Well, it’s new to me, but it has had at least two previous owners and one leasing company has cast its ominous shadow over the documents. But somehow saying ‘i recently bought a used car’ doesn’t quite bring it, you know? In the process, me and my dad (who helped) did a reasonable amount of [...]
Programming; slightly trickier that making accharu, though principally the same. Photo by @aufidus I have long since been fascinated and frustrated by computers. I’m not ashamed to say it, i don’t understand them. All i know safely is that they are some sort of glorified abacus. But I’ve been given to understand that even this definition might be somewhat of an oversimplification. ...
Stick it to the uncle (Reuters) Will i though? That’s highly doubtful. yes i know all you democracy wonks love to vote. You think voting is the highest calling of citizenship. But taking pills is not the epitome of good health, staying fit is, when the body is sick, medicines dont ...
Just watched Dirty Pretty Things. It depicts a seedier side of London. A London where illegal immigrants sell their kidneys for a forged passport. The operations are butcheries, and some survive, most don’t. The operations manager, lets call him the villain, justifies the whole thing because he is in the business of making people happy. The immigrant gets a ...
Yesterday’s Rally For Unity, I think, was a resounding success. There was a fair bit of commotion in the run-up to it with various would be social media saboteurs attempting to close the event down. But the turnout was a testament to its reach. By my estimates, around 500-700 people were present, but I could be wrong, being notoriously bad at ...
Tokyo Tower: At 332.5 meters (1,091 ft), it is the second tallest artificial structure in Japan. The structure is an Eiffel Tower-inspired lattice tower that is painted white and international orange to comply with air safety regulations. (yes, Wikipedia) Tokyo left me a little out of breath. It is too vast for a few days of wandering about to fully ...
I have a friend who wants to join the police. He is about 22 and holds a high office in the student council of a local university. He is good in sports and has great leadership qualities. More importantly for him, he has a degree and that is something you definitely need if you, like him, are going to ...
slum, somewhere in Sri Lanka, image from JDS The IMF’s Regional Economic Outlook talks a fair bit about the Sri Lankan economy and its growth prospects. The region as a whole has grown but inequality is still a problem. Inequality is not the same thing as poverty, which has decreased. Inequality is measured by the GINI coefficient, which is basically a ...
A picture of cops From the guy who ‘helps’ you park at a random location in Colombo and then snidely asks for payment for a service you never noticed him doing, to the hustlers outside airports who get you taxi’s but yelling and waving their arms about, freeloaders (economic term, rent seekers) are everywhere. There are rent seekers all ...
The Krrish project has been making waves, if only for its absurd proportions. The complex’s tallest tower is going to be the third tallest residential tower, are you ready for this? In_the_world. I hear three quick bangs on a bell; the crowd goes wild as the fighter in the right corner shrugs off his glittering robe. All hail the Krrish ...
Sci-fi as a genre is easily confused with high budgets and futuristic gadgematics. But sci fi is really more about ideas and concepts. And even about philosophy and ethics. Where would Rendezvous with Rama be without the sense of mystery it invokes into the biosphere of the great unknown universe? Where would the Culture series be if it wasn’t ...
Something i saw today got me thinking of Colombo, and does Colombo even have a ‘counter culture’ movement? Does Colombo have meme’s? Do we get taken up with random shizz that don’t mean anything in particular? Of course we do, various teledrama phrases spring to mind like ‘I know the ...
Yesterday i was ‘dragged to court’. Must to the chagrin of my family. ‘Why did you get involved?’ ‘you should have just walked away’, now you’re going to have to waste half your life there and you’re never going to be able to even leave the country, was the general surmise. It was about this. Some three months ago ...
image from the brilliant Wisdom on Wheels Democracy is too nice. Everyone has a say and everyone has a in on how to handle things. This, generally, is a very good thing. But when things hit a rut, and quick decisions are needed, democracy can fail spectacularly. Just take whats going on in the Euro zone right now. No one ...
Dayan Jayatilleka spoke at a recent event organized by the Sri Lankan Committee for Solidarity with Palestine, to commemorate the UN Day for Solidarity with Palestine . The Sri Lankan government has made it a general point to sympathize with the Palestinian cause, though in recent years it has also become increasingly pally with Israel, with an envoy in the country ...
The new budget is meh. Other than the out the blue devaluation of the Rupee, the budget didn’t deliver any major surprises. This is probably a good thing, the surprises sprung in past budgets have seldom been happy, but this budget wasn’t that solid either. While it has its positives most of its proposals for development appeared to simply ...
Town Hall/ White House Original post from the SAES blog. I’m blogging and tweeting from the South Asian Economic Summit along with a few others, hastag #saes2013. This morning Pakistani economist Akmal Hussein talked about how mainstream economics/capitalism teaches that inequality is essentially an un-avoidable by product of growth. He said that equity is not only a measure of social justice ...
Messed up Una beach, pic by Indi Indi went down to Una last night to check out the destruction down there. He says things aren’t that bad. Some illegal obstructive constructions on the beach have been demolished but the actual hotels haven’t been touched. The beach is a mess though, and the season is just starting. Apparently things look like ...
Frontier Research does this nifty summary as a part of its overall range of news products, usually for private clients. They scour through the myriad goings on in the global economy so you don’t have to, and bring out what’s relevant from a Sri Lankan non-expert’s perspective. Pretty useful if you’re generally into economics, or just want to get a feel ...
