Three days since my first, hurried update. If there is such a thing as too much goodwill, I think I’ve seen it. Gripped by a desire to help out our fellow Sri Lankans, we’ve cooked, screamed, delivered, run supplies by the truckload and picked clean the shelves of our supermarkets. The result? Incredible good – people fed, clothed, supported to another ...
If there’s one thing all my female friends have in common, it’s that all of them have been stared at, catcalled, dry-humped and masturbated at. It’s not that all of them are alluringly sexy (sorry, folks) or go out in leather and heels every day. It happens whether they’re wearing jeans, shirts, skirts, hijabs, flat, sneakers. One of them is a ...
If your digital friends read Asian Mirror, you’ll know that 14 Royalists were recently arrested for breaking into a girls’ school in a Big Match fuelled testosterone frenzy. If they read Colombo Today, it may have 24 Royalists. Regardless of the actual headcount, opinion is divided on the matter. Many believe that the police overreacted to a fairly harmless tradition. ...
In Nice, a man driving a bomb-laden truck killed some 84 people. In the wake of the Nice bomb, many people stoof up and said: “The Nice bomber drank alcohol. He ate pork. He never went to mosque. He was not a Muslim. He was not one of us. Islam is a religion of peace.” This is the same chant that ...
A couple of days ago I spotted a curious question on a YAMU review: “Has the economy improved here so much that 1500-2500 per person is considered middle-class?” I’m not here to diss YAMU or its writers or their definitions of middle-class. I’m here to try and answer this question. Let’s set some context. I. I work in Colombo. I ...
The woman runs across the street. Tamil woman, beggar, your brain notes, and you bury that half-sensed disgust that rises, that uneasy unease that your temple-going, karma-fearing parents buried in you, years ago, one casual slur at a time. Dirty. Ugly. Beggar. You crush these thoughts with the half-formed specter of shame and watch as she recedes, a spot of color ...
This article was originally written as a paper following the 2014 CPRSouth Conference. However, work and procrastination set in, and after half a year of just sitting on it (I completed this in December 2015) I decided to upload it here in the format I know best – a blog. Scroll down past the introduction and the method if you ...
Here’s what we can make out right now. Kotikawatta, Kelaniya, Biyagama, Malwana, Wellampitiya, Kolonnawa, Aranayaka, Dippitiya, Kilinocchi,Meethotamulla, parts of Ja-Ela and Wattala are flooded. According to Anura Yapa’s statement in Parliament, we have: 1. Affected Div Secs: 219 2. Displaced families: 98,075 3. Displaced individuals: 414,677 4. Deaths: 43 5. Injured: 28 6. Homes fully damaged: 286 7. Homes partially ...
December is that time of the year when Christians ready the carols and the turkey and every other religious group, in time-honored tradition, does whatever they can to get invited to Christmas dinner. It’s usually a very happy time for everyone. Except this time someone seems to have thrown a monkey wrench in this jolly process: the Budget. Now that ...
Context: As an outsider and a bit of a data geek, I’ve been tracking the US Election campaigns with interest. My tools are slightly different for this: I’m using the Election Monitor, a Twitter analytics engine we at WSO2 built as a big data experiment, and it’s tracking everything happening around the US Election live. A lot of things just ...
Some time ago, the Colombo Telegraph published an article titled “No Wise Country Celebrates Victory After a Civil War” by the NPC. The NPC here is not the Northern Provincial Council that’s trying to split the country again, but the National Peace Council. Despite the rather stupid stab at describing American celebrations, that article raised a few very important points: ...
When the identity of the new Governor of the CBSL was revealed, I saw congratulatory posts flying left and right on social media. An excellent choice, they said in general. Like many people, I saw his acceptance speech and felt inclined to agree. He sounds like the man we need in that chair right now. Unfortunately, I don’t really know the good ...
I was at the Negombo beach this morning, doing what now seems to be the standard ritual for 2 AM on a Sunday – stare grumpily into the sea and wonder when Rodeo opens for breakfast. A lawyer chappie I’d just made friends with dropped by and we started to chat. Halfway through our conversation, he asked a deceptively simple question: ...
My first introduction to Thailand was Bangkok. We were met at the airport, whisked into a van and checked into an expensive hotel in Bangkok’s Siam Square, where we stayed for the next two days. I knew what I was going to do and who I was going to do it to. Phuket was a completely different experience. I arrived ...
Pada Yatra: rough translation, pilgrimage. They’ve been around for awhile, but the most famous is Mahatma Gandhi’s non-violent Salt Tax protest. That original Pada Yatra started with 80 people and went down in history as the famous Dandi Salt March: it even inspired Martin Luther King, Jr. Leave it to the Joint Opposition to organize their own Pada Yatra. Mahinda Rajapaksa ...
Ah, the US Election. The one event in recent history where the entire world looks at the most powerful nation on the Earth and goes “what the fuck are they smoking?” Hillary Clinton Putting the ‘old’ in ‘old guard’ “On my first day as President, I’ll set two big goals,” said Clinton. “I want the U.S. to have half a billion ...
Microsoft deletes ‘teen girl’ AI after it became a Hitler-loving sex robot within 24 hours (the Telegraph) Microsoft Executive Apologizes for Not Understanding How the Internet Works (Gizmodo) The Internet is plastered with headlines about Microsoft’s disastrous chatbot. If you haven’t heard of it, here’s a bit of context: Microsoft launched a chatbot called Tay (@tayandyou). This simpleton Ai was designed to ...
This article originally appeared in the Sunday Observer (10/1/2015). A long time ago, there was an Indian Prince. His name was Vijaya. Later generations would practically worship the guy, but despite the marketing, said Prince was a deeply disturbed individual. His grandmother had been carried off and knocked up by a lion. History tells us the lion is a metaphor; ...
“They allege that I have stolen $18 billion, but if they find evidence of even $1, I will cut my throat.” – Mahinda Rajapakse Two years ago I used to wonder why more people didn’t really discuss the news. I wondered why we, and my generation in particular, were largely content to ignore everything happening around us and focus on mundane things like what to ...
Every human suffers from two painful maladies: boredom and loneliness. I’m pretty sure these two have wreaked their havoc on every single generation before us. Boredom and loneliness are an inseparable part of the human experience … if you look back far enough, you’ll find a bored and lonely caveman scratching on the walls, and if you look forward far ...
