So, Maithripala Sirisena is President of Sri Lanka. Still feels weird to say that. Maithri campaigned on an ambitious 100 Days Plan and he’s mostly kept to it. What has he done in his first week? View image | gettyimages.com 1. He Survived Not easy. If Mahinda had won he would have surrounded Maithripala with troops and likely jailed him ...
Photo via Facebook. Yesterday Ramith Rambukwella of the Sri Lanka Cricket A Team (just below national) tried, for a good few minutes, to open the emergency door on a British Airways flight, thinking it was the bathroom. According to managers he was confused by the dim light. And being completely wasted. Young Rambukwella is also Media Minister Keheliya Rambukwella’s ...
I just gave a talk at the University Of Sri Jayawardenapura along with Reeza Zarook of Anything.lk and Rohan Jayaweera of Google. These are my notes. Internet Explorers Devin Jayasundara asked me for a subject for this talk and I told him Internet property. But I talked to my fiancé Shru and she had a better idea. Startups aren’t ...
So, that happened. It must be tough for Mahinda. No matter how he tries to hold this political bag of cats together, someone always pops out. Last time it was Sarath Fonseka, from the Army. Now it’s Maithripala Sirisena, from the SLFP. These are both important bases of power for him. The Army and his own party. Mahinda is a wily old ...
Sanjana Hattotuwa has got a personal beef with me, but he's hiding behind Groundviews and the CPA. Sanjana, if you have something to say, why don't you say it to my face? I'm here, I'm under my name and I try to be as honest and transparent as I can. You don't need to hide behind Groundviews ...
Much of the international press seems unable to grasp that Sri Lankan voters might have determined the recent election. They’re saying that Indian intelligence did it, or only America can push reforms forward. Actually I guess that’s just the New York Times. Let’s look at both propositions. 1. India Did It When Sri Lanka unexpectedly turfed out President Mahinda Rajapaksa ...
The CHOGM website is making news because it cost Rs. 15 million, which is a lot for a not very impressive looking website. From checking out the delegate login page, it looks like the site was designed by Australian company Centium Software. It also looks like the website is a bit more than a content thing, handling accreditation, arrivals ...
Mashallah, the Central Bank has said they’re going to allow PayPal soon. PayPal (which not ecommerce manna) is nonetheless the global currency for freelancers and small businesses alike. I know freelancers who’ve actually moved places like Singapore simply to be able to accept money – taking both forex and human capital out of the country. Never mind how hard ...
Not the best place for an airport. To quote Mili, Happy Mattala Rajapaksa International Airport Day. Seriously, the government has blanket state and non-state media with advertisements heralding the opening of a new airport in the rural south. They’re trying to buy buzz for a project which is too useless to generate it naturally. Nobody is talking about how ...
The sadness and shame, photo via Daily Mirror. One of my favorite spots in Colombo is the top of Rosmead Place, where Kynsey Road has been painted with doves and flowers in memory of the slain Neelan Thiruchelvam. Neelan worked for peace within a united Sri Lanka and he was killed in an LTTE bomb right there. Now some ...
Dambulla, a beautiful town. Photo by Photosightfaces Muslims are Sri Lanka’s invisible minority. In Colombo they are one of the biggest communties, as they are in many coastal towns. In Dambulla, however, they are more of a minority minority, and un-Buddhist forces there are protesting and calling for the demolition of a mosque (Ceylon Today). I say un-Buddhist because ...
Jayalithaa. You are embarrassing your country. I’m still shocked at how Tamil Nadu’s Chief Minister kicked out some Sri Lankan school-kids, precipitating mob attacks on average Sri Lankans. I mean, really? Have you no hospitality or shame? The kids they kicked out are from Royal College and an international school in Ratnapura and they were just playing a friendly ...
I was recently at Softwave Gallery to get some prints and there were like four people sitting around, none of whom could do anything. Some were cleaning staff, so fine, but there was one accounts girl who could do absolutely nothing beyond processing payments. Like, she couldn’t even give us a waiting ticket when we came in. Softwave Gallery ...
Maps lie. Most obviously, the world isn’t flat, but more relevant to Sri Lanka, ‘winning’ districts is not the same as winning votes. All weekend I’ve been trying experiment with maps to see how to accurately display the 2015 Presidential Election. I can’t. You can see different levels of mapping above – national, regional, provincial, district and polling division. Each ...
Mahinda is still a popular politician among the people, as you could tell from the big rally in Nugegoda yesterday. The problem is that he’s just not very popular in his own party. If he wants to be Prime Minister, that’s a problem. The Nugegoda rally saw thousands of people and made for some impressive drone photography, no doubt. If ...
This is Maithripala Sirisena’s 100 Day Work Programme. It lays out day by day, week by week what he promises to do. I’ve transcribed and formatted it here because I couldn’t find a good English version online. There is some stuff he can do on his own but there is some stuff which depends on him getting a majority of ...
Pascucci Coffee Shop, Wijerama Mawatha This is not a comprehensive list because I really don’t get out much. These are just a few new businesses I’ve seen. Please note that these businesses are new to me. It’s a relative measure. Caffè Pascucci I remember once upon a time when Colombo only seemed to have ...
Sarath Fonseka’s dog. Probably first against the wall. Word on the street is that they’re going to start culling (killing) street dogs. Some fun facts: apparently Sri Lanka has 3 million street dogs (for 20 million people) and about 2,000 people are hospitalized for dog bites each day. Dog culling was stopped in 2006 but they’re restarting it because ...
Sigh. I earlier said that Sri Lanka needs to provide a dignified role for retired statesmen. But no one said that Mahinda had to take it. Mahinda is now wandering around Medamulana with a megaphone (literally) saying that he hasn’t lost because he won the south. Nevermind that Maithripala won 49% of the votes outside of the North and East, ...
The water supply has been suspended to basically all of Colombo – from Kotte to central to Mount Lavinia. I checked the taps and stuff is flowing for now but this sucks. The news isn’t reporting it directly, but the last source of oil pollution into the Kelani River was a Coca Cola factory there. They were the source of ...
