I'm tired of seeing that monstrosity on the top of my blog

Is it safe to assume that no one reads these anymore? That Kottu has finally moved on to the netherworld. That the old blogger crowd, now probably married and old enough to have multiple grandkids, no longer cares?

Good.

I love being busy, because it keeps the mind occupied, but I recently had quite a long exam season (abridged with Avurudu) and this left some time for thinkingz. Uh oh.

Profundity pundits on social media these days love to throw out phases like "if you love her, let her go know", but maybe sometimes the best course of action is to run away like the wind and let the ambiguity of "what if" keep you comfortable in those long, lonely nights?

Sappy shit, I know. This is why people lost their appetite and the blogosphere died in the first place. Oh well.

ISIS and the modern, westernised girls who flock to it

The premise outlined in the title is all kinds of inexplicable. While trying to grasp the whole wtf aspect of it, this old quote from George Orwell's 1940 review of Mein Kampf stood out:

Also he has grasped the falsity of the hedonistic attitude to life. Nearly all western thought since the last war, certainly all "progressive" thought, has assumed tacitly that human beings desire nothing beyond ease, security and avoidance of pain. [...] Hitler, because in his own joyless mind he feels it with exceptional strength, knows that human beings don’t only want comfort, safety, short working-hours, hygiene, birth-control and, in general, common sense; they also, at least intermittently, want struggle and self-sacrifice [...] Whereas Socialism, and even capitalism in a more grudging way, have said to people "I offer you a good time," Hitler has said to them "I offer you struggle, danger and death," and as a result a whole nation flings itself at his feet.

Humano

Logic calls me forth, but biology holds me back.

I've been fascinated by the whole Soylent story. Unverified claims, of course, but if the man is telling the truth, he might've just made one of the biggest breakthroughs for the human race since we decided to come down from the trees and become omnivores.

I have never been a big fan of food. Lunch used to be a chore for me, back in the day. I'd stay at this home-daycare run by an aunty (my mom's friend's friend), and I'd be sitting there with my bath packet from home prodding away for 45 minutes, barely eating anything, until we all realise I'm not making much progress and I proceed to washing my hands (covered in dried indul at this point).

I don't have much to complain about my mortal frame (yet, touch wood!), and I'm happy being underweight, but if this thing can give me a fully balanced diet that makes my skin glow and concentration last for more than 15 seconds, then sign me up! :P

random post #62

Let's go back to one of the oldest tricks in my book of what to do when I have nothing to write about.

So, I'm going back to uni next week. Baller girl will be there, balling away. Here's a sketch of her that I drew one boring evening at the library:

And here's a story of how things will not work out between us:

"Fifty rupees. It'll make you feel better." said she. Reluctantly handing over the money, he went and sat by the window. The table hadn't been cleaned after its previous occupants had left. He had barely started playing with the straw (from a half-finished bottle of Pepsi) and the ketchup on the plate when she joined him, ice cream cone in hand. "But I have a cold!" he protested.

I found this in the drafts folder. Must've written it one one of those bad days when I was frustrated with everything. And just when you think of how she means nothing to you, and how you're sooooo over her, you see her sitting there at uni; her long hair waving in the breeze, her perfect pearl-white skin glowing in the morning sunlight, and her arms crossed like the total tomboy (yet elegant girl) that she is, and you're left doing this:

Blocked

It sucks, you know, not being able to sleep? I find myself awake at the most awkward of hours, staring blankly at the laptop screen. Three nights ago, I went to sleep at 3 AM. Two nights ago, I attempted to go to sleep earlier but was lying in bed unable to, and then I went into a sneezing frenzy and found it so difficult to breathe that tears were coming out of my eyes. This morning I awoke at around 2 AM, and I've been wide awake for the past 18 and a half hours.

Did I tell you how much I hate IDEs? I also hate languages that are no good without IDEs and import statements, like Java and C#. So this morning, 2 AM onwards, I was busily typing away everything in my mind inside a gedit window because I hate IDEs. And of course, once I'm done I open up the IDE to make sure all the imports are in place and everything is in a runnable state. 5 minutes to clean up all the code and make sure the imports are in place, and we're a go. Start up the SDK, wait for Android to boot up and eagerly unlock the screen on the old Gingerbread ROM. And then BAM, unexpected application error, force quit, and there goes hours of work.The exception thrown doesn't really help matters, and a solution seems out of reach.

So, spirit broken, I waste the rest of the day idly checking out what real programmers are up to on IRC, and switching tabs between that lethal mixture of facebook, gmail and reddit. Rinse, repeat. I swear I'm going to lose it one of these days.

Things left unsaid

I haven't even touched this thing in ages, have I? I miss the days when I could write something stupid and get a million comments. I miss being anonymous, being able to speak your mind, you know? There are so many things I want to shout out about, so many things that the blogosphere circa 2009 would've been able to help me with. Everything was so much better back then, and I'm not just saying that for nostalgia's sake. We were family, even though scattered around the world and never having met.

Getting back to the present, I've been done with the first semester of my last year for about 3 weeks now. The batch is all back home, de-stressing. Some of us (a tiny fraction, really) even went on a pretty awesome hike, more on that in another post. :)

By the way, I'm no fan of modern pop, but I rather like this "Call Me Maybe" tune. I'm even more of a fan of the memes that it has spawned.

There's even an epic one for the bronies (via Chathura):

Ah, on the topic of bronies, I don't think I mentioned this on the blog earlier, but I'm now a die-hard fan of the show. It's all Gehan's fault, really. :P And before you get into insults about my masculinity: the dark ages called, and they wanted their bigots back.

And in other news, I think that certain people need to be reminded that nothing pisses me off more than people who shove their religion in my face. See, I've avoided discussing topics of faith on this little blog of mine because I absolutely loathe discussing things like that in public. Nothing is more personal than your beliefs, and I respect people who understand that. Reminds me of this awesome SatW comic:

Anyway, I'm off for now. It was good to let all of that off. Hope I can continue this. :D

Maybe

Sometimes you tend to forget.
All the interesting people you've met,
All the crazy things you've done,
All the memories.

And all you can see - the past, the present and the future - is the dull grey cubicle you spend your days slaving away.

But maybe there will be better days, days of sunshine and laughter, of cold rain and hot chocolate. Maybe there is still hope.

Delwala, 28/12/2011

Blogging during long weekends

Regular readers of this blog know that long periods of silence are usually followed by a post where I tend to rant about stupid lecturers and having to write mindless assignments etc. This will not be the case this time around, since I don't have the energy to even write a rant anymore. Nothing describes the feeling of going from an awesome 7 week break where you grew in leaps and bounds as a programmer - to a grueling study course which involves about 2 hours of C programming a week, supplemented by 38 hours of reading reference books about the intricacies of dependable software design and time sharing operating systems.

For someone who's never been inside the library, like ever, it's a nice change to be spending so much time in there, faithfully reading the ebooks and typing notes on the laptop. (I don't take the physical book anymore because it involves scanning the bar code on my student ID - a student ID I lost 2 years ago and costs an arm and a leg to replace, hence me never bothering.) If year 1 and 2 were spent taking notes in class and treating the lecturer as god, then year 3 is trying to digest every reason Avi Silberschatz gives as to why Solaris was the greatest operating system ever built, and hoping that your Australian paper marker feels the same way Avi does. But hey, cheer up. Pass rates from previous years hover around the 40% mark, so it's all good! :P

It's not all bad, though. I'm actually managing to stay motivated and properly sit down and study, something I never managed to do, even during my A/L days. The Malabe campus is awesome, expansive and beautiful; and there's enough and more eye candy around. ;) I also met a bunch of awesome new friends, and it also helps that our old gang of five still remains pretty much intact, which is super cool. Maybe when we're done with this year, we could (hopefully pass and) go back to Galle Face and grab an isso wade, like we used to in the good old days. :)

Escape

Komari Beach. Picture by my friend the hiker

Exams will be over tomorrow. I've been waiting for this day for a long time. And my legs are itching to run fast and run far. I need to get away from this city. It no longer feels like home. I know, I know, I used to profess my undying love for her back in the day, but all of that feels like another lifetime now.

I've even been toying with this strange idea of just leaving for somewhere else (Trincomalee? IDK) and starting anew. Strange because it's so out of character, but I don't really know who I am any more. I blame deleting my Facebook account for this. :)

Other things I really need to do include learning some Haskell and polishing up on my driving, because I have a major urge to do something like this, soon:

Since I forgot to mention this: the footage is from a real early morning drive through Paris, in which the driver actually ran red lights and all. It's from a cult film called C'était un rendez-vous

Love is messy business

Platonic love is underrated. This is what I told a friend of mine who had just broken up, to comfort her. Don't we always struggle with that special person whom we really really love, but don't know if we're meant to be friends or lovers? What is it with being lovers that is so attractive anyway?

It's rarely ever the physical intimacy.
Is it the whole social girlfriend/boyfriend thing?
Maybe it's attention. Or respect.

Friendships are so often taken for granted. You crave attention and respect, but you never get it because, hell, "We're just friends, right?". This leads to a logical fork. Do you put up with these limitations and re-adjust your expectations, or do you make it more than just a friendship?

Is it worth it?

I don't think it is. I don't get why rational people do this to themselves, put themselves through the pain of romance. And it almost never works out. Romance crashes more often than Windows ME.

And yet people keep falling into this same old trap. Girl and boy. Share interests. Find each other charming. Carefully build up friendship for months. Move on up to Stage II. Crash. Unable to look each other in the eye again.

And you do this over and over again. I've seen some beautiful friendships fall apart because, apparently, whatever they had going for them wasn't enough.

Part of life? Self-destructive behaviour? I really don't know.

And you...

...are probably the nicest, most graceful, intelligent, beautiful, forgiving, mature, loving person I've ever met. And I'm lucky to have even met you.

There are three things that I suck at very badly. Saying 'Thank You', saying 'Sorry', and saying what I feel like, for real. Every single time I put up a stupid update about some programming thing, or some non-event, I'm preventing myself from expressing how I really feel inside.

And like you said, we're all human, and we all screw up. But I will beat myself up over this. Yet, if I could go back to December, I don't think I would've changed a single thing. I learned more about myself in the past few months than I had for years, and I learned about the world, and I learned about my responsibilities to other people. I dare say I even peeked out of my self-centred bubble for a while, and saw the sun shine outside.

Things always dawn on me a little slowly. And as upset I am about this right now, things will only really sink in once I understand your true value. Under-appreciate the people who love me, I always will.

And maybe someday, just like you said, I will learn to lower my guard. Let my heart lead me, and not my useless brain. Love as fully as I am loved.

Someday. Maybe.

I miss you.

Prefectship: Is it worth it?

Those of you who subscribe to the Sunday morning rag sheet would've have seen the good name of my Alma Mater being dragged through the mud. With it, the shadowy world of prefects and the ragging that they receive as the initiation ritual have come to light.

No right to hurt your brother

I am lucky enough to attend one of the few institutes of higher education in Sri Lanka where ragging is unheard of. When it is so, a new student feels freedom and belonging and a sense of security in his new environment. This is in stark contrast to what some of my friends have had to go through at some of our universities. Ragging, therefore, is a hurtful and vicious activity that should be eliminated.

As schoolchildren, our teachers would make it a point to disciplinary action against children who bully the other kids in the class. Therefore, isn't it a logical extension of that principle to view ragging as a systematic, and extreme form of bullying? And therefore, isn't it logical that the students who have been guilty of bringing upon their fellow students mental and physical harm be subjected to the most severe punishment that the College can hand them: expulsion?

Prison-guard mentality 

Out of the 17 prefects who got suspended, I knew quite well a few. I knew a few of the victims as well. They were among the smartest, most talented (through sports, aesthetics, debating, etc.) and most level headed people I knew. These are kids who would go to debates and make the audience cry about how humiliating and painful ragging is. These were well rounded junior citizens, on their way to take on the world (at some of the most prestigious universities the world over).

So what gives? What turns a non-violent, smart, level-headed kid into a thug who abuses kids (most of whom he has known for years). And what allows this kind of abuse to go on for years without the abused speaking out against it?

There was a very interesting experiment done in the Stanford University in 1971.  Termed the 'Stanford prison experiment', it took 24 undergraduates and assigned them roles as 'prison guards' and 'prisoners'. The outcome of the whole experiment was astounding. The 'prisoner guards' adapted to their roles so well that they began being authoritarian and torturing the 'prisoners'. And the 'prisoners' adapted so well that they would take that abuse as if they deserved it and generally behaved in a subjugated manner. I highly recommend that you read that entire article, because it certainly blew my mind away.

So, giving kids who are in the cusp of adulthood and responsibility a 'prison guard' role, are we endangering theirs and their subjects' futures? Are we bringing up a generation of 'prisoners' who think that they deserve the abuse they get? Are we telling kids that it's okay to be authoritarian and abusive, if you're in a position of power?

Is the tradition of 'Prefectship' worth all of this?

A month in a post

Erm, so hi! Yeah it's me again, the kid who went AWOL all of a sudden. Trust me, there's a good explanation as to why I wasn't around, and as to why my left arm has been shaved of all fur hair just above the wrist. But this is not a time for such trivial pursuits. Or is it? Nah.

Anyway, I was genuinely offline for like 9 days and apart from external factors like nausea and the fact that I was peeing saline... it felt good. It felt good to have some down time. I even learned how to turn off worrying about all the lectures I was missing. I still haven't been able to switch that back on, even after I realised today that I have no flipping clue as to how one could get a user's keyboard input on a Java program (this lapse in programming knowitallitary has since been rectified). Sometimes you realise that there are bigger things, that you could just drop dead and the world could move on without so much as a whimper, that the true value of friendship becomes apparent only when you're lying in a prison (of sorts) unable to move about, that sometimes the little things matter - like you eat one grape too much and you throw your whole dinner down the toilet. It's then that you realise that your dickish, constantly moody, nothing's-ever-good-enough attitude hasn't got you anywhere, and that we're all human and we're all mortals and that we should all chill a bit and be kind to each other and all other kinds of drug-induced crazies. But seriously, this post is getting nowhere.

I just want to jot down something here that's far more important than my ramble up there:

On the 13th of Jan, just 11 days ago, Colombo experienced temperatures of 18.8 Celsius, the lowest recorded in over 6 decades. That day, due to unusually high cloud and an extremely clear lower atmosphere, my little obsession was visible: not only from the 12th/15th floors where we usually look at that, but even from the lunch room of a certain 5 story building, from what I heard. I was in bed that day, unable to crawl out. I missed that golden golden day, and that is perhaps the only thing I regret about this whole month. Meshak got some pictures of it though and hopefully he'll put them up. (I got a sneak peek of the pics off his phone a couple of days later.)

So that's that, that was my Jan. I hope yours was happy and fulfilling. :)

Recap

November started off on a positive note with a presentation at uni that went off pretty well on the first day of the month. But plenty of other things that were planned didn't happen as expected, but it was a good month nonetheless.

I learned a fair bit of C, and can implement everything we learned up to now at uni using it. Object orientation and such are obviously not supported, but the workarounds exist and as many programmers say "C is easier to learn in its entirety, and that is the biggest advantage it gives a coder". Basically, when you know exactly what the language can and cannot do, it makes coding so much easier and more productive.

A thing I didn't get to do was visit ol' Tommy. The time elapsed since I last saw him has hit a new high of 5 freaking months! :( And I don't think I'll get to visit him this weekend either. Sucks ass.

A lot of the travel planned for November had to be shelved, especially due to the bizarre weather conditions. The family did visit Katharagama and the south, but it was a rain affected journey. The planned hike to Nuwara Eliya with Uni buddies didn't work out, and neither did Arugam Bay with Sai and the old thread gang. I did get to spend an extraordinary amount of time at Sai's place though (thanks for the lunches, Sai! :D And the lulz too.) Spending time with one of your best friends in the whole world who only drops by the island once every 15 months or so is one of the true delights of life. :)

Hmmm, so what else. Watched a couple of movies, including "Toy Story 3" (How the hell does Pixar impress over and over again like that???) and "The Social Network"  by David Fincher. The latter was one of the best movies I had ever seen. It had the obvious geek appeal for me ("OMG Zuckerberg uses Linux!!!") and also the first Beatles song in a soundtrack that I've heard in a long time (Baby, You're a Rich Man, off Magical Mystery Tour. Beautiful song.) But what I loved about the film is that he achieved in a couple of years things that most people wouldn't in their entire lifetime. And it made me think... What's the point of being called a geek, what's the point of knowing what a wget command does if you don't apply that stuff and do something exciting, do something that you can be proud of? Will you forever be remembered as a nameless faceless glorified typist who slaved away coding some buggy commercial software, or will you be remembered as a Torvalds, a Stallman or a Cohen? Someone who gave up a boring, well paying life to do something that they genuinely found exciting and worth working towards? It's something I'll have a long hard think about in the next couple of months.

The quest for cheap slippers

I'm the kind of guy who wears slippers anywhere (apparently not Coffee Stop, guess that's another for my list of places to never ever visit), hopefully even to my grave. But my old pair of DSI Beach slippers are getting a bit old and I wanted something nice and comfortable to replace them. I always considered spending more than 200 bucks on a pair as blasphemy, but if you're going for the 200 rupee limit there's not really a lot of choice in the local market.

Trusty old DSI beach

The selection is further limited by the fact that I'm a bit anal about details. My ideal pair of slipper has to:

a) Be flat topped. No spiky 'health' slippers for me Sir, thank you very much.
b) Shouldn't be too thick.
c) The top and the bottom should both be very non-slippery, since I jump off buses in the rain in these things.
d) The shape should be the proper round foot-like shape and not hexagons or something.

So I begin my search at Bata. The slippers are a couple of cents cheaper than those at DSI, which is always a nice thing. There's nothing much in the way of colour selection, but dark blue or red with a white stamp on it looks pretty good. Things are going pretty nicely till I flip the slipper over. OMG, the most horrid underside I have ever seen. Plastic, baby... slippery slippery plastic. I throw away the failslippers in disgust and mosey over to DSI.

The DSI beach slippers look good. I like their blue, black and red colours, but their green and orange leave a lot to be desired. I spot this nice looking dark blue pair, but the price tag says 700 BUCKS. -_____- Stupid 'Walkers'...

So I guess there are two kinds of people in this country. People who spend 700 bucks so that their slippers look good, and those who don't. The vast majority of people belong to the latter category, but they're being kept away from slippers that have a semblance of style in them and are possibly being put at deadly risk with those stupid plastic undersides.

Why can't Bata make slippers like these anymore?

Elegant slippers for a more civilised age

After Hours

I've been thinking (oh noes!)... The lower your expectations are in life, the happier you are going to be. Does that mean that you won't be giving it your best? Stretching yourself to the maximum possible? Yes, or maybe. Does it really matter? Not if you stop, take a look around, and enjoy the little things in life... :)

(One, two, three)
If you close the door
the night could last forever
Leave the sunshine out
and say hello to never

All the people are dancing
and they're having such fun
I wish it could happen to me

But if you close the door
I'd never have to see the day again

If you close the door
the night could last forever
Leave the wine-glass out
and drink a toast to never

Oh, someday I know
someone will look into my eyes
And say hello
you're my very special one

But if you close the door
I'd never have to see the day again

Dark party bars, shiny Cadillac cars
and the people on subways and trains
Looking gray in the rain, as they stand disarrayed
oh, but people look well in the dark

And if you close the door
the night could last forever
Leave the sunshine out
and say hello to never

All the people are dancing
and they're having such fun
I wish it could happen to me

Cause if you close the door
I'd never have to see the day again
I'd never have to see the day again, once more
I'd never have to see the day again

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...

:)

Lilac skies and the end of November

Well, as I sit here writing this, I can't stop staring out the window at the beauty of the sky this evening... I'm home alone (again) and kinda bored, but relaxing after a hectic week. It's never easy to come out of a year of doing basically nothing, is it? ;) Couldn't be bothered watching the match, I mean an innings and 144 runs? gimmi a break! :/ Aaaanyways, I was planning to be all holiday-fying in December but by the look of things that doesn't seem like a possibility. This will be the first time since the O/Ls that I'll be working in December and it must be the first time ever that I'd be working the whole month. Well, better get used to it son! It's not like employed people get vacations anyway, is it? :)

Uni's been good, it's good to be around books and laptops and seniors who seem to have nothing but their presentations on their mind. Yikes, I'd be having to do those in an year too!!! But seriously, it feels good to be doing something productive again... :D

Ok, I'm going to end this by apologising to you peeps for this completely boring and pointless 'journal entry'...hopefully I have better stuff to write about *wink* next time! :)

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... :) 

Something for Sunday

Today was a hectic hectic day! The house is getting painted so mom wanted me to throw away all the useless exercise books I had piled up in my room, some dating from my pre-O/L days! O_o so, stacked them all up in a neat heap of books ready to be thrown out. Of course I found some stuff that COULDN'T just be thrown out, they had to be burnt! :S So some matches and half a bottle of paint thinner later, they were sufficiently charred to make their content unreadable. And so ends the lives of many of my glorious childhood doodles, maps, secret codes and battleplans to conquer the world... muhahahaha! >;)

Oh, and I stumbled upon this while on Facebook... :D