When nature speaks, it is best to be silent...

How true!
I spent a heavenly weekend in a remote forest lodge at Galkadawala - which is somewhere off Habarana - about one hour drive from Anuradhapura. The house is made from bricks, wattle and daub, wood and some iron. There is one bedroom on the ground floor, another two in the first floor, and about 8 people can sleep on the deck - which roughly functions as the second floor. Oh - and there arent any stair cases :) Just a sort of wooden ladder thing.
Sleeping on the deck was amazing...Imagine the night winds gently blowing in your face while you fall asleep listening to the distant sounds of elephants...and then waking up at dawn to the sounds of birdsong...














There is no TV or internet. Which make this a escape from the electronic jungle - especially for computer junkies like myself :)
I wish I could have spent more days there - to take long walks to the now dried up reservoire where hundreds of birds flock to in the early morning... To wait silently while a lonely elephant crept away to the forest...To finally be able to catch a glimpse of that elusive peacock who had been calling to its mate for hours...And to return to the lodge by dusk and stand under those refreshing outdoor showers...And then to savour a delicious drink of fresh wood apple juice...

My dreams are not for sale
They are not on display
Like cheap celluloid Popsicles
With sugar coated dazzling gods...
They were shaped by love
And hope and hope of love
Of truth and beauty and the beauty of truth
Under uncharted skies
On star sprinkled dusks
Days that were so long ago
On Once Upon Times
When I still believed,
When dreams were not dreams
When anything was possible...

Now the possible is replaced by the probable
Hopes with pure statistics
And innocence has been traded with Common Sense
Because everything must make sense
Calculated.
Priced.
Accounted for.
And we have to be logical after all.

And yet
By the green of spring
I repeat
My dreams are not for sale.

Do you ever get bored of life? I do! I am.

Boredom is like leech that sucks your lifesap little by little. If I am this bored by 26 I can't imagine how people survive to be 40. Seriously!

Yesterday I was so bored that I tried to find a way to hack Barn Buddy on Facebook. *Sigh. Yes I know it's sad. I really don't understand why Barn Buddy is so popular. You just plant seeds – add manure – and …wait. The only fun thing in the game is you get to steal crops from your friends. There are some pretty hilarious messages some people have set when someone's stealing. Best one I've come across is "Thova kotiyama kapiya"

I guess the sheer number of Barn Buddy players just goes to show you how incredibly bored people are.

*Sigh

Everyday I wake up in the morning -6.30 on weekdays – and go through the same routine.

Work has become a collection of routine tasks:

Log in – check mail – open Ecllipse – check bug list – try to figure out why the damn thing is crashing. Oh and the meetings. Now we have meetings to discuss meetings. O-o

Then go home – eat – maybe watch a movie or I'm a Celebrity Get Me Out Of Here or some such crap and go to sleep.

Then wake up the next day and it's the same old dance again. And again.

What about all those exciting things that were going to happen to me when I Grew Up?

Personally I blame Disney. You should never let kids watch Disney movies parents! It will give them unrealistic expectations of Life.

"No matter how your heart is grieving – If you keep on believing – the dream that you wish will come true"? Please. According to some random internet searches, Disney is responsible for giving people unrealistic expectations about Love, Men, and Hair.

We need to make kids watch "Rachael Getting Married" instead. It will give them a sense of how utterly mind numbing and boring something can be. Also it will teach them how NOT to wear a sari. "Lost In Translation" is another good movie for kids. Nothing happens in the movie – nothing will happen in life.

If you're reading this and you can't decide if your life is boring or not – OR if you can't figure out exactly HOW boring your life is – visit here. Aint internet a damn good thang?

That's right. We don't. Not enough it seems.
I came across this video clip : http://techtv.mit.edu/videos/140-span-classhighlightwomenspan-dont-ask from a friend's email.

Basically the point is that women don't know how to ask for things for themselves at work. For example, a women goes to a job interview, and she gets selected, she would just say 'Hey great! I got a job..Thanks' and accepts the salary thats given to her. In contrast, a guy would say 'OK that's a good offer - but I was looking for more like <$$$>'. And most of the time, the guy would get the job with a raise.

And you know what? Its true. I got accepted to the first job interview I ever went to and did I negotiate? No. Did I go to another interview to see if I could get a better offer? No. Now, I'm not complaining about my job because it's quite a nice place to work - but my point is that I was just happy to assume that I would be getting what I deserved. And it's not just me. Among my friends, none of the girls negotiated their first offer - ever. The guys on the other hand had the confidence and assurance to ask-for-more.
Why is that women feel so bad about asking for more? Perhaps it is ingrained with our social upbringing? Are we afraid to be labeled as pushy? as bitchy? - I don't know.

It's not just money - tons of other things - exciting projects, foreign trips, workshops, new responsibilities, etc.

Even now, when ever a performance review comes up, my friends (girls) would say 'Should I ask for more this time? Its not very nice to ask no? I don't feel comfortable asking' - whereas my guy friends would go 'I need at least $$$ this time. I have done this and this and this - do you remember I was the one who did that - I totally deserve a raise'.

And did you know that when you do not negotiate, your employer might be thinking you're not qualified. They may think - hmm there's something bad in this girl that we don't see in her resume - because of course we tend to think that the more expensive something is - the better it is.

So girls, please do check out that video. And please do stand up and ask. Who knows you might even get it :)

දැන් ඉතින් සීතල යුද්ධය කිව්වාම හිතයිද දන්නෑ අර අමෙරිකාව - රුසියාව අතර තිබුණ (තාම තියෙනවද?) එක වගේ එකක් කියල. මේක මේ එහෙම එකක් නං නෙවේ. මේක A/C ප්‍රශ්නයක්. :D

මේකයි සිද්ධිය - අපේ ඔෆිස් එක දැන් මාස කීපෙකට කලින් තැන මාරු කරා. ඉතින් අලුත් තැනට ආපු දවසෙ ඉඳලා A/C එකට රණ්ඩු.
මෙහේ එක එක තැනට A/C එන්නෙ එක එක විදියට. එක් කෙනෙක්ට වැඩියෙන් - තව කෙනෙක්ට අඩුවෙන්. ඊටත් වඩා මේකෙ උෂ්ණත්වය 25 ට වගේ දැම්මත් මාරම සීතලයි. අනිත් එක මේවයෙ ෆෑන් ඕෆ් කරන්න බෑ. කොච්චරවත් හුළං පාර.

ඔෆිස් එකේ ඉන්න ගෑණු ළමයින්ට ඕනෙ A/C එක අඩූම කරන්න. මටත් පේන්න බෑ මේ කෙහෙල් මල් A/C එක. අපේ වැඩේ ඉතින් අඩු කරනව. අනේ මන්ද ඒ උනාට පිරිමි කට්ටියට තියෙන්නෙ මහ පුදුම A/C පිස්සුවක්. මේ වෙව්ලන තරමට අපිට සීතලයි. එයාල ගිහින් තව වැඩි කරනව.

reproduce වෙන්නෙත් නැති බග් එකක් හොයල හොයලම මොළේ කචල් වෙලා තියෙන වෙලාවට තව ඒ අස්සෙ හිම මිදෙන තරං හීතල හුළං පාර වදිනකොට ඉතින්!!

මං ඉන්න තැනට කෙළින්ම පොල්ලෙන් ගැහුව වගේ A/C. ඊටත් ඔළුවට මයි වැදෙන්නෙ. දැන් ඉතින් මං අර එස්කිමෝල වගේ hoodie sweater එකක් ඇඳගෙන ඉන්නෙ. නැත්නං හීතලේ මැරෙයි.

ඇත්තටම පිරිමින්ට මෙච්චර හීතලේ ඉන්න ඕනෙ ඇයි?? මං දැක්ක කොහෙද තිබුන එයාලගෙ සීතලට සංවේදනය වෙන මොළේද කොහේද තැනක් ගෑණු අයගෙ තරම් develop වෙලා නැතිලු. මං මේක මගෙ ඔෆිස් එකේ යෙහෙළියකට කිව්වාම ඇය කිව්වෙ මෙහෙම කතාවක් :

"හ්ම්ම් කොහොමත් ඒ ගොල්ලොන්ගෙ ගොඩක් දේවල් develop වෙලා නෑ තමයි"

හික්!

My friends want to go see X-Men at Liberty on Sunday :( I don't know why but for some reason or other they're convinced that they absolutely HAVE to see it.
I've actually already seen it on dvd - and it didn't make me laugh or cry or smile or even puke or gag or anything. Basically no extreme reactions. Actually no reactions at all - well except maybe a yawn or two. And oh yeah - I watched the pirated unedited illegal version - which in itself made it more interesting that the movie by itself is.
Anyway I thought of compiling a list to motivate myself why and how to go through some 2hrs of mutant activity.
Things to do:

1. Bask in the total hotness of Hugh Jackman
2. Imagine basking in the total hotness of Taylor Kitsch (Gambit) if only he was given more screen time
   
3. Curse Fox for not giving Gambit more screen time
4. Try to figure out how people who can make optic blasts shooting out from peoples eyes and make metallic claws growing from peoples hands can not make Gambit's eyes red and black.
5. Be mean and catty and criticize all the poor sods sitting in front (and around) our seats
6. Try to incorporate real life characters to characters in the movie ("Look men that weird blue woman - doesn't she make you think of XYZ miss"/ "Ohhh look look that leaping fat guy with the claws - he's just like your ex-crush hehehe".) Trust me this is loads fun.

Well that's all I got.
Think that's enough for me to go on a movie lunch with my best mates?...



Hell yeah! Hehe
London,NoMonie,Nilubilu,theMadOoori : I wouldn't miss a good old gossipy girly outing with you guys even if it was the most boring movie yet to be seen!
:XOXO

Later:
It turned out they had finished showing X-Men and we ended up watching 'Night at the Museum 2'...We were surrounded by 8 year olds! lol

I have this family wedding coming up next week. I thought I should probably check out some things – such as do I have hairspray/powder/lip gloss, does my blow drier work, etc in advance… So I rummaged in my room – went through my cupboard and dresser.

Now I'm not one of those squeaky clean maniac girls who insist in dusting and rearranging their rooms all the time. Which basically boils down to the fact that there are probably many things in my room that have not been in human contact for quite some time…

Still, even I was quite surprised at the things that turned up in my dresser! Some were items that I had given up as lost – some things that I didn't even know I had – and some..were frankly quite mysterious!

First things first. I found out that I do in fact have hairspray. Ditto on lip gloss – but I'm not sure it's the right colour for my dress. I did have lots left in the powder compact but sadly past its expiry date L Blow drier still in prime condition though.

Among lots of safety pins and broken earrings, I found the following inside:

• 1 very old and discoloured candle (??)

• 3 swimming caps ( 1 blue, 1 green, 1 blue and green. why on earth I bought 3 is beyond my imagination. Possibly kept buying new ones because I couldn't find the ones I bought before? Hmm)

• 3 house badges and 1 pahana (Finally found them! Was wondering where those had disappeared. Now if I can just find where I put my tie…)

• 1 old hello kitty wallet (this one even had an old library fine receipt in it, but unfortunately no amount of money)

• 1 rusted math compass (why do I keep these things??)

• 1 mosquito repellant (it still has 5 more months till expiring! Yay!)

• 3 floppy disks (remember floppies people? These must be from the 1^st year at uni when I used to take a bottle of surgical spirit and a cotton swab with the floppies. I would clean the floppy with the spirit if the drive couldn't read it and it actually worked 75% of the time)

• 1 letter from a pen pal (Lost contact with her like a decade ago..Must have put it here after randomly reading it)

So there. I'm actually delighted with some of my findings (letter and the school badges for instance) while certain items make me suspect if I have inherited my mother's 'throw nothing away' syndrome. Can this have anything to do with 'delete nothing and backup all source code' syndrome do you think? Hmm…

Reminds me of a certain uni projects where we used to save the source in folders labeled 'version1', 'version2' ..etc. In the end we had 'FinalVersion' folder…and then we had 'Final2' and 'Final3'…and then..'FinalFinal' :D Then we got tired of 'Final' and we had 'Anthima1', 'Anthima2' and on and on…