Friday, September 30, 2011

The 18 year old wait is over

After an 18 year old wait, Trinity had managed to win the President's trophy. It has been a remarkable year for Trinity rugby. Although they lost to the minnows Science College and then lost the 1st leg of the Bradby but then managed to make one of the best comebacks in the history of Bradby to win it comprehensively. Now to follow that up they clinch the President's trophy. A phenomenal team that had showed how to make a comeback when you are down and out. It takes a lot of character and commitment and these boys has just showed that to the world!

I just found this classic compilation of Trinity rugby! Enjoy!




Thursday, September 29, 2011

MySQL relay log purging

From time to time I get interesting MySQL questions from people who attended the trainings I conducted. Yesterday I got this message,

"We have setup master-slave mysql. Now it seems that the slave is running out of disk space ( yesterday we got 100%), the replication died. And I found that file slave-relay.000xxx, is taking up disk space.Just wondering if I can delete the old slave-relay.000xxx dated in August, just to save disk space. Is this a normal master-slave situation,  Do you have any other recommendation?"

Unlike other questions this was a bit tricky since I was not sure. I didn't want to take the route of deleting the relay logs, since as long as I remembered it was supposed to be automatically purged as soon as the SQL thread has executed the statement.

After a bit of Googling I was left with two options,

1. Might be a version bug where the relay logs are not getting purged
2. To control the relay log explicitly by adding following to the my.cnf,
 relay-log-purge=1
 relay-log-space-limit=size

by setting the relay log space limit it makes sure that when the limit is reached, the IO thread stops until the SQL thread clears the back log.

He had tried the option 2 and was able to get his problem under control.

Wednesday, September 28, 2011

Ted Ted

Whenever I need a dose of inspiration I visit the TED site. An absolute gem of a video library, with some amazing speeches from some great men and women. Just look at these three videos to see the variety and the variation TED offers. On any given day visiting it and seeing whats new leaves me with more knowledge.

If you want to watch an inspirational video - watch this! I am sure it will make your day!
Steve Jobs: How to live before you die | Video on TED.com

If you love Cricket - watch this
Harsha Bhogle: The rise of cricket, the rise of India | Video on TED.com

In case if you like politics and if you were following the Egyptian revolution  watch the story of the Google executive who was abducted and kept in hiding by the regime during that period.
Wael Ghonim: Inside the Egyptian revolution | Video on TED.com

Tuesday, September 27, 2011

I am addicted

I am addicted to this clip on youtube. Had watched it more than 10 times within the last few days.  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ibH7uAODhjY

The song Aaromalae is one of the songs which never fails to impress and now I had listened to quiet a few variants of it and I admire AR Rahman even more!

Listen to these too, original from the film,



Listen to this female version,


Then the English version which the critics say Rahman was influenced by, 


But even if this was influential in someway you cannot take anything away from the genius Rahman's work on this. 

Monday, September 26, 2011

Superstition - Its all in the mind

When I was a kid I was very superstitious, seeing a particular type of bird had different interpretations. As per my interpretation seeing a lone black and white bird of that certain type meant it was to be a sorrowful day and any other number meant it was a joyful day. When I set off in the morning I would love to see the sight of the milk man but would hate to see certain other people. People used to tell that if a cat crosses you its a bad omen and I believed it, then a couple of times the days on which cat crossed me it turn out to be successful days and then I started to believe the reverse, so I wished the cat would cross me on every important day.

Still one thing I am finding it hard to change. Wonder whether if its a superstition. I have now worked in Colombo for more than 4 years but I never has had a hair cut in Colombo. Without much thought I still make sure that I go to Kandy and go to the same salon to get the hair cut. I just thought a few times to change from this pattern but the head says yes but the heart says no. I think that's the last superstition I am left with.

It took me a long time to understood the irony behind my superstitions and tried and still trying my level best to come out of it. Now I think I am almost out of superstitious beliefs, now I know that its all in the mind. Now I understand that, if I believe that a certain event is bad it will definitely play into my mind and screw my day. So as I said before its all in the mind!

Sunday, September 25, 2011

Death by Meeting

Right from the day I started work on of the words that I hated was the term "meeting". I used to think when someone calls up for meetings very often, that the dude is a bit too free on those days and pray that he would get enough work so that he wouldn't bother to call up for meetings. But you know god is too busy counting the tears of women and seldom listen to mine! ;)

The meetings of personal, internal or external in nature normally end up being like a soup where long term (strategic) and short term( tactical ) issues are all mixed up and I for one would walk away all drained and with more questions than answers. In this sort of context I came across a book called as "Death by meeting", the name itself said that this is the book for me! You know people want hear what they like to hear and I was no exception, the name implied that the book is going to be a good tool which would give me more ammunition to my argument of "not another meeting please!"


Reading this was a great experience! Each problem that's described in their I had lived through at some instance or the other. Whats in the book is not rocket science but it highlights our day to day paradox and gives a framework to solve it. I wish I can buy a copy to everyone who runs meetings and make them read it.

Friday, September 23, 2011

If you don't ask you don't get

I walked into a book shop, which as per my standards is very posh, and was about to buy a book. All my life I used to think that this was a big book shop and it always sold things at marked price. I was almost ready to pay the money and buy it, when my friend jumped in and asked from the sales assistant whether he can get a discount on it. For a moment I felt odd specially since I had grown with a shyness to get NO for an answer. I had this feeling and asked him "dude do you ask for discounts even at super markets?", since that's the closest comparison I could make to this book store. To my surprise, she said she will check with her manager and then came back and said she can give a 40% discount on it!

He told me that its a simple rule, "If you don't ask you don't get" and there is nothing to loose in getting a No for an answer, but what counts at the end of the day is the YES you get. Now I had been observing this pattern everywhere, frequent travelers always tell me to ask for a complementary upgrade in planes, good negotiators tell me that ask what you want and then keep silent and let the other party do the talking, I over heard another expert explaining that when you ask out girls when you try ten, out of that seven might work but if you don't ask you don't get any :D So remember, if you ask you increase the chance of getting !

Thursday, September 22, 2011

Private Universities

Private university is a taboo term in local universities. Every time when there is a discussion about opening a private tertiary education center in Sri Lanka, the university students' get on to the streets with placards which say that "Education is a right not a commodity" and the government is conspiring to "kill free education".  Let me tell you that I am not a fan of this government, for that any government but when it comes to private universities someone needs to bell the cat!

Even currently and also in future any government is not going to be capable to give free education to all the deserving students at tertiary level. If anyone thinks that only the student who get top results at the ALs only deserve to have a degree, then that's they typical mind set of the people who wants to build a safety net for life showing the achievement at a single exam. I agree that the achievement at A/L is good and should be rewarded, you can give that 1% merit and full scholarships, but the rest who qualify should also have an opportunity to at least EARN their degree. What has happened is that 97% who doesn't enter the university doesn't have trade unions or 'leaders' to voice their part of the stories and on the other hand the 3% who are hell bent on preventing others getting tertiary education are making their voice heard.

Ironically today's paper had the following as the medical student's arguments when demanding to stop establishing a private medical college.

“We are asking the Higher Education Ministry to stop the private medical faculty as it is of low standard and does not have the recognition that is required for a medical faculty,” 
How I see it: If its going to be of lower standard, the natural low of the nature would take over and the product from those universities shall be rejected. Such concern! I am sure you would also next tell you are concerned about the society that will be affected by these doctors. If you are scared of competition tell it out openly don't hide behind other reasons.

“The minimum requirement to join the private medical faculty is three passes in the science stream. However, we have found that students from other streams are also recruited by the institution. The only requirement necessary to join this institution is to have parents who can spend Rs.65 lakhs on education." 
How I see it: Wow such concern again, if you really want demand that they should be regulated, which is a valid demand. But the rest of the concerns are ironical!

Local universities will die a natural death since the government is only focusing on private education,
How I see it: Now this is the real point which should be addressed, which is getting lost in the chaos. The need to create a self sustainable model for local universities. Which should be made to function in more competitive and pushed to create revenue streams around them. It can be in the form of external degrees, paid courses, post graduate education, research in partnership with private sector, etc.

seriously when people demand that private universities should not be established, remember how many children are denied the right to education because of the scarcity for places in the local universities.

Quotes from Daily mirror : http://print.dailymirror.lk/news/front-image/56976.html

Tuesday, September 20, 2011

All happens for good

"எல்லாà®®் நன்à®®ைக்கே "
is a Tamil term which when directly translated would read as "Everything happens for good". 

I used to think that its the epitome of positive thinking and at times that its ridiculous. In the recent past I had become a firm believer of this and now try to practice it as a philosophy. Even in the darkest of clouds when you think through you can find a silver lining, even the worst of tragedy can lead to an opportunity, hope is the main thing that keeps us alive and kicking and if not for the positive thinking a hope less life will be empty. Remember it can always be a blessing in disguise! 


Past is past, only thing that can be fixed is the future so just assume and believe it happened for good and look at the future with hope!  Oops I am out of my mind,  trying to sound very philosophical today. I will stop with this or it would be an advice over load. LOL

Monday, September 19, 2011

Theivathirumahal

Over the weekend I found some time to watch Theivathirumahal movie. Its a beautiful movie and the little kid's acting was good as Vikram's acting. A phenomenal achievement given that Vikram is probably one of the best Tamil actors! 


The best part was the climax given above, where the acting of Child and Viram touched a peak! Its a movie worth watching!

Sunday, September 18, 2011

Life is a Journey

I had not been to Kandy for nearly two months and badly wanted to be here. Usually I travel on Friday nights, but this time around since there was no way of passing the house key to me, amma asked me to time my arrival after 5 PM. I prefer to take the train than to take the bus. So I had two options, one was the 3.30 Intercity train and the other was to take the 4.35 train.

The issue with the intercity train was that I didn't have a ticket and in order get a ticket for it, I was supposed to go to the station one  hour before. Usually they open the 3rd class ticket counter an hour before and also distribute remaining 2nd class and 1st class tickets. On most days the 2nd class tickets are pre-booked a lot more earlier and the last minute people like me, either would have to choose between the first class ticket and the 3rd class tickets. If I had gone and tried for the ticket, worst case I might have gone with the 1st class ticket. People at home were thinking that I would go for the 3.30 ticket, but I was too lazy to go an hour earlier to be in the queue, so I decided to take the 4.30 train for which there aren't any pre-bookings but on the flip side the journey is slower.

I got into the train, found a seat in the space where they have 4 seats placed opposite each other. My akka calls these types of seats " I see, you see seats", which basically is a seat from which you can make eye contact with most of the others seated in the train. I pulled out my kindle and continued to read "Death by meeting", all of a sudden 3 pretty girls came and sat on the other 3 seats and then it seemed like a beautiful ride.

The train stopped at Veyangoda and an announcement played out said "The train on platform number 2 will be delayed due to congestion in the trail track". I overheard people talking about a train accident. Still it was not clear, I got off the train to find out more, so I walked up to a railway guard who was there, he was giving graphic description of the fatal accident. He explained how the observation compartment (1st class compartment ) of the 3.30 intercity had crashed in to the engine of another train. He said that people are trapped inside and they are not being able to take out people still. I was stunned for a while, a chill went down my spine, I just remembered I was supposed to be in that train and there was a good chance I might have ended up in the same compartment in case if only first class tickets were left, like in a usual day. My phone rang and it was my sister, she has panicked, she was not sure which train I was in, luckily(?) I had missed the train I aught to have been in.

Now I had another challenge to find a way to get home, akka called again and said, goto Nittambuwa and then get in to a Kandy bus. I am so bad in geography I had no idea where Veyangoda was, anyway by speaking to people I found the bus halt. To my surprise and joy came a bus, which was supposed to go to Matale. Already it was full except a space for a foot step which can be kept on the foot board. I managed step in, I got a kind person to place my bag near the drivers seat. slowly I sneaked a bit into the bus and ended up right near the windscreen. I could sniff the windscreen, I was jammed between the windscreen and about 10 more people on the foot board. People mistakenly thought that I was the conductor and passed money to me. I took it and gave it to the driver and after a few minutes I was serving as the proxy for the conductor. I just found a new job and happily doing it. Driver at times wanted me to tell the people that it was a long distance bus so not to get in if they want to get off close by. I was doing that too. Doing it I realized its not easy to be a conductor! I just realized that you should walk in the shoes of another to realize the challenge they face!

Once we passed Mawanella the crowd got off and I could now get in to the bus, so didn't have to sniff the windscreen and work as a conductor. After the long journey I was glad to be in Kandy and I remembered that  in my journey of  life I am still spared, since I have a purpose to achieve before mother nature decides that the my journey should end!

Saturday, September 17, 2011

Friday, September 16, 2011

Software measurement dilema

Implementing measurements in software engineering is a great challenge. Every other manager wants to have clearly defined measurements to make sure there is visibility while the engineering or rather the geeks completely rule out the possibility of the practical application of measurements.

At the two extremes both have their points, the pro measurement group quotes that building software is a business hence needs visibility and measurements. They would tell you that start by measuring with whatever you can measure and eventually we would learn and will be refine it and would help us in making better decisions in future.

They would also tell you that measurements are used, only to help. track the status, measure productivity and not intended to point fingers or fire people.

While on the other hand, geeks stay at another end and say, software development is almost writing poetry hence cannot be measured quantitatively but should be measured qualitatively. They would make mockery of the measurements like lines of code, by saying that its the biggest joke, they would tell you that this measurement discourages efficient code writing. The more code write doesn't mean that you are writing it well.

There was this classic case in which, I came across where people were measured on the number of tester approved releases made, this measurement had paved the way for a culture where developers and testers acted in concert to make releases frequently as possible, at times even a dozen releases within a fortnight, at times even the smallest bug fix is fixed and sent out as a release.

While the two parties stay at two extremes, we need to keep in mind that we need to have some indicators while rationally picking the measurements and most importantly know to interpret it without blindly using it.

Anyone who wants to design a measurement system should remember that unless done carefully it leads to sub optimization and remember the golden saying
" What you measure is what you get " if you measure lines you get more lines, if you measure bugs you get more bugs, if you measure the overall contribution to the success of the project you get more people contributing to the over all success. Just some food for thought.

Sent from my BlackBerry® wireless device

Thursday, September 15, 2011

Little birds

Although I had a liking for little birds in recent weeks they had become absolutely annoying. At our flat amma has spoilt them by feeding and they start screaming on my window before the crack of dawn. I wanted a picture to show how arrogant those creatures are, probably a video. Probably on another day. Below is a picture of sweater on who didn't disturb me. :D IMG_5657

Wednesday, September 14, 2011

You know you are addicted and in denial

- When you are spending hours on twitter and you are feeling as if you are contributing to the world  positively.
- When you are on facebook half your lifetime and thinking that you are using it as an information tool.
- When you had spent more than 4 hours on chat on a day and thinking that you spent only 30 minutes and believe that you had done work for the rest of the 3.5 hours.
- When you cannot resist from reading a chat message as soon as it blinks on the task bar.
- When you go home, the first thing that you do it to take out the computer and switch it on before even having a change and search to see who is online to start a chat!
- When you can play a game and forget both breakfast and lunch

The worst state is to be addicted and live in denial, a better step would be to accept and try to get out of it. Interesting  reading material here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_addiction_disorder about this.

Tuesday, September 13, 2011

Killing in the name of god

As a Hindu I feel shamed at the sight of seeing animal sacrifice being practiced under the hood of Hinduism. Last year when I saw the pictures of how the slaughter was being done I cringed in shame. From the little I know about Hinduism one of the sects, called Shaktham, has a tradition of such practice but sacrifice as long as I know is not in vedas (but even if a line in Veda is to be interpreted as sacrifice the concept goes against the larger understanding of the religion), but since its an old religion we have a situation where a common man cannot make out which part is religion and which part is culture.

We are at a position where stupendous stupidities in the form of superstitions get passed from one generation to the other and these foolish cultures and traditions are portrayed as Hinduism. By doing this, these idiots are doing harm and nothing good to either themselves or the religion. Hinduism, for me, is the religion which promotes ahimsa and respect for all life, it promotes but doesn't force the concept of vegetarianism. Its a classic oxymoron of these 'followers' who tries to interpret the same religion to be promoting vegetarianism on one hand and then speaks about sacrifice. It doesn't make sense or logic. For goodness sake I beg from these people to stop perverting the name of the religion. As a start For GODS' sake, ban all animal abuse activities happening at places of worship.

Monday, September 12, 2011

Campaign to discipline

On certain days I take an early morning walk along the beach, walking while the breeze pushes you and then spending a few minutes in contemplation while starring at the horizon is a blissful feeling. I can hear those friends of mine, who are screaming - "Dude you  are an introvert" ;)

But the issue is not about the walk or starring, it about the issue which irritates me each time I take this walk. While I am amazed at the gift mother nature has given to us in the form of the beautiful beaches, what hurts me is the stupidity with  which we destroy them. If you observe around any seat on the strip of beach between Bambalapitiya and Wellawatta you would be surprised to see the amount polythene, food items and at times even syringes strewn around it. It hurts so much, I at times feel like wearing a glove myself and picking what ever I can and put it aside.

Beaches are not something that every country is blessed with, but since we have it we take it for granted. We don't see the value of it. Most importantly we as Sri Lankan's lack discipline.  We would beat our chests and call our selves patriots or would boil up when something is said about our race or religion, we would be up in arms saying that westerners are all out to destroy us, but in reality we have self inflicted wounds due to our lack of discipline.

If you have an inch of concern for your own place of living do your little bit to keep it clean, you can put your dirt in a dust bin, teach the children to do it and most importantly do it ourselves. Practice this at least in places which are ultimate gifts of mother nature, which other countrymen dream of and yearn for at least as a once in a life time visiting place.

I see an importance for a campaign - not the once which are done as a fashion on a one off day or a politically motivated one. This can be a starting point to infuse discipline in to the minds of people. Ideas on this our welcome. I will do what ever little I can do to help this.

Sunday, September 11, 2011

9/11

Ten years back on the 11th of September 2001 I can remember being called by my mother to come and watch   the breaking news on TV. I was thinking it was some local news item, but to the utter shock the images shown on TV were from US and the images of the planes crashing into the twin towers. Although at that time I was a teen who had lived in a country where  mass scale man made destruction happened from time to time, the magnitude of this was shocking and for me up to then US was all above this sort of destruction so it took a long time to digest the images I saw. While watching on TV, I could feel the pain of the people who were going through that.

Since then I had watched in surprise how this single event has had a sort of butterfly effect on the world and its equilibrium. The butterfly effects had spread and effected everything and anything and touched and even taken many more lives. Everything and everyone, from Kabul to Karachi, from New York to Nandikkal, from Baghdad to Bombay, from London to Libya has had felt the effects. The economy of world, the power of the world, the world opinion, the word terror and a lot more things has changed drastically in the post 9/11 world. I guess its the single most incident which has had the biggest impact on the world during the last 15 years.

Saturday, September 10, 2011

When an elephant charges you


Our guide shouted, don't worry he is a coward he wouldn't get any closer, I tried to steady myself but my hand was shaking so the pictures are not clear :(

Friday, September 9, 2011

Fooling people using Google social search

Sometime back a 'friend' of mine told me that when he searched for MySQL on Google my blog posts appeared in the first page. Poor dude, he had immediately assumed that I was so good at MySQL and hence the posts appear at the top. I was a bit amused, how come on the first page?!

Out of curiosity I searched today to check and this was the result.


Bingo! This happens when you are logged in to gmail. It internally co-relates the public posts done by your friends, public followers on twitter and most importantly your gmail contacts too and starts showing them as part of the search results. Seems as if making public posts have an added advantage to become a fake expert on something :P

reference

Thursday, September 8, 2011

Re-learning to greet

I was in unbearable stomach pain and walked into consult a doctor while in Kenya. As soon as I went I said "Hi Doctor, I had been having a stomach pain from morning", the doctor paused, smiled and said "Good Morning, I am Dr. so and so and nice to meet you and may I know your good name please". I was caught completely off guard, I cringed in shame at my own behavior. It just clicked to me how important was it to greet the person properly in that culture.

The real reason I cringed was since I realized how over the years I had stopped practicing the good habits that was thought at school while I was a child. We were trained to greet people with a big smile and a big salutation of Good Morning/Afternoon or Evening. The rule was that we had to greet people loud and clear. It always gave you a pleasant start to the day, it was an additional boost of energy. Unfortunately over the years it has all eroded and I had become a typical Sri Lankan.

I always realize how unpleasant I had become when I travel abroad. It might be at a lift, bus, office, train, restaurant  or at a super market they greet you warmly. In Singapore its almost a sin to get in to the bus without greeting the bus driver. Where as here I would probably seldom would have even seen the face of the driver or even the conductor. After thinking about this yesterday night today I woke up and decided I am going to start the day by being pleasant and greet who ever I come across. So I started off from home and got in to the bus, greeted the bus conductor with a big smile and said "good morning". He turned and said, "mahathaya maru salli deela issarata yanna" ( Sir, give change and go to the front ), I gave him 20/= he said " eka parak kiwwa nae, maru salli nae, issarata yanna " ( I told you once, I don't have change so now move on the front ) and then I never got the balance. Although I failed today I am planning to try this again tomorrow and see, what will be the reaction.

Wednesday, September 7, 2011

Define - ROFL

Newbies to chat usually ask what is ROFL. This is the step by step guide to Rolling on the floor laughing!

Step 1 
step 1
Step 2
step 2


Step 3
step 3

Tuesday, September 6, 2011

Pair of trees

Usually you find a lot of lone trees in Africa but this is a bit its a pair of lone trees. Looks more like a mother shielding a child. tree reflection

Monday, September 5, 2011

The brave tribes


In certain countries certain tribes are held at high esteem. Two countries at distance apart have two unique communities which are referred very highly with respect to bravery. One is the Maasai people of Kenya and the other Gurkhas of Nepal.

Gurkas

They simply explain a Gurka by the phrase by saying that,
"If a man says he is not afraid of dying, he is either lying or is a Gurkha."

They are supposed to be parts of elite squads in Armies around the world and have their own regiments in the Nepali Army, British Army and Singapore Army.  Their acts of bravery and the toughness was unprecedented, they were a fighting squad which stood tall against the English and forced the English to sign a peace agreement. Even today GURKA is indeed considered a brave heart.

The Maasai people

The Maasai's were the only few people who had not entertained slavery and resisted from being taken away for slavery by the Arabs and the others. Its said that even a wild lion would never challenge a Maasai man and it would opt to retreat. In Maasai tradition its said that the kids leaves home when he is about 14 and learns to live in the wilderness and returns home with the skin of his best kill as trophy.

Now are you a Maasai person or a Gurka?

read about them at

1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maasai_people
2. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gurkha

Sunday, September 4, 2011

Honey and Fenugreek

As long as I can remember its very seldom that I have gone to meet a doctor complaining of stomach pain. But last week I was in unbearable pain and was out of option and for the first time while being abroad went to meet a doctor ( ah this itself is a longer story, probably on a later date I might write).

This made me wonder how I have avoided the doctor although I have had slighter stomach pains. This reminded me it was always my mothers formula which worked, she would ask me to take two teaspoons of honey and a few seeds of fenugreek, it has always had worked like a charm. Adding to that she would always order me to take some king coconut water to keep me hydrated. No anti biotics, no tablets, no side effects it was just natural care. I am no doctor but this mothers mantra works for me!


Sent from my BlackBerry® wireless device

Saturday, September 3, 2011

The mystery of my profession

Today I was seated next to a 'know it all' type of dude when flying back home. He had this long list of questions and while I just was interested in watching the African Cats movie on the in flight entertainment system. Seriously he was irritating.

Here are the best parts of the conversation,

Ithalien nedda? ( you are returning from Italy right? ) I replied, Nae ( No ). He asked, kohenda ennae? ( Where are you returning from ), Kenya. Malu business nae karannae? ( You are doing fish business right? ) I was like No..but. yeah sort of. He exclaimed "mama danagatha!" ( I knew it! ) From here on it was a joy ride.

He asked, how long did you stay there? I just without thinking too much replied "almost four weeks" He asked why so long, I replied, the manager was supposed to come and take over, but he got chicken pox so I had to stay a bit longer.

He asked, what do you exactly do? I replied, at times have to do different things like take future orders, check the once being delivered, etc....but I don't go fishing now.

Air hostess came in and asked, excuse me Sayanthan, did you order vegetarian food? I replied "yes". Thankfully the guy stopped asking anymore questions.

Lieing is bad, I know, but when a stranger is too annoying I couldn't help it or rather I couldn't stop helping his imagination.

Sent from my BlackBerry® wireless device

Friday, September 2, 2011

Did I miss anything?

My longest stint up to date, in a single country outside my place of birth comes to an end today. I was trying to think whether if I missed anything during this period. First of all I think I was all at peace and I personally got the time to do a lot of work by myself. Adding to that I spent less time commuting from place to place, my days were centered around, work, sleep, cooking, meetings, learning and of course the weekly bonus of SAFARIs! Altogether it has been a perfect package.

Now this makes me wonder whether if I really missed anything, few people asked whether I missed them, answer is pretty obvious - its a pretty big NO.

Probably I missed my early morning walks, probably I missed the weekends in which I sit and read for hours, probably I missed the cooling off time in Kandy. Ok, I will stop beating around the bush, I think I missed my amma's food more than anything else :( I will sign off to go and catch the flight back home and leave you all with the picture that sums up the life over here.

  dear

Thursday, September 1, 2011