stop ignoring him, and give him a big hug for me, kay?

Don't worry too much about your studies, you're going to ace all the exams. But please, please, PLEASE FFS, don't do Applied ICT! You can throw away this letter and not take a word of advice I give, but please if you love your parents and don't want them to go through all kinds of crap because of you, do chemistry or something instead. You'll thank me for it!

You're going to be a lot less religious in the years to come, but that doesn't mean you'll turn into a immoral bastard. But try not to stop observing Sil with Ammi, sitting on the ground all day might not be fun, but atleast try?

Music, I know you aren't into it right now, but by next year you won't be able to live without it! Don't listen to stuff just because your friends like it. Delete the hip hop off your HD, you're never going to like that stuff and there's no point listening to stuff that you don't like. Music for you would be about happiness, so listen to songs that make you feel warm inside. A tip if I may: Next time you go to Kandy, rip 'I Feel Fine' off your uncle's Beatles' CD, put it on your phone (yeah you're gonna get one of those soon, and use it for the next 3 years and counting!), listen to it 3 times in a row. You shall be hooked for life! :)

OK, computers! You'll get rid of that old Compaq dinosaur next year. Be sure to get atleast 1 gig of RAM on the new machine, or you won't be able to play CoD4 properly! And PLEASE get a router when you get your ADSL, you'll avoid countless nights trying to compile your modem driver on Ubuntu to no avail! Oh, and webcomics. Start reading xkcd and Questionable Content, you'll love them! What? URLs? Google can find you stuff OTHER than porn you know, so start using it!

Right then, go and get back to whatever you were doing while pretending to study for your O's... and no, you'll never learn to study, sorry! :)

With love,
Older (only by a couple of years) you.

***

Thanks Cadence for the tag! I tag Kirigalpoththa and Black... :)

random post #60

One word that I wish was easier to say in Sinhala is 'cousin'. I mean, 'ඥාති සහෝදරයා' is too long and too formal, and 'නෑනා' makes me uncomfortable cos it always reminds me of cousins getting married and shiz... :/ I mean if there was a simpler, less-formal term, like say 'කසයියා' (I hear the thunder gods grumble in the distance!) errr! ok, ok, what about 'ඥායියා' then? :P no? but WAAAIIIII?! :(

***

The areas that I've highlighted in the picture above, near the Rukmale housing scheme, used to be two tall proud granite mountains, the closest there were to our house I think. The one in the bottom was strikingly beautiful, shaped like the head of an Elephant. But sadly, they're no more, since they've almost totally been blasted apart to make those small rock pieces used in road construction. Sad, I know! :(

***

This blogger will be beginning his new life at the university from next Monday! yay for the fact that it'll make me employable, boo for the fact that I can't sleep all day and not have any work to worry about! :( And this morning a wise wise friend of mine shared this gem on Facebook! :D

"The back rows [in class] produce the wise"

So, that's it for now. Will post again soon with any updates... :) 

Pokerface

I've developed a brand new addiction to playing poker on Facebook... which is kinda strange, because back when I was in school (during the last two years of A/Ls) everyone was playing Facebook poker in the computer labs and real poker in the classrooms during off periods, and I wasn't! :S I was more interested in playing Counter Strike in the labs (we'd switch to the easier-to-conceal-behind-your-work Deluxe Pool when the teacher started breathing down our necks!) and wandering about around the school during off periods... man, those days were fun! :D

St. Fallen shared a cool and lightweight application called Screamer Radio that enables you to listen to a wide range of webcasts from radio stations around the world... what I like most about it is the ability to save the tracks onto your hard drive, something that I used to do by manually going through my Firefox cache, but is now only one click away! so we're basically using legal radio webcasts to illegally download music... niiiiice! lol ;)

My favourite station on it at the moment is Radio Luxembourg, which is the descendant of a famous station situated in Luxembourg that used to broadcast rock music to the UK back in the day... something like the offshore pirate stations in the movie 'The Boat That Rocked' I watched sometime back. That movie was good! The soundtrack was awesome! I'd definitely recommend it for lovers of '60s music! :)

Fukitol

I Need You is a song off The Beatles' fifth album, 'Help!'. Written by George Harrison it was prolly meant for Pattie Boyd, his (and Eric Clapton's! what was it with her and guitarists? lol) future wife whom he was trying to date (apparently unsuccessfully) at the time... good song I must say, they all look like they're freezing in that video though! ;) I can't also figure out what all the tanks/army dudes are sitting there doing! are they gonna bomb the fab four or something? O.o

So, one of my best friends knows about the blog now... wazzup Sai! :P :D

anyways, posting this coz I've kinda gone AWOL from the twittersphere and stuff... not to worry, I'm still alive and well... ;) *cue groans*

I was reading some of my older posts, and it occurred to me that this is not the first time I've found it hard to update my blog because I think too much, so I'm just gonna take my 'fukitol' pill and be normal again! :D

by the way, where have Harumi and MTC disappeared to? :S I totally miss you guys and your writing!

p.s. this better not get posted on the thread Sai! :P ;)

ABC tag

Ok, I didn't plan to write another post so quick but was pleasantly surprised that Harumi had decided to tagged me... thanks Harumi! :)


The Tag

1. A – Available/Single? are they both the same? :S I am 'single and loving it!'... ;)

2. B – Best friend? that Fascist/Communist/Monarchist buddy of mine that I talked about on twitter... lol ;)

3. C – Cake or Pie? Chocolate Cake! :D

4. D – Drink of choice? I guess right now, It'd be Pineapple Juice! ;)

5. E – Essential item you use every day? haha need I answer this? the PC by far man! :D

6. F – Favorite color? Dark Blue and Sea Green

7. G – Gummy Bears Or Worms? haven't eaten either, I think! :D

8. H – Hometown? Colombo

9. I – Indulgence? Gaming? :D

10. J – January or February? hahaha August man! Kite season!!! :D

11. K – Kids & their names? it sure as hell ain't gonna be 'Albus Severus'! lol ;)

12. L – Life is incomplete without? my parents! :)

13. M – Marriage date? the day I give up my freedom! NOOOOOOOOO!!! :(

14. N – Number of siblings? nada! only child... :)

15. O – Oranges or Apples? (pine)apples? :D Avocados!!!

16. P – Phobias/Fears? heights and snakes... :|

17. Q – Quote for today? "Live and Let Live!" :)

18. R – Reason to smile? I dunno, I like smiling! I smile a lot! :S

19. S – Season? Rainy season? KITE SEASON!!! YAY! :D

29. T – Tag 3 People? open tag, as always! :)

21. U – Unknown fact about me? I was a monarchist too when I was 13! :O

22. V – Vegetable you don't like? Broccoli! *pukes*

23. W – Worst habit? my (slight?) evilness! :(

24. X – X-rays you've had? once... :|

25. Y – Your favorite food? Gotukola and Wattakka? :D

26. Z – Zodiac sign? Aquarius (and according to mom it justifies my laziness! lol) ;)

The Rules

1. Link the person who tagged you.
2. Post the rules on your blog.
3. Share the ABCs of you.
4. Tag 3 people at the end of your post by linking to their blogs.
5. Let the 3 tagged people know that they have been tagged by leaving a comment on their website.
6. Do not tag the same person repeatedly but try to tag different people, so that there is a big network of bloggers doing this tag.

random post #58

random post #57 can be found here

So we went to Anuradhapura and came back within the space of 2 days... I believe Anuradhapura was the first city that had advertisements on road blocks... starting off with those earth-filled barrels with the "Siddhalepa" logo on them... one of my mom's old suddha bosses had once said that Sri Lanka is the only country in the world that he had seen sponsored checkpoints in... hmmm :)

So, I reprised my role as the family map-man, the guy who takes all the heat when he misreads a map and says "left" instead of "right" you know? I was like pretending to eat all the way upto Anuradhapura since I still have trouble with left right... hehe ;)

Ritigala

So on our way back, saw in the distance Mihinthale, and I thought it was Ritigala so... and Thathi tells me that it's not, and points at a large grey blob in the distance... So Ritigala... we meet again!

I remember how so many years ago, when we went to Anuradhapura, the family had decided to go to Ritigala... I had got into a fight with Ammi that day and I refused to go, opting instead to stay with my little cousin malla and my aunt... so they went! without me! and the little backstabber totally went to sleep (he was 2 years old or something... but still!) and so I was left jobless and sulking the whole day... hmph!

Last year we were passing Ritigala on the Maradankadawala-Habarana road... and it was freaking Ginormous!!! You couldn't believe that a mountain of that size could exist smack in the middle of the plains of the dry zone! It was truly surreal, and the fact that I missed out on such a beauty kinda dawned on me... :(

So Ritigala, mate... I shall climb you someday! and since they say you're a part of the Himalayas, that'd be as good as me climbing Everest! Someday mate, someday!

Footnote: I'm trying out a new Flickr account since my Picasa account kinda killed itself when I switched my Google account... :S why couldn't it be more supportive, like its sisters Analytica and Blogga... even Reada is so easy to set up... I dunno Picasa... you really broke my heart! :P (This Flickr account has since been deleted. The photos from the trip can be seen here)

Footnote 2: Thank goodness for Blogger autosaving the post... MAAAN! the power just went (so did my UPS!) and I was like *sheeeet* :D

Footnote 3: sorry for being a whiny self-pitying sorry ass in the last few days... I have realized that I'm just 18 and if I don't make mistakes now and learn from them, I'll end up making them when I really can't afford to... Really really sorry if I freaked you (yes YOU!!! over there on the corner mister!) out... :)

The "I hope no one gets pissed" post

Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.

- attributed to Albert Einstein

I'm not sure whether I'm supposed to write this down... but here goes nothing!

I've discovered recently that I'm the same old naïve, clueless and immature 15-year old brat I was 3 years ago. I still remember just like yesterday how I, with my bestest bestest frenthos seated around the table, revealed my brilliant 'discovery'... This was almost exactly 3 years ago... Then a few months later, it broke my heart to tell them that it didn't work the way it was supposed to...

Now fast forward to about 2 years ago: School canteen, early morning. A skinny kid is surrounded by a bunch of peers, their eyes all filled with eagerness. He details the events of a fortnight ago, sensational events: he had made a life-altering 'discovery'... any bets on who the kid was? Nope, not Harry Potter... though the last book did come out around that time! ;)

So now, they say the 3rd time is the charm eh? Well not in my case.

One of my friends is going to Aussie for uni, so I'll be meeting my best friends tomorrow at a farewell party of sorts... Guess what kinda story the skinny kid surrounded by his friends will be telling them?

The End!

Exams are over!!! I'm feeling all sentimental about the last 2 and a half years... missing my friends and stuff... :)

So what DID I learn at the end of the day?

• Driving exams are all good and well, but getting your license doesn't mean your parents are going to let you drive... Sad but true, I spent more time at Werahera that day getting my license than I've spent driving since. It's pathetic, so pathetic that I think I've forgotten how to do the clutch-balance properly now... ARRRGH!!! :(

• You may grumble what a bunch of idiots the school administration is, but at the end of the day they do their job... You have to apply for exams yourself and go to a gazillion places and rasti-fy to understand what a load of work they save you from!

• Blogging is amazing!!! maybe even better than Facebook?! :D

• Wars are long and bloody affairs... At the end of the day there are no winners, everybody just loses! People lose their lives, their limbs, their belongings and their freedom, sorta like that line from Won't Get Fooled Again: "Meet the new boss, same as the old boss!" We need to let those people go!!! (and if you haven't listened to that song: DO IT! one of the best songs ever IMHO!)

• In a classroom, it's always better to pretend that you're below average! The people you befriend in that situation don't like you because you're smart and they can copy off you, but because they genuinely like you. *feels all lovey dovey* :) plus, you'll never get blasted by the teacher for doing better than him, right? ;)

• The British Council will NEVER call you back. You should always call them and find out whatever you want. Simple fact, talking from experience! This applies to government departments as well, although calling one of those will be a waste of your money, time and good health, unless of course you use Upahara! hahaha ;D

• Never say never, there's always a way, but it might be wise to ask for help! (That is, unless you're at an exam! haha) :D

• The most docile and innocent looking creatures (no I'm not talking about squirrels here!) can turn on you, with such force that you wouldn't know what hit you! Never underestimate the power of words...

• Never forget your true friends, they help you out when everything seems lost!

• Twitter is addictive! stay off it... ;(

• There's good music out there, hidden away by the sands of time...

• The internet is just awesome, you can uncover all these said heaps of good music, hidden away by the sands of time™ :P :D

• Never pay for music, we're poor enough already! (Viva la Pirate Bay!) ;)

• Learn to play an instrument, it's an investment you're never going to regret. (That being said, I haven't learned anything yet! hahaha)

• January exams are always easier than June exams! Trust me on this one... :)

• Depend on xkcd for all your life's decisions! :P

• NEVER EVER DO EDEXCEL APPLIED ICT!!! YOUR TIME IS BETTER SPENT LEARNING HOW TO DRIVE EVEN THOUGH YOUR PARENTS DON'T LET YOU DRIVE ANYWAY! It's just the most pointless subject ever, you don't even get enough marks for the time and effort you put into it... If you're doing London exams, do Cambridge, which is much more recognized. If you're forced to do Edexcel do something worthwhile like Further Pure maths or Chemistry (even if you're planning to do something computer-related at Uni), at least you'll get some good marks... :)

• Oh, and don't listen to rock music before an exam, it keeps playing over and over in your head when you're in the hall doing the exam... and you feel like singing along! :S (happened yesterday! The Rolling Stones were playing a concert in Sugathadasa Indoor Stadium! lol) ;)

Design Changes for Summer 2009

Yes, I have an exam tomorrow...

Yes, I missed the match last night! :( Daaaaayummm!!!

Yes, I've been spending way too much time combining BTemplates' 2 Plus and Floral Concept themes into the one you see right now...

Yes, I love the fact that red, white and blue have become the main colours in the blog... Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité! :)

Yes, I've managed to make myself a twitter blogroll of sorts! I dreamt that up in my sleep last night... :S If you're not on it, then prolly means your account is protected... sorry!

Yes, I'M A BAD BAD BOY! Going off to study now... :(

I WAS FRAMED!!!

...or tagged more like, in the RD taggathing, by Serendib Isle and Kirigalpoththa! Thanks guys! :D

The rules are:

• You write five words to describe how you feel about recent events in Sri Lanka.
• You tag five bloggers.
• You sit back and relax.

So my thoughts are:

1. Relief
2. Sadness
3. Regret
4. Worry
5. Hope

My Tags

1. Gadgetgirl, the one who likes socks, the purple ones! :)
2. Tulie, the raging cyclone
3. Meg, the one who puppeteers
4. The Single Couple, the one with the rabbit
5. Fallen, the one who was canonized...

Thanks! :)

Goings on

This morning, noticed to my horror that a gecko had been totally flattened by the door. Idiot that I am, told Ammi. We had a big argument as to who was going to clean up. Both of us refused to budge, which automatically meant that I was there 2 minutes later, with pan and brush in hand. The corpse fell after a bit, but the tail refused to budge, even after multiple strokes with the brush! It was so spectacular that I would've posted pics, IF I hadn't almost thrown up... (thankfully I had an empty stomach at the moment, my kidneys still hurt from the experience)

Stupid geckos!

Ummm... During my time away from blogging, time I spent mostly at Computer class getting ready for the practical exam, I drank something for the first time, and it:

1. It tasted god-awful (well actually worse than I thought it'd be... lol)
2. It didn't give me the desired effect, won't ever BUY it! (just like dragonfruit, so!)
3. Mom would've been furious if she knew I drank that... *shivers in fear*
4. Made me go all hyperactive (think insanely throwing paperballs right in front of sir's face) and made me say the f-word out loud (in the middle of a class mind you!) four times after I drank it! :S

wanna guess what it was?

Little did I know that a week later my computer sir would accuse me of "confusing everybody else" because all the other retards had decided to use MY database for their exams. of course, non of them had the guts to stand up and say that they had taken the database from me (with my consent, but that doesn't really matter does it?) and were simply asking me for technical assistance. So poor old me ended up "nakadi pusi"... My friend told me that he had never seen sir meltdown like that, he was pretty much shouting at me at the top of his voice for a good 15 minutes. I still have my doubts that it all had something to do with the paperball incident... lol! :D

This post is kinda retarded because it's 3 useless posts abridged into 1 useless post. The first part happened today, I'm still feeling all puke-y! :(

Murals

He was your average 5-year-old boy, turning the walls of his home into one giant canvas, much to his mother's displeasure. He drew what other 5-year-old boys drew: Techy stuff mostly... Dams and Power stations, Pylons and cables. One of his mother's cousins once remarked that the stairway wall had the whole Laxapana Complex sketched on it.

Among these carefree drawings, one curious sketch stood out. In the back wall near the fuse-box, hidden from view almost. A long straight road led to a tall building... a burning building. A side-road led to another building, which wasn't in flames. Seeing his parents puzzled looks, the boy explains, pointing at the building on the side-road: "That's where mama works!" with a look of innocent relief on his little face.

***

He remembers that sound... deafening, metallic, very very scary. Louder than the loudest thunder. The teacher was getting a bit nervous... "Madam, sounded like a train collision..." she tells the other teacher. They both stare out the window, at the railway tracks and the greenish Indian ocean. All they see is black smoke, menacing black smoke, rising from the distant Fort.

And just like that, school was over! Although school looked more like it was having the concert, because everyone's parents were there!! His parents put him into the back seat of their car, and till they got to Park road, his mother was constantly on the cellphone. "I can't get to him, the lines are all jammed..." she said to his father, lying the phone down. What a wierd combination of words? "Jam in the lines"? He chuckeled at the insanity, yet he chuckeled silently, to himself, a mental chuckle. There was something very very worrying about his mother's tone...

The first thing they do when they get home is switch on the TV. A dazed looking news presenter keeps mentioning a lorry and a bank. A fire leaps out the windows of a tall building. A couple of firefighters on a lift pull a man out a window. There's utter chaos, bodies, glass shards everywhere, people lying on the ground, bleeding like water fountains. The boy can't get the images out of his head. He wakes up suddenly that night, the burnt corpses won't go out of his head. He walks up to his parents bed, and cuddles up between his mother and father. No creepy corpse can get to him in his mother's warm arms.......

.hopefully.

My two cents on social networking

The Whackster wrote about twitter some time back, and these past few days of twittering non-stop has made me appreciate why we fall in love, and out of love, with social networks. Does anyone remember the day you first joined Facebook? I do... It was at the school computer lab sometime in Mid-2007... a long long time before Facebook became popular with the average Sri Lankan school kid (and that explains why it wasn't blocked at school, unlike Hi5, the dominant social network among us at that time) and I remember just why I joined (yes, it involved a girl... duh! hehe) and I have been through a lot with Zuckerberg's contraption: 3 major design changes, the rise and takeover of applications, pokes, superpokes, walls and superwalls, threads, groups, photo tagging (something I had never seen before that, although I believe it had existed much earlier) and yes, the relationships and the breakups that took place on Facebook. And when I first heard about twitter, I was confused as to how a social network could grow based solely on 140-character updates and messages. Then Facebook changed it's design to mirror twitter, and I was furious that this had happened. The homepage became cluttered and all sorts of bull started appearing on it.

So it was with very low expectations that I joined twitter, and that too only to follow 'famous' people... Now, one month and 1057 updates later (mostly @ replies though), I have gone through making new friends, finding out stuff (did anyone else know about fingermonkeys?? I sure didn't!), analyzing Kottu bitchfights (that was fun!), sharing hugs and other 'moments', debating television shows, movies and music, being at the receiving end of quite a number of old 'Thomian jokes', and of course that one instance of getting caught twittering at a class! The sheer number of updates show how addictive twitter is, and it doesn't look like it's going away anytime soon! :D
So, all-in-all, If you were a guy who should be studying for his final exams happening in less than 5 weeks (!!!), I wouldn't never never never ever never ever never (even if I hated you!) suggest you join twitter! Don't!!! Seriously! :P

Edit: St. Fallen shared this video poking fun at twitter-culture with me, and I wanted to post it here

You know you're living in Sri Lanka when...

...one day you're boiling in the heat, and the next it's raining cats and dogs and thundering and lighting like there's no tomorrow! :) Yes, thank goodness the heat's gone away... man that was the worse couple of days I've had in the last few years. Hope no one starts complaining about the rain now, as John Lennon put it so aptly in the often forgotten (or rather, underrated) Beatles B-Side "Rain":

If the rain comes they run and hide their heads.

They might as well be dead.

If the rain comes, if the rain comes.

When the sun shines they slip into the shade

And sip their lemonade.

When the sun shines, when the sun shines.

So from nagging about the weather, to something we men (or boys as some would say...) like to nag about a lot: women! I mean I love women and all (ok maybe not as much as Mr. Bush's gynecologists! hahaha) but you know, when you're in a boring class trying to horen twitter* write some complex VBA code to update tables in Access, the last thing you want is for a bunch of girls to start giggling (in that annoying high pitched voices of theirs too!) about how hot(???) some jobless bugger in Twilight(???!!!) is... and the feeling of sweet revenge when the teacher shouts "Girls! enough gossiping now, get back to work!" is followed by that feeling of your stomach turning upside-down when the bugger cries "oi Chavie?! twittering are we??!!! wtf man! I thought we were facebook brothers and all!!! Stop procrastinating and get back to work!!"... Haiyooo, women! ;P hehe *runs away from horde of females out to kill him* :D

Anyhooo, what does it say about a guy when he's trying to turn on his computer in the middle of a thunderstorm just to write a blogpost!? :S nothing good I suppose... heh :(

* horen twitter- trying to twitter in class without getting noticed by the teacher! :)