Meeting this guy was a chance occurrence, most likely through MW, I believe. He may have ask some favours from MW and he would have duly helped. Perhaps getting his daughter to a Kandy school with talent in swimming. This guys daughter, I use to buy treats, since she was a good swimmer and spend lot of time on swimming lessons.
Sitting with this friend who is an expert on Origami and having a tea and treat was to put importance of education and not sports. Only a few can rice up the ladder of sports. Doing sports for fun is a different matter. I used to the points point blank but now I use gentle and pervasive mode.
She was tiny and I told him, what she needs is good food and good education and her teachers are using for their fame and not his daughter.
In fact. the teachers are using her.
She gets up at five and come to Kandy, before six thirty in the morning to have half and hour of of swimming lessons from 7AM to 7.30AM the school opening, time. Then he waits until 2.30PM to pick her up with after lessons. The school closes at 1.30PM.
This schedule exhaust both the father and the daughter and his hard earned money in Japan is down the drain as it were. He has a another kid I think a boy.
I told him not to give Origami lessons free of charge and advertise it and earn some money. I could not follow a single lesson and my target was to get my memory back and develop a skill in old age to help my coordination in old age. I am losing bit of coordination and I realize keyboard is my my friend.
Besides, it will make me to finish few more books in double quick time. I also try to master new English words and synonyms are my favourites and I try to avoid using the same word repeatedly but instead use a synonym to go with my fast flowing ideas
I told him she has no energy left to concentrate on lessons. It is far better to lean English and Japanese instead.
Of course, corona virus put and end to swimming lessons and me meeting him for a cup of tea.
I should end this with the all the Japanese Guys and Girls who helped the Dental Faculty to its present standing. It is also closed due to corona virus and a blessing in disguise for the guys who are practicing.
My target was only 50 dental surgeons a year and export them and they went up to 100 not heading my advice.
The first is Dr. Handa and he was an amiable guy and I used to tell him instead of JICA, he should become a diplomat. I lost touch with him and he never game me his email and I did not ask in any case.
The other was Miss Hagiwara, opposite Dr. Handa very reserved and difficult to make any tangible friend. She was a computer lady and had all the Windows proprietary software including statistics with her. She was stingy not necessarily due to copyright issues but her nature. I gave up trying her but got Professor Asoka Ekanayake to demand from her all the software needed for student education in the small computer unit we had.
She had to give in and I built a small network in Linux at home with 14 computers.
I had lot of time and was doing research work and most of my time in the morning was used in the computer laboratory with SPSS, only available in Windows. Linux has limited software in statistics and SPSS was a proprietary software.
I also found pirated copies in Kandy streets.
It was no big deal for me to master statistics in six months, only to finish my thesis.
The third guy was with whom I shared my official room. He was a retired Professor of Pathology and had lot of publications in Japanese but his English was hopeless to say the least.
I used to do develop my private statistics database on placenta which I did not give to the university.
All morning two days of the week, I was in Teaching Hospital, Peradeniya getting my data and specimens collected and then I come to Faculty and finish entering them.
No conversation at all with him but got him to train our technicians in special staining techniques (demonstrations and no talking involved), through Dr. Handa. He was of course was fluent in English. He stayed with us for six months. There was an intensive crash course in English for him by Dr. Handa and sure enough he made an English presentation and a booklet to go with it.
I was instrumental in getting the text in the instruction booklet edited. We sent three of our technicians abroad one to two Japan and another to Korea for hands on training on special staining techniques.
I never wanted to go to Japan and learn Japanese or Korean in my twilight years and English and French are my mode of exchange of ideas but fall behind in French as compared to English.
But my cellphone keyboard is In French which I can switch to English effortlessly but my grammer in French is hopeless.
I thought I could not get one page on KJ in my book of Unique Guys but here I am ending with 5 pages.
I have inadvertently deleted the entry on Japanese Contribution to Dental Faculty.
I am going to cut and paste this as a replacement for future reference but I will trim this site to 300 entries moment I finish publishing books at Amazon and have only Linux entries and few on other topis.
This site is named Linux 100 and 300 is three times that target.
I think I have done my honours to Linux in style.
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