chicken pox saga

I went to the doctor last month because there were some unusual blisters in my body. The doctor examined my mouth ,ears, back and forth and gave the verdict.

I was down with chicken pox. Well that was a bad timing, I had to rest in bed while my friends were busy working on group projects , workshops and assignments. I wanted to be recovered as fast as possible. But, well bad timing, I got chicken pox in the wrong era. Suddenly I found my family a group of very devoted followers of the God called Papola.

When I said that I wished to get the chicken pox shot, they were against me. Until that point to today I was tormented physically and psychologically by them.

Ah wait, behind them, there was another powerful figure.

That is called the CULTURE, the culture of myths.

While the culture of myths was slowly killing me, I was googling from the bed to find out an easy cure for the disease. There were many, but to my dismay, all were against “our way” of doing it.

I was fighting against this “our way” of my aunt, but it was not a success. She won. And as a result I spent a very unpleasant time in the bed.

Now its the time to take revenge. I will tell you the story.

At the end, decide whether you are going to kill the “culture of myths” for me or not.


Blisters

My decision to take the Chicken pox shot was not entertained by the family. They said that the coming of blisters should not be disturbed in any way. They should be allowed to come & disappear naturally. Blisters come because your body is hot. More blisters mean that the hotness in your body is being evaporated. So, it is better to have more blisters.

Well, chicken pox is just another viral infection. Blisters are a side effect of the virus. The idea of the hot and cold is a common belief in the ayurveda. I have no idea, what it has in connection to the chicken pox.

Medicine
According to the traditional beliefs, a person gets chicken pox, mumps and measles when is is subjected to the anger of the Gods. So they are called the diseases of the Gods. Taking medicine to cure the decease is similar to going against the Gods. So, the people would pray to the gods and make vows to go the temple and make offerings when the disease is cured.

Speaking of medicine, there is Acyclovir tablet and the vaccine for chicken pox. (Read the hand out issued by the government on treating chicken pox in IDP camps)

I wanted to get either one of them and my father and aunt were totally against it. When I asked why they had plenty of stories to tell me about the people who got big blisters due to the vaccines and girls who never cured their marks, got bad side effects due to the pills. It was interesting; they didn't knew a single success story of a person who minimized the effects by taking medicines.

In my case, all the stories I have heard were positive. In fact, my friends were telling me stories about people who got well within a week thanks to the pills / vaccine etc, but, it was sad that none of my relatives believed them

But they were helpless when it comes to the point of the tablets given to me by the doctor. What he gave me was Panadol, Piriton and another drug which looked like the old round shaped Panadol. I didn't know what it was. But I took the prescribed drugs despite of the strong opposition of the adults.

Food
Food given during the period was second only to the kiri hodhi & rice I had to eat when I had my first menstruation. Turmeric powder for food was totally prohibited. Meat, fish, dry fish, eggs etc were taboo. Fried food too was prohibited. Only 'good food' for chicken pox, as the adults said, was cold food. The idea of the cold food would have probably come from the belief that the chicken pox is a hot disease.

Despite of the cold food I was given, I had a problem of pooping. I felt that my digestive system had dried up. So I asked for papaya. In fact, I felt an strong desire to eat something watery like that because it was very difficult for me to eat hard things as I had blisters in my mouth. In Sinhalese, papaya is "papol" ( පැපොල් )and the sinhala name for chiken pox is "papola" (පැපොල). So my aunt said that eating papol when I have papola was not good. So I was not permitted to eat papaya. Instead I was given ambul kesel, which was again considered to be a cold fruit.

Although eating turmeric powder was considered bad, they diluted some of it in water and sprinkled all over my room and the house. When I asked why, they said that it was to kill the germs. My next question was “Then why don't you eat it? It will kill the germs inside the body?” For that question, the simple answer was “Its the tradition not to use turmeric in food”. So ultimately, when I was able to poop it was grayish, something like ash colored clay. At the first time I saw it, I was afraid of the unusual color, but after few minutes, it occurred to me the reason.

Sleeping
As soon as the news of my sickness spread in the university, many friends called me and asked me to sleep on margosa leaves (කොහොඹ කොළ) and alu kesel leaves. One friend even had taken the trouble to meet my father and give him some margosa leaves. I was first pissed off at the idea. But I could not lie to my friend saying that I was sleeping on margosa leaves.

So I got the them washed, waited till the water evaporated and spread them on the bed. Believe me, it was super cool. Ah, I forget to tell you that I was sweating a lot. It was very difficult to stay in bed when I was sweating. I felt as if my back was in fire. But with the coming of margosa leaves between my body and the bed spread, I found it more comfortable. I felt as if they were sucking the bloody burning sensation from my body out. In simple words, sweating on margosa leaves were more comfortable than sweating on the bed spread.

That was one of the good things I found in the traditions.

Bathing
This is the most dangerous and the horrible part of the story. In fact, this is what nearly killed me.

According to the traditional beliefs, it was necessary to abstain from bathing for 14 days of infection. Then, after the blisters had dried up, a seven day bath is compulsory. This seven day bath should be started on either a Saturday or a Wednesday which are called the "kemmura days" or the days of the Gods. As the tradition says, the bathing should happen before the sun rise. Before having a bath, it was necessary to apply a mixture of blended margosa leaves, turmeric and coconut all over the body; including hair in order to sterilize the body from chicken pox germs and to erase the scars.

Imagine my plight, I was to stay about an hour till that pack dries on my body and then have a bath before sunrise continuously on seven days!!

I strongly opposed the idea.

Meanwhile, I tried to get the back ground story to this from my aunt.

When she had got chicken pox, on the 14th day of infection (forgot to ask whether it was exactly a Wednesday or a Saturday :p ), she was taken to the near by river by my grand ma. Then, grand ma had prepared the mystery pack with margosa, coconut and turmeric and had applied it on aunt's body. Aunt had sit on a stone in the river till the pack dried off and then she was bathed. All this happened before the sunrise and mind you continuously for 7 days.

I do not know how she endured that, but aunt vehemently insisted on the fact that the scars go away only if you have a bath like that.

For her era, it was OK. They had no running water at homes those days. The only source of water was the river. If they get late to go the river people will be there and the patient as well as the care taker would have to answer the questions of the villagers. On the other hand, when it gets late, the water of the river gets polluted. For instance, the people in the upper side of the river may wash their clothes, clean their cooking pots etc and if the patient bathes such unclean water, it might result in another infection.

Since I felt good, said that I would have a bath on a Monday. But my aunt disagreed. She called this friend, that doctor etc and said it was not OK.

I had huge arguments with my aunt over the bathing time and finally agreed to have “the bath” on a Wednesday at about 10'o clock.

On Wednesday, day it was rainy and cold. Not even a healthy person would have a bath on such a day. I said that I cannot. But all my oppositions were in vain. She wanted to have the ceremonious bath on that cold rainy day. The rainy weather continued and so was the bath. I bathed continuously on Thursday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday. After the bath, I was given cold things like kola kanda, saw kanda and thambili.

I insisted that I want to go back to the university on the next Monday. So I went to the doctor to get a medical certificate. By that Sunday, I had taken 16 days of leave. Doctor said that he couldn't give a medical for 16 days for chicken pox. As the law says, it should be just 14 days.

That was a huge contradiction. As the tradition, you should stay 14 days in the bed, then have the 7 day bath and go to work. In total that is 21 days. But the medical certificate says that all that bed resting and bathing should be finished by 14 days.

So, on Monday I went to university. I was asked to have a bath in the morning before going into the university. I agreed to that. Then, as I was trying to eat some rise and curry, my aunt came up with a kola kada (a drink made up of green leaves). I had to drink it because, well, because she was such an annoyance. So I drank the kola kanda as my breakfast and got into the bus. As I was getting off the bus, it was raining. My shoes were soaking wet when I finally made my appearance in the faculty. I finished lectures at 4.30 pm that day and came home around 5.30 pm. It was still raining and my tooth with a broken filling was hurting like hell.

What I wanted as soon I saw my bed was to have a sound sleep. It was cold and using hot water to have a wash was prohibited a long time. In consequence, I had go for a cold water wash.

By 8.00 am next day, I was shivering with fever. i was rushed into the medical center of the university from where I got to know the reason for my fever.

The doctor at the health center was suspecting that my fever was a symptom of pneumonia for several reasons. I was having continuous baths in the rain, I got caught in the rain..soo many rain and water related things.

That is where the tradition becomes the killer:(

I was suffering from fever for another week and that was a great loss when it comes to academic stuff.

I have one request to make from all of you. never resort to traditions if they seem irrational !!

Why just colour, we need the size too!!

Im keeping myself out from the Facebook fun these days. The only reason for that is my increasing love for twitter as a social network. Its simple, fun and useful in many ways than facebook. For example, if i have a problem in ubuntu, twitter status update is the best way to get the problem solved. If you want to check out a film before you actually watch it, a simple twitter search would allow you to know how the people all over the world from diffrent walks of life think about it.

Well, the preference for a social network depends on who you are, what you want and how many kilobytes of personal information you want to be leaked into the cyber space(and not to mention, the type of internet connection you have:P). I wrote a whole blog post on this issue and unfortunately, the recent ubuntu Vs XP issue in the home computer vandalised all the words, commas, fullstops and pictures beyond recovery :(

Fortunately, @ranmalee tweeted this post from Techcrunch about "twitter and how it is better than any other social networking services". So as a replacement post, read this and contemplate. After all, most of the ideas presented are similar to mine:)

eh, that is past and these days I see most of the women updating colors as their status updates!! I was wondering what the hell has happened to facebook or my lady friends there. In about 5 simple hours, my sms inbox was full of more than ten colour messages. In another few hours, mashable unveils behind the scene story as usual.

WTF, it is considered to make the whole world aware of the so called breast cancer. yeah, true it is a deadly disease, let alone just breast cancer, the whole disease called cancer is a freaky ghost. But how does the knowledge of one's bra color help to bring breast cancer awareness? In my idea, this colorful status trend of faceBook is nothing but a way to let the whole world know how many you-know-whats a particular woman has, the colour she prefers and according to some web sites, the colour describes how she feels. (link via @Binku)

Or else, the brain of this stupid godaya girl has no enough power to process the colourful information and decipher out the hidden breast cancer awareness message in facebook updates.

After all, this is another crazy trend started by guys/girls from a world where the people have thosand and one chances to see not only the bra colours but also bikini colors, boxer colors and thong colors. They won't mind somebody posting her bra colour as the status message. Well that is their culture.

halooo, welcome to Sri Lanka. Girls are supoosed to hide their bra using all types of under clothing available. When a bra is washed, grand moms want us to hang it in a place where the male family memebers would not see. If the bra strap is visible to the outside, even the girls with a modern mind set would feel embarassed and what if a guy or a girl in the bus stares at such a visible bra strap (which often happens in Sri Lankan busses) ? ahah, there you got it. No need to explain the feeling right?

So, how come all such girls publicly shouting out the colour of their under garment? oh, people forgeot to mention another thing, although now a widely known secret, it was first thought to be a "girl only secret" in Facebook. Here is one of the emails I received.

Its just a little fun for us girls only..Each of you write on your status what
colour your bra is..Nothing else, just the colour.... Then send this by private
message ONLY, 2 all the females on ur friends list.. Lets see how quickly we can
spread the wings of cancer awareness, and see how confused all the men get when
they see just a colour as our status...Take care

However, as one unfaithful woman of the pack has unveiled the secret to web, "the guys" got to know the secret in no time.

Now imagine a guy seeing "red" as the status of the most innocent girl in his faceBook friend list. I bet 10000000000000000000 dollers that his mind's eye pictures the girl in a red bra in no time. the image may erase itself in seconds or sometimes, it may be carved in the brain for days ; who knows, according to our Psychology lessons, typical male mind runs wild even after a simple stimuli. Of course, a stimuli may differ from person to person. For some, it would be just fun; fun to know something that a typical Sri Lankan girl would usually tag as too personal and keep as a secret. just imagine,

In facebook::
a guy writes "what is the colour of the bra you are wearing now?" in a random girl's wall.
The girl replies "WTF???$%^$%$$###@#@#@#$#@#@^(" and she would be no more in that particular guy's friend list

In real life::
A guy walks to a girl he knows and asks "what is the colour of the bra you are wearing now"
what would be the reply?? up to you to imagine !!

probably not positive right? and if in any case she replied with a color, she would be labled the "slut", or the "pros"

And now, thanks to this stupid breast cancer awareness programm, you are being the laughing stock of guys.

Im sure this color scenario would be one of the hot secret topics among guys (girls) tomorow, at work, school or uni.

"you know, she loves black it seems, she wore 4 blacks and 2 pinks over the week. so if you are planning to give her a gift, remember to buy a black one"

"yakoo imagine X in a dark yellow. yuck I would throw out right in her face!!"

"ooooi, all the other girls in the batch had colorful ones but X has only one color. Poor kella machan"

"it was fun to see how many bras a girl would change during a day"

"Munta lajja nadda manda mewa eli pita kiyanna (aren't they ashamed to say things like this in public)"

"You should have been on FaceBook man, weekend was damn funny, it was like how many bras, colors you have game among girls. This is the high time you create a FB account. who knows what would be the next :O"

Imagine how a boy friend would feel when his friends crack jokes on the color of his girl's bra.

How bad an ego of a Sri Lankan husband be hurt when he gets to know the color of wife's bra over FaceBook?

Finally, the breast cancer awareness turn out to be a joke. Frankly, how many of you guys or girls were tempted to raise awareness of breast cancers as a result of the color wave in facebook? Let alone raise awareness, did you atlest (happen to) read one article on how to prevent breast cancers or on the major causes of breast cancer ? In my case no. I was just educating myself about the colors of "those" and also learned that a bra involves some Newtonian physics. (link via @chanux )

I have no idea of the western world. However, for the average Sri Lankan, this would sure have been a big surprise bra color party.

so, girls, one humble request, think twice before a Fb status update again

One word again, all the above are my ideas in my world, if you think otherwise, you are free to leave a sarcastic comment or a laugh on me and my stupid brain


PS1: I know this is rediculous. but this is my crazy expalanation for the color wave in FB status:P
After seeing so many colorful bikinis during the summer, a group of guys have a thirst to know the bra color of their lady friends during the winter; may be to do a research on the underwear color preferences of women over season, who knows, these days people do weird researches:D

One comes with this magical idea of creating a female FaceBook profile and sending a secret message to all the women in the area asking them to update the color.

And Wow, the research questionnaire is filled by millions in minutes. nice!!

And what if they wanted to do a research on the breast size too? nicer no???

PS2. just got to know from a guy that the newest trend of the FaceBook girls is to update their hair style as the status. That is better than the bra idea anyway

Managing life in the Internet era

Friends are those who enjoy being with us. Out of them, there are special friends who enjoy being with us in both the happy and sad moment. During the days when there were no phones and internet, it was not a hard job to select those few special friends out of the handful of companions. Simple logic, if there are 5 candidates for 3 vacancies, selection is easy for the interviewer.

With the advent of the mobile phones mania to our little island, many had sms friends. They replaced pen pals of the olden days and guess what, these sms pals are more funky than the pen pals who takes months to reply for a snail mail.

Then comes the email, chat rooms and social networking and with them, floods in lot of unseen friend to our lives. Now, the number of friends are not handful but thousands of handfuls. Selecting the best few to be with is a bit difficult task. Lot of people may seem to appear best friends but only lord knows who they are in reality.


But, there are this special buddies you met online, then met in reality and have a good friendship maintained and some although have never seen, continue to be best of friends for a long time.Apart from them, there are school mates and class mates on your chat lists. The third kind of people in most of your lists may be the professional or work crowd. For example, there can be your colleagues at work who chat with you about the present project you are working on. Fourth category is the people you love. May be family or your fiance.

It is always nice to have lot of friends around when you log into skype, Gtalk, Yahoo or facebook for that matter. But how are you going to manage them all? There are hundreds of best buddies online. You do not know what they are up to, you do not know where they are. Thus, having a green bulb next to a name of a buddy does not mean that he or she is ready to chat and similarly, having a red bulb always doesn't mean he/she is not ready to have a chat.


Talking in general, the fourth category and the third catogory are in the top of the list of priorities.

The reason is no other than their importance to your present life. If you do not respond to your GF, she will shout at you and being silent for the professional list is too dare to think of.


But hey, you got to give the others a hearing too. Some times, you are exhausted with work that you postpone some work that you have to do.

For example, when I logged into facebook one day, it said that the next day is going to be the birthday of one of my best buddies. I told my self that I am going to wish him early the next day. The next day comes in, I sit in front of the computer thinking that I have to wish him. In a moment I forget it with the whole load of information/work put in front of my eyes.At the end of the day I turn eyes out of the computer and then only remembers that it was his birthday. I log into the chat using phone, he is no where to be found.

I thought I would SMS, but that too was postponed forever. Later he showed up in the chat list , I tried to say hello and say sorry but he was silent..then yesterday there comes a message saying that I have forgotten his bday and I have forgotten him.

Well, I was helpless. what he says is true. I have forgotten him. I didn't even emailed when he was not replying for chat. I was embarrassed and believe me it was a hurting to get such a message from one of the handful of my best buddies.

True that Internet is helping us to get to know many friends but that is not all, it creates new needs for us and sometimes makes us stranded among the friendships that come along the wires (and for the wi-fi users : over the air.).

The first time I used the internet was to do some research for an English Debate and that day, I thought internet was a great tool for education. The moment I got to know about email, I was crazy sending forward emails to friends. A friend invites me one day to Hi5 and from that day I was not only crazy sending forward emails,reading them but also making new friends. then comes Facebook. (count the numbers everybody, now 3 needs, turn on the computer, read mails, go Hi5ing, see the faces of Facebook and do some research for school work), Then comes chatting, blogging, twittering, stumbling, you tubing, flickering, LinkedIning and a whole lot more.

Its true that they are great services, but still, do you not feel the needs they create? if you create a blog, you feel like monitoring the visitors, so you put up a script in the blog to track them. Than each time you log on, you not only feel like reading the comments of the visitors but to know the countries from where they came and how did they found the link to the blog. The list goes on and so is the day.

We sure can live without those but, "It" sometimes makes us all slaves of the internet and ultimately forget humanity.

Forget it so much that you postpone wishing a person through a call or a SMS because you feel it is better to wish him over the chat which is spontaneous and some times more fun than a phone call.

Or, is it simply due to the over flooding of information? The information updating in real time makes you forget the real life issues ? I do not know what it is. The only thing I understand is that internet is the modern open economy. It provides you with lot of new oportunities and in order to keep up with the world you have to update your selves, sometimes forgetting or rather not not bothering about the old things/ services etc. Frankly, tell me how many of you are missing your old buddies simple because they do not have IM? In my case a lot.

But they do miss you too, specially in the special moments. So make sure at least you give your all buddies in the contact list a missed call once a week. Believe me, it makes both the parties happy or may be end up in a long gossipy call.

Now what if this thing called the internet go brum and bang one day like in the big bang? Well, im going to experience it soon, just got the red bill from the SLT and my dialog bill is too high so that they are sending me SMS from time to time.

So back to the age when there was no phones and no internet. let us see how am I going to choose the best 3 out of 5.

PS: My dear friend( whose birthday falls on 11th of August) , Wish you a happy Birth day. I know this is too late to say it. But still, I couldn't think of a better way to apologize.

Your message in the morning is still waiting in my inbox because I'm not that strong to bear the guilt of not remembering your birth day :(

the bottom line : Take this as a lesson you internet junkies. Computers and internet does not worth a single penny when compared to human beings


Speaking of being addicted to the internet, this what an online quiz said of me.

85% L33T H@x0r (81% - 100%) You live and breathe the Internet. You rarely leave your computer(s) for fear of going through withdrawl. You are beginning to say "lol" and "brb" in verbal conversations and you haven't seen your friends face-to-face in months if you don't count their web cams. Maybe it is time to back away from the computer slowly and go get some fresh air? The Internet will be here when you get back! The Quiz at Quiz Meme!

yes, it sure is the time to back away from the computer slowly and go get some fresh air

See you soon!!

Boys, Prefects and more

This post is nothing but some personal ideas.

These days are making history. A girl was killed inside a school and apparently, a phone, some prefects and teachers are to be responsible for that. Some girls and boys who were imagining that they were in love had eaten kaneru to frighten the parents. These incidents may be just news for the majority of the nation. For parents, it may appear as a warning and for the students it sure is a shocking news. Since many have talked of the incidents in the above points of view, why not blog about the way i feel about this whole thing as a past prefect?

I was the deputy school captain of my school for the year 2006/7 . more than 3 years back, my thinking pattern was very very different than the present one. there are plenty of reasons which you 'll understand by the end of the post.

I still have no clear idea what was in that mobile phone to make her suicide. But I'm sure the school has a big share over her death. if the same incident happened in a boys college, he would be punished, may be kneeling in front of the office and that is all. so , what is wrong with all this girls' colleges?

First and foremost, I love my school because it is the place which made me who I am. If you enjoy being friends with me, you have to thank my school too. How ever, that does not mean that I only have to speak of the good side of everything.

Going back to the incident, if I was the Head Prefect of that school,and if I had the power to decide, what I would do is to talk to the child and let her walk off with the phone. no problem to both sides, she will get the phone and I will get her abide by the rules of the school. But, that is not the case, all the senior prefects would have got together and they decide what to do. This "what to do " part is dangerous. Being prefects, they have the power, but using the power in the proper way is not taught to them by the relevant authorities or simply, as any other human being, they need to use power to gain wealth and status.

It is true that I also had to take some actions to some "actions" when I was working as a prefect. but now, they seem stupid. totally stupid. Once I was talking with a younger sister of the school and she was saying that she was afraid of me. I asked her why. she said that I was strict. well, I would have been strict during the school time, but now i am not (although i think so, its up to you to judge). so the reason to think that I'm strict and a monster to be afraid of?

Tearing up a picture of prince william in front of her eyes! I didn't even remember doing it, but it seems it was embedded in her mind. I continued the conversation. Akki I was born in UK and I love that country. Prince william is the royalty of my mother country. It is true that he is a "guy" but still its nothing but a mere liking to collect pictures of the people you love.

I was sad. but was helpless. during the time when I was a prefect, we had to abide by the rules and if went other wise, it means the end.

Thus, boys were out of everything. Being prefect, I had to be of an exemplary moral character and according to the idea of the world in which I was living at that time, being good is all about being good and being away from boys.

If I go for a debate, a quiz or any other inter school competition, talking with boys was looked down upon by me myself. It's not that I hated guys. It was more like a virtual dungeon. I was under the impression that talking with boys and joking was a bad thing and each time I talked with them I was mentally counting the time and make sure I end the discussion before hitting the red line. It was such a difficult thing for me to talk with boys, let alone having a boy friend.

It was the result of both the school and the family. On one hand, I'm grateful for both the parties for keeping me out of the company of boys and on the other hand, I'm so sad that I missed a great company during the school time.

That is all about being a prefect in summary

Since I missed the company of boys during the school time, now I know what I missed during the past. I personally do not like being in love during the school time. How ever, not having the opportunity to be friends with boys is sure a misfortune.

When a girl with lesser understanding about the creatures called boys come into a society, she a sure to be an easy catch. But today hardly any school would admit the fact. For most of the girls' colleges are walling up the avenues for their students to mingle with boys. Its just crazy....

When such students become citizens of this big society, they fall in to the trap easily. Guys would come as lovers, friends, study mates, project team members etc to your life and who knows what their real intention is if you have no understanding of the way the mind of guys behave?

For me, luckily I met this guy who very well understood my situation and helped me to get away with my boy phobia. But, we cannot be sure that each and every girl would have that chance. Although I had no close male friends at that time, I believed in him and it is my luck that he is such a good person to be with. what if he turned out to be a crazy moron. When he was being friendly with me, I thought it was love but he was just being friends. That was just because I didn't know how is it to be friends with a boy.

When he first phoned me, I thought it was a sin to answer.

But today I laugh at the fact.

The reason is that today I have male and female friends alike and I think it is a priviledge.

However, during the school time, it was not. talking with a boy was considered a taboo and I used to look down upon the girls who had male friends. Any girl with a strict family back ground and would think the same. The situation would be dangerous if she was brought up in a girls only school.

Then, let us consider the present situation in sri lanka.

Mobile phones being prohibited

Facebook banned

Porn sites blocked

Movies with adult only content censored/prohibited

If i was a prefect, I would say yes to all these.

But as I'm not a school child anymore, these things stand just like bullshit.

To start with, I would quote "ඕවා මේ ලංකාවේ බ්ලොක් කරනවා කියන්නේ අනාගත පරම්පරාවම අවුල් කරවන වැඩක්. මොකද ඔයා හිතාගෙන ඉන්නේ අපි බැඳපු දවසේ රෑට කරන්න ඕනේ දේවල් අපේ අම්මා, තාත්තා කියල දෙයි කියලද? ඒවා ගැන අපි දැන ගන්නේ ඕවා බලලා තමා."

Note that this was uttered by a school boy in a conversation he had with me about blocking the porn sites.

Although not 100% correct, he definitely has a point there.

I do not encourage anybody to watch porn, but at least you got to have an idea about sex, no need to explain as I believe that the readership of this blog is matured to understand what that means.

Going back to the words of that teenager,it reflects how young people find a way to quench their thirst of curiosity. If one way is blocked, they will soon find another way.

The issue is the same with all the other taboo topics.

Now you might wonder what the heck me being a prefect has to do with this?

Well, being a prefect, I tried to be a goody goody person. No jokes, no friendly talks with boys and no any other non-sense. I even avoided chatting, emailing and IMing in sinhala thinking that it would destroy the image that the public have of me.

But to day, I'm different, may be different than a traditional girl who would not blog about porn sites being blocked. Coming into the university and of course reading made me completely a different person. The bottom line is that when you hang out with people, you can get to know the society and it is not what the school offers us or at least it is different than what the school promotes. (Now, that statement is personal guys. so, please do not get angry over it.It is how I felt)

This difference between the actual society and what the school wanted us to be makes lot of troubles.

With all those hushed up thoughts and feelings, I came out of the school in 2007. when I was feeling that society was diffrent than the one that we had inside the school it was too late. However, being a prefect, i have got lot of experince on how to deal with people. Being a silent girl those days, i observed the society and of course, made some terrible mistakes too.

But still, being prefect gives you the courage to carry out any task succesfully in life. for me, today I have managed well in the company of males because being a prefect gave provided me the right time to be open. so dear sisters and brothers.think of the chance and act carefully. And parents, im sure if you are with your children and be friends with them, many disasters can be avoided

Till the mood gets fixed

hi folks, its been a long time since i wrote a post in English. there are many reasons behind it.

Reason number one is the launch of my sinhala blog and secondly, exams, thirdly and the most recent one is the restless of the vacation time. sometimes, i just wonder why peple think vacation is all about being free. no it is not, in my idea, vacation is the time to get busy with all the stuff that you couldn't do during the semester. i had many plans... reading, movies, going to the family doc to have a medical check up, visiting friends and do writing and writing and writing for the blog. but until now, none of the plans have made at least one step forward from being just a vacation dream. today, one of my big dream (visiting one of my bestest buddies in Kurunagala)was shattered just at the last moment due to a call from an uncle coming from no where. This is crazy, just crazy, why do I always have to sacrifice my dreams for the sake of others?

at the moment, i m status less and desperately waiting for a change.

there is no reason for this blog post other than asking all the friends to bear with me for the crazy things i do these days.i was planning to reply all the emails, do @replies for yesterdays cat war soldiers in the morning. BUT, my big plan for tomorrow was ruined and on friday, im busy the whole day because of the college day at TCL. Oh, what if i had the chance to get away from all these duties and responsibilities? or at least, what if the duties and responsibilities of mine were things that i love doing?

these are just questions with no answers.

going to watch a movie now..ah, speaking of movies, recently got a 250GB of films and TV series. but damn there is a prob with my new mother board's USB drivers. when i plug in any USB device except the MP3 player, the whole computer gets stuck..just imagining having a 250GB of lovely things in front of eyes and downloading movies with super speed SLT ADSL. These days may not be the best days of my life. But still got to pass time too.

until the mood gets fixed, see ya

DeepS ගේ ලෝකයේ අනං මනං

ගිහින්ම බලන්න

One country one nation......big thank you to all the sons & daughters who contributed towards it

(Pilimathalawa town celebrating the victory )


War is over. LTTE leader is dead.

People rejoice.

But who knows when and where they would start again?

PowerPoint on the GO--Run PowerPoint eventhough you dont have it installed in the computer--

PowerPoint and Presentation, these two words mean almost the same for some people.

Well, it is reasonable as PowerPoint is an easy way to convince your ideas to an audience. But, PowerPoint can sometimes be a mess too. Specially,when it comes to the 'font' and 'version' problems.

But, the software itself has provided a solution for this headache

If you are using 2007 version, click on the Office Button-->Publish-->Package for CD
and if you are working on power point 2003, go to file menu-->package for CD


This option allows you to copy all the files into a folder or wrote a CD of the presentation with all the linked files to the presentation. For example, font files and audio clips that run within the presentation.

In the dialog box which appears next,select what you want to do.




1. Name of the CD
you can give a name for the CD which contains the presentation

2.Files to be copied
all the linked files are automatically included. for example, sound clips and movie clips. power point will identify the places where they are located in your computer, copy them into the CD and alter the paths in the presentation so that you don't have to worry about, missing paths, and cannot-be-found sound clips.
Any way, if you need any more files to be copied, use add files button

3. options Button



In the package type section, you can select the way you want the presentations to be played.
-Run all the presentations in the CD automatically
-Play only the first presentation automatically
-Let the use select which presentation to be played
-Don't play the CD automatically

In Include these files section, you can select whether you want to add embedded font files as well. (Linked files are automatically selected)

In the security and privacy section, you can password protect the editing and the opening of the presentation.

If you enable inspect the presentation for personal details, PowerPoint will check whether any personal data are hidden in the presentation.

When all the settings are done, you are left with two alternatives.

You can either burn a CD of the presentation or copy all the files into a folder so that you can later copy it to a pen drive.

If you copy to a folder/CD, the presentation folder looks like this.



There are lot of files to be sure...but don't worry.

Double click on the file which is named PPTVIEW

It will open the PowerPoint Viewer.

If it asks whether you accept the terms and conditions of the program, click accept and then, you'll be automatically forwarded into a dialog box, from where you can select the presentation you need.

Power point viewer is so intelligent that it shows me the place of the presentation that I have to run
.

So, you just have to select the presentation and click OK.

No more problems.

Whether you have PowerPoint or not, your presentation will run

How can we eat ‘Parrippu’ and ‘Bath’ the whole day along?

'Amma', what sort of crap is this?? How can we eat ‘Parrippu’ and ‘Bath’ the whole day?

For mothers, this sort of conversation is a headache and for the children it is an expression of anger towards the parents. But what of the children who don't even have ‘Parippu’ and ‘Bath’?

It is their story which won the MOST POPULAR FILM award in the 56th International Berlin Mobile Film Competition on the theme FOOD TASTE AND HUNGER.

However, the” story” is not popular as the “film” was. The reason may lie in the fact that “they” do not grumble as we do. No grumble, no attention. Every body lives happily ever after.

And no body knows this happily ever after has its own secret legend. This is a tribute to them for their bravery and courage in being grumble-less and for all the others, an eye-opener.

View this movie at cultureunplugged.com

Are you going to fight with 'Amma' again?

My geekiness

Found this cool quiz where we can test our geekiness..

This is my result. little shamed, but this is the truth




Let us know your geek level too

(click on the pic)

Coming soon--Cooking with Deeps--

Wanna taste home made ICE CREAM?

Wait till I finish my Sociology Assignment

Google Annual Report 2008 is out

Google probably is a company that makes life easy for us. To put it in Google's own words, their mission is to

"organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful. We believe that the most effective, and ultimately the most profitable, way to accomplish our mission is to put the needs of our users first. We have found that offering a high-quality user experience leads to increased traffic and strong word-of-mouth promotion.

(Source: Form 10-K of Google Inc)

Note: if you are wondering what is Form 10-k click here

Who will not be interested in reading the annual report of such a company for the year 2008?


Here are some interesting things from the report



"In 1990, the very first web page was created at http://info.cern.ch/. By late 1992, there were only 26 websites in the world"

"In the past year alone we have made 359 changes to our web search — nearly one per day"

"we expanded Image Search to include the LIFE Magazine photo archive. This is a collection of 10 million photos, more than 95 percent of which have never been seen before, and includes historical pictures such as the Skylab space station orbiting above Earth and Neil Armstrong landing on the moon"

"our first major purchase when we started Google was an array of disk drives that we spent a good fraction of our life savings on and took several car trips to carry. Today, I walked out of a store with a small box in my hand that stores more than all those drives and cost about $100"

"Every minute, 15 hours worth of video are uploaded to YouTube — the equivalent of 86,000 new full-length movies every week"

"Today, some Googlers have more than 25 gigabytes of email going back nearly 10 years that they can search through in seconds"

"Google Translate supports automatic machine translation between 1,640 language pairs. This is made possible by large computer clusters and vast repositories of monolingual and multilingual texts:"

At December 31, 2008, we had 20,222 employees, consisting of 7,254 in research and development, 8,002
in sales and marketing, 3,109 in general and administrative and 1,857 in operations. All of Google’s employees are
also equityholders, with significant collective employee ownership"

Well, If you are interested in, the report can be downloaded here. (1951KB/130 pages in pdf format)

MMS enabled phone+Mobitel+Gmail means cheap or almost free E- Mail

I got a new phone , ADSL is back and after a long time.... deeps is back into the blogging business!

So, as any person (like me) would do I was showing off my phone to the uni friends through out the last week.!!

Some were amazed at the way I manage email free or almost for a very small fee like 50 cents with the mobile phone.

This post goes to all of them who wondered seeing my phone's message inbox full of emails

Its a simple task. (The required settings may change according to your phone model. I'm referring to Nokia 6120 classic. However, if you need any help, add a comment stating your problem)

1. Set the MMS settings of your phone

Mobitel MMS Settings :

*Connection Name - Mobitel MMS
*Data Bearer - Packet Data
*Access Point Name - wapmms
*User Name - Leave it blank
*Password - Leave it blank
*Authentication - Normal
*Homepage - http://192.168.50.165

2.Set the Access Point for MMS as Mobitel MMS

3. Change the MMS settings of your phone to Automatically Receive MMS

4. Go to Gmail--> Settings --> Forwarding and POP/IMAP

5. In the Forwarding section select "Forward a copy of incoming mail to" and set the Forwarding Email Address as @mms.mobitel.lk --Example-->> +9471637****@mms.mobitel.lk

6. Select what you want Gmail to do after forwarding the Email. My advice is to select keep Gmail's copy in the inbox

That's it...a simple plan...now your Mobitel phone is a free real time Email receiver!

Some of you might wonder why i was referring to Mobitel and Gmail particulary. The reason is that Mobitel Incoming MMS messages are free and Gmail provides us the facility to forward all the Incoming Emails to another email address. So you can receive your emails free of charge on Mobitel whereas Dialog charges for the packet data usage of Incoming MMS's.

I have been using this for about 2 years and until now, I only Found two cons.

1. It's hard to read forward mails Because most of them have long list of email addresses before the actual email message. Most of the phones say that it cannot open such messages and sometimes my old Nokia 6020 gets stuck. So my advice is not to try to open Forward emails. After all most of the forward mails are of no use right? So, you have the option to filter the messages that you want to be sent to the phone in Gmail To set a filter, go to Gmail--> Settings-->Filters

2. The second short coming is that mobitel does not store your emails in their servers more than 6 hours which means that, you have the possibility of receiving the email as MMS within 6hours from the time which the email originally was dropped in your email inbox. For example, suppose you turn off the phone at 12 am and you receive Mail A to your Email inbox at 12.15am. the Mail B comes to your Email inbox at 7.00 am. You turn on the phone at 8.00am. Then you do not receive the Mail A to your phone because your message is considered to be expired by Mobitel.

But if your phone has a built-in email client (If you have an option called Email in your messages menu, you probably have a built-in-email client), then you can send/receive email without facing the second shortcoming I mentioned. However, the email client method requires lot of data transfers and hense cost money. What I do is receive the mails in the above manner and reply the important mails in the following way which costs about 50 cents (Mobitel)for a text email.

First , you have to get the GPRS/WAP settings from your Service Provider

Mobitel WAP settings:
*Connection Name - Mobitel WAP
*Data Bearer - Packet Data
*Access point Name - mobitel3g or wap depending on your phone
*User Name - None
*Password - None
*Authentication - Normal
*Homepage - http://wap.mobitel.lk (If you wish you can have another one too)

Dialog WAP settings:
*Connection Name - Dialog WAP
*Data Bearer - Packet Data
*Access point Name - www.dialogsl.com
*User Name - None
*Password - None
*Authentication - Normal
*Homepage - http://www.dialogwap.com (If you wish you can have another one too)

Then you have to change the Email settings



1. Go to the Email Menu on the phone--> Add new mail box (The wording might change from phone to phone)

2. Add the mail box settings

For Gmail users:

Incoming Email Settings:
*User name - your email address
*Password - Your Email password
*Incoming Mail Server - pop.gmail.com
*Access Point in Use - Mobitel WAP
*Mailbox Type - POP3
*Security Ports - SSL/TLS

Outgoing Email Settings:
*User name - your email address
*Password - Your Email password
*Outgoing Mail Server - smtp.gmail.com
*Access Point in Use - Mobitel WAP
*Mailbox Type - POP3
*Security Ports - SSL/TLS

3. Add the User Settings
*My Name : The name you give here will appear as the senders name in the mails you
send using the phone
*Send Message : Immediately
*Send Copy to self : if yes, sends a copy of the sent mails to your email
inbox(ie.Google,Yahoo etc)
*Include Signature : activate if you wish

4. Add Retrieval settings (For Mobitel users no need to retrieve mails this way because now we are getting all the emails as MMS to the phone free of charge.However, if you wish,you can activate this too)

Email to Retrieve: Usually there are options to select from. Choose the option which suits you the best
*Headers only - retrieves only the headings of the emails
*Messages and Attachments - Retrieves the full email to the phone
*Size Limit - you can limit the size of the emails to download

Retrieval Amount: The number of emails that you want to download per one
session

5. Automatic retrieval settings: If you are using Mobitel, disable Automatic retrieval. That is how I do and it's fine as you receive emails as MMS. But for Dialog and other users change the settings as you wish

6. Go to Gmail--> Settings-->Forwarding and POP/IMAP

In the POP Download Section-->
*Select Enable POP for all mail(even mail that's already been downloaded)
*Select Keep Gmail's copy in the inbox @ When messages are accessed with POP

In the IMAP Access Section-->

* Select Enable IMAP(see the screen shot above)

when you want to compose a mail, go to the email sub menu on the Messages Menu of the phone, compose the mail and press send..

...enjoy email on the go!!!...

Deeps is offline!!

Seems fate play real cruel games on me these days.

My ADSL modem is not working and my phone was stolen.

so, im lost.....

cyber deeps is dead for a short time!!

untill i get online again, have a nice time, all the best in all your work.

meet you soon

SlumDog Millionaire

Image taken from here


Just watched SlumDog Millionaire

It was thrilling,
funny,
sad,
sympathetic,
loving,
cruel,
interesting.....
and ete etc

I don't know, all the adjectives in the world would do it justice!

A film not to be missed.

not because it is Indian,
not because it has won sooo many awards
not because it is a love story

But it is the story of fate,

yes it is written

ARTS is NotShiT

This post goes out to all the people who think that ARTS degrees are of no value. For the Information of you guys, I will tell you of the subjects that I have to follow this semester, and had to follow last semester. I'm doing Sociology, Management and Western Classical Culture(WCC) as main subjects and apart from them we have follow two foundation courses per the requirements of the university(I'm referring to the faculty of Arts in Peradeniya University)

For Sociology, we had to study all sorts of theories and introductions to the subject and this term, we are dealing with Sri Lankan Society from Vijaya to the modern period.(well some thing similar to the O/L history part but more in detail)

For Management, we had to learn about the theories and the four major functions of Management, planning, organizing, leading and controlling and this time, we have to Accounting with a nice young lecturer

For WCC the syllabus for this term can be found here and for the last term, we had to do Odyssey and Argonautica. Yes, two big books

For the foundation Courses, we had to do Maths and Writing Skills and Computer last term. Now I must tell you something of these three subjects.

Maths was hard because apparently, it used to have elements from the the syllabus of the Engineering guys at UoM.

Writing skills was harder because, we had to write research papers and critical arguments just after setting the foot in to the university.

Computer was hard because it was soooo hard to find a free computer in our lab.(other than that, for me, it was OK. I do not know about others. Just the history and introduction to networking and hardware stuff. No programming at all. Instead we had some advanced work to be done with Office package)

And this term, the foundation courses include basics of the following subject areas.

Human Mind

World Religion

Law and Ethics

Art and Aesthetic Subjects

Environment

Society and Culture

International Relationships

History of Science

According to Prof Desmond Mallikarachchi who had designed the course, the above subject makes a qualified undergraduate. To be called an real graduate, you should at least know basics of the other subject ares as well

Now,One question for you Engineers, Scientists, Financial Experts and Doctors....

What do you know about Art and Aesthetic? International Relationships?Society and culture? Of course, if you are exceptional engineer or a doctor, you will say yes to at least for one question. But for many, it is a “big no”.

Any way, on the contrary, the Arts graduates have the opportunity to learn something out of their subject matter, which in my idea, is a great achievement.(here in pera, we are given the chance to attend lectures in any faculty but the students hardly do it. It is another problem)

But still, in the long run, they(not Arts graduates) get jobs and a good salary while the “real graduates” sleep in the pavements.

So, the public think that doing Arts is useless. Children choose Maths and Bio science for the Advanced level examination and when they get screwed up for several times, they learn the so called useless arts subjects to get into the university. For many think, arts is the easiest of all the streams in the Advanced level. But it is not and I have the right to say so because I have experienced how it is to do English, French and Greek and Roman Civilization to get into the University.

I have deliberately put in my A/L subjects because they too belong into the category of Arts. Well but many think those subjects belong to a new category called languages. No it is not, they are same as Sinhalese,Logic and Political Science. The only difference is the medium of instruction.

However, there is a general idea among the public that doing Languages worth it than doing Arts. There is little truth hidden in the statement because the competency in English language always matter a lot in getting a job in Sri Lanka.

But knowing English itself is not enough to get a good job. You should have the knowledge in the subject matter the way the world demands. For example, learning how to draw a graph using Microsoft Word 95 is considered nothing these days.

Unfortunately, the knowledge of the students who learn in Sinhalese has ultimately fallen into that category today. I m not asking all the students to offer courses in English medium After all it is our mother tongue. But they should have a working knowledge of English so that they can apply what they learned into big companies.

And that is exactly what most of the Sinhalese Medium students lack. There are many reasons for that but I would not like to deal about them further because Prof. Shantha K. Hennayake has already done that here. ( Refer to the section on ragging)For your information, I would quote his article here.

"Students should not speak in English as it’s the "para bhasawa". (meaning not only a foreign but also oppressive). Generally the union leaders are English illiterate English."

With such practices, I wonder whether the efforts of the ELTU are fruitful. But they are doing a good job in the university. Hats off to you nice ladies and gentlemen!!

Another thing is the lack of computer knowledge. Some times, even a simple thing like formatting a USB Drive. The most common reason given by such students is their inability and the fear. There can be other reason like the ones I explained in one of my earlier posts. Anyway, such things are unforgivable at the University level. You have a computer lab where you can do anything(I mean not changing the OS, but simple things that are vital in day today's life.) So you can practice and learn, After all if we do not make use of the facilities who would?

English medium students too have this problem but at least they have English; something very very important for a good carrier like computer knowledge.

So, due to the lack of those simple two facts we ARTS students are considered to be the lower class in the hierarchy of the Faculties in Sri Lanka.

But in the reality, we are taught about the humanity so that we should have the ability understand it ,to be flexible and adopt to any situation easily. We have the best knowledge base in Sri Lanakan students; I mean, with regard to the breadth of it.

Earlier, an Arts degree was something to do with Sinhalese, Political Science and Sanskrit. But these days, the trend is changing. You have the access to many fields such as management, computing ., law and many things. (Well, I'm not talking about the private universities)

And if you have the means, doing another degree or a diploma in a private institution to is possible. But if you make the best use of University of Peradeniya, you can have an Arts degree as well as a part of the Engineering Degree(cz you can go for the lectures in the Eng fac if you wish. I do not know about the other universities)

My dear sisters and brothers who are planning to enter into the university, why don't you give a heed to these thoughts and decide your University life today it self?

After all, ARTS is not shit if you manage it properly!!

(Will talk about my point of view about this in the future)

Clean your system after SemiAntivirus.vbs attack

To get the most out of this post, read the following blog posts first.If you feel you do not understand what the commentators have said, don't worry, I have taken the gist of the comments to write this.

Find out how SemiAntiVirus.vbs has come into your machine and how to delete it

Errors that can be possibly shown after you (or Anti Virus Software) delete SemiAntiVirus.vbs

Read the script of SemiAntiVirus.vbs

and here in this post, I will tell you how to fix the errors

Fixing the Windows Script Host Error which puts up a pop up window at the start up saying "cannot find script file c:windows\system32\semiantivirus.vbs"

Reasons

This happens because the virus is coded to launch with the userinit.exe which manages the start up sequences at the start up.

When the computer boots, userinit.exe is executed and then, it looks for the semiantivirus.vbs to execute. But we (or the anti virus software) have deleted the semiantivirus.vbs in this step.

Since the computer cannot find the semiantivirus.vbs file it displays the above pop up window

So, first, you have to break the link between the userinit.exe and semiantivirus.vbs

Fix

1.Open Registry Editor (Start-->Run-->regedit-->OK)

2. Go to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion and select \Winlogon

3. On the right side pane, you will see a long list of entries. Out of them, right click on userinit and select Modify

4.In the Value Data text box, you will see something like C:\WINDOWS\system32\userinit.exe,c:windows\system32\semiantivirus.vbs

5. Modify the value to C:\WINDOWS\system32\userinit.exe and click ok (then, the userinit registry entry should look like this. Look at the status bar for navigation details)

6. Close the registry editor and restart the computer

--OR--

If you like to do it in the command prompt this is the command reg add "HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon" /v Userinit /d %%SYSTEMROOT%%\System32\userinit.exe, /f

Fixing the Internet Explorer

Reasons
It looks like this because the virus has edited the registry entries for the Title bar and the Home Page

Fix for the Title Bar
1.Open Registry Editor (Start-->Run-->regedit-->OK)

2.Go to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Internet Explorer and select main

3. On the right side pane, you will see a long list of entries. Out of them, right click on Window Title and select Modify

4. Under Value Data, you will see LRI Internet Explorer. Change that to Internet Explorer and click ok

--OR--

If you would like to do it in the command prompt, this is the command reg add "HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Main" /v "Window Title" /d "" /f


Fix for the Home Page
1. Repeat the 1 and 2 steps of the Fix for the Tiltle Bar

2.On the right side pane, right click on Start Page and select Modify

3. Fill in the Value Data box with the URL of the page that you wish to have as your home page(For example,www.google.lk) and click ok

--OR--

If you would like to do it in the command prompt this is the command reg add "HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Main" /v "Start Page" /d "http://www.google.lk/" /f

--OR--

Do it simply in the settings of Internet Explorer
1.Go to Tools-->Internet Options-->General-->Home Page

After completing above steps, the registry entry for Internet Explorer should look like this(look at the status bar for navigation details) All the changes would be visible after you restart Internet Explorer

Completing the above steps should remove the implications of the semiantivirus.vbs attack on your computer.

And thank you Shaakunthala, Sadeepa, Isuru and Abish for your valuable comments in earlier posts!!

This is me!

I found this website in the morning with all those funny quizzes. According to the site, this is me.

You Are Influential and Skilled

You are balanced, orderly, and organized. You like your ducks in a row. You are powerful and competent, especially in the workplace. People can see you as stubborn and headstrong. You definitely have a dominant personality. You are friendly, charming, and warm. You get along with almost everyone. You work hard not to rock the boat. Your easy going attitude brings people together. At times, you can be a little flaky and irresponsible. But for the important things, you pull it together. You are influential and persuasive. You tend to have a lot of power over people. Generally, you use your powers for good. You excel at solving other people's problems. Occasionally, you do get a little selfish and persuade people to do things that are only in your interest. You tend to be pretty tightly wound. It's easy to get you excited... which can be a good or bad thing. You have a lot of enthusiasm, but it fades rather quickly. You don't stick with any one thing for very long. You have the drive to accomplish a lot in a short amount of time. Your biggest problem is making sure you finish the projects you start. You are a seeker of knowledge, and you have learned many things in your life. You are also a keeper of knowledge - meaning you don't spill secrets or spread gossip. People sometimes think you're snobby or aloof, but you're just too deep in thought to pay attention to them. You are usually the best at everything ... you strive for perfection. You are confident, authoritative, and aggressive. You have the classic "Type A" personality.

What's Your Name's Hidden Meaning?

Do you have anything to add or delete?