I won a Galaxy Tab from Dialog recently. Ever since i used a friend’s ipad briefly i was playing with the idea of buying a tab. not only because i’m a bit of a gadget freak, but also because i thought it was an easy, portable computing option. So what happens just when i’m contemplating this is a competition ...
Often in Sri Lankan clothing stores you can find designer wear going dirt cheap. Most of these clothes come from garment factories. They are either rejected shipments or a result of surplus production. It’s technically illegal for the factories concerned to sell these items but they do so anyway, lucky for us. I’m not going to go into the ...
Water Is Life is carrying out a play on a twitter hashtag that is usually considered to be satirical. #firstworldproblems tweets are usually self effacing guilty admissions of how people have it so good but they still complain. Water is Life however have voted to take it seriously. I don’t whether on purpose or not. Their campaign features poor kids complaining ...
Image from the BBC: Hajj 2011 It’s Hajj season again. From all over Sri Lanka, a few thousand fortunate Muslims have already left to perform the actual pilgrimage, a once in a lifetime obligation for those who can afford it, to join hundreds of thousands more in Mecca. The Hajj is the pilgrimage of Abraham and has been followed ...
From the impressive @13thWitness’ Instagram feed I stayed away, i really did. I was derisive of the ‘hipster’ image associated with it . I didn’t want to be identified as one. Why would i use my perfectly good camera to take perfectly good pictures and then make them look like they were shot with my uncle’s old Pentax and ...
The Rally For Unity crew has done a pretty neat timeline and infographic (click to enlarge) of the events that took place in Grandpass between June and August this year. Accurate information is crucial if anything is to be done about the upsetting problems we’re seeing today. IMO mainstream media, due to various restrictions, is failing at providing a ...
Galle Face (and a shameless plug for my Instagram) Washed out streets and a clean Colombo welcome the start of SAES2013. A literary metaphor for a fresh beginning? Perhaps. But also an ominous symbol of one the themes of the conference. The weather in Colombo hasn’t been normal for years now. When I was a kid, the monsoon was like ...
Is the president really in need of several pints of blood of people who don’t eat pork? Are people in specific districts of Sri Lanka undergoing simultaneous mass hallucinations possibly brought on by the collective effects of coastal winds, fasting and being of a particular ethno religious persuasion? Like the beggar killings, we might never know [...]
My Uncle, circa the 1970s At Lunch. My uncle Mubarak, dad, aunt and mom are done. I’m just beginning. My uncle; “so how was Knuckles?” I tell him the story. “There are animals there” he says, “leopards etc. Did you see any snakes?” “No”, I say, “but hear that it houses some of Sri Lanka’s most poisonous snakes”. “That’s ...
(Syndicated with permission from Frontier Research) News Asia’s MSCI Asia Pacific Index rose 3% for the week as better US economic data and Chinese stimulus hopes spurred investor confidence, the S&P 500 also rose slightly by 1.1% on similar hopes. The European Stoxx 600 increased by 1.6% on better than expected corporate earnings and stimulus hopes for the region. Meanwhile, geopolitical concerns and North Sea ...
Last week global markets rallied on stimulus hopes and better than expected corporate earnings, while geopolitical tensions drove up crude oil. On that note, speculation on what will happen to Sri Lanka should it discover commercially viable oil reserves has already begun. (Frontier Research does this nifty summary as a part of its overall range of news products, usually for private ...
from Neuromancer, not really related Most decisions we make about money, after a certain level, are not based on logic or facts. Emotions, hormones and ego play a bigger role than is usually imagined. Global markets are churning*. And financial analysis and economists everywhere can’t figure out exactly where things are going. This is causing some frustration. Market analysis ...
O Levels are starting today. Ada Derana sent out an SMS in the morning saying that the examination commissioner wanted all students to come half hour early. I remember when i did my O/Ls. i crammed a few months before the exam. And passed pretty well. At that time the exam was a repeating pattern, most teachers knew the ...
I’ve stopped writing and genrally taking an interest in US politics and international affairs for a while. because you know, whats the point? Its all so much hypocrisy, i’d say it makes me sick, but it doesn’t anymore, i’m too used to it now. They manipulated post 9/11 hype to invade Afghanistan and Iraq and caused hundreds of thousands ...
Image from deviantart One day insha Allah when my wanderlust is sated, maybe i’ll look back at all the naivity posturing as intellect that so preoccupied my young life. But then I am young now, and perhaps these statements are drenched in naivity themselves and are only posturing as thoughts born from intellect so that my illusions can remain intact. ...
illustration by KAL (great to have met him in Sri Lanka at the US Embassy btw) “Kabul ain’t Colombo” I said unthinkingly. My Afghan friend laughs. Leaving things in one’s car while one wanders off into a restaurant or a mall isn’t done in Kabul. Not if you want to find them still there when you come back. Kabul isn’t ...
It’s been nearly a year since I last went to Jaffna. And things have changed. A lot of things are happening all over the North beneath a veneer of stillness. The people progress doggedly, shouldering responsibilities, not waiting for freebees and generally making good for themselves. Military presence is ubiquitous, but toned down. Instead of standing around in uniform ...
Picture by Sanjaya Senanayake ප්රශ්න නැතිවට ප්රශ්ණ is an old famous Sinhalese saying. The creation of problems because of shortage of problems in other words. The mysterious case of the ‘Humber’ dates smacks of just this. Unearthed at Cargills, Sri Lanka’s largest supermarket chain’s, now apparently racist, shelves their presence was first alerted (to me at least) by the ever ...
Pictured is a massage chair from Abans. It’s made in China, costs about a lakh and comes with a one year warranty sans the grinning analyst. Work just bought one for us to relax on and having tried it twice, i kind of like it. Of course, it’s never going to replace an actual masseur/masseuse. It doesn’t really help ...
This Duran Duran video was shot in Pettah. I like the song and call me a noob but i just saw the video thanks to Raisa. If the eighties rock. Pettah in the eighties rocks more. And Pettah in a Duran Duran video is probably the only thing that rocks even more. The tea shop has a snake charmer ...
