Monday, April 29, 2019

Why Politics is a Failure and Democracy Needs Revival In Ceylon


Why Politics is a Failure and Democracy Needs Revival In Ceylon

This piece is ruthless to journalists and our secular politicians.


If you are weak mind do not read below this line since I am going to talk about drug peddlers, religious fanatics, homosexuals, money swindlers, way side killers, pedophiles and psychopaths who write to national media and journalists who encourage them.

Dispense with SF to begin with.

He (SF) should contest the next election with or without the help of UNP (non existent currently). 
This will eliminate Thajuddeen murderers and white van philosophy.
We need not want JVP to hoodwink him (that is what they did in the past)
We are breathing fresh air due to the efforts of foot soldiers and SF who led them.
This does not mean all the soldiers are good and some of them have murdered Sinhala (1971,1989), Tamil (ethic war) and in the future may be others (Muslims), too.
A psychopath (reproduced below without his name) says SF is a failure since he could could not avoid the suicide bomber.
He faced the bomber head on and saved his colleagues in his office.
Mind you he wore a protective vest and that is why he is alive.
That is what a true leader does not like current president who run to Thirupathi for inspiration and hide his cowardliness in broad daylight.
We need not have coward guys (two in fact) on the top.
We do not need politicians who believe no existent gods including Muslim, Hindu or Christian.
I think now they should wear a helmet (average citizens Kithul Polla awaits them come elections not the journalist’s pen) and a protective vest now onwards.
Preferably a BOX the cricketers wear since they value their private parts more than the life of an average citizen.
Now I come to the homosexuals since, I talked about the box (all MPs should wear BOXES in parliament, their behavior speaks themselves in public -is exemplary).
Before I went to UK I was told by a senior guy “Beware of Homosexuals) whom I managed to outwit in the interview of over 60 guys.
Mind you I did not accept it (declined) since the government bound me by 12 years, monetary bonds and penalties.
The basic salary then was Rs.400/=.
I must say in the plane I did not come across homosexuals but my first encounter in a tube toilet (horrible those days) in London was a homosexual. 
I told him that it is a criminal offense and five years in jail and would you come to the nearest police stations. He ran away like a thief. I used to keep a Swiss knife in my possession, the entire stay in UK (still in Ceylon to counteract pickpockets) and pull it out with an apple to show my not so elegant public defense.
It is illegal to carry a knife (knife incidents were common those days in London).
 
Mind you 80 year old lady was raped at midnight (my wife and I took the train few minutes before this incident) in Merylibourne station in 1984.
We came home that Christmas for good.
There were 35 odd pedophiles (one was a PM) and many more homosexuals in the upper and lower house in the eighties.
Mind you, Lady Thatcher passed a bill in my time making homosexuality a normal act and I became a minority but a vocal opponent.
That is how the democracy works, more homosexuals and more in the parliament.
More drug peddlers and more of them in the parliament (over 125 currently) .
Mind you most priests are homosexuals and like politicians they hide behind the robe.
More criminals (drug peddlers) more terrorist in any country, Ceylon is no exception.
Ceylonese National papers (media, too) are owned by underworld guys to make black money white.
There was a good article in a Aniddha about how putrid the journalists are now. 
Giving a psychopath a room to tarnish SFs image is a manifestation of this malady.
They are scared that he will contest next presidential election and their blood dirty swords are directed at him but not who killed Tharjudeen and Lasantha.

Democracy -Why the Failure?

I will list them not in any order of priority.

1. Post of Presidency its action and inaction (past, present and future)

2. Bonus vote, List MPs and Governors (political bum suckers) not accountable to the masses.
Only one man one vote works in democracy not when it is in multiples.

3. Fringe political parties based on religion, race, drug peddlers and homosexuals but not workable policies on national issues.

4. Intransigence of these fringe parties breed ground for extremists and terrorists.

5. No regular time table for elections and the President and PM fiddle with them.
They are fiddlers on the roof but no impact on policies.

6. Division of executive and parliament was meant for democracy to work . It works the other way and antagonistically.
Conspirators run the country.
Deal Dasas make money behind the scene.

7. The cross over of MPs after the last count is made.
It should be made illegal and the cross over holder should lose the right to contest for 20 years.

8. Foreign dwellers who come (Naganadda included) only during the election.
Minimum two years residence to qualify for candidacy including MPs.

9. Vote rigging and bribes.

10. Failure of the public servants who bum-suck politicians.


11. Failure of the bum-sucking journalists.

12. This is not the time for a new constitution.
It is a rotten time.

The list can go on to hundreds.

Fonseka too failed in security

April 28, 2019, 12:00 pm
"The entire government would have resigned if a disaster like the Easter Sunday carnage had happened in any other country, but such things would never happen in Sri Lanka" …said Field Marshal Sarath Fonseka. He severely criticized both the Government and the Opposition for allowing the deterioration of intelligence services.
In the course of his discourse, in parliament, he also stressed that vitally important responsibilities for the security of the nation should not be entrusted to inexperienced amateurs; and that he himself is the person best suited for such a task.
In making this type of statement he, like most politicians, probably believes that the public memories are woefully short. We remember that, he was an excellent Commanding Officer of the Northern Zone, who steadfastly resisted the pressures for the Army to unilaterally evacuate the 'High Security Zone' around the main military base in the Jaffna peninsula, exerted by the leaders of our government during the fateful ‘Peace Negotiations’ of 2002. But, several years later he failed disastrously to protect himself and his headquarters against a terrorist attack, and was compelled to remain a disabled patient in Singapore during that critical phase of planning the final onslaught against the LTTE.

Thursday, April 25, 2019

Why I Agree with Karl Marx, that Religion is an Opium to the Selfish Mind


Why I Agree with Karl Marx, that Religion is an Opium to the Selfish Mind
Religion is an opium to the Unkind and Selfish Mind.
It is a deep philosophical argument he portrayed even though social and communist countries adapted it to politics in the wrong context to control secular societies.
Religion is not based on scientific methodology but on dogmatic statement of a not so charismatic individual and stupid people follow the so called enlightened guy who is in one sense gone bonkers in thinking capacity.

Once a dogma is incarcerated in the mind the guy or girl becomes paranoid and sick and there is no treatment for it except for strict incarceration.

What Karl Marx reiterated was that this illness has no treatment or ready made remedy.

That is the philosophical content for shich we must thank, the British for giving him the refuge in UK when he was vilified by the Church in Germany. 

It was not Russia or China but British who saved the “Freedom of Speech”.

Mind you Sir Bertram Russel had to hide in China from the Church for writing a book “Why I am not a Christian?”.

No religion new or old can escape from the root dogma which is fallible by scientific examination.

What is written in books is not sacred or sacrosanct.
They have to be examined with open mind and be subjected to strict scrutiny.

This is why I say we are still Level Zero Civilization.

Most of the alien civilizations (who have visited us after atomic bomb explosion in nineteen forties) are level one or above level one civilizations and they live in amity and there is total abolition of war mongering.

It will take another 100 years for us to reach level one civilization but long before that we will be extinct due to mass extinction or another bomb which is more lethal than atomic.

This is where the American (Church logic) logic that alien visitation should be hidden under the cover of Conspiracy Theory from the average masses perception is more dangerous than religion by itself.

It breeds grounds for mass paranoia and phobia.

The CIA plan was to make the entire world Christian, whereas the Muslim fanaticism is to make the entire world Muslim.

They are at loggerhead for ages and communist and socialist worlds should be in the forefront to diffuse this animosity.

We need not fear aliens but paranoid youth who are brought up without knowledge, understanding, responsibility or brotherhood or mutual human benefit.
That is the root of the problem.
Dogmatism has no currency in this century.

Startup Disk Creator to Boot Debianon a USB

I finally found a way to create a Startup Disk for Debian.
Debian by default discourages making a Bootable USB Stick with good reasons.
It has enormous source of packages and one missing file will create configuration problems.
In my case I do not like Live DVD for booting.
They make a lot of noise and I prefer USB booting.
Finally I got MultiSystem to have copy of Debian inside a SSD with many other distributions.
Toady I booted ElementaryOs (it has minimal package system after SDD install) on an external disk and started downloading packages and came across Startup Disk Creator Package.
I tested it with 16 GiB USB and presto it could create a Debian 9.8.0 version on USB Disk in less than ten minutes.
By the way, even if you use the USB stick you ought to have DVD in the CD ROM for the dpkg (package checking) to configure the packages correctly, especially if not connected to the Internet.

Tuesday, April 23, 2019

Debian on a USB Stick

Debian on a USB Stick
Making a Bootable USB stick (USB 2) with Debian 9.8.0 is humanly impossible.
1. I tried it with the latest DVD (First out of the 3 DVDs).
2. It has enormous amount of packages and does not fit in with a 16 GiB stick.
3. Writing took nearly four (4) hours and aborted with failure to install software.
4. I tried (thinking that it might help to recover) again.
It did not (probably no space left) write a Grub file.
5. I could mount Debian on a USB 3 64 GiB stick (no installing) with MultiSystem Software.
6. I tried UnetBootIn and failed.
7. Now Linux does not support writing a Grub file on a USB stick.

My advice is to use SSD external drives. 
I have several and discarding all OLD USB sticks.

Alternative is to try other Linux distributions on USB sticks.

AVLinux supports booting from a USB stick.

I do not know whether Peppermint, ElementaryOs or PinguyOS support USB booting.

It is time to say Good Bye to USB 2 sticks, except for data writing.
I am not sure one needs a swap partition for SSDs but all the same reserve some space for swap.
SSD does not support Master Boot record and one cannot install a second Linux distribution.
I have Debian on my Mater SSD but the reserved (for a second distribution) JFS partition is unusable.
New technology does not support OLD but very productive methodology.
My old turntable drives with terrabyte capacity have three or four distributions installed with over 500 GiB left for my data (films, photos, books and record of my Document Files).
One does not need cloud to store data, especially if your Internet connection and supply is pretty slow.
It is true in my case and I work only past midnight.

The technicalities behind it are tricky, but MBR is constrained by the capacity and limited number of its sectors—only 32 bits are available to represent logical sectors. You can find out more on Microsoft’s TechNet blog, but it means that MBR can only use up to 2TB of storage space. Anything larger than that, and the extra disk space is marked as unallocated and unusable.
GPT allows for 64 bits, which means that the storage limitation is 9.4ZB. That’s a zettabyte, which is one sextillion bytes or a trillion gigabytes. In practice, what it really means is that GPT has no real-world limit. You can buy any capacity drive and GPT will be able to use all of the space.
In short: MBR can support up to 2TB; GPT handles up to 9.4ZB.

My contention is why one need that much of capacity (only servers use that amount) to write a book which can be accomplished with a very small PDF (Portable Digital Format) file.
I do that with Abiword.

Sunday, April 21, 2019

Ubuntu Update


Distributions
Based On
RAM Usage

Quelitu Jazz 16.04**
10/16
 E17/Lubuntu 16.04.1
103 MB

Quelitu Lxde 16.04**
10/16
Lubuntu 16.04.1
125 MB

Lubuntu 16.04
04/16
Ubuntu 16.04.1
154 MB

Linux Mint XFCE 18
08/16
Ubuntu 16.04.1
185 MB

Xubuntu 16.04
04/16
Ubuntu 16.04.1
225 MB

Linux Lite 3.2
10/16
Ubuntu 16.04
240 MB

This is just to write my last three hours with Ubuntu 19.04 and its software. 
It has its own featured set of software and nothing else. 
Downloading Ubuntu was easy with torrent.
Installing was painful.
I tried a live session and tried Gparted (mind you I can visualize my partition table even in my dream) to pick a root and home partitions.
It froze.
Simply because it used so much RAM resources to SHOW off its versatility BUT  not its functionality.
Then I went for the ultimate KILL treatment.
Pressed the switch off button and restarted Ubuntu and it took ages to boot up again.
Installed it which was relatively fast (not to my liking anyway with lot of missing first boot up packages) and I could not use an alternate person to use my computer without the root permission.
Mind its cage was not enough to fill all the characters of my root password.
It does (who will use the root password for daily word) not let me have a user password.
Updating software and removing boot-up software took so much  time I switched the kettle for a cuppa.
Then getting a software update to install Abiword my favorite writing tool took ages.
So I decided to upgrade my anger here.
Mind you this is installed in an old USB 2 external drive (to show a newbie, if asked) not in my alternate external hard drive.
It is better to use ElementaryOS or Peppermint or PinguyOs for productivity.
Mind YOU all are Ubuntu based (Debian based to begin with) but much better user friendly.
How can I recommend Ubuntu to anybody? 
I only use Debian now with few packages missing (Abiword, UnetBootIn, Dilo web browser, Tor, very tiny utilities but super-fast) in a store of over 66,000 packages, I will never use in my life time.
Thank you Debian.
No thanks Ubuntu.
I never used Ubuntu for productivity work anyway!

Wednesday, April 17, 2019

ElementaryOS

ElementaryOS

Concept of ElementaryOS is elementary.

It has a small footprint to start with but it can expand to one's needs.

Its look is something like Mac Os with square windows, is eye-catching but nevertheless still foreign to one who comes from Gnome and KDE base with minimal clutter (with workspaces that keep individual process one not currently working out of sight).
Having said that its commercial entry and approach, I welcome, since Linux guys also needs bread and butter (or rice and curry) for survival.

Its packages are $1 to $3 dollars are withing everyone’s reach and for $100 dollars one can have 25 to 30 packages of ones liking.

It has large repertoire of FREE packages, I do not need any of the fancy stuff, since I use Debian as my workhorse.

Peppermint by the way, I am losing interest due to its bulkiness and slow speed of booting.

I keep an eye on PinguyOs but it has some teething problem with Grub File.

None of them supports UnetBootIn except AVLinux.
So don’t be a distrohopper but have multiple distributions installed on an external turntable hard drive (preferably not SSD, that has problems with multiple booting).

If you are using SSD better try, MultiSystem CD for booting multiple distributions on a USB pen or drive.

Currently UnetBootIn support only one distribution (good old days multiple distributions on a stick) at a time.
Debian does not support MultiSystem, the French System but UnetBootIn does the honours with Debian (I put Debian 9.8.0 on a stick since I hate humming Disk Drive in the background when installing).
Thanks the guys and girls doing the wonderful stuff for Linux.
Please do not let UnetBootIn go into extinction.

Tuesday, April 16, 2019

UnetBootIn-Update

UnetBootIn-Update
I was installing Debian on this computer today.
I got a warning in the installing script (not use toUnetbootin) since the USB Stick was made using UnetBootin.
It (installation) went on smoothly without a hitch. 
UnetBootIn is a very small Linux utility and it needs additional plugin or libraries to function.
I used AVLinux Live session and used its Unetbootin.
Very handy Ghaphic interface.
Unlike old days it installs (overwrite previous installation in USB) only one iso- squashfs file (not multiples).
Only French Utility MultSystem allows one to have many iso distributions in a USB stick.
But the squashfs file might not have all the utilities the iso DVD may have.
It may be safer to use a DVD, instead.
DVD Rom makes a hum and I prefer quiet installation with a USB stick.
As far as I know only UnetBootIn support thisfunction,
Nothing ele.
Please do not destroy its functionality by giving wrong information.
If one tries (I had that difficulty and I have voiced my concern, elsewhere thinking it does not support 64 bit computers) the raw UnetBotin without the plug in one may fail.
The bottom line is if one has a distribition (AVLinux is an example) that supports unetbootin use that distribution.
I hope many of the other Linux distributions would include it in its packages,
Plase do not distroy its functionality.
 

Friday, April 12, 2019

Who is the one who makes the Real Twit?

 Who is the one who makes the Real Twit?


In Twitter parlance which Ceylonese bird makes the real twit sound?

I am not good at distinguishing various chirpy chips of our birds.
There are plenty of different types of Munias (Battchittas) that make a lot of noise.

Identifying the one who really makes a twit is very difficult.

They avoid direct eye contact and disappear the moment one focuses on them and hide under leaves.

Today I spotted two of them alone in our rooftop garden.
They are the tiniest of the lot.
They are the ones who made a nest in our rooftop garden which was left to wilderness (I was busy or had gone abroad, may be) sometime ago.
They are the ones who attacks the big birds without fear.
They are the ones with golden brown feathers with soft white underbelly.

The black variety (I call the paddy birds) does not twit but are very chirpy nevertheless.

It was hide and seek.
I was listening to the twit hiding behind the plastic gate.
Waited for sometime to locate the direction and found two on the roof.
Within seconds they disappeared and I could hear the alarming twit to its buddy at a distance. 
They come to feed on the fruits of the mulberry trees. 
I have three on pots and they have plenty of fruits. The big birds never come down to that level and tiny tots have a leisurely feed.
The mulberry trees need lot of water otherwise they shrivel away.
I have been doing that during the torrid time.
They rain is long overdue.


Thursday, April 11, 2019

Torrid Weather and Birds



 
Torrid Weather and Birds

This is to correct some misconceptions about birds.
We think that by feeding them with left over rice we can support them during the dry weather.
The rice sucks water and fills the belly and make them prone to dehydration.

What we should feed them with is with fruits with seeds.

They scatter seeds helping the reforestation.

At least grow a paw paw tree in your garden and let them eat the ripe ones.

We think they can survive on insects.

No.

They dry weather inhibit abundance of insects.

So only way they can survive is with limited number of fruits.

The best is to grow a mulberry tree in your garden.

They have fruits even during the dry weather.

Birds need honey, too.

Flowering plants are essential for many tiny birds including humming birds.

Water is essential to keep the wings in trim condition.

There is an open water plant near our house.
Local Mynahs have a bath there and come for the mulberry fruits.

They love them.

They are the most jovial type even after a thunder storm.

Mynahs do eat fruits.

The insects are an additional source that helps to control pests of our food crops.
So keeping our bird population is vital for the foods crops.
Eating a few beans by parrots  should not be considered a menace.

They are the worse of birds hit by the torrid weather pattern.

Growing Bamboo Trees

Bamboo and the Windbreaks

This fastest growing plant rather a grass is one of the most vandalized plant in this country. Since it is growing fast we take for granted to destroy at every opportunity available and never care to plant any.

I have never seen a nursery for bamboo even though there are hundreds of varieties.
These plants are not seen in the temperate countries and in early as 18th century Americans took them from Asia and started growing them as ornamental plants.

While they do research on these plants we vandalize them.

Why?

We have plenty of them and we do not care for the mother nature.

If I write one plant a day and continue I may have to continue for years how we destroy our wealth of plants.

The plants going extinct were never recorded in our history and we have not even begun to take an inventory as a proactive exercise.

This is not to elaborate on that issue but to state how bamboo tree protects our river beds and roads that run along the rivers.

They do protect the embankments but what our guys do is to chop them at will since they are not protected by the local authorities.

River basin and embankment is nobody’s business in this country.

It also act as a windbreaks.

It cools the air on a warm day with with gentle air currents.

Not only that it reduces our CO2 foot prints.

None of these are taken into accounts since our guys who gets to the parliament have never studied any including social science and not at all pure science.

They use environment issues to form green parties but never practice what they preach once they get there.

If we want to do as little as possible for our mother nature grow a few bamboos around river path and the surrounds.

Like eating a banana a day (not poisoned by UREA) is healthy for our life growing a bamboo a day would protect our rivers, roads and environment (air) too.

That is my message.

Why I do not use a cell phone

Why I do not use a cell phone

I have more than 100 reasons why I do not have or use a cell phone
I will list them as they come to my mind but not in any order of priority,
As an intern I hated a call since it meant, a batch of new arrival of small kids who have arrived in absolutely appalling condition. 
Some of them fitting due to low blood sugar nearing zero.
In fact I had 8 t0 10 kids whose blood sugar and CSF sugar zero.

The government at that time told the public it was encephalitis and I proved them wrong without even my medical registration completed. Then in 6 months later when I went to collect my own data they had disappeared mysteriously from, medical records.

Then what I did subsequently, I have to pen down on a latter date of my life nearing my death!

One thing was sure I decided to leave the Public Sector Health Service and I was glad I did that and if you read Dengue Dilemma elsewhere in my writings, one can easily guess it. 

They use the Dengue diagnosis to hide their mistakes without an alternative diagnosis.

It has deteriorated in quality even though it has expanded in number.
  1. As a doctor I hated bad news on telephone. We rarely hear good news when on duty.                     
  2. Later in life when cell phone came I believed in CPP (Calling Party Pays) and flatly refused a cell phone.                                                                      
  3. It is a public nuisance
  4. It is a nuisance when the cell phone owner has switched it off when you really needed him
  5. When you travel on a public transport one cannot have a snooze to drown the inconvenience with frequent interruptions. I love silence in public places.
  6. Even though I don’t use it I have to foot the bill (kids telephone bills)
  7. No work get done in public officers. They are busy answering their private call of nature and it is more frequent than the real call of nature.
  8. It is cheaper to redirect a message by email that should  end up as junk or gossip.
  9. We use it for gossip not for creative work
  10. It is private enemy one when you own the bank or telephone company a small sum in arrears and the reminders by them cost you more than you actually own them. I think you got the picture correct.
  11. I think it is enough for today but I will add more on future date when I run short of a topic to write.

Majestic Elephants

Majestic Elephants


This is a country run with Mega Mania Memorabilia (3 Ms) but unable to look after our majestic elephants.
A few years ago one of the tuskers was dead due to negligence and dehydration after a so called majestic pageant that paraded the hill country.
Then recently a giant tusker was dead in captivity and the popular story circulating round is he was let to die to get the tusks for ornamentation in high office.
Then comes the floods in the East.
A young dead elephant is trapped in a tree. 
First of a kind of news item and quite relevant in context.
That tells the sorry story of our majestic heritage and how we care.
It is an eye opener for the world if not for this blessed country.
We had 90% forest cover at the beginning of the last century and had over 60,000 elephants.
By mid last century the estimate was 6000 in the wild.
I do not believe we have 600 left in the wild now and the the forest cover is less that 20% now not enough to sustain vegetation let alone elephants.
We are going to commission two mega coal power units in the near future.
The forest cover will be reduced to 10% within a decade of their operation due to acid rain and the environmentalist are hiding behind the saffron clothed M.P.s.
Very soon we won’t have a place in the jungle to meditate in quiet solitude.
Mega Mania development will sacrifice the rest of the trees in the name of development efforts.
Very soon we have to import coconut timber with coconuts on top.
Last tsunami a few people survived by climbing on top of coconut trees.
We have mega floods after 53 years in the East and there are no coconut (palms) trees grown for 6 years after the tsunami to climb onto.

But we have election after election to elect representative who ruin this country.

Mega Mania Memorabilia at its best!

Making an Elephant Laugh

Making an Elephant Laugh

 
Making an elephant laugh is no easy task but this is a tiny attempt with the help of a tiny animal.
This sketch is overdue and is to record the 1st death anniversary of an unfortunate (first in the history of Esala Perahera) Majestic Pachyderm at the hands of the all too important Diyawadana Nilame.

Before that I must (this is also in the same spirit) rectify some of my own lapses and some incisive comments on an attempt by local Microsoft cronies and goons to vandalize our emails (I have many emails but intrusion to my privacy is violation of Fundamental Right of any living and dead soul.

I have already rectified one lapse by switching to Linux completely.
I have dedicated this year for Linux and have already accomplished all what I wanted, well in advance (thought it might drag on till December holidays) and have enough time for my resumes, now.

Second lapse that I rectify now is that the finding a name (word) for (see Katha on Kadde) Kadde.

The boy who raised this question is now growing up fast physically and in English.

This is long overdue, may be by over three years. because of the vandalizing attempt by some living paranoid soul breathing air I exhale.
I started looking at some of my old writing to see whether any one has been defamed or deframed and suddenly found one not edited on time with new / old discovery.
This I give credit to a Burger Gentleman with Irish descent who inherited it from his mother. (Edited today-He is now no more with us in Kandy and has gone back to his base to look after his aging mum giving up his job in Kandy)

The word is Pingo Man.

I make it Ping Pong Man since when he walks with Pingo on his shoulder, he reminds me of a dancing Ping Pong ball.

The Pingo part may have come from either Vietnam or China, this a traditional way of carrying things on shoulder in South Wast Asia. In any case it sounds Chinese to me, and with the ascent of the Chinese Tiger in the East due credit should go to China if it has any connection to the birth of this word like Ying and Yang.
Coming back to the pachyderm, the treatment it gets from the mahout and the tourists, local and foreign is less than desirable, to say the least.
I can remember once I had a not so healthy argument with a Lady Doctor from UK who was voicing the concern I raised now 25 years ago. 

She said that it is a violation of Animal Rights and using them for long hours without due concern is inhuman which I fully endorse without reservation, now.
These animals are ill treated during Perehara time to please tourists!
I still have picture of this lady on an Elephant at Elephant Bath (now non existent) and I have never climbed an elephant in my life. There was another dispute I had with this lady some days later.
I said, I admire this majestic animal so much that I cannot think (not fear) of climbing on one of them and pretend that I (the man) am big or bigger than my size (she of course did not have an answer to my unexpected impromptu) but she of course enjoyed the ride thoroughly.
Coming back to making an elephant laugh none in the list below can do that.

1. Diyawadana Nilame is out on the first count. He goes on to record (in history) for the first death of an elephant who participated in this annual event.

2. President Rajapaksa cannot achieve this because he is making the elephants (two legged) under his fold crying for posts (latest is Mr. Milinda Moragoda).

3. Mr Ranil Wickramasinghe cannot achieve this because he is making all elephants (past and present) cry in vain.

4. I cannot do that since when I go near any one of them garbed with surgical gear even a tame animal gets angry (All Sri-Lankan Doctors are a very arrogant species).

5. A gecko cannot.

6. A chameleon cannot.

7. So who can do that?

I have found one by accident.
This was an ant.
He happened to be on my cup of tea. I asked the fellow what on earth you are doing in my cup of tea.
He looked at me and said, look guy I may be small but I have made an elephant laugh.
That made me to open my eyes wide.
I’ll give you a Palawatta Sugar Grain for the information you give, please tell me the secret.
He took a meditative breath and with a smiling face told me.
It is easy.
I did that to the Majestic Elephant who died a year ago during Perehara.
My gray matter started working with new gush of pure blood not polluted by Americans and their Autos.
How come?
He said when the Kandy Veterinary Surgeon was attending to him, he hid inside the nose (with his poking the elephant was crying) and when he was gone came out from his hiding (in the night) place to inquire why he was crying.
He said to the ant in his slumber, these guys (doctors) even do not let  me sleep my last nap (sleep) with poking and probing.
Suddenly the ant realized, he is having his last conversation with this majestic guy.
He (ant) whispered to the elephant, buck up you guy, if they take you to the Intensive Care Unit, I’ll give all my blood and save you, OK.
To this the elephant could not stop laughing.
He took his last breath laughing and ended up in heaven.
The moral of this story is when one is dying only the little ones are near you.
Little things can make one happy but not doctors (plenty in white garb) without humour.
For the two legged elephants, the little ones (grass root citizens and not those who are at Diyawaanawa) are the ones that matter most.
Not foreign tours.
Small is beautiful!
P.S. The real reason for the Elephant’s death was dehydration (negligence) and poor care and not old age as stated by those who were in authority.
22th July, 2009

Why I cannot Make Wine In Kandy?

Why I cannot Make Wine In Kandy?
This I have to post very quickly before the ordination of young ones by next Poya.
Then this country will be (alcohol free except in the parliament), smoke free (except smog from coal power plants and the variety of luxury vehicles imported for our representatives after elections and driving on our motorways built and will be newly built) and Buruwas free (except National Lottery and Lotto)  the National and Awrudu Game including Polburuwas watching our TVs for another 5 years (i.e the voter in peace).
 
These Buddhist monks first Kariya or the duty would be to get rid of the above three (alcohol,smoke and games) and disregard any excesses of other kinds that are not permitted to Dasa Sil Mathwas on a Poya Day.
But my real reason for not been able to Make wine is more of a scientific nature and is not in my control.
Making wine is simple process but this betel chewing (no taste for wine) and arecanut cracking (inhibit taste for wine but not for arrack) nation would not experiment on new varieties of taste except what the government wants them to be.

In wine making one needs five to six ingredients. 1. Sugar 2. Yeast, living organism 3. Water 4. Flavour 5. Time and Temperature
We have five of them in abundance but only one is missing.
Guess what it is?
Even in Kandy I cannot provide it, the most important for correct brewing.
Well it is the temperature that is missing which has to be correct, precise and ideal.
1. Above 38 C (100 F) yeast will be dead. 2. Primary or the start up fermentation should start at 21 c (70 F) 3. Secondary or the slow phase fermentation should be at 16 C (65 F) 4. Finish product should be kept at 10 to 15 C (50 to 55 C) 5. Ideal requirement are 20, 15, 10 C (70, 60, 50) and very simple in arithmetic but never achieved in Kandy or suburbs.
That is the reason I cannot make wine in Kandy and the global warming has taken the toll.
I hope after Wesak Poya, the temperature should hover round 100 F (38 and above) and the newly ordained monks should meditate on this so that they do not have to worry about one of the three mentioned above for certain (that is the ideal way to kill yeast) but the mosquito menace and the music accompanied with will hinder their meditative path.

In my case I cannot think of Pani Waraka Wine Passion Fruit Wine Banana Wine Keeri Samaba Wine Mangustine Wine Belly wine Diwul Wine or any fruit cocktail Wine for certain.
I have to think of getting them only in heavenly abode and probably after my death.