Dream-02 and its interpretation from Heaven

Edited some grammatical mistakes but the content was not altered.

I think my predictions are real now not futuristic.

Maha Brahma had got it slightly wrong but I stand correct!

Currently Buddhist monks want to be like lay persons and politically active without even Andana Kada in high streets.

Whereas, Buddhist laymen/women practice Metta and not hatred except Wira Wansa and Holman Pila an P. (P stands for Kunuharupa he utters in broad day light, his mother is turning in her grave) Vasu!
 
Dream two (2) of course is a fragmented dream.
 
The full version was dreamt for me (until he takes over the spell cast on me) by Maha Brahma.

Part One of the dream goes like this

1. I was given huge load of linen by some godforsaken guy and he came to collect it soon after giving me a call.

2. At the time of the call the top part of the bundle which was 4 by 6 foot size an 6 foot in height (which appeared to me like bedsheets) was in disarray and fallen sideways and leaning on the doorway and preventing the door being opened when the guy comes to collect the load.

3. I was rearranging the lot and with the sound of the telephone I was woken up.



Before the interpretation was released Maha Brahma asked me a question.

Why are you sending half of a dream, he asked?

Sir, this was a armchair dream and mind you it is a day time dream?

Why are you dreaming at day time?

I could not help, Sir.

We are on industrial action and we have given up our headships and the head chair was empty and I sat on it to see how it feels like without administrative work like filling e-forms and mundane stuff like timetable for students and annual calender.

Then the head's telephone rang and I was woken up.
I was annoyed that the dream was interrupted rudely but unfortunately for me there was nobody to answer the call.

Did you answer the call?

No Sir.
Why?

It is head's telephone if I answer it, I will be in trouble.

Why?

If the guy on the other side is from FUTA, he might think I am secretly working.

If the guy on the other side is from the Ministry, he might mark another stupid head is working and add to his statistics.

The beauty is that lot of guys who never had an opportunity to sit on this big chair (like our politicians wanting to sit on high chairs of others when they are sleeping) to see how it feels like and when a call comes unlike me, answer it.

Even before caller's call ends, guy says, wants to be head speaking for head.

It must be a lucrative post for aspiring candidates.

No Sir it is only Rs.1000/= and not even enough to pay the monthly telephone bill and we pay from over pocket, the telephone bill.

Or I see.

Why then people want to be heads?

It is a very good and open question Sir but I think it is a dress rehearsal for becoming a politician, I believe .

Sir, can you tell me the full dream.

Part Two of the dream.

Mind you I like your futuristic dreams shall we make some arrangement for the first part for you to dream and the second part for me to dream and it saves me reading a long email.

No problem Sir, till our industrial action is over we will be dreaming of a pay hike and dreaming is our objective proposal and vision for miracles in this country, like Martin Luther King, we do like to dream even day time now.

He told me the setting is not at your home but at the laundry.

The guy who was dreaming had come to collect the dues (linen) after 3 months on credit card (that is the time laundry takes no responsibility for the clothes).
  
He could not pay for the bill.
 
He was a professor of Political Science.  

Unfortunately had not got any salary hike he dreamed of, for 10 years.

Then before he pays the bill, the guy who gave the first load has given him a second load and that is the reason for it falling sideways.

If the dream was continued the guy gets a heart attack and dies at the laundry.

Was it me Sir?

No you stupid?

These are futuristic dreams not current.

Then?

The guy is a Professor of Political History of Sri-Lanka and this is ten years from now.

Had I let you dream the rest of the dream you would have had a heart attack and die in your armchair (dream).

I saved you in nick of time.

But what's the point Sir, the way the things are developing in this country we do not have to dream.

We Know for certain we won't get anything for our lifetime.

That is not the point.

If you die I won't get these lovely dreams.

I love them and if you go who is going to dream for me for the first half of the dream.

It is my hobby and I won't die for eons unlike you!

I am going to have this fun only till you live and Aryubovan (Long Life) for You.

Sir, there are 20 million people here.

We dreamed that we bring the world cup home for the second time round but we did not.

Those dreams are mediocre and not futuristic like yours and lasts only a day and people get on with their work as nothing has happened.

But pay hikes are our daily dreams not only of professors Sir.
Every Sri-Lankan who is able is dreaming of a pay hike.

Only problem is politicians do not see that way.

Sir, can you pass one of these lethal dreams to the treasury secretary and let him dream it in full, instead of me.

That is criminal, know?

But if he goes millions will be happy millions times (we made billion in India to be happy by losing the World Cup and we deserve a pay hike at least at Indian Level) and there will be pay hikes!

Well I will see about it and in any case he is in the geriatric age group isn't he?

I got to go.

Interpretation.

It is 10 years from now.

1. Global warming has peaked to 38 F and there is no alcohol (no yeast-no alcohol-the song no woman no pain- theme is adopted to no alcohol no fun) except imported in this country. 
The imported stuff is available in international institutions and hotels.

2. There is no rain for two years.

3. All rivers have run dry

4. Coal power for 2 hours at night for email services only for booking air tickets etc.

5. No laundry services at hotels.

6. People are asked not to wear anything like IMF boss while in hotels.

7. There is no air conditioning

8. There are no maids for cleaning especially in the International Buddhist Institute.

9. Buddhist monks are permitted to wear only the Andana Kadas by the hierarchy at International Buddhist Institute. 
There is a big Vada (argument ) developing to wear or not to wear Andana Kada.

10. Some get heat strokes while in meditative mode in the tiny cubicles.

The laundry load was Andana Kada from the International Institute.

Action necessary to prevent this scenario.

Grow trees in Colombo instead of developing international Hotels!

This applies to Kandy too.

To be a more Kindly Kindle

To be a more Kindly Kindle

E-book was something I was looking for for sometime and expecting them to come down in price so that even school kids can use them.

I have many reason and some of them are special and related to disability.

People are not born equal and many have minor or major disabilities.
Visual handicap is one theme, I have been interested and it looks like I myself come into that category with the type of typos I make on daily basis.
I hate making mistakes especially typos but it has become a common occurrence.
Thank god their is spell checker but sometimes I feel spell checker itself is a handicap.

One has to keep on checking the word and the meaning and many a time, mainly due to oversight, they keep appearing and re-reading ones own writing is not something I fancy.

I have to do this on daily basis.

Most of these mistakes are due to small fonts and the distance between ones eye and the monitor, which is basically a physical relationship and not a handicap by itself.

Having worked with children and elderly with multiple disabilities the scope becomes much bigger in here in my writing.

1. Physical-Hand Eye coordination (keyboard and monitor)

2. Various degree of visual handicap including age related.

3. Hearing Difficulty

4. Various types of dyslexia

5. Many other disabilities including language.

I take language as a major handicap to use computers (English) and programng language is one of the most significant. Visual basic has made some impact but I think it has not done enough to integrate with natural language which is basically written or spoken.

I will concentrate here on written and spoken.

This is where Amazons should make giant step.

The ipod is killing its entry into main stream but ipod and the hifi gadgets are for the able and busy bodied rich guys and girls.

In my case I have so many books which I have read and many I keep for reference since library facilities especially in English books are vanishing species now with Swabasha emphasis on government schools.

It has become problem with taking lot of space and I do not want to make my living quarters a library.

I prefer big open space.

If I can take all my books out and put all that into a Kindle that is the last think I wish in my life.

Then I can take everything out of my room cum study or donate them to a school or university library.

When I want to fish a book or an article it takes ages sometimes days since the last time I made some in depth study of that material may be 5 or 10 years ago.

Facts are vivid in my memory with minor memory failure (almost normal in nature) and a bit hazy in some areas that need either clearing or refining.

If the kindle can do that with the help of the publishers and coordinate e-phasing (that is a new word I am coining here) my library of books it would be a blessing for my kith and kin in my absence.

My mother who passed away on 92 had wonderful memory of Dhamma which she had read and understood better than me.

She knew all the verses by heart.
In my case I never by heart, but remember where it came from, book or volume or article and refer them (that is my scientific way of approaching a problem) as often as can be when the need arises and get the meaning into ordinary English, not scholarly adage.

Brevity and simplicity is my attempt but vary rarely succeed in doing so since Dhamma has meaning beyond its general appearance at face level and is sometimes so succinct I miss the point in my deliberations.

She lost the ability and interest in reading almost suddenly.

Then whenever I get an opportunity I flick a page and start reading from some leading stem read and she recite the rest with my initial prompt.

Then I tell her the meaning, which is the most difficult part and the higher level of cognition.

Unfortunately Dhamma is for the extremely intelligent (she is intelligent enough and there are no arguments developing in these very brief dispensations but occasionally she alerts me if I am off the target a lot).

This was a two way process since she had read thousand times more than me.
The procedure ends that she knows it better attitude even though I had some major disagreements in content.

They were supplemented with TV, radio and cassettes and not books.

From reading stage she went to listening stage.

Then her memory started failing (short term) and things like she had eaten or had a drink but till the very late stages could recite but concentrate on few verses of four in spite of the disorientation in time and used to sleep (very lucky) a lot.

This is where kindle would have been helpful.

If Kindle had all the verses and the sound to go with, it would have been a big boost to her moral.

In her lucid intervals it could have been a nice companion.

So kindle could be a lovely companion for elderly gentlemen/women in retirement.

Equally it would be intellectual boost for kids, especially the handicapped.


The biggest obstacle was the price and now it has broken the sound barrier so to speak of market philosophy and could be affordable in the third world too.

Another venture would be in different language.
Imagine if they can introduce it to mainland China.
Like breaking the sound barrier Kindly should break the language barrier too.

Forest Harvesting; Comparison of American Style and Sri-Lankan Style

Forest Harvesting; Comparison of American Style and Sri-Lankan Style

I was bit inquisitive why there are so many tornadoes and hurricanes in America.

I just went to Google Earth and had a little peep from above of North America's, the West and the East.

There is hardly any difference in tree cover over the land, East or West.

Mostly farmland and build up areas.

That did not give me any clue to the state of the forest cover.

Then I went and searched deforestation.

Americans harvested 90% of the land in 70 years from 1850 to 1920.

Entire East was covered with Forest and fair proportion of the West was covered with primary forest. The deforestation continued to this century and America now has mainly secondary forest covering 10% of the land.

American knew that the CO2 problem started around 1920 and continues even today due to their exploitation of fossil fuel.

Did they tell the truth to the world?

Big No.

In Sri-Lanka we had 90% forest cover until around 1850 and British started deforestation for coffee and tea cultivation. By the time they left in 1948 forest cover was over 60% but before they left they pass a law prohibiting encroachment of the Crown Land.

From 1948 to 2000 we have decimated another 40 percent especially after 1970.

We are now below the minimal threshold of 25% to maintain our rivers.

This land now can be called the People’s Land instead of the Crown Land and the tree felling and the development go on.

When the thermal power plant is operational we will be approaching 10% level which is the cut off point for desert classification.

Acid rain will do the rest even we stop cutting to Zero.

Then we can say we are better than America in case of deforestation and go for an IMF loan.

Very soon we will be no different from Dubai.

Regards to American tornadoes and hurricanes trees act as a wind breaks and control the water cycle better. They should reforest America back to 1920 or continue to have this cycle every year.

Problem is there is no country rich American can go to avoid hurricanes since rest of the world is no better including China.

This is what I call the development of the Earth Crisis.

The prediction that world ends in 2012 should be rephrased that irreversible loss of biodiversity is in full swing from now onward with global warming well established.

We Sri-Lanksn will be drilling oil with Indian help till sun goes down.

The cycle of destruction has begun and it is irreversible unless there is global consensus.

Next biggest crisis will be food crisis and that will be worse than 1973 (due to oil crisis and poor foreign balance) since this time it is related to failure of rain and land becoming desert.

We are at a cliff edge.

Problem is politicians obsessed with development and energy do not want to see that in that way.

We have no plan for food security but have a big plans for 100% energy supply which we will never achieve.

Children who are born today will see the consequences but we do not even have a population plan.

From Teacher to a Student (hypothetical)

Learning Linux is easy if you take one step at a time.

When I started there was nobody to guide me.

I used to read books (This is where English is important) and fast.

That is a technique (reading fast and also digesting the material) I developed on my own.

Give me any big book I will read (not from cover to cover) only what I want to solve a problem (in this case installing Linux) and pick up the important things in 3 to 4 days.

This is something essential in higher studies. One does not read for the sake of reading in science (reading in other fields including philosophy is different).

One focus on why one reads this or that and make one's own personal assessment in the course of the reading.

Early days I used to get bogged down in two or three days without any progress.

Then I take a break and think about the problem deep and somehow get to the point (D.I.Y- Do It Yourself) where I want to make progress.

It naturally comes.

We all have this natural ability but examinations do not make us better but show where we are weak.

After every examination we have to go for a higher level and a more difficult level.

Even though A Level is difficult we make life easy after the 1st year Examination.

Unfortunately 1st year examination is the most difficult for all and problem with English compounding the disability.

This is especially so in maths and IT.

Maths is difficult if one is not in it.

I was very good in my maths including applied mathematics and used to beat all in my class.

Then one day I decided to go for biology in particular (with my reading talent and the fast speed was a bonus) and without any help covered the syllabus myself (D.I.Y).

Rest was history and I never felt big but looked for the next challenge.

When you get bogged down in a mathematical problem do not try to solve it by somehow.

Think, analyze and look at the problem in a different way.

There is always several ways of solving problems and try to grasp the concept.

What I find in my teaching in the University is students struggle to grasp key points an concepts.

Not like our time.
I do not know why?

Other problem is they cannot read a manual and follow instructions according to the manual and instructions.

This is where reading is important.

So concentrate on your mathematics and English.

Rest will follow.

Linux take as a problem and a hobby to take a break from your studies.

Do not make it your first interest.

But keep trying and look at where you go wrong.

This talent is essential in IT.

There is something called fixing bugs.

This is where both mathematical concepts and programming merge.

Even though I do not write programs, I am good looking at bugs.

That probably has come from my analytical skills learned from pathology.

Try to be a problem analyst.

The term in IT is system analyst.

If a server breaks down one has to find where and when and what has gone wrong?

Without trying to spoon feed I have given you a list or methods that I have used to solve my problem with Linux.

You try all and decide what is good for you.

One is enough at an examination but in teaching (as a teacher I have to cater for different type of students) one has to look at the global picture and focus on different aspects of a problem.

That is the difference between a student and a teacher.

It is sometimes very hard to become a good teacher.

If am given a chance I prefer to be a student.

That is where I always enjoyed.

But having to teach a brighter student is a blessing.

Linus Torvalds, I like him the most because he showed that his professor was wrong.

There are many ways to solve a given problem.

Not one professors given method.

This is how the business world operate and there are Teams and not Lords.

Patterns in Nature

Patterns in Nature

I recently watched a video on modern architecture which try to design miniature environment on a massive artificial structure.

It looks very impressive from the outside with some semblance of life in it.

But on entirety it is static landscape eye catching from a distance but more and more you come closer to it one find oneself at a loss.
Nearer one gets to the structure more artificial it becomes.

It looks a miracle but that miracle has no life.

We would like to imprison ourselves within four walls and it is some comfort to our very selfish desires and way of life.

However, nature is not designed to be selfish but for all and sundry.

Everything that is designed biologically is part of a whole and one is connected to the other and to the physical elements and the moment one sits down and watch one feels the beauty of it unravel before ones own eyes.

It is dynamic and full of life.

The patterns of nature are made to be part of whole life.

I was watching the leaves of the coconut move gently with the oncoming wind upward and directing the wind upward. As they do that the shadows of the leaves on top falls on the leaves that are not moving making shadows on top of the leaves and making some undulating movement as they were living creatures moving on top of the leaves (call them shadow of the moving creature).

Leaves of the bread fruit tree (taller than the coconut tree) stay in tune with the wind and move it gently upward and the bamboo leaves breaks the wind in endless direction and when the wind touches me it has all the softness that one could never get from a ceiling fan.

There is not a moment a pattern remain same, it changes and changes but giving infinite variety with the rustle of the leaves making subtle musical note one could barely hear.

With this background music comes the birds resting for moment bit of a chatter with rest and making a bit of a symphony orchestra before leaving for another kind of bird to take the chorus.

Then come the squirrel giving some note or alarm by its very watchful eyes focusing on events around it.

None of these patterns can be seen in the gigantic structure with very still shadows.

The cup a tea I was sipping was over it tasted nicer even though I forgot to add some sugar.

That taste I will never have in luxury hotel suite.

Hotel suite isolate me form the living world.
No wonder all the crimes happen inside closed doors.

Why we hate our environment and built more and more skyscrapers is beyond substance or rationality.

It makes us more and more selfish. Self imposed prisons.

We want to close our doors to everything the living planet has to offer.
If this is called development I do not want it.
They are not miracle structures but monsters where life freezes for ever.
I wish I could bring them down.
Even if I do not wish them demolished certainly earth quakes will do that to bring some equilibrium in nature.
Which sensible company would take the risk rebuilding on a devastated land?
I wonder?

Linux Update-Berry Linux-1.09

Linux Update-Berry Linux-1.09
I have been testing and using Berry Linux from its version 0-9 and it is one of the best of Light weigt category.

It has packed amazingly good amount of packages (Japanese mastery of Linux) including open ofice, K3B and wine.
Only missing package is gparted and has LXDE, Gnome amd KDE desktops.
dropbox of course need to be downloaded after installation and that 20 odd amount is breeze with a fast internet.
I have no hesitation of recommending it to a newbie.
Being Redhat derivative i believe it is stable too.
Hope they will add gparted (parted is there but I prefer graphic variety) and dropbox in the next version.
Thanks a lot guys and girls of Linux in Japan.

Cup a Tea and University Education

Nostalgia of Perdeniya Campus



I decided to update this with minimal (there were lot of spellings and grammatical mistakes, which I do not care now) change to the contents, in the name of Nirmal.
 
Intellectuals are persecuted for telling the truth like what happened to Hippocrates.
This was what happened to Nirmal in broad day light.

Pol Sambol, Kiri Bath and and cup of tea were the standard diet of a student, outside the university residences.

Within the university residences we were served, with cheese, butter, Pariipu, beef, fish and Cadju (for the pure vegetarian students from Jaffna) on a regular basis.

No wonder most of the non-resident student would come for Gajai and Wala on weekends when many of us go home to tell our parents that the food in the campus was horrible (a big lie) to supplement our liberal pocket money which were spent on cigarettes, alcohol and once a year gambling during the Perahara Carnival.

One should not take that we did not go to the cinema.
That was my addiction to save the time on reading (Godfather, French Connection, English Classics-not my favourite though)

I used to hit the first day first show since, if somebody tells me the plot I never use to enjoy the film and fortunately most my friends used to find a boarding place near a theatre / cinema and would be in the queue well before me and jumping the queue was not an issue or offence. 
This was the time of decline in English Education in in Ceylon, including Kandy and the crowd that hit the cinema was selective and would accommodate minor idiosyncrasies of out time.

Swapping a seat to accommodate a girl friend was a done thing but they used to go to the balcony and we visited balcony only for our beer during the interval.

Unfortunately some of our professors also used to hit the show on the first day, my professor in particular.

But our modus operandum was changed and skipped the first two days and go to the 9.30 show and that also was only to the gallery for 60 cents and the money saved was well spent on beer and if the show was bad we would leave after a round of beer sometime well before the interval.

Suffice is to say the back row was reserved for us by default for English shows and when we start to move in for a Sinhala film "Market Somes' (city thugs) would move forward leaving the back row empty. 

We used to command respect from even these guys those days and that was the respect for an undergraduate of yesteryear.

To recap good quality Pilsner Beer (we could not come to halls of residence drunk, though--now even booing, smiling and even cracking a joke of political nature is prohibited by Chinthanaya) was Rs.1.80/= and two of us could enjoy a round meal or mixed grill for Rs.10/= which included a liberal tip for the waiter.

I would go home have a little nap and have a run round the lake with my dog till all the smell of alcohol is dissipated to fresh air around Kandy City and I never wondered what my friends would do-may be they went to the gym).

This is the way we kept our friendship and never got involved with private life of others .

We were fiercely independent.

I promised our team which I captained that I would throw a party (lunch) if our team wins the inter-university championship and that was the only encouragement that was needed to lift the cup, beating Colombo on a Penalty shoot out.

I never liked the way Colombo guys reacted to the defeat and they turned down my offer for a round of refreshments on my account (not University).

I still wonder what happens to people when they migrate to Colombo from far away villages and many of them become monsters (or is it ministers), in no time including village politicians.

The cost for the lunch for the entire team wit beer was Rs.110/= and that was raised by me on one day of gambling at the carnival.

Thank god we did not have Casino then but Tombola only in Kandy Lake Club and I never told the guys how I got the money but I made sure I got some extra cash from my mother too, in case guys would double my expenses on beer.

Now my mother is no more, it is more than enough time I kept all these secrets from her which she would only know from heaven.

I believe she still won't believe that her small brat was capable of such feats.

Extra Rs.10/= was the tip for the waiter with left over beer.

What was obvious none of us had the gene for alcoholism unlike our politicians, even when the prize of alcohol was very cheap.

We soon graduated to VSOA (Very Special Old Arrack) and the price was Rs.7.50 at Union Place Grill (with full birds-this was the time cats and dogs meat were substituted for chicken) in Colombo.

Soon afterwards, I was baptized with 6 rounds of beer in a Pub in London and that was the last time I had a drink with that crowd and told to myself, I would never have in excess of a glass of beer and that is also with good company and never with a crowd of drunkards.

But I could not resist myself half a chicken for lunch and another half a chicken at night (free from NHS on days I was on night duty) and liberal amount of fresh milk instead of beer (half that from the NHS).

Now to the present moment and cup of tea in Sri-Lanka.

It was only today, I went out to buy some bananas and the Muslim guy who sells me good banana and runs a tea shop round the corner got little chatty now the Vesak fever was over.

I asked him how many cups he makes from a Kg and told him unless his raises the price of cup of tea he has to close the shop for good.

He was not convinced.

I told him tea has gone up in price even before the election by 100%.

I told him if I put two good blend tea bags in a cup (without water or sugar) it costs Rs. 90/= and the cheapest brand costs Rs. 75/=.

(Needs little explanation here to see how simple arithmetic is used. Two tea bags will cost only Rs.7 to 10 but when it is made in to a cup of tea it is called value added and it is rounded up by ten times-in other word value added means a profit is 10 times.)

It used to be Rs.25/= if one bag is dipped (dipping a tea bag into hot water costs, 10 times) 10 years ago but 50 if two bags were dipped. Now the price of tea has gone up by 100% and if one asks a cup with two bags it costs Rs.100/= or more.

Two years ago, in a reasonable hotel in Kandy (not 5 Star-one needs a decent swimming pool for that classification) the price of tea pot for two was Rs.175/= (before the election-the last time I went there- mind you not Mesna). 

I met one of my colleagues (freshers at the campus) who was a director in an education institution (after about 20 year lapse) and we went for a chat and some tea (the waiter refused to serve a tea pot) and I had to go to the manager to make my order placed.
I tendered Rs. 500/=, my friend almost got a heart attack, and left the balance as the tip, since the waiter who served us was almost slavish after my little intermission with the manager.

Kandy already has lost the trick of the trade, the Kandyyan Hospitality.

Now my friend is retired but works as the vice principal in a private school in upcountry, and his kids are abroad doing well, whenever I meet him with his wife, he used to remind this 'Tea Episode' and I retort, if the president can have a Hopper for Rs. 200/=, I am just helping out our tea Industry.


Gods only know how much it costs now.

But I can assure you that the take away prices of food items have doubled, in this city.

I give a break for my family members (all adults) and stay at home with the dog (cannot afford to hire a watcher and thieves have increased in numbers even in our neighbourhood and practically every house had been broken into either in day / or in night.

I do go for 'take away' regularly and spend and eat out once in a way when friends from abroad visit me, since thing have improved security wise in the night.

The cost of a meal for my dog (including fish for the dog) and me which was Rs.450/= will cost now over Rs.1000/=. 

That was my experience last time round. 

Strangely enough in Majestic City in Colombo a tiny piece of fish is Rs.250= (10 times value added) and a buffe that costs over Rs.650/= per head was so horrible (another place in the Colombo City) none of us finished the meal and went to an American take away and had ice creams of all sorts to satisfy our hunger and drown the anger with delight.

There is something horribly wrong in our hospitality trade.

There is no exaggeration here.

This is the miracles happening in broad day light.

I have to spend Rs.100/= for cup of milk tea (if somebody else make the tea for me) and from 6 cups (in 10 years) I have come down to 2 or three a day and very soon I will stop drinking Sri-Lankan tea.

I have cut it down to one but mind you that cup is virtually a beer mug and my daughter estimates it to be an equivalent of (minimum) 750 milligrams of caffeine derivatives.

In other words three (3) cups of tea.
 
I went on to say for the last one year I do not drink tea in my office, and he was more than convinced.

He still sells his plain tea for Rs.10/= and he has to have 100 to make Rs.1000/= his turn over for a day.

I do not think he gets 30 even though he works 7 am to 7 pm (12 hours).

In my case, I have to make my own cup of tea and stay away from drinking tea while on work.

I told him to make as much tea as possible from his bulk tea strainer for him to stay in business and display the price one (1) Kg tea in a prominent place in Sinhala and let the customer calculates the number of tea one can make from a kilo of tea.

They are very poor in arithmetic's and would blame the Gods or Tamil State Worker for the price but never the present government to which they are immunized and anesthetized.

Coming back to University, the teachers and students should do their teaching and studies without a cup of tea.

We must teach students that tea is addictive and it is good only for foreigners.

For teachers who are asking a pay hike should stop drinking tea and coffee and should drink the miracle water the government promised them before and during the elections.
The miracle water in the university is none other than 'Pol Arrakku'.

If they go for an audience with our=ex president I am sure they will be provided with a different type of miracle drink that would make them to think that the miracle will come in two years after the predicted end of the world and with new world order taking shape where intellectuals are persecuted for telling the truth like what happened to Hippocrates.

History repeat itself!

That is a normal phenomenon.

Linux Update-PixieLive2 and Gentoo--Waste of Time?

This is the second time I downloaded Pixie ( Earlier Version 1) and it took almost one and half days to download with only two or three seeds.
Unfortunately it does not say how to make a bootable live DVD or Flash Drive.
All executable files of dos and sh are there but when they are run on a command line terminal, "permission denied message" comes up.
I cannot one understand why this is done for a Linux distribution unless with commercial intention.
This is the biggest down side of Gentoo too it has live a DVD which goes up to 4 GiB but there is is no script for installing.
It is this psychopathic behavior of some developers that makes Linux commercially not viable n shun newbies.

This is a a verse comment I have made academically (please not not with commercial intent) on a distribution apart from apartheid Linux which speaks for itself and violates the fundamentals of open source spirit of the game of computing.
As far as ordinary user is concerned this no longer an issue since there are over 100 Linux distributions with multi-language capability.
These distribution will be good for nothing or would be destined for the archives and sometimes without even an adverse comment.
How can I make even an adverse comment without experiencing the virtues for a moment?

I beats my guts out!

Newbies do not waste your precious time on these distributions in spite of glossy pages in their home web pages since there lot of nice birds out there.

Or else visit my Linux 100.

Linux Update Pinguy

The recent edition of Pinguy based on Ubuntu is very pleasant.
It has both 32 bit and 64 bit versions.

This was one of the DVDs I could download overnight and was over 1.67 GiB and comes under my middle weight or the Chimpanzee category.

Rapid download was due to the availability of large number of seeders.

Seeders themselves speak of it popularity and I need not say any more.

It has Unity and Apple like desktop.
Boots up fast has LibreOffice and Dropbox, Skype and many of the utilities that a first time user may prefer to have in his or her system.

I have no reservation of recommending it to a newbie and Linux savvy should decided for himself or herself.

It has some issues like not being able recognize multiple Linux operation that I have in my hard disk. Grub is is little bit limited and finicky (one does not have to worry about it and let me deal with it myself) in its behaviour.

This comment is short and sweet and I should wind up with my bonobo to gorilla classification of the ape family assuming that we, users not the Linux community descended from apes.

This was something to substitute the boxing category I started with and being interested in biology, environment and biodiversity, I could not resist using our nearest relative (I am not an expert on apes and not even humans and their behaviour especially with the computers) to illustrate how heavy or padded a Linux distribution is.

1. Bonobo is the feather weight category and include all Linux distribution under 200 MiB and fits in to a mini CD. Puppy to DSL to IPcop.

2. Common Sri-Lankan Monkey is the Light weight category and the best in this category are Peppermint, again a Ubuntu derivative and Berry Linux (Redhat derivative).

3. Middle weight is the Chimpanzee category and goes up to 1.5 GiB and Pinguy fits in well to this category. (Mind you mini DVD can fit in 1.4 GiB image and still fit in with your front pocket. I still have few Mini DVDs, I bought for Cricket World Cup,2007 left in my cabinet and a double layered one not used. This is to illustrate the point that I rarely go above Mini CD and standard CD for my work. I am light weight in my approach. Fact that there are DVDs now one need not fill them with junk packages one never uses. Remember Linux used to pack them in Floppies. Do not forget that creative beginning).

4. Heavy Weight ( 3 to 4 GiB) or the Gorilla category is PCLinux FullMonty and Knoppix, the 10th Anniversary edition which is less than 4 GiB and it is my number one).

5. If one wants one can add HaliWandura (Sri-Lankan jungle variety which is less in numbers with a blackish ring around the face and neck) for 700 MiB CD and PCLnux and Ubuntu fall into this category.

I find between 500 to 700 MiB one is limited with many constraints (We are limited by the physical capacity of the disk and not Linux) and going up to 1 GiB does not do justice to the developers, either.
So go for next best that fits in with mini DVD of 1.4 GiB).

One (1) GiB may be good for Flash Drive guys / girls but with Flash drive capacity which has increased now, trying to fit a distribution (KDE) to 1 GIB is not advisable.

So developers it is far better to stick to 4 categories.

1. 50 to 200 MiB
2. 500 MiB
3. 500 x 3 and the 1500 MiB ceiling.
4. 500 x 6 and the 3000 and above category

5. For any glutton use above 4.0 GiB (this is not hitting Debian below the belt punch (boxing terminology) which has the best repository on this planet but to state that packages above the base system should be blocked into either 4 GiB (standard DVD) or may be even 1.5 GiB (Mini DVD) and that depend on how they are used.
It is high time somebody outside the Debian (it become an independent survey) community do an objective survey of the use of various elements in the repository.
Then on the basis of 5-S classification divide into three categories and archive according to that system.
1. Frequently used
2. Less frequently used but generally useful (? Education).
3. Used for a particular purpose but rarely (Science)

Double Density and 8 GiB is a waste of time and it is far better to have two 4 GiB game DVDs instead of one big 8 GIB DVD.
Incidentally I saw a Debian distribution of 20 GiB (? BlueRay) in LinuxTreacker today and I wonder to whom this distribution is targeted for?

Who is the glutton?