Attacks on Buddhist temples in Bangladesh.

A wise man once said, "Never talk about religion unless you want a fight!". Though this seems to be true, with the late turn of events, its impossible to keep filtering out whats happening in that part of the world.

Buddhist communities around the globe seems to be protesting against these attacks and one such event in Sri Lanka ended up in a mob attack to the high commission in Colombo. Therefore, I believe it is important to look at the macro image of these conflicts. The fact that a human being can kill or harm another human being and feel good about doing so is simply unimaginable to the rational mind. Yet, we seems to be having an up rise in the world arena of such incidents. The riots in the middle east over a silly you-tube video is a classic example of such atrocities. My intentions are not to single out any particular religion in this article. On the contrary, my objective is to demonstrate the ability of monotheistic religions to poison the human mind into thinking doing bad in the name of a god is a noble deed. This is exactly what happens when people in the information era still hangs on to beliefs from the Bronze age!

Buddhism has an advantage in this playing field merely owing to the fact that it is a philosophy and not a religion. Yet, recent events that occurred in Sri Lanka begged to defer that case and starts to portray a religion in disguise within Buddhism. People simply follow some aggressive monks on to the road and throw rocks at institutes with diplomatic immunity  without the trouble of thinking through the morality of his actions. This in my belief is the real threat to Buddhism. It tarnishes the very principles this philosophy was founded on and furthermore, blur out the fine line that separates the radicals from the peaceful protestors.

YES, we do have to protest against these barbaric acts of violence. But not with the slight hint of violence. We need to make sure that the international communities hear about this story and make sure that its told the right way. Someone with very little background knowledge if presented with two consecutive news articles about two sides stoning and burning, the message Buddhists want to convey will be lost in the white noise. Lets unite against these barbarism and act promptly but, please leave weapons and violence outside of this matter.

SRI LANKAN CRICKET... THE VICIOUS CYCLE....

Thought to discuss about the only holy subject for fellow Sri Lankans, "Cricket". Although different from rest of the region, we still do have a lot of passion about cricket and how our team do in the world arena. But so far, in the last decade, it has been nothing short of a vicious cycle. We have been consistently driven away from cricket and watching it throughout.. and just when we had enough and start to complain against wasting time watching it, the team starts to win inspiration-ally in a major tournament. So all those who opposed starts to post lion faces and posters on FB and look around for tickets in a hurry. The team builds up expectations, gathers us around....and when the judgement day comes, they fall short. Then the cycle continuous...

I believe its more important to analyze why this is becoming eye candy for statisticians in the field, that Sri Lanka is a team for the finals and finals only. What seems to be the reason for the lack of ability to go the last mile? Is it simply the lack of drive? Or last but not least, the presence of the president?  I threw in the last one just for fun as we all had a good laugh out of it, and found the perfect scapegoat to point our fingers at. But later on, after the tournament, the cricket board has been hinting at some changes and also not surprisingly shifting the blame. It was implied by one press release that Sangakkara and Mahela are not suited for the format!!! This seems to imply that we lost the finals, because of a failure in the two most senior batsmen in the team... Yes, Sanga and Mahela might not be the best options for the hard hitting format, but they did carry us so far.. But they are not occupying those spots by denying the opportunity for hundreds of consistent hard hitting batsmen trying to get into the team. They are playing as we have no better! The board has not done its job of picking and selecting new talent!!!

Its true that Sanga and Mahela are not gonna be around, but its also true that they are really great players capable of adapting to any format. The matter of the fact is, Sri Lanka for the last decade have been TOP HEAVY in batting, Brilliant in bowling variety and Not the best fielders in a final under pressure. In other words, they have over achieved their potential by the time they get into the finals and the nerves in the crunch game can easily see through batting or fielding. The last final was a classic example of this. Fielding first of all was better overall, but still dropped the highest scorer in a hard chance. But given the hitters WI had, SL would have been glad to settle to chase anything under 200. But Dilshan's nervy dismissal rocked the boat for SL. Not sure about the sporadic middle order, the two seniors tried to be too watchful at the beginning and then gave their wickets away trying to beat the D/L method. So, if you look at it closely, its the lack of batting talent that has let us down. We don't posses a single batsman who can dismantle a bowling attack like Kalu and Jayasuriya could in 1996. What happened to the country who invented hitting out and over in the power play? Is it lack of talent or the lack of intellect in the selectors? What ever the reason is, this better be solved... the country can't bear a 5th consecutive runners up position!.

Akila.

Why so much hatred out there?

This is an observation I have made over the years related to the society in Sri Lanka. Hatred!. People have started to hate almost anything. One example was the hatred demonstrated on facebook with the exit of Pakistan and especially India from the world cup. Its perfectly acceptable to have grudges against some, which is generally the case with anybody's neighbor. But, is it nice to see you write hateful comments about it on your wall? (May it be physical or virtual). What is demonstrated by these outbursts? I posted on my fb wall to find out why this is happening and got many interesting answers. Here are some reasons why they hate India,

1. They voted against us in the UN
2. Big headed people in the team
3. Think they are better than us
4. Implanted the civil war in SL

While these may or may not be true, that does not give anyone of us a moral guide to be rude to be at them. Doesn't that make us even lower than the accused person or nation? Is this another side effect of having a war for 30 years and the need to see and hear bad things? I am totally stumped by this question and think its about time we start discussing these symptoms before the sickness gets worse.

Where SRI LANKA is heading? FUTA and general public. 

I was really shocked to see the hatred towards university lecturers in the form of online comments in an e-newspaper. Some even called for the lecturers to even go to some other country if they don't like the way things are here. That shocked me to the core. I am not defending the strike or the situation it ended on.... But the hatred is immense and if I am not mistaken alarming. Is it the fact that the person commented don't know that its these qualified people who teach their kids when (or if) they get into the university? Or they just don't care?

Its amazing that the same person could not see why these few educated people hang around indefinitely underpaid and constantly harassed by stupid politicians and bureaucrats!!! And if the general public is dumb enough to compare the necessity of these people to the same level as needing clerks in an office, then by definition we are a doomed nation beyond repair. Then it would be few masters student and graduates who ll be teaching in few years in our unis and later on it ll be a sub set of the same students who would have to teach themselves. Of course, the business class and the politicians will send their kids to foreign unis and pay with your tax money. Then they (like Malaka Silva) can come back and become the education minister. Is that what we want to see happen to our beloved country? We boast to the rest of the world about our high literacy and the intellect we provide through our unis... But then we might have to modify that to accommodate for the mass idiots as well!!!


Akila Mike.

Today morning, when I looked outside, my eyes caught some dew drops shinning with the morning sun on the cherry tomato tree. Took my camera out and took this picture.

I could barely see myself in the dew drop..

The picture was taken using a 50mm prime lens and later cropped to give the close up feeling. f = 11 (to get the larger depth of field in closeup shots), shutter = 1/200 s and ISO = 100. A closeup filter was also used for this shot. Only small cleaning up on the computer.

I was out on the porch yesterday just relaxing and the weather was starting to take a turn. A small patch in the sky caught my eye where I saw rain clouds rushing in, while the same rain clouds were blocking the sun and making an adjacent cloud shine... I ran in, grabbed my camera and took few shots. Here's one of them,

The reason for taking this shot is the contrast between the dark and bright clouds in the nice blue background. Therefore, made sure to underexpose the image using exposure compensation on my Canon T3i (AV mode).