Reality Undefined

Just agree with me!

2009-04-16T23:01:00.002+05:30

So I'm talking with my friend. I complain about flying coach and not getting business all the time. No leg space, crappier food, too many kids, blah blah; you know the drill. She starts, "but you know, you should try and get the front-most row seats or one near the emergency exit. They have more leg room... blah blah". But why? I'm just bitching. I feel better when you agree with me.

This is pretty much like when people give you alternatives when you don't ask for them. For instance, you say "man that [insert hot bird/celebrity name] is damn hawt!" and they say "yeah but have you seen [insert OTHER supposedly hot bird/celebrity name]? Can you please help me be faithful and go pervy on just the one bird at a time?

Gah. Just agree with me god dammit!

Of tragedies and extras

2009-03-04T00:55:00.002+05:30

It's a sad day. It's also a tragic day. It's a sad day because a bus full of brilliant sportsmen had to endure a traumatic experience that they never should have had to. It's a sad day because family, friends and fans of theirs were glued to the TV on the third day of a test match for a very wrong reason. It's a sad day because it'll most probably make an already brewing hosting problem much worse for the sub-continent cricketing nations. But that's not why it's a tragic day.

It's tragic because today, the one last standing bastion of human decency was shaken to the core. I belong to the 'humans are evil, law and social norms (a.k.a diet-law) keep us decent' school of thought. However we have traveled so far down the path of civilization, it's understandable that in varying degrees of stubbornness we cling on to ideals of human decency. So much that even when terrorism -the plague of our generation- hasn’t spared leaders, clergy, artistes, women and children in its mad path of destruction, we believed that the sportsmen were untouchable. Because where politics, religion, art and even love failed miserably, in the greatest parody of all sports was our saviour in uniting communities. And then they went and hit the white dove with bullets, grenades and rockets. Oh how we wanted to forget Munich.

Now to the extras. There's no doubt that much will be talked about the Sri Lankan cricket team, the target of the attack and also the impact of the attack on the sport and the political environment. So it should be. However I want to make sure that one other significant part of this attack gets a fair mention. The ones who fought and some of whom died to save the others. I mean absolutely no disrespect in comparing the security personnel who had to pay the greatest price of all to extras in a movie. On the contrary, anyone who steps in to protect ones that are not their own is a class A hero of mine. It's just that I can't help but think of all the innocent bystanders who get thrown around in street chases, all the other people in vehicles that crash out in car chases and all the cops who die in shoot-outs in movies. I'm constantly disturbed by how all that is justified and forgotten by the saving of the hero. But that's a story for another day. While it maybe naive to imagine a flattened hierarchy of social importance, we should acknowledge and appreciate the ones who saved the day. Respect.

The MOABAs - Mother of All Blog Awards

2009-02-22T16:38:00.002+05:30

The supreme council of all things bloggy is proud to present the MOABAs to honor the outstanding achievements of our member bloggers and acknowledge their contribution towards the advancement and the benefitment of our grand civilization. This year in an attempt to put the 'mock' back in democracy, the council has decided to let you the lesser bloggers nominate potential candidates for each of the awards. The categories are as follows;

Best 'body part for a profile pic' award.
Any body part photo-shopped or not will qualify. More points will be granted for pics of naughty bits.

Oh my god it's not a boy/girl award
This is where you follow a blog for weeks or months before that defining moment hits where you go 'holy shit' and then re-read some of the older posts nodding to yourslef 'ah that makes more sense now'. Longer it took for the revelation, more points granted. (An attempt to e-mail flirt met by an 'I'm a boy/girl you creep' response will also qualify as a defining moment.)

Longest title award.
The absolute number of words in the title as well as the title to body length ratio will be considered.

Unintentionally funniest blog award
Please attach excerpts as evidence

StatCounter award for the most visits
Please note that this is not for the most number of visits to a blog by the readers but the most number of visits to the stat counter by the blogger.

'Oh my eyes' award for the best template
More links, more frames, puke inducing color schemes, more side panel stuff will all attract more points. Girly and ghey colors will get special points. (Disclaimer: Certain words used in the description are used purely in their aesthetic sense. The council strongly condemns any sexist, racialist and sexualist behavior.)

Best meme (a.k.a guilty pleasure) award
'Best' can be interpreted as most interesting, most annoying, most absurd, WTF etc. The number of points to be written as a part of the meme, number of bloggers to be tagged and actual number of bloggers participated will be considered. More juicy information the meme manages to get the bloggers to reveal the better.

The NGO chicks' choice award for the best arm chair politician
Hair splitting arguments and anal-ysis about the war, the CFA, the sickonimic situation of the country, MR's moustache, Praba's designer cyanide capsule etc. on a continuous basis will qualify a blog for this award. The ability to generate frequent comment war sequences will be considered.

Boo-fucking-hoo award
This is for the whiniest posts during the past year. Given out considering the social service value where vast numbers of readers constantly uplift themselves thinking "and I thought my life was bad".

Most random topics award
That beautiful ability to churn out posts on a variety of topics ranging from nose boogers, use of dirty socks as weapons of mass destruction, family encounters, alien attacks, movie reviews, ice cream flavors of the season etc within a week or even a day will be rewarded with this.

And the final award of the night;
The best shape for a collection of blogs award
The council has realized the potential benefits of venturing beyond a sphere as it's official shape especially after observing the easy-to-pack-ability of box shaped items. Creativity and practicality will be considered equally important.

Please submit your nominations for the consideration of the council before the 31st of Feb. The council will announce the winners during the following week.

So this is...

2008-12-12T21:59:00.003+05:30

...the scene eh? Wandered on to ach after a long time to see a lot of people coming out with what they did or what happened to them during the past year. It's been a while since the last post and I've got some time in hand so thought of jotting down a few things that I remember of the year that was 2008.

- Well, did the least amount of blogging since the time this started. Only 10 posts (not including this one) for the entire year. In fact, dropped off the whole blog scene all together. Hardly went through my regular reads let alone explore the new ones (and there are quite a few it seems). Can't really think why. It just happened that way. Nobody will probably read this :)

- Met me 'aiya' after three years in London. He's still his super-self.

- Performed on stage for the first time and did it once more. Felt fucking good even though it was for a small crowd. Wish I could make a living out of it. Really do.

- Consumed an insane amount of alcohol. Smoked a lot more than ever before. Partied a lot more than I thought I would following last year. No regrets.

- Bought me first vehicle. Gah I louwe it. You should see it. You'd louwe it too. Stay away! It's all MINE!

- Met and befriended a bunch of damn interesting and hilariously funny bloggers. You know who you are :)

- Traveled the farthest in support of a friend. Saw Tiesto again while I was there. Not even close to the first time but still was pretty awesome.

- After all these years of playing, had my first major injury and had some minor surgery done. Happened at the worst possible time. Watching from the sidelines sucks ass. Joint injuries FTL.

- For the first time, didn't see a single club rugby game! Good year in the international sporting scene. I mean the Giants won the Superbowl, Celts won the NBA, United won a double and Hamilton won the F1. If only Boston had won the world series.

- Had the worst year so far at work. Gah.

- Grew quite restless. Became more convinced that life doesn't really have a meaning or serve any real purpose. Detaching myself from the world, looking at it as if watching a giant cctv monitor and thinking 'what the fuck are these people doing' became a common occurrence.

I'm sure there was a lot more. Gah!

Colombo blues

2008-08-17T14:25:00.002+05:30

Every once in a while I get to missing the Big Apple a little bit more than I usually do. More often than not this happens after a night out in Colombo. Following a few weeks' break in April/May, I've been out a lot. Few times every week. However it just does not seem to get any better. Last Wednesday night was one of those 'oh my god, what am I doing here' night outs. Yes we did end up staying out at Zanzi till 4.30 in the morning but that's hardly an indication of how good or bad the place was. Some of the gripes I have about a typical night out in Colombo are;

1. Having to deal with morons/fucktards. These are idiots who think they own the damn place or own the damn city and are out looking for the most trivial of reasons to start a fight. God I could write a book about them, but I won't.

2. Having to protect the girls from these morons/fucktards. I hate ending up as a bodyguard for an entire night. I hate getting into fights because of girls, it's lame. Unfortunately though, I hate the girls I'm with being groped at every turn, being photographed against their will, having to say 'no' a fifteen hundred times before a single fucktard gives up trying to grind with them and so on more, so I end up doing this anyway. And I hate it.

3. Not being able to chat up a random, unknown, cute girl at a bar or a club. I can count the number of times I've done this in this city. For one, the girls are so very defensive, but I guess this is partly because too many morons have tried to work their 'charm' on the girls in the past. However the part I hate most is the 'gal looks' one gets from the girl's friend girls and the friend guys, the possibility of an over protective friend guy picking a fight with you, the possibility of an over protective boyfriend shooting you etc. I'm not being a hypocrite in saying this having written point number 2 of this list. There's a big difference between forcing oneself on another and having a civilized conversation.

4. The lack of options to be at. Colombo has what, four or five places at most you can go to. It gets boring.

5. The same music. The same set is played for month after month so much so that one can almost guess the next song. Some of the tracks would be so cool if it was 1996. There's also the tendency to play the crowd favorites over and over again during the same night. It gets stale and there's so much of music out there. Sigh.

6. The same people. I dunno. Some people I know love the fact that when they walk in to a bar, a club or a pub they know half the people there. I'm not one of them. Although I like to have a 'home bar' where I'd know some of the people there, I want to be able to walk into a place and be anonymous. I like to be left alone with my partner or my friends or just myself. I'd like to see and meet new people. I'd like to do things and not have half the city know about it in the morning. Tough ask in this city.

End of the day, the pure need to get out drives me to the same old places with the same old problems over and over again. It sucks though. It really does.

Hikka

2008-08-12T01:22:00.003+05:30

Yes, it's been a week since Hikka Beach Fest happened but MAN, that was just awesome! I've seen a posts on the Hikka weekend and some of those bloggers seem not have had a good experience which is unfortunate. Yours truly on the other hand had a blast.

That weekend was all about preparation. Unlike our usual last minute job, this trip was planned well ahead. Due to that and because someone was able to pull a few strings, we managed to get rooms at Coral Gardens which proved to be damn convenient. We also took a proper sound system along with plenty of music. Oh and yeah, a lital bit o' alcohol.

Well, this is not gonna be some sort of a review but just a note to say that we had a fantastic time. Got there on Firday evening. Quick shower, dinner and the drinking started. One of the rooms (obviously the one that was occupied by Spectral and 'C' the other single guy of the crowd!) was converted to a chillout/party lounge. After lotsa moosic, alkie and smokes(ahem) we headed out to the rave thing. The place was jam packed but not in a crazy bad way. Quite a few local boys were around which kinda sucked a bit but plenty of Clolombians were around to make up for that. Much eye candy around as well. Ran into so many known people but to-date can’t remember half the stuff I told them (shudder). Had an awesome time, but headed back to the hotel after a while as some of the people wanted to go back a little early. Half an hour at the hotel and C goes 'Machang shall we go back?' and who am I to argue with such a splendid idea? So the two of us head back with two of the girls who were up for it. The party ended just before day break but some of the crowd moved to Mambo and we followed suit. The music was pretty good there but we finally called it quits and walked back to the hotel at around 7 in the morning. For the first time ever we were the first at b'fast.

Caught a few hours of sleep on Saturday morning but sleeping at the party room is never a good idea. Started drinking again. Lunch, more drinking and general misbehavior, stroll on the beach, more drinking and general misbehavior, dinner, more.... do you see a pattern? Saturday night at the rave was pretty much the same although we had to go through a bit of drama courtesy of one of the girls that was hanging out. Much had been said about the dancers and well, they were kinda good I think. They were staying at the same hotel as we were and there were rumors of them either skinny dipping or being topless in the pool on Friday morning. Unfortunately there was no repeat performance since apparently someone had complained. (Sigh). Saturday rave ('rave' being very loosely defined) went on till after sunrise.

Sunday afternoon was spent with some superb chillout music and relaxing. The journey back was thankfully quite smooth without any traffic jams and such.

All in all it was a great weekend. (Does five hours of sleep for the entire weekend tell you something?) I thought the key to having a good time in Hikka that weekend was one to be with a good crowd and also being able to have a party on your own without relying entirely on the 'rave' for entertainment. After all that craziness (and all the partying running up to that weekend) I have decided to take a little break. And then last night happened. Oh well, I’ll get there somehow.

Tonight on the road I realized....

2008-07-16T21:03:00.003+05:30

... that I ALWAYS get stuck behind stupid ass mother-fuckers who drive at 25-30 kmph (I'm not exaggerating!), especially on single fucking lane roads where it's impossible to over-take another vehicle for the longest fucking time.

... that some fucking morons would get to their destinations much faster if they walked or if they got there in a coffin.

... that I need a free pass to run over fucktards on motorbikes.

...that inconsiderate mother-fucking bastards on the road should all die a painful fucking death.

... that one's 'moron tolerance threshhold' is very low when one is driving home late after a stressful day at work knowing one will have to cancel plans to work on a holiday AND when Muse is playing in the background.

... that my life expectancy can't be that high.

Stupid fucking assholes! Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr. Okay, now for some alcohol therapy. Sigh.

Knock on

2008-06-29T09:26:00.003+05:30

IRB Law 12
DEFINITION KNOCK ON: A knock on occurs when a player loses possession of the ball and it goes forward, or when a player hits the ball forward with the hand or arm, or when the ball hits the hand or arm and goes forward, and the ball touches the ground or another player before the original player can catch it.

We love you Dilroy. Abso-fucking-lutely love you.

At least the boys tried. My busted knee (ouch ouch) meant that I could only try and tear my hair out in front of the TV (which was worse with the frickin re-plays). Would've been a lot more fun doing the same at Bogambara. Oh well.

DEfense! DEfense!

2008-06-18T21:32:00.003+05:30

Now, if you know me the slightest bit, you'd know how I love everything about NY. However when it comes to sports my loyalty to NY teams is not die hard. Funnily enough, I seem to end up building strong likings towards teams from NY's usual sporting rival Boston. The worst case of this is baseball, which incidentally accounts for the most bitter rivalry between the two cities. I hate the Yankees and love the Red Sox. I do like the Mets though. In football, I love the Giants to bits (can't believe I missed the Superbowl celebrations this year!) but Pats are my second favorites.

This brings us to the topic; basketball. I like the Knicks and would love to see them be the champs but the new look Celtics have won my heart. This morning they beat Super Kobe and the Lakers to grab a record 17th championship marking the end of an incredible season. The success story is almost like a fairy tale. A journey that transformed a team that had one of the worst records last season to this years champs with the best regular season record in the league! A series of transfers off and mid season certainly helped. In particular KG and Ray Allen joined to form the holy trinity on North American sports along with Paul Pierce. The rest as they say, is history.

The scenes that unfolded as the Celts wrapped up game six in Boston were just beautiful. Here you have a team that was basically put together within less than a year, and you would think they had played together for a decade. How they celebrated with such emotion and comradeship was a joy to witness. As I was watching it with a big smile I couldn't help but contemplate how utterly different it would've been had it been San Antonio again. With my hatred towards Duncan and the boys re-affirmed, I watched Doc Rivers give an emotional interview and Pierce accept a well deserved Finals MVP award.

The best part came when the crow started chanting "De-fense De-fense" in the middle of all the celebrations that brought a smile everyone's face. What a fitting victory call! Awesome.

The Spectral Seven

2008-06-06T00:12:00.005+05:30

Eek! I've been tagged by Chaar~Max and ze Spider. So I'm jotting down seven random things about myself, being the good sport I am.

1. I have severe allergy issues. Even the slightest exposure to the following irritates the shit out of me. Among many other things: morons, deadlines, credit card bills, commitment, home work when I was a kid, hindi movies....

2. I can travel through time. I'm not fussed about revealing this. If turns out to be an issue I'll just come back to this lovely Thursday night and not take part in this tag thing.Hah! Oh you want to know what the future is like? Well, the Sri Lankan blogsphere is destroyed in 2009 when a tag asks you to kill seven fellow bloggers and tag seven more to do the same. The last blogger standing gives up blogging because it's not half as fun tagging yourself week after week.

3. I'm Ron Jeremy in disguise. I'm made to feel like a sex object at work every single day and I hate it. Boo hoo. The moustache was my agent's idea. I didn't like it at first but the chicks totally dig it. So much so that at times it feels as if they are paid to sleep with me. Oh wait....

4. I killed the Deputy. Bob just shot the Sheriff. Really.

5. I can ride my bike with no handlebars. No handlebars. No handlebars....

6. I can only count up to six.

There you go. Don't you feel as if you've known me for years and years and years now? Oh and open tag for anyone to continue with this, but make sure only seven of you do so.

Dialog TV sucks ass

2008-06-02T21:56:00.004+05:30

If anyone reading works at Dialog, especially if you are involved with Dialog TV, please take note. It sucks.

I got myself a connection in January and the regular service hasn't been much to write home about. The picture quality of some of the channels isn't all that great and I think it looks worse on a TV with a relatively big screen.

However my main issue is the current situation. Ever since this rainy period started, the service just keeps vanishing. "Signal Not Available" message turns up at the slightest hint of rain and stays that way for thirty or forty minutes at a stretch. The first time it happened I wasn't sure if it was a problem with the cable box so I checked with their hot line. The dude at the other end after enquiring if it was raining said that a whole lot of other people had a similar complaint and gave me this brilliant piece of advise. He wanted me to try when the rain ceases! It's certainly not his fault, but if a cable service provider has to ask its customers to pray for good weather to get the service it's pretty fucked up ain't it?

This has been going on for the past few days and is getting fucking annoying. Tonight it wasn't even raining when I got the dreaded message. For a moment was confused as to why there was no signal but after a few minutes of channel switching turned the TV off. Wallah, and ten minutes later it starts to rain. Well until Dialog improves their bandwidth and probably switch to a different frequenzy band I guess I could use the damn cable connection to predict rain.

Sigh.

Satya Paul and Boru John

2008-06-01T16:08:00.003+05:30

Here's the deal, I'm not the most fashion conscious person around. So, when a colleague of mine name dropped 'Satya Paul' at breakfast conversation a few weeks back, I almost fell off the chair laughing. Is it just me or don't 'Satya Paul' and his side-kick 'Boru John' have the potential to be the best South Asian Superhero duo? Obviously this suggestion didn't go down well with the women folk at the table. Women! (scoff) What do they know?

Why am I bringing this up now? Well because Saturday night, Spectral had the privilege of seeing some Satya Paul creations with his own eyes. A friend had got a few tickets for the 'Colombo Fashion Statement' and I tagged along. Multiple Miss Indias were supposed walk the ramp along with other Indian models and some of our own. So going by what I've seen on FTV and what not, I was thinking 'Yummy'! I mean, it may not be the annual VS show but must be somewhere there eh? Then on the way the friend says "No you idiot, it's mostly going to be sarees and stuff because it's the Indian Designer Night". Women! Never tell you the whole truth.

Well suffice to say while the friend was trying to critically analyze the various sarees and dresses presented, her hubby and I were playing 'spot the Indian' for the most part. Some observations;

- Although none of them were 'jaw dropping' hot, some of them looked way hotter walking around at the lobby afterwards than on the ramp.
- I love tall girls with nice butts. Grrrrr.
- There were a few which had freakishly skinny legs. Crazy. Most of these were our models I think.
- 'Neha Dhupia', apparently a 'successful model and actress' was to make an appearance according to all the promo material and the compere. She modelled just the one saree at the very end, was made to say a 'few' words, attempted to get a loud response from the crowd about the environment thing the show was sponsoring and was kind of embarrassed by the compere dude who kept on repeating how 'mesmarizingly beautiful' she was. I kinda felt bad for the other models.
- The average age of the crowd must've been 45. Much eye candy had it been 1980.
- Remember Geraldine the model? Is she back being a regular model? Still looks damn hot.
- Maybe I'm wrong but there's only so much one can do with sarees. Sigh.

Unfortunately we didn't join the after party. Our tickets didn't buy us dinner so we went away to grab something and came back. The official after party was going on/winding down and according to a friend of the friend (who was all pally with the Indian birds) they were planning to move to Tramps later. Since Tramps was kinda empty at that point we decided to head back home. It hit me when I got home quite early. Something must be wrong when we choose to go home early over partying on a Sat night, especially when there's a possibility of being introduced to and hanging out with some Indian models. (This is the part where I imagine hot Indian models will find me irresistible. How I love endless self esteem.) Not partying for one and half months is taking it's toll. Time for a change.

Btw, it's decided. I want to be a fashion designer.

Whose life is it anyway...

2008-05-25T22:00:00.000+05:30

what if you took that step, on to the dizzy floor
let it flow in and fill your soul
felt the rhythm wrap its fingers around
reach inside and snap you unbound

what if you followed the heartbeat nigh
in a graceful dancing stride
eyes closed to see better than ever
in that utterly blissful fever

how could it be wrong if it feels so good in your arms

what if you took that path
whisked past the vultures with a mere glance
brushed the dead leaves aside
to breathe in the clear blue sky

what if their needy calls were never to reach your ear
if tomorrow's train ride didn't matter right now, right here
what if you took the plunge,
head high
with a smile
before, the water runs dry

how could it be wrong if it feels so good in your heart

dive. fly. dance away
Whose life is it anyway

Happy-troid

2008-05-16T22:33:00.003+05:30

Bah. So the Pissu one decides to tag me.

Zings zat make me 'appy.

1. Music. Music music music. Live and on record. Nothing like it.

2. Dogs. Sorry, but not the little 'glorified cat' types but the real, big grrrrrrrrrrrrr ones. Woof.

3. Good movies.

4. Good company. Of friends or strangers.

5. A woman's hair that smells nice. Hell, women that smell fresh and nice.

6. Travelling. To see man made glory. Cities.

7. Chilling next to water that flows.

8. Post Drunken Bliss. The spaced out state of mind on the day following a wild drinking night. (Completely different to being hungover.)

9. Winning a hard fought game. A favourite team winning a game. Be it CR beating Kandy (if ever), Giants winning the super-fucking-bowl or Royal winning a big game.

10. Independence.

Does this mark a retun to blog normalcy? Let's see. I'll blame you Pissu.

Home no more...

2007-12-04T09:07:00.000+05:30

Knicks Woo Hoo

2007-11-27T10:19:00.000+05:30

They are winning agian. Phew. Good game with Utah.

The opening

And we are off...

Randolph free throw. He had an awsome game.

And then they came out

And turned around

Grrrrrrr...

Oops

Some kick-ass Acrobats

The clock runs out. The winning moment

aaaand the score is...

Cut my life into pieces...

2007-11-18T06:04:00.000+05:30

Saw Papa Roach on Wednesday night. Must say, the show exceeded our expectations. I was never a die hard fan of theirs and they are kinda old news now. However when I saw tickets online few months ago decided to buy a couple; and I'm glad I did. They put on a very good live show. The crowd was nuts and was the first time I got to witness a proper crazy ass mosh pit in action. The lead singer probably motivated by all the crowd surfing actually did a few stage dives as well.

Got no pictures as I had to check the camera at the door! Because nobody thought of mentioning that on the event page, there were porbably more cameras than coats checked that night.

On Thursday night saw Moby in action. It was not quite a show but rather the him playing at one of the clubs. The dude seems to be a very down to earth person. While we were having a drink at the hotel bar before going into the venue, the man himself wandered in and was just walking around and shit. My friend ended up asking him for the time of his set.

Following are a couple of shots at the event including probably the best shot ever taken of Moby. Ever. I'm quite sure. Maybe one year after purchase would be a good time to actually go through the user manual of a camera. Maybe you can have different settings for different lighting conditions. Hmmmm.

Bob

2007-11-10T23:03:00.000+05:30

Simply amazing. For me the the picks of the night were Tift Merritt, Mason Jennings and My Morning Jacket performing "A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall", "The Times They Are A-Changin'' and "Tonight I'll Be Staying Here With You" respectively. However the night's undisputed highlight was the energetic and passionate rendition of "Masters of War" by the Roots. The thundering applause and the standing ovation spoke volumes of their brilliant performance. Oh and their drummer was just out of this world.

Check this link for some pics.

The two videos below are of Roots perfroming "Masters of War" at a different concert. However its almost identical to the one they put on here (except for that on Wednesday the dude who plays the tuba jumped in to the crowd at one point!).

Leaving the sweet madness....

2007-11-06T08:05:00.000+05:30

Oh brother. Its strange when you look back. At times those first few weeks seem like a life time back; at others you wonder how time just flew by. Sigh.

Its been one year and and a month since yours truely set foot on the East coast of the US of A, and there's just more weeks to go. At the end of November I'd have to haul my as back to SL, and my heart sinks everytime I think about it. Make no mistake, I'm still every bit the Sri Lankan I was and I love the good ol' Island of paradise, but I've fallen in love with this city. Every little glorious imperfection of it. The city has a vibe that creeps in, grows and ultimately owns your soul. Boy, am I owned or what.

The stay hasn't been a bed of roses. Especially the work. In fact until a few months back its sucked. The work-load, the constant over-whelming pressure, the morons and what not. The city just kept me going. It made everything all worthwhile.

Amongst countless little things, there are a few specifics that I would miss on me return.

The music: Everyone wants to play in New York don't they? I've discovered so many new bands and seen so many live acts. Mega bands wih multi-platinum album sales to bands that play with borrowed gear. A good variety of top quality live perfromances, a tough ask back in SL.

The people: Such diversity. People from all over the world, from all walks of life living together as New Yorkers. As I might have said before, I've almost never felt like a foreigner over here. I've also never met such interesting, different, weird and colorful people.

The women: Ah yes. Black, white and every shade in between. I don't think there's any other city with a concentration of such beauty and variety. On top of that, you could just chat up a girl at a bar/club/party without worrying about their over possesive boy friend/brother/cousin/neighbour/friend trying to kill you. God, and those delightful derrieres!

The big city life: The hustle and the bustle, the fashion, the buildings, the countless bars, shops that you can find anything you ever wanted, the yellow cabs, the trade mark police car sirens...

Partying: Any day or night you want, without having to worry about how you would get back home.

Independence: I seriously don't know how I'm gonna live with my parents again. They are the most loving and non-prying sort of parents but still.

The list can go on and on but I should stop. God knows I may be back here again. When or for how long I don't know. When I go back I'm gonna switch projects, coming back depends on a lot of things. At least I'm gonna ease back into SL because December should have everyone down in Colombo with lots of parties and such. However come January, I'd probaby gonna end up being seriously depressed.

Oh well, such is the way of life I guess. As always I too don't have much of a plan as to what I want in life. So who knows what'll happen.

New York City, given a choice, I'll be back in a heartbeat....

Boo!

2007-11-02T07:01:00.000+05:30

Halloween and New York. Crazy ass combination. People going nuts. Girls in short short outfits. My kind of holiday.

Some hastily taken pics at the parade.

JVP rep?

Its a G.H.O.S.T

Nothing scary about this Angel

High as the sky

Guess who crashed the party

Man, I'd like to be the meat in that sandwitch!

Watchout Kermit

Ado leave the subway alone!

Scary my foot!

I... um... think there was osme singing going on here... I could be wrong..

Save The Planet, Use Birth Control

2007-10-16T07:11:00.000+05:30

There you go. That's my contribution to Blog Action Day. Forgive me, I'm not trying to be a spoil sport. Just that these must be the last few hours left of October 15th on any timezone and a lot of good things have already been covered.

Plus my suggestion makes sense. If there's one species whose extinction would help the continued existance of a gazzillion other species, that would be us. So there you go.

Wanted to write about "The National" gig last week but couldn't find the time. It was good. Damn good must say. Definitely one of the best live musical performances I've ever witnessed and experienced. Although they come out as more mellow on records they generate so much of noise when performing live. I'm not talking about distorted guitar noise (trust me, I love noise of that kind as well) but something different. They played with passionate perfection. The sound seemed to flow over the crowd, fill the hall and fill my soul in turn. Ah, that was good. Beyond good. Frickin awsome.

This is also my self declared "stay-sober-till-the-weekend" week. From Sunday to Saturday evening. Well, the Bloody Mary at brunch (it was free!) and the beer while watching rugby (it was just one!) on Sunday don't really count do they? Might also have to have a lital bit of wine on Wednesday night but its nothing. Must try and stick to just two beers on Friday. Come on, can't go to a concert without a coupla beers can you? I'm gonna be strong. Wish me luck anyway.

Scary Shit

2007-10-10T21:50:00.000+05:30

Had a shock yesterday morning.

Monday night was, well Monday night. Wanted to have a 'quick beer', ended up going home at 3:00 in the morning shit faced. As usual. Tuesday morning wasn't bad. Got up on time and got ready. Just before stepping out stuffed my pockets with the wallet, phone, iPod, keys and the ID badge. Wait! Something's missing. Shit! Where's the fucking passport?!

Now here's the deal. I'm an idiot. Why? Among other reasons, I carry my passport with me almost all the time. Why? Because that's the only ID I have with the b'day on. (Stupid fucking Sri Lankan Driving License!) I've been meaning to get the NYC photo ID done. Honestly till about August, I just did not have the time. Really. There was no way I could've stepped out for a few hours on a working day. (No I'm not trying to sound important, work just purely sucked.) However I should've got it done since then when things had eased up, but being the lazy fuck I am, I still carry the passport.

So the damn passport is missing. Looked around the apartment but its not there. What's surprising is that the previous night we had been to one of those bars where the bouncers or the bartenders don't ask for our IDs. It couldn't have fallen off in the cab (although I was asleep during the ride) as I still had the phone which was in the same pocket. Couldn't hang around for much since I was getting late so stepped out and started calling the few people that I was with. None of the ones I managed to get through to knew about it. So I get to work and go about daily shit with this thing nagging at the back of ma mind. Suddenly one of the guys calls and the first thing he says "Dude, its with me". Funny thing is nobody knows how it managed to get out of my pocket and find its way to his laptop bag! Oh well. I should get that damn photo ID sorted out.

On other things; the city sucks when it comes to rugby. Hardly any place shows the games. With the MLB playoffs, NFL season on and College football one cannot expect them to have the games on anyways. Thankfully a friend's friend had subscribed for the channel that shows the games, so much of the weekend day time was spent watching the games. (Quite proud of waking up at 8:30 on a Saturday morning, although I couln't repeat it on Sunday!) However the frickin French managed to oust the ABs. Dammit.

On the brigher side, music scene has been quite good lately. Caught the Arctic Monkeys and The Teddy Bears last month. Got tickets for The National and the Maccabees in October and Papa Roach mid November. So much for grand plans of saving.

The Teddy Bears again

2007-09-30T01:23:00.000+05:30

Yesh yesh, I've written about these guys quite a few times but hey, I do love the cuddly buggers.

I'm not sure why but on Tuesday I just happened to be browsing their site and couldn't frickin believe what I saw. The tour page said that the bears will be playing at The Hiro Ballroom on Thursday. Talk about a close one. Called a few others who liked it because nothing short of a catastrophe was gonna stop me from seeing this. Plus it was for free!

Well, it was bloody fantastic as usual, so I wouldn't harp on all the positives. Coupla things to be note though. There was only one drummer as opposed to the regular two present. Some guy called Red Fox did the vocals for all the Mad Cobra tracks, but he was quite good. Lighting was terrible. Really. It was like a high school end-term concert but I guess you can't ask for too much for free can you? Aimee Echo was brilliant and hot as usual. Oh, and I was pissed off that they didn't start off with "Ahead of My Time". Really, you cannot better that start and the entrance of the band.

Overall I thought the Gramercy gig and the first gig at Hiro back in March were comparatively better. On the other hand we were right in front this time. Ah, all that mad bouncing.

If anyone's on the west coast, try and catch them during the next week if you can. This is the schedule. I'm telling you, that's one show you'll enjoy. Oh and N, if you manage to see them, please take some decent pics man. I did take a camera (for the first time to a concert), but the terrible lighting, my preference on bouncing over clicking and of course the fact that its a regular point-and-shoot device didn't make much way for good pics.

Teddy Bears, Woo hoooooo.

The Liver can do what?

2007-09-19T00:53:00.000+05:30

Okay, so all this time people would tell me that drinking will fuck-up the liver. I believed that. Worried about it too.

Yesterday this guy tells me that the liver can sorta repair itself as long as you drink moderately. Nobody ever told me this! I didn't believe the bugger at first (I thought he was trying to convince me to keep drinking till he left NYC when I revealed my grand plan to go easy for the next few weeks) so like every good researcher I googled it. This was at work, which didn't let me spend too much time on it, therefore couldn't determine how far it was true with all the contradictory posts.

So, can some kind soul clear this up for me? Please? Basically can it really repair damage on its own and what is the acceptable level of alcohol intake?

Idiot's Guide to Handling Kids

2007-09-17T01:33:00.000+05:30

Can someone send me a copy please.

So this afternoon I'm doing laundry. Eventhough the laundry joint is just a block away from my apt. building, I usually hand around there for the entire duration of the wash and the dry. The main reason is that it gives me an hour to one and half hours time-off from everything. I don't check mail, read, do any work, call anyone or do anything else but listen to some music. its my once a week getaway from reality. An added bonus would be the fact that Its one of the best places to meet interesting birds. Really. I've noticed that even the most uptight girl has her guard down while doing laundry. Plus, it gives you a rare preview of the "morning-after" look.

Back to the story. While the clothes were being washed, I was just sitting on the bench with the iPod on just observing people on the street. Basically bird watching on First Avenue. (The fact that girls are already starting to cover up was duely noted. Damn, I already miss the summer!) Once I noticed that the wash was done, just walked towards my washer. Now, this is when the trouble began.

There was this little kid standing right in front of the washer door. Even when I approached, it just stood there. You know how kids have this dumb/blank look on their face? It had that on. I was highly confused. A normal adult would've understood that I wanted to open the damn door and moved. This thing didn't. It just kept staring.

If that was a dog, I could've said "shoo" or stamped my foot. if it was a cat I could've prodded it with something. This was different. It didn't feel right saying "excuse me" to something that was only tall up to my knee. So I tried to stare it down. Bad choice. That was its game, no way in hell was I gonna win that. I didn't wanna physically move it at this risk of being accused of attempting to hurt the damn thing. Several minutes passed with me looking around scratching my head before the mother (I assume) came by and said "hey Joshua, move from there" which resolved my mini mid-sunday afternoon crisis. As she passed me by she miled and said "they can talk and understand what we say you know!".

Easy for her to say.

Europe through a digital eye

2007-09-05T06:45:00.000+05:30

Ibiza - Just before the sunset

Ibiza - Gin n Tonic, chilled music and the sunset

Ibiza - The sunset

Madrid

Amsterdam - The Dutch and the bloody canals

Munich - Beeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeer. Or Bier

Paris - At night

Paris - The Notre Dame Cathedral. Probably one of the best pieces of art in the world.

Paris - My new dining room! Yeah, anc call me napoleon.

Paris - Fire, moon and the tower

Desert Island Music

2007-09-03T03:52:00.001+05:30

I had been tagged by N while on tour, doing it now for the kicks.

1. Oasis - Definitely Maybe: Probably one of the best (if not the best) debut albums ever. At least in my opinion; and my opinion rocks. "Hey you, up in the sky, leaning to fly, tell me how high...."

2. Nirvana - Nevermind: Do I even have to explain?

3. Tiesto - In Search of Sunrise - Volume 5: My favourite out of the series and no beach party would be complete without this (and there'll be a lot of 'em at the island. Right? RIGHT????).

4. RHCP - I'm gonna cheat here and take a CD with tracks picked from various albums. If I die at the bloody island, I want "Under the Bridge" played at my funeral (or the dinner party if I was made into a stew by the frickin island cannibals).

5. Bob Marley Collection. All the tracks I can take. Hopefully the island has an unlimited supply of weed. Now that'll be niiiiiice.

If I could sneak one more in, I'd probably take "Soft Machine" by the Teddy Bears. I'd also trade that chance to take one of their funky bear heads instead. Grrrrrrrrr.

Also found this on the web on the subject.

A new place to call home

2007-09-03T03:39:00.000+05:30

Yes, I'm back in NYC. Just ot back from the little Euro tour and today moved into a new apartment. Why I had to do it is a bit of a long story which I'll leave out, but it did have me hunting for a new place like mad just before I headed out across the Atlantic.

So now I'm in the East Village! Absolutely wonderful neighbourhood. As one buddy put it "You step out the door and the whole world's out there". It's true. However this is pretty bad news for my liver and the bank account. Sigh.

As for the rest of the Euro trip, subsequent to Madrid yours truely was in Munich, Amsterdam and Paris (plus one night in Barcelona). I might decide to put up a few posts on those places (they really were awsome in their own different ways), maybe just for my own memory. We'll see.

This tour has also made me think about what I really want to do in the future. I'm pretty convinced that if I ever do settle down, I should learn one of the languages and do it in Europe. Really. Well, lets see how the future turns out to be.

Madrid

2007-08-22T15:10:00.000+05:30

Spent the last two days here taking it a bit easy following the Ibiza episode. A few things noteworthy.

- I'm bloody impressed with myself for being able to find my way around without much help. Even with hardly anyone speaking spanish, been able find my way to and around the city.

- The metro seems pretty damn neat. Yes, the NYC subway has a lot of character but this is on schedule, less crowded, smells better, easier to navigate, got bloody estimated time of arrival of next train and the works. One thing common with the subway though, everyone around you is speaking in a language you don't understand.

- Spanish women must have the best butts. I liiiiike.

- This morning I had breakfast for the first time since I left NYC, as I managed to get up a bit early. I walk into this little diner type of place and with much difficulty and sign language manage to order something. The one of the people working there srtrikes up a conversation with me and asks if I'm a musician. I say yes just to avoid the explaination and also because it seemed as a good line to play along. Then he bloody announces that to a few others at the bloody diner and asks me to sing something! I think quick tell him I'm a drummer. (God forbid if I told him i'm guitarist or something, he may have whipped out a guitar from under the counter!) He insists so I have no way out. Now, I have a terrible singing voice, plus I didn' want sing anything in english in case they realized I was bullshitting. So I tell them there' there's this very happy love song in SL about courting a girl near a river and that I'll sing a few verses. They seem very happy (bloody romatic spaniards). So I actually sing that infamous song "Premi enna yanna ..... ara mahaweli gnanga ainey" in all its filthy glory. Thank god for the Roy-Tho.

Aiight me is off now...

Tiesto. Wow!

2007-08-19T22:32:00.000+05:30

Wow is not the word baby!

So, I had bought tickets the moment I saw the event being promoted. A slight deviation from the plan last evening and I ended up sleeping till about two hours before the event. Panic sets in because I know I got to have a good buzz worked up to optimize experience but I knew the prices at the club would be stupid. Solution? Five beers and two gin tonics in an hour at the friendly neighbourhood irish pub while watching France beating England in rugby.

The event was at Privilege. I had heard that this was supposed to be the biggest club iin the world but had my reservations. I mean how could one know for sure right? Wrong. You walk in there and there's abosultely no doubt. Its frickin humongous. Easily a few football fields. I won't even try to describe it.

I also probably should' try to describe what tiesto live was like either but i will say a few things. Bear with me. He played from 1:00 am till 7:00 am non-stop. I was dancing the entire time (plus an hour before he came on) with just the one stop for a leak and two quick stops for water. The music was super. Lighting unbelivable. Special effects including flame throwers and HUGE video/light background was amazing. The laser light show which ran through most of the gig was just out of this world. Seriously. There was a crew of nine handling the controls for sounds, lights, video, special effects etc. If you ever get a chance to see tiesto live, go for it. I highly doubt if any other venue in the world can put up a similar show but still it'll be pretty darn good.

Oh btw, I love being in spain and the fact that no one speaks english. This way I can go through the whole night with everything else other than irritating chatter. Heh heh.

How to sell a Sunset

2007-08-18T21:19:00.000+05:30

So yesterday I decided to stay away from the big clubs and explore the neigbourhood bar scene.

Ibiza has two main touristy towns, Evissia and San Antoni. The little hotel I´m staying in is in SA. Its a few minutes walk to the San Antoni bay, but more important, its just about a 10 minute walk to the famous Sunset Strip. Haven't heard of it? Bet you've heard of 'Cafe del Mar'? Sunset Strip is where it is. The place was already filled up by the time I got there so I stepped into another bar on the strip.

The sunset strip is basically a port/beach which has a pretty good view of the sunset (simple and logical). There are four cafe type bars on the strip side by side. They have seating inside and outside which is basically for people to sit down sip a drink and watch the sail boats and the sunset. Each bar also has a DJ who play some really nice chilled out music. This is how the whole Cafe del Mar chillout sessions had started off.

Although I was a bit disappointed at first at not being able to get in to Cafe del Mar itself, I was glad later on. Place I got into was more relaxed, the drinks were reasonably priced (comparatively of course) and the people were less pretencious. Oh and the DJ was top notch. All evening he was playing some real nice music and then just when the sun was about to set he started playing this grand ochestra sort of track. The kind you'd hear in the last scene of a movie where the hero wins the batlle or something. I was thinking "this is a bit lame". But then, it just started to add to the mood and he timed it so well that the end of the track which was a grand "ta da" was absolutely on time with the final dip of the sun in the horizon. That was bloody amazing. Then, he followed that right up with "Salt Water" and I was just in heaven. It literally sent a shiver down my spine and I had goosebumps all over.

Later on, I was just thinking, this is something we could definitely do back in SL. Our beaches are seriously much better and we have the entire bloody west coast to find a sunset! Just that we got to be a lot more organized. However I wonder if we are a bit too far away from Europe and the US to do something similar. Ibiza is blessed as its just around or even less than a 100 Euros to fly here from Europe and the flight's just a few hours. In any case we should at least look to put up a similar show in the winter months where people are willing to fly that way. Boy, if we can sell it proper, we do have some frickin awsome sunsets, that's for sure.

"F*** me I´m famous" at Ibiza.

2007-08-17T21:51:00.000+05:30

Aiight. After a lot of crazy hectic planning, me is in Ibiza! I´m the king of doing things at the last moment and this vacation was not different. Even a few hours before flying out of NY, was still booking flights while trying to troubleshoot some stuff at work.

Anyway, after all that I´m here. This is the first leg of a little two week Euro tour I have planned. Its a strange feeling to step into a sunny island with beautiful beaches where I´m the one trying to speak english and everyone else speaks in a language I don´t understand. Nobody here seem to speak English. Last night I was trying to chat up this really cute bar tender. We had a very nice conversation. I was speaking english. She was speaking spanish. Neither of us understood shit other than "beer" and "gin and tonic". Oh and and of course "Euros" with a number of fingers displayed. She did say "yes" to everything I asked. Even when I asked if we could have wild sex on the bar with her sexy hat still on. She had a strange and colorful tattooish thing on her arm. I asked her if that was a reall tattoo. She said "yes yes". Then I asked is it was body paint. She said "yes yes". Oh well.

Went to Pacha for the night. Man, the line outside was insane. This is even with pre-bought tickets. The inside was insane too. They have the main room and several other rooms with different DJs playin gin each. Now don´t be thrown off track by the word room. They are huge and several thousand pepople were in last night. The music? Well, maybe it wasn´t as good as your average night at Clanceys or tabu but Bob Sinclair and Daid Guetta played. Almost there. Yes. You heard me right. BOTH of them! It was frickin awsome. The climax in each of their sets were of course "world hold on" and "The world is mine". To hear those being played by the masters themselves at a place like that is an amazing bloody feeling. Oh and I also saw probably the best ass and legs ever on one of the dancers there. Grrrrrrrrr.....

The people who handle the entrance would make a Sri Lankan private bus conductor crowd. The main room was so packed, you coouldn´t stick a finger in there. Not that I tried to stick my finger anywhere. Or did I? There were also a few fuckjibians who weren´t satisfied with pictures of Sinclair and Guetta from a few meters away. They were sticking their cameras right in the faces. Those guys were good sports with it but the bouncers who were trying to stop the bloody menace were as effective as a bunch of 12 year old girls. Had that been NY, those morons would have been literally tossed out along with their stupid cameras with bright flashlights in a whim.

People also seem to think I´m a drug dealer! A brown skinned dude, with longish hair and unshaven beard sitting alone on a bench sipping a beer? I wonder what makes them think that. Been appraoched several times already. These people who won´t even try to speak a word of english any other time even try to string a few words when I tell them I dn´t speak spanish. Sigh.

Well, that´s it for now. I consider this post (especially the punctuatuation and stuff) a victory in itself over the bloody strange key board. Aiight then, till later. Wish me luck.

Btw, the title of the post is taken from the Guetta/Sinclair party theme name.

Spectral Facts

2007-08-14T07:36:00.000+05:30

N has tagged me. Since I've started the blog, quite a few have commented that I never write about anything personal. So, this sort of touches on that.

1. I hate cats. I think they are a mistake in evolution. It was supposed to stop at the wild cats or something, but due to some crazy mutation the domestic cat was created. However, if you are really hot and have a cat, I'd probably tell you that I don't mind cats.

2. I'm a lazy procrastinating bastard. "Don't put off till tomorrow what you can put off till next week" seems to be what I go by. I've had so many close shaves all my life because of this, its not even funny. I have a feeling one of these days I'm gonna get seriously burnt.

3. I believe thongs are overrated! There, I said it. I'm probably the only human male who thinks that. A nicely cut non-thong pair of panties on a girl is a much greater turn on.

4. I almost died on Duplication Road when I was 18 while cutting a tuition class on a rainy Saturday. I was in the back of a friend's speeding double cab. It jolted at one point. I was thrown off balance. Was hanging from one knee barely holding on while the friend kept speeding away till someone else managed to catch their balance and help me pull up. I was on the road-side and could see the look on the faces of drivers going the opposite way. We had Biriyani afterwards and watched a movie.

5. I suck at small talk. Totally. I can talk crazy shit for hours, make people laugh etc, but regular small talk? Nope. I'm not even shy person.

6. I seriously want to retire when I'm in my mid thirties. If I can go easy on drinking and partying, and of course manage to stay unmarried I could probably do it.

7. I swear a lot. A lot. I don't realize it often. One eye opener was when once a more conservative friend told her parents that she doesn't know the owner of the voice all that much when they accidentally saw a video clip of a trip we made. I was behind the camera talking non-stop. She was lying of course.

There you go. I'm not gonna tag anyone. I think the entire bloody blog community has already done it.

No one's gonna take me aliiiiiiiiiiiive...

2007-08-10T07:43:00.000+05:30

"Auditory Orgasm" would best describe it. Yes, so I saw Muse at the Garden on Monday. As much as I like the Cold War Kids who opened, they were utterly and completely outshone by the main act. I drifted into a higher state of conciousness with the starting chords of the set opener "Knights of Cydonia" and stayed there till the subway station stink brought me back en route home. I guess the few beers and the shots of tequila before the gig sorta helped a bit as well.

Matthew Bellamy's voice was spot on throughout the performance. His guitar antics were mind wrenching and Dominic Howard was hitting those drums like there's no tomorrow. They really did play a very tight set. There was not a single song that was average. I almost died when they played Map Of The Problematique. Also added were some fantastic outros to a few songs.

Although there were a lot of lighting effects used, they merely complimented the musical performance. This is one real arena band and I can't even Imagine what it would've been to see them at Wembley. One thing is though, I thought the pit was a bit lacklusture, at least at the begining. Also have a feeling a brit crowd would've been way better. I don't know how but one guy actually managed to get on stage during Stockholm Syndrome.

The encore call was deafening and non-stop. The entire crowd started waving lit up mobile phones which is apparently the new trend with very few lighters around.

All in all, awsome frickin gig. I actually like them more now.

Some videos here and some good pics here.

Muse... Live

2007-08-07T09:59:00.000+05:30

at the Garden tonight. Just got back after the gig. Arrrrrrrrrrrrrrrg... Yes yes yesssssss... yeah baby... wooo hooooooooooooooooooo.. mother fuckers.... woo hoooooooooo... yeeeaaaahhhh.... aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaargggggggggggggggggggggghhhh....

Potta Harry and the Curse of the Sri Lankan Passport

2007-08-06T08:30:00.000+05:30

There's only one situation in life where I wish I was never born in Sri Lanka. That's when I want to travel. We must be on every god damned red list. Anyone who's got anything to do with immigration runs a mile when they see a bloody SL passport. I guess you can't really blame anyone because us Sri Lankans would've set some real stinking precedence that calls for all this caution. I frickin envy the locals here. If the visit is less than six months, they don't have to even think about a visa to go anywhere! This is also true for a few of me friends who have Canadian, New Zealand and UK passports.

The latest trouble is with planning my vacation. So a few months ago Spectral decides to take two weeks off as annual leave for the first time since he started working. I wanted to fly to Europe. One because I've wanted to for so long and also because its much easier and less expensive to fly from here than from back home. As with everything else I do though, planning gets pushed till later and suddenly I'm running around in a mad rush. Technically I had enough time from when serious planning began, but then, I under-estimated 'the system'.

The Spanish consulate took three bloody weeks to issue the Schengen visa. At least they did make something happen. The UK visa is a mess. There's an online booking system to get visa appointments with the brit consulate. However the damn thing is a curse. Nobody knows when time slots are made available, and when they are, it just fills up like insane. Long story short, I'm left without an appointment in time even after adjusting vacation dates. Well, the plan is to forget London and spend those days somewhere in Europe as well. It sucks though because me bro and lotsa friends are in London.

This weekend was not the one for good news. Just after I realized London plans are out, I hear bad news from the landlord. My two roommates had planned recently to move out. Usually whoever moves out finds a replacement and everybody's happy, but no, usual doesn't happen to me does it? Again, long lease related story short, I have to find a place to move into at the end of the month!

There are a couple of twists to this though. As at now, I don't know for how long I'm supposed to be in NYC. Some want me to stay longer, others want me back at home. They are supposed to come to a decision by the end of next week. Buuuuuut, in one and half week's time I'm going on vacation and only coming back at the end of the month. Mother fucker of a situation. So now I'm scrambling around trying to find a room for the short term. This on top of all the Euro tour preparations.

Well, on the bright side, tomorrow is Muse at the Garden! The Cold War Kids opening for them. Woo hoooooo!!! Should be frikin awsome. Hope me can get out of work on time.

Super Heros

2007-07-27T09:07:00.000+05:30

Was having a chat with a Sri Lankan friend who happens to be a girl. At one point we were talking about Jessica Alba and somehow conversation turned to her new Fantasic Four movie(which I hear is shitty). One part of the conversation goes like this.

Me: Well, I never knew the Silver Surfer was a bad guy at first.
Her: I hadn't heard of a Silver Surfer before this movie came out.
Me: What? But he was one of the most commonly found heros with those collectible cards we had wasn't he?
Her: What? What cards?
Me: Wha do you mean "what cards"? You know those cards they used to sell outside the school gates? You collect the heroes and paste them in a book. If you send a completed book you get some gift. You trade them with friends. Protect the rare ones with life. Didn't you have those outside your school?
Her: But I'm giiiiiirrrrrrrrrl!!! You idiot! [in an exasperated but very girly tone]
Me: Oh! Ugh...

p.s. Does anyone know of anyone who actually got a gift by sending the completed book?

How stuff is

2007-07-25T07:30:00.000+05:30

Nope. Not dead yet. Just a bit difficult to get back into the habit of writing even when a bit of time is in hand. This is how stuff is right now.

Summer: Absolutely love it! The presence of a winter definitely makes you appreciate the sun more. My dressing standards have sunk lower and am looking more and more like a hobo. Love the looks cast my way everytime I step into the posh little neighbourhood wine store.

The women are bloody amazing. Really, the concentration of hot women in this city is frickin amazing. And boy, are they ready to party or what?

The downside of the summer? The Puerto ricans go mad! The bunch on the next building have a bloody street party almost every night. The ice cream truck at the middle of the night is the worst. Can't get the frickin annoying tune outta ma head. Much like the 'Walls' tune back in the day. At least I'm spared when I try to sleep as my room doesn't face the street. Room mates not so lucky. Heard one of them screaming "shut up you fucking idiots" the other night. She ain't afraid of nobody when she's drunk....

Music: One of the biggest reasons I love this city. Seen so many talented bands. Fratellis, McAbees and Maximo Park are a few among many that I caught. Managed to get tickets for Muse at the Garden (not the theatre, the big one) and Arctic Monkeys at the park. Just last Sunday, saw The Brazilian girls and Cat Empire for free at Summerstage. Awsome.

Apart from the bands, the clubs and bars play pretty decent music. Never have to worry about hearing the same somg four times on the same night. Especially not crap like 'Fairy Tales"...

Life Expectancy: Think I've lost a few years of me life during the last nine months. A coupla years due to work pressure and stress and another few because of the life style.

Drunk Sleeping: Sometime during the last two years this started to happen and its gotten worse. I could always sleep anywhere anytime if I wanted to. However as said, during the last two years I've grown this condition of falling asleep everytime I get somewhat drunk. Its different to passing out. Its pure sleep. The place or the surrounding doesn't seem to matter. It happens at bars, on subway benches while waiting for trains, leaning against big loud sound boxes at clubs etc. One infamous incident was in Colombo, where a friend found yours truely asleep leaning against the wall in the bathroom at Tabu, patiently waiting for his turn!

Its almost like a power nap, where after a quick doze off I'm back again in full swing. However it can really kill the setting, or even worse. Like the other day while heading back home around 6.00 am, Mr. Spectral ended up going all the way to 190th St or something in the Bronx because he fell asleep in a subway car! He believes he still has both his kidneys attached.

The perfect wave

2007-06-18T05:31:00.000+05:30

This is the Lincoln MKX commercial that runs on TV quite frequently these days. For some reason I just bloody love it. Probably because of the super couple of shots of the sea and the soothing music. In a way, it reminds me of our own beaches and the good times associated with them. Check this out. Although this is far from the same as seeing the ad on HD or even regular TV (the blue of the oean is amazing), still pretty neat.

Why I luurrrve dem

2007-06-09T22:18:00.000+05:30

Now Playing

2007-06-06T07:16:00.000+05:30

New music. Well, new for me.

- Cold War Kids - Hang me up to dry (Love the little guitar riff and the beat)
- Cold War Kids - St John
- The View - Superstar Tradesman (Cancelled their gig in Brooklyn, dammit)
- The National - Secret Meeting (Gig in the city sold out, dammit)
- The National - All the wine
- Yoshida Brothers - Kodo (Inside the Sun Remix) (Figure out what ad features this)

Also Playing:
- Tiesto's In Search of Sunrise series. Awsome shit
- Heavy overdose of Knights of Cydonia due to a wave of re-discovering Muse

White Square

2007-06-04T08:48:00.001+05:30

black square brown square
teasing me to no end
my promised white square
one day
you said
one day
so take me there
crawled out of the black square
on to the brown square
soaked in darkness
gasping for white air
gaping sea of black squares
there are more?
don't play with my journey
give me hope
don't give me hope
kick me back to the black square
to my bitter sweet despair
how I hate the brown square

Yanks at home

2007-05-28T01:23:00.000+05:30

Never thought I'd be a baseball fan (although I've tried my had at it in school). Coupla months in to the season i find myself vociferously cheering Boston on in bars, while receiving a healthy dose of dirty looks from the clear majority of Yankee fans. The game has a lot more character to it than what you'd think at first glance.

So yesterday me and me buddy decided to catch the Yankees/Angels game in the afternoon. That's what's good about being in the city. The easy access. The stadium is only a 15 minute train ride away. (Just like the Garden, which again is only a few minutes from the trian.) We manage to buy two tickets cheaply from some old dude, which gives us seats in the tier behind third base. Covered from the sun too, yay.

The Yankees franchise is bloody amazing. Its one of those things you can't explain but got to experience. Game day is crazy. A gazzillion people fill the HUGE stadium, and bars outside are crawling with die hard fans grabbing the final few drinks brfore the game. Boston hating t-shirts are in abundance, and we keep our anti-Yankee thoughts to ourselves although these people probably aren't nearly as fanatic as the football fans. We have the last laught though cuz the Yanks end up losing.

Gimme a sunny day, a chilled beer and a constant stream of hotties in short shorts and plunging tops, baseball ain't half as bad as you'd think.

The stars are out but the show goes on

2007-05-20T07:17:00.000+05:30

Well, all the predictions have been blown to pieces. The most fancied teams have all been kicked out. But the show must go on.

The play offs were full of upsets from the begining with three of the top teams being ousted in the very first round. Miami, Houston and most incredibly Dallas. The Mavs were my favorites through the regular season (propbably the only sports team from Texas that I like) and who would've thunk that the 8th seeded Golden State would knock out the team which not only had the regular season MVP but also the best record in the league by far. Anyways, once those three were out we were all rooting for Nash and the boys from Phoenix. But last night they were beaten by San Antonio, the team I like the least. Fuck it. So now its all about the East. Hopefully Detroit would kick some serious western ass.

Added the NBA scoreboard widget to the template. Enjoy.

Btw, at least the MLB season is going pretty smooth. Boston is doing great and more important, the Yanks are getting their asses royally whopped :)

Machang, what are you upto this weekend?

2007-05-14T06:44:00.000+05:30

Asks T, after I get a call from him on a early Wednesday morning. "Too early to say machang" I reply, and then stop. "Why the fuck are YOU asking man?" I ask, realizing that T is actually in Dublin. Why on earth would he care from a coupla thousand miles away. "Well machang" he says, "I think I can get a cheap ticket, so I'm thinking of heading over to NY for the weekend if you buggers are free". Long story short, a coupla mails between him, Y and I, sorts everything out and the three of us end up having a blast over the weekend.

After T leaves on Monday I gets to me thinking. What a difference a few years have made. When we all first met in College, it was a classic case of 'birds of feather flock together'. Although none of us knew each other (almost) before hand and regardless of being thrown in different 'lecture groups', we ended up 'flocking together' at a very early stage of the course. The rest - as they say - is history.

Back then though only two had vehicles, accounting for numerous rides in the hot sun packed in the bakkiyas of the two double cabs to play BB, play pool, drink etc. And yes, those were the things that were done on a spur-of-the-moment (well apart from the night outs obviously). As the years went by, things evolved. Some one would call early in the morning "Machaaang, wadduwa yangda?". Aaaand we would drag ourselves out of hangovers/study sessions on day trips. Even later, final year and after graduating, when the financial situation had bettered, it turned into early morning calls to do weekend long out of town journeys.

Now, just two yearrs after graduating, I get a call from across the Atlantic, "machang, what are you upto this weekend?". Life's frickin strange.

Only in NYC?

2007-05-02T04:31:00.000+05:30

These are a few random encounters that amused me. Okay, maybe I haven't been to too many places around the world to say with conviction, but I'm pretty sure there aren't that many other places where these things could happen.

- A guy selling used pregnancy tests on the subway. He was claiming that he could provide test kits with whatever the desired result! Okay here's my question. Is there an actual market for this? Who would want one? Some woman planning to blackmail a guy she slept with? Beats me.

- Free hugs. Coupla weeks ago was walking towards Union Square to see that a few girls were walking around holding signs which read "Free Hugs". Yep, they were dishing out hugs to complete strangers. Maybe in the summer I'll join 'em, with a sign "Free hugs for hot chicks".

- Mass pillow fight. Again at Union Square. This was a "bring-your-own-pillow" kind. Bunch of total strangers (and friends) hitting each other with pillows in public. Unfortunately me was in a hurry, so couldn't witness the thing for too long.

There were a few others I wanted to write about but have forgotten now. Speaking of crazy stuff though, last Saturday comes to mind. Went to Staten Island for a concert by a couple of Sri Lankan artistes. Now, the location was quite far from where I stay. Had to take the subway all the way down, take a ferry to Staten Island and take a 25 minute bus ride to get there. I knew the two guys and re-united with a lotta people from school, sojoined them for the after party at one of the guy's places close by. Got piss drunk and vaguely remember taking a ride with a friend to crash for the night. So the next morning I wake up, to find that I'm at some unknown person's place. My two friends are there and apparently we slept at one of their friends place. We walk outta the apartment building and I ask them where we are and one of them goes "**th Avenue and **th street" and I'm ask "in Staten Island or Jersey?" (cuz one of the friends is from Jersey). The friend goes "ha ha ha, no machang, in Manhattan". I'm like WTF??? That's only a coupla blocks from my place!! Anyways, the walk home was thank fully quick, but it felt fucking crazy..

Random check-in

2007-04-28T20:50:00.000+05:30

Yep, haven't been that frequent with the posts. Life's been same ol' mostly, but a few things worthy of a note. Hung out with a couple of buddies from SL who had come down for a visit. Saw the Teddy Bears live (again) at the Gramercy Teatre. (That was fucking awsome.) Weekend before last hauled my ass over to Washington D.C. to meet some friends of a friend. Met some nice people. (Felt kind of unreal to hang out with a bunch of Sri Lankans for almost two entire days.) Some pics from the DC trip attached.

Ado, who copied the town-hall building?

What's this called, Roller hockey? Looked a lotta fun but quite serious at the same time. Right in front of the White House.

On the way to the Lincoln Memorial. Looked so damn lovely. Would have just walked up and down this stretch the whole afternoon if not for the frickin hangover.

Looking over the empire. Wonder what's going through his mind.

Giant Phallus. A.k.a Big Dick.

A break for the liver

2007-04-02T08:01:00.000+05:30

Been drinking too much. Got drunk on five nights straight. Monday to Friday. Well, at least Monday was just a few beers at the game. Tuesday was the Snow Patrol gig. When you are alone at a concert and when there are not one but two opening bands, you tend to drink a lot, as I found out. Wednesday was poker night. Drank half the beer in the house. Doesn't help when you lose early. Thursday met up with some friends and went on a gin n tonic binge. Friday was the climax. Drank like an idiot. Gin, Scotch, tequila and god knows what else.

Saturday wasnt so nice. Was recovering towards the evening when a friend sends an invite to her b'day party. Arrrgh. But that was fucking amazing. Glad that I went. Magic brownies, some 'magic' stuff to smoke and freshly made sangria till the break of dawn. It was the most chilled out night I've had in NYC. Almost like a dream. She has a nice cosy apartment complete with one of those purple bead curtain things as well :) Everyone sitting on the floor, super fucking music playing, one guy playing the guitar once in a while, another playing the trumpet, people sharing the most crazy ass stories. Excellent.

But gotta give the body a break. Got me mind made up to stay away from alcohol this week. But two good friends from SL should be here on Friday so guess the weekend's out of the question.

Seeing Snow

2007-04-02T07:14:00.000+05:30

So I did manage to get out of work in time and yeah, the seat was great. Dead straight across the center stage and not too far away.

Got there early enough to see the 'Silversun Pickups'. They were pretty damn good live. I just love the raw guitar noise they make. The extended ending of 'Lazy Eye' was just amazing. If they work on a bit more variety in their sound, should have a shot at being big.

Once these guys were done came my big surprise. I didn't know 'Ok go' was the main opening act! Although still not one of the mega bands, they are quite well known in this part of the world. You might remember them from the now infamous video for 'Here it goes agian'. They played a tight set as well although in terms of the style of music I'd still prefer the silversuns. There were some very nicely done videos running in the background during the performance as well.

Then came the big one. Snow patrol blasted their way into the night's performance with 'Spitting Games' (probably my favorite song of theirs to date). Now, I have to make something clear, although I like the music of SP, I'm not really a die hard fan of thiers. I also haven't got the chance to listen to their new album as much as I probably should. Therefore I was a bit disapponted when the three favorite songs of mine were done within the first twenty minutes. (That's 'Spitting Games', 'Chocolate', and 'How to be dead'.) I really think 'Chocolate' is and will always be one of their biggest songs and thought they should've played it much later in the show. However, must say, hearing it live just sent shivers down me spine.

The lighting and souds were amazing as expected. Gary Lightbody's accent was much more prominent compared to recordings. However he was really good at connecting with the crowd. (Actually the leads of all three bands were quite witty.) They even got two girls to get on stage and sing with 'em for one song. (Apparently this is a regular feature in their concerts.) Oh, and yes, hundreds of girls would scream their heads off everytime he talked :)

All in all, it was pretty good. Money well spent.

p.s. Some videos of the gig on You Tube can be found here.

Snow Patrol at the Garden???

2007-03-27T09:53:00.000+05:30

I know I bitched big time about ticketmaster. However the strangest bloody thing happened yesterday. I was checking out the web site of the 'Silversun Pickups', was going through thier 'Tour' page to see if they'd be performing in NY anytime soon. Apparently they will be here in May. Then I noticed a section which said that they are touring with Snow Patrol and would be performing at MSG in 26th and 27th of March. Now, I've known before that SP was gonna be here. I did try to get tickets but both the shows were sold out months before. Yesterday, just for the kicks I checked ticketmaster for tickets and wallah, there was one ticket available! I pounced on it and bought it of course cuz its gonna be a double treat with two pretty good bands in one show. The seat seems quite okay (although obviously not the best) especially since the gig is at the theatre as opposed to the much larger arena.

So keeping me fingers crossed hoping that I'd be able to get off work in time.

Things to do checklist: NBA game: Done

2007-03-27T09:21:00.000+05:30

I love basket ball. Love to play it, love to watch it, I love everything that's about it. It was my first love in sports and will always be number one for me. When you are a kid playing basket ball, you dream of playing in the NBA. When you grow a little bit older and realise that you are a South Asian kid, you dream of seeing NBA games live. I'm no different.

Finally got the chance today. I got to NY in the right time in that the season was on and hadn't progressed up to the play-offs. However between insane work schedules and difficulty in getting tickets, never got a chance to see one. So when a coupla weeks ago a friend got a few tickets yours truely was ecstatic. Tonight was the night. Thankfully, work was done at a decent hour, so me and me friend set off to the Garden after a coupla beers and a slice of pizza.

The Game was Knicks vs Orlando Magic. It was a crucial game for both teams in the fight for a berth in the play-offs. Over the months I've really grown to like the Knicks. (Its funny how you can arrive at a strange city thousands of miles away and warm up to a team as if you've been a fan for years.) It felt surreal to be at 'The Garden', sippin on a beer and seeing the people you see on posters and TV warming up for a game just before your eyes. We hadn't got the best of seats obviously but the seats were still pretty good.

Okay, here goes the bitching section of this post. I can't fucking believe they lost! I know they played without a coupla key players but they could've definitely won. Arrgh. Defence sucked most of the time which let the Magic close up on a few good leads. Steve Marbury had a 30 point game, playing for almost 70% of the time. It really sucked to see them lose.

Anyway, all that aside, it was a pretty damn good experience, especially seeing those monster ally oop dunks in real life. Like an idiot I forgot to take the camera so all memories were only stored upstairs. Oh and btw, the Nicks City Dancers were HOT!!!

New Music

2007-03-25T20:10:00.000+05:30

Check-out this band called the "Silversun Pickups". Heard one of their tracks called "Lazy Eye" yesterday and downloaded more. Pretty darn good must say. Quite addictive. Been listening to their stuff on me iPodda continuously. Think I'm hooked because of the nice mix of noise and the haunting bass lines that make up their sound. Plus the drummer sounds great. Kinda sounds like the Smashing Pumpkins a bit as well.

Definitely worth checking out. Tracks to look out for would be Lazy Eye, Melatonin and Kissing Families but almost everything else I downloaded is quite good.

Try and listen to some stuff by "The Raveonettes" as well.

Ticket-Bastards

2007-03-24T06:25:00.000+05:30

So, yesterday while browsing ticketmaster.com I found that the Arctic Monkeys are gonna be in NYC in mid May!!! Now, I really like these folks and this was the perfect opportunity as usually I end up finding out about good bands too late when all the tickets are sold out. According to the site pre-sale was already on, but the tickets were supposed to be available for the general public starting 12.00 p.m. 23rd March. That's today. So I tell ma firend who I know likes them as well and we plan to get three tickets. He logs in at 12.02 p.m. and guess what, NO FRICKIN TICKETS. I couldn't believe it!! Fucking assholes.

Something fishy's going on here. For one, the Monkeys aren't that big in the US to sell out a gig in two minutes I would think. They are not even gonna play at the Garden. The site says there's strictly a limit of 4 per credit card and there's the whole stupid word verification thing to "prevent unfair use of automated programs". So I can't imagine what happened. Basically the ticketbastards fucked us.

Anyway, check out "The Raveonettes". Saw them last Saturday in Brooklyn and they sound pretty neat. I found several tracks on Bearshare.

Its probably not a good idea to....

2007-03-17T07:58:00.000+05:30

- Mix two types of gin in one drink, whiskey, beer and tequila on a work night...

- Tell a budding Indian actress you've known for five minutes that Bollywood movies are just bullshit.... no matter how drunk you are.

- Tell her "but don't you have to be REALLY hot to be an Indian actress?"... (grrrrr... cringe cringe)

- Say "aiight thanks machaaang" and get out of a cab thinking the cabbie is your friend...

- Show up late and hungover to work on the day of your annual performance appraisal...

Teddy Bears Rockin'

2007-03-04T06:31:00.000+05:30

So Thursday night we hit Hiro on the West side to catch a band called Teddy Bears. T had managed to get us on the list so I agreed to go eventhough the week's been a real shit-fest at work and knowing I had to get up the following day to get back there. Hiro is one of the best joints in the city, and one is guarenteed to have a good time on any Thursday night. Man, am I glad I went or what. The band ROCKED. One of the best live performances I've ever seen.

Don't be thrown off track by the name, these guys make some serious noise. Hailing from Sweden they had quite a few guest artistes to do the vocals. The sound is mainly rock/electronic. The three main band members wore suits and these big ass bear heads throughout the performance.

Today I managed to find their album at the Virgin store. I think they sound better live eventhough the record sounds pretty darn good itself (more guitar noise live). Their site features some of the songs and videos, however my favorite 'Ahead of my time' isn't on it. That was the intro song at the gig and the extended version sounded fantastic with the sound of a siren playing in the background. Drop me a mail if anyone wants that one.

See me

2007-02-26T05:38:00.000+05:30

You are messed up
I'm not
Look at yourself
I can't see myself
Yes you can. Look in the mirror
What's a mirror?
There. Look into it
That's not me
How do you know? You've never seen yourself before
But I know. That's not me. I know myself
Do you now?
Yes goddammit. I am me
No, I am you
Why can't I see you in the fucking mirror? This mirror is broken
Its not the mirror thats broken
Shut the fuck up
That's what people see as you
They should see you. You are always there
They see what you want them to see
No they see what YOU choose to be seen you lying bastard
I am the master
I am just a puppet
That's how its going to be
One day I'll snap the strings
No. One day I will decide
Fuck you
You are messed up. I told you

Story Baton - Part 02

2007-02-12T02:57:00.000+05:30

So I was supposed to be the second in line for the story baton. Theena did Part 01. I did try to switch places as Feb wouldn't be a good time. It isn't. Its pretty much fucked up. However I did get some free time this Sunday. So here's what I came up with.
****************************************************

"Holy crotchless panties Catman!" exclaimed Bobbin, "did you really write that speech?"

Startled by the sudden outburst of words in the otherwise quiet room, Roy turned around to look at his partner. His blissful stare into the evening sky through the tall glass sliding door was disturbed. He didn't like it and the grimace on his face told the tale.

"But the bigger question is" went on the man lying on the couch, "would you actually say all this tomorrow?" Bot was too excited to notice his partner's annoyance, he wanted to know if things were going to happen.

"How many gazzillion times have I told you that we don't have to call each other catman and Bobbin at home you moron?" barked Roy, "its only while fighting crime and at press conferences."

"Oh, looks like someone got out of the wrong side of his litter-box."

After twenty years together, Roy didn't know what he hated most. The stupid jokes or the snorting laugh that invariably followed them.

"Plus, I'm wearing half my uniform anyway, so..."

"Goddamn exchange student superhero partner lottery at mutant school" thought Roy, "lucky bloody me!" Inside though, he knew how much they've achieved together. After all, "what's Catman without Bobbin?" as that popular couples therapy t-shirt said.

"Look Bot, I'm NOT going to call you Bobbin every time you wear green briefs okay? So piss off now."

"Alright Roy" chuckled Bot "take it easy man. But seriously, what's all this talk about heartbeat of the country and fights at home?"

The man in the big arm chair facing the glass door let out a big sigh. He was clearly the brain 'and' the brawn of this duo. His partner though, had a knack for accidentally doing something right at the right time, which had turned to be an essential element in the formula for success of this superhero partnership. He realized it was time to let his partner in on everything he knew. Well, almost everything.

"Bot, there are certain things you should know." He cleared his throat. "You know those mysterious electro-magnetic pulses that we've been picking up?"

"You mean the weird sounds we hear through the giant stethoscope in the basement?"

"Well, if you still insist calling the 'electro-magnet-jigamarator 3000 GX' a 'stethoscope', yes. As I suspected we weren't the only ones monitoring them. Dr. Zigan and his team at the metro-lab were apparently all over it. They've been all over the country looking into it. They know what's behind all this."

"Dr. Zigan only really works with one other. Zolena. So, she's a smarty as well then eh?"

The mention of Zolena put pause in the conversation. The minds of the two men were too busy processing all the mental images of her at a frantic pace. There's nothing like the image of a beautiful woman to make a man's imagination run riot.

"Man, that is one fine woman" mused Bot, "mmm... mmm.. FINE... The things I could do to that body! She hides SOME treasures behind those white lab coats I tell you. Can you remember her at the imperial christmas party?"

"Why isn't anyone around to here this kind of talk from Bot?" Roy cursed to himself, "those bastards still run a story once in while claiming we are gay!"

"Forget about her for a moment Bot" he said out loud, "what they found is far more important right now. Those pulses were not natural. At least from an earthling's point of view."

Bot was confused.

"Apparently we have had millions of little soldier Tracticans planted underground for several years. They are growing up now. Its the pulses that they emit that we hear as the damn heartbeats!"

"Holy peanut butter jellyfish Catman! Tracticans as in the big, purple, 'we-wanna-rule-the-universe' mother fuckers from planet Tractica? But I thought they couldn't cross out atmosphere?"

"Them be it Bot. They are smart. We don't know how they got there, or atleast Zigan wouldn't tell me. We do know that in a few months time, they'll grow to their full selves and we'll be right royally fucked. But we can't go down without a fight. We also can't fight this alone. That's why I'm going to give that speech at tomorrow's imperial leaders' convention."

"Well I'll be damned" said Bot shaking his head. "So that explains the heartbeats but what about this fights at home you mention?"

"Oh that's about the bloody roach problem we've had form months now at this place."

"Huh? Why would you tell the imperial leaders about our roach problem?"

"I don't have a goddamn clue Bot, but since its on the speech, think I can twist it around to show that if its that hard to beach a bunch of little brown bugs at your own home, it sure as hell won't be easy beating a million aliens with superior technology of war."

"So you think you and Dr. Zigan can convince everyone?"

"That's the twist my man. Zigan doesn't want me to tell everyone. He's a pawn of the Eastern Regime. They want to fight it alone, get the credit and rule the country themselves. He wanted me to join them. I told him to stick it. Now they are out to get us."

"That's insane. What would they do if they catch us?"

"Zolena isn't just a scientist. She worked for a Regime Agency before the first peace convention. Lets just say if we are captured, she'll have her own 'ways' of convincing us to keep shut."

"You mean she'll tie me up and do all sorts of nasty things?"

"Not in the way you like it you moron. Anyway, I've got to go out now. Have to get into Zigan's lab and get the evidence. Without that no one would believe me tomorrow. You be here, be alert and guard all our work Bot, I'm gonna go put on my costume."

"Roy, you know that a black rubber suit doesn't look as good on a forty year old man as it does on Catwoman don't you?"

"Shut your trap green-boy" snapped Roy as he got up to find his way to the secret den, "someone who wears noting but green briefs below the waist in public shouldn't point fingers at others."

He could only take a few steps before stopping dead on his tracks. The bowl of coco-pops dropped from Bots hands onto the couch.

There was a loud banging on the door.

****************************************
Writer's Comments:

- Theena machang: I'm sorry if I ruined your story line. This is the only story I could think of :)

- The next writer: Please feel free to discard this and continue from part 01 if you feel this is a piece of junk :)

- Althernatively we can have two story lines, if we have enough writers. One serious and the other continuing from Theena's part 01 (juuuus kidding)

Say Whaaaat...

2007-01-24T10:07:00.000+05:30

Just a few random things based on my NYC experience so far;

Women putting on eye-liner on the subway: FREAKS ME OUT! Women putting on make-up is a common sight on the subway system. Hell, I've even seen a few men doing a last minute touch up job (long live the city). However when they bring out the eye-liner kit, I just flip. I just keep thinking the train's going to jolt, the damn pointy thing will poke her eye, blood will come gushing out, people will start screaming and all hell would break loose. I can't help but stare either. One of these days I'm gonna get beaten up by some big Eastern European woman for grabbing her eye-liner thingy, breaking it and throwing it away while screaming "stop it, stop it you stupid woman, aaaaaaaaaaarrrrrrh". Call me crazy, but you ain't seen it.

Moving trains: Hopefully this'll make sense even with the least knowlege on the subway system. Just know that at certain stations you get muliple platforms and tracks running in parallel. This happens when I sit facing away from the platform for my train. The train slows down at a station and I can see through the window right across me another train leaving the station (pretty fast) the other way. If I'm not paying much attention, sometimes it feels as if my train is still moving eventhough it has smoothly come to a stop. (The second train moving in the opposite direction creates this sorta optical illusion.) Suddenly the doors open nex to me and people step out. I FREAK OUT! I'm sreaming in my heaed "stoooooooop, why the fuck are you morons jumping off a moving train? Are we in the matrix? Is it real? Noooooo..". Call me crazy, but you ain't seen it.

White men can't dance: to save their lives. Dear god. Everytime I'm at a club/party/anywhere-with-white-folk-dancing, I cringe. They look so awkward. Most white women can't seem to dance either but at least they improve dramatically with a little help of alcohol therapy. The white men don't. They degrade. Worst is that they are completely oblivious to the fact. Alas, not every white man has a Justine Timberlake trapped inside 'em. At least they make us look good.

Being a foreigner rocks: Speaking an unknown language that is. You can swear out loud, say the rudest things out loud when you feel like it and make the most lewd remarks; optionally while you smile politely. Man it feels good. Its the best stress reliever I tell you. Singing the filthiest of songs at the top of your voices on a busy street while being utterly drunk rocks...

Boobies on Public Display

2007-01-22T10:38:00.000+05:30

Sorry to disappoint boys and girls. Seen at the American Museum of Natural History in NYC.

Pol Bada & Kos Kariya

2007-01-09T10:01:00.000+05:30

Off an recipe book. Another victim of inter-language direct phonetic translations...

New Dogmyster

2007-01-07T04:19:00.000+05:30

So we've got a new member in the family. Me bro was back in SL and had got the new pup. Apparently the bugger's quite active. Coupla pictures.

Funny ears eh?

Grrr... Can't believe I don't get to be around and play with the little devil. Arrrh...

Btw, the weather in NYC is fucking unbelievable. It was 70 degrees today. (That's about 21 celsius). But I had be stuck at home doing some work. Fuck it.

The most beautiful...

2007-01-07T03:22:00.000+05:30

The Spectral World was given a mighty shake last night at a lower east side bar. There she was. Sitting at the bar like a goddess. Just frickin amazing. Its not the sort of beauty that one can describe in words. She wasn't wearing anything fancy. White sweater and jeans. Just perfect. She had this look on her face which looked so real, shone of beauty, screamed of happiness and glowed of warmth.

Yours truely's brain space allocated for the 'Most Beautiful Woman witnessed' was updated.

She was with a guy and we were with other people, so.. (By the way, the guy 'looked' so damn average. I bow to him in admiration.) The thing is, its not like you look at her and think of all the nasty things you can do to her. You just feel happy to have beheld such beauty in your eyes...

And then she kissed him.... to the deafening sound of every man's shattering heart ...

p.s. We did find out that she's Ecuadorian, but I'm pretty sure she's a mix.

Inland Empire

2006-12-28T07:09:00.000+05:30

A movie by David Lynch. The same guy who did Mulholland Dr, Eraserhead, Blue Velvet and quite a few other good ones. Saw it at the IMC theatre on the Lower West Side which hosts Indie films.

Truely mind blowing. We were warned that its three hours long but I swear it didn't feel that long. Its sort of a mental rollercoaster with few disturbing scenes as well. However it flows well and ends so fucking perfectly. Laura Dern does an exceptional job of portraying the main character of an actress going through what can best be called a mind fuck. The musical score compliments the visals amazingly. I've never sat through the complete credits scene of a movie before. My friend says she's never seen an entire audience stay through it either! Both of us couldn't stop repeating "That was fucking awsome" for a few minutes after we came out.

Check it out. Just remember this may not be everyone's cup of tea. Anyways, this was on Christmas day. Was a good break following three consecutive nights filled with absurd drunkardness and immoral behaviour in general. That's how the much awaited long weekend was spent. Nothing productive in a regular sense.

Couple of pictures taken while in a state of drunkard bliss on Saturday below.

I've stayed away from vodka for a long time but a bottle of Grey Goose was too inviting on Saturday.

Touched by a Sloth

2006-12-26T10:02:00.000+05:30

Well, tagged by one. Me is not a big meme fan, but never done one. So here we go. (Oh and dogfight, no I'm NOT gonna do the movie one! Not right now at least.)

1. CD or vinyl- CD. Never got the chance to mess around much with vinyl. Friend's planning to get a turn table and a console soon so might get that chance after all.

2. An album you’ve been meaning to listen to- 'Whatever People Say I Am, That's What I'm Not' by the Arctic Monkeys. Been absolutely stubborn about not downloading it. Arrrgh.. must get the damn CD soon.

3. Grammys - Its alright by me. Let 'em have their ego trip for christ's sake.

4. Your favourite album is - One? Unfair. Well. 'Definitely Maybe'

5. Invite 10 Music people for dinner. Who will it be? - Hmm. No dead people? Okay then. Richard Ashcroft, Noel Gallagher, Anthony Kiedis, John Frusciante, Billy Corgan, Alanis Morissette, Marilyn Manson, David Gilmour and Andrea Corr for eye candy. Oh and the lead pussycat for the after dinner special ;)

6. Appropriate punishment for those who play Celine Dion’s "My heart will go on" while pretending that it’s still 1998 - Shove the entire Celine Dion CD discography up where the sun don' shine.

7. Choose your favourite instrument and its best player from your point of view - Guitar. Page and John Frusciante.

8. The one piece of music that can move you to tears- Can't think of any.

9 You are an executive at a major label and have the power to green light one album a year. What would you do? - Would pick this band called 'Valeze' that I saw last December when I was here. Very funky different sorta music. The lead singer's quite the chick as well.

Hmmm. Whom do I tag now. For one thing this has pretty much been around the entire SL blog scene ain't it? Plus I'd rather pass it on to someone with a higher chance being irritated by it :) So I tag StaticX and Hasitha.

New York New York

2006-12-10T12:02:00.000+05:30

So I moved. To the city. Which city you ask? THE city. New York. Manhattan. Moved last Sunday to the Upper East Side. A Bit Further up than I would've liked (although its not as high up as Harlem). Had no choice because of time constraints. One of the best things is now I can easily split a cab with ma best buddy here after late drunk nights. The place is nice, and I'm rooming.

Its ball freezing cold. Falling below zero celsius already. Work sucks. Absolutely. Had the worst week ever. For the first time in my life I'm wondering what the hell I'm doing. Is all this shit really worth it? I think the only reason I'm hanging with this job right now is because it gives me the chance to be in this amazing city. Well, that and the fact that if I just got up and left it would probably put a lot of good people in more deep shit. Sigh.

Been spending a lotta money on alcohol. Getting drunk and meeting strangers. Well they are no longer strangers after you meet them I guess.

Got this song stuck in ma head since Friday night when the DJ at Trinity played it. "Young Folks" by Peter, Bjorn and John. Good one. Check it out. Coupla other new ones that I've been listening to latey. (Well, "new" to me.)

Morning wood - Nth Degree (pop-ish but nice)
Beck - Nausea
Luouis XIV - The best little secrets are kept (the album)
Lazlo Bane - Superman (Scrubs theme song)

Under the same stars

2006-12-01T20:59:00.000+05:30

On the rusty broken bench I lie
Feeling high and fly
Gazing into the deep dark night's sky
A million flickering stars falling on my eyes
And I realise

I could be oceans apart
From home, where lies my past
but we all still live under the same stars
Constellations, I know by heart

Suddenly...
Is that Orion's belt moving I see?
Holy shiiiiiit!
Who's taking his pants off, beats me

Bloody air-planes with lights!
Fucking with my mind
when I'm high
sigh....

Save the Spectral Movement

2006-11-26T09:52:00.000+05:30

Today I played some ball with some buddies, and almost coughed up my guts and died. Its just been a coupla months since I had played and man, has my fitness level gone down or what. One obvious reason is the lack of excercise, but I realize I've been following a pretty unohealthy life style in general lately. Lack of sleep, stress, lotsa alcohol and last but not least, eating out ALL THE TIME!

So I'm thinking of changing at least one of them. Eating habits. Basically me is trying to get into cooking more often. I've done some cooking so far. Made rice a few times, dhal thrice and chicken twice. (I've been pretty good with the dhal and the chicken curry turned out pretty darn well the second time.) However I cannot be eating rice, dhal and chicken forever now can I? So here's where you the loving general public come into play.

'Save the Spectral' movement is all about saving me (a worthy specimen of the human race, destined to be immortalized at a museum one day) from dying of hunger. How do you do this? Ideally make some super tasty food and hire bikini clad Chalize Theron and Elisha Cuthbert to feed me while Adriana Lima and Alessandra Ambrosio mud/oil wrestle at my feet. But then I got this funny feeling that you might not. (Useless people you are, really.)

Next best alternative? Tell me how to make other food. Basically give me instructions on how to make stuff other than rice, dhal and simple chicken curry. Now remember a coupla things. I need proper INSTRUCTIONS. Not a list of things to be used and a two lines of cookery jargon. Proper quantities to be mixed and simple instructions.

Think of this as not only a chance to help a poor Sri Lankan lost in the big Apple to make a decent meal, but also an opprtunity to make a mass online mating call. Who knows, some hot chick/stud might be swept off their feet with your cooking skills and go knows what can happen.

If you thought that wasn't enough, I'm gonna choose the best dish with the best set of instructions. The winner will get to enjoy the special SpectraCenrtoid dessert made with a personal touch. (Basically whipped cream, chocolate syrup and honey to be licked off yours truly's chest. Oh oh oh, there're cherries too.) Five personally autographed pictures of me cooking naked are also available as consolation prizes.

So, what are you waiting for? Get your cooking groove on baby.

Of work and alcohol

2006-11-24T03:51:00.000+05:30

That would pretty much sum up my life right now.

I'm buried upto my neck in work. Its crazy unbelievable busy. I mean it. It took me two weeks to find time to deposit my pay cheque at the bank which is just a few blocks away from the work place. Been working through weekends and holidays as well. Last Sunday was at work for 12 hours straight without an ounce of food. The fact that the client is so unbelievably disorganized doesn't help at all. Sometimes its scary, to think that the decisions you make on a late Sunday night after 7 days of intense work can affect practically thousands of people and billions of dollars.

And I find solace in alcohol. The work crowd makes sure that every coupla days the blood level in my alcohol stream is kept at a decent level.

Oh, and I'm back in love with the city. Its another thing that keeps me going. Love everything about it. The sights, the sounds, the variety, the imperfections and the women. If everything works out I should be moving in the first weekend of December. (Btw, let me tell you that hunting for apartments is a super way to meet hot chicks :) And most of the time they are very direct about what they want and I love it.)

I'm gonna attempt to be more frequent in posting. There's another reason apart from the general lack of time why I didn't do many posts even when I found a little bit of time. When I started blogging I never wanted it to be just a journal where I go on about what I did, where and with whom. Lately those seem to be the only kinda posts I've been making. So hopefully I'll find the time and the presence of mind to write some other stuff.

Till then, party on people. (Thanks to everyone who even mailed in to find whether me is dead :)...)

She's gone...

2006-11-14T11:43:00.000+05:30

Forever.

My dog.

Got the news from home.

Showered me with unconditional love for 13 years.

Unconditional.

I feel glad I'm over here. It would've been too fucking depressing. Yeah I'm a selfish bastard.

It didn't kill me!! (second attempt)

2006-10-30T10:15:00.000+05:30

Fuck a duckling! I'm still alive! Last night I prepared my first meal and ate it too. Phew. Apparently nothing has gone too wrong. Yippiee!

Well, I've had to neglect the blog for a while. Time's really not been on my side these days. Been workin ma ass off and hitting the sack late. Well, a bit of alcohol in the middle as well. Okay maybe a little more alcohol than a 'bit'. So, I'm gonna jot down a few noteworthy things of the past few weeks. Starting with of course....

I can really cook!: I did it. Made rice, dhal and chicken curry. I must say the dhal came out very well. Seriously well, although it bordered on glowing luminous yellow due to a slight overdose of turmeric. Rice was pretty good as well and chicken was so so. Obviously the combination of spices, salt and everything else is yet to be perfected but hey, it was very much edible.

Dining with the dead: Well, our client's office premises is located right across the street from the New York Trinity Church. (This is featured on the movie 'National Treasure' I believe, although I never watched it.) Its a beautiful piece of work from the outside and I hear the insides pretty nice as well. Anyways, the subject matter for this story is the burial ground that's beside the church. It's relatively a small area and is almost like a little park during day time where people sit and read, chat and have lunch. So last week on a clear skied day (which are starting to be scarce) a coupla colleagues and I went here with the food, sat on a big monument sorta thingy and had very nice meal. It was kinda strange though, not just being surrounded by all the grave stones but also the serenity you feel there despite being right in the heart of NY's financial district.

Oh, give me a home: ...where the hot chickitas roam... Well, as per the arrangements, I have to move out of the company apartment by the end f this month. Which means I've got to find my own damn place by that time, and ain't the winter the best time to move houses! Anyways, right now I'm staying in Jersey City, right across the Hudson River. It works out well because the place is only 15 minutes away from downtown NY where the office is and its waaaaaaay better than the rest of New Jersey!! But I'm thinking of moving into the city (yes, THE city, the big apple, Manhatten). Out of everyone who's there on work only two guys have opted to stay in Manhatten, others prefering to stay in Jersey. I guess that's the rational option. Bigger space for the same rent and less tax and they tell me that all the time as well. But the two city's are worlds apart when it comes to the vibe. Manhatten, well do I even have to tell you, and JC, almost no vibe. So I'm keeping my hopes up and looking for a little place in the city, failing which might ahve to crawl back to JC. I'm actually looking to share which is a more practical option. So, I'm on the hunt for my own bachelor pad, my love shack.... and if anyone out there is looking to share or knows someone who's looking to share, lemme know. I'm the bestest roomie you'll ever have ;)

I can cook !!!!

2006-10-14T05:45:00.000+05:30

Well Maggi noodles.

But that's not easy as they would make you believe on those ads. Its a series of careful steps that ends up in a delicious gourmet dish. First, water must be boiled. To do that you gotta figure our how to turn the damn burner on. Took me ten minutes to do so *hangs head in shame*. While its boiling you have to sorta crush the noodle block in the packet. Once water is ready, gotta put the noodles in with the flavour stuff and keep stirring for a few minutes. You have to make sure its not under or over done. Then you have to drain out the excess water without spilling the noodles out. Man, I was exhausted after all that.

But it did taste so damn good. Maybe because I was so damn hungry. Still getting used to the changed meal habits and trying to optimize it. See, I'm usually a sorta big eater. On a regular day I usually have rice for luch and dinner and on most working days I have rice in the morning as well. I'm also definitely a quantity over quality person. No posh little dishes for me baby, fill me up with the carbs. So from that I've had to go to bread with peanut butter and cereal in the morning, some crappy chinese food or pizza for lunch and maggi noodles at night. Bah.

Well I'm supposed to cook. But two things are stopping me. One, I'm too damn lazy, two I dunno how to. Honestly I can only boil an egg. Which sucks especially since everyone else in my family including my dad and bro are great cooks. The thing is I've never actually tried my hand at it, so I'm hoping once I start I'll immediately be able to turn out super dishes. Sigh. I don have a choice. Unlike last time when I was here for just a month, don't think I can eat out for one whole year. So, poor me has to put all my effort into either learning to cook or finding a girl whols willing to cook for me.

Well, I'm gonna go now. Have to call the delivery Indian food joint for dinner tonight....

What a few days

2006-10-10T02:17:00.000+05:30

Ah, so I'm back again in the land of the dreams, this time for a longer stay if everything goes to the plan. The past few days have been frickin hectic to say the least.

Went for the visa interview on Tuesday but the passport was only given on Wednesday due to some delay. Since the dparture was scheduled for Sat night this left only a few days to get everything ready. So had to run around, buy things, set thigs up, pay bills, meet people and what not.

Leaving didn't mean I get stay away from work. No sir. The usual late hours apply. So the days were mostly spent on shopping for stuff and running back to work. (Had to buy an entire set of office attire as I had none! I'm one of those who make maximum use of the casual attire practice at work. So much so that on the visa interview day when I turned up at office in formal with hair sorta combed wearing shoes, half the people had a tough time recognizing moi!)

Thursday night was spent with two bunches of people at Tabu and Onyx. Got piss drunk and went home late. But managed to 'spend a little time' with this 'person' as I've wanted to for a sometime now. Friday night was spent with my dearest regular bunch at N's place. Bugger's got a projector from somewhere. Having gin-tonic, tequila and black on a comfy sofa with a Coldplay concert playing on the wall feels divine I tell you. Another late night.

Saturday, the last day in Colombo was again spent running around trying to get things done at the bank and last minute shopping. Was also trying to meet this 'person' for one last 'meet up' (ahem). Things were running at such a tight schedule at one point like an idiot I parked the car on duplication for a few minutes only to find a cop trying to call the tow truck! Had to plead with the cop but the bugger was adamant on the ticket. So on the last day in the island I lose my license! Stupid frickin me.

Thank god daddy dearest was home. Had to ask him to pack for me while I was out in the town. As usual he did an amazing job.

So two consecutive late drunk nights, work and constant running around means that by the time I get on the plane at 2.00 a.m Sunday, I'm frickin exhausted. And the journey is close to 27 hours! (12 hours to London, 8 hour transit and another seven hours to NY.) Woo hoo. The Col - London leg was so so. Well, everything about SriLankan Airline was so so including the chicks.

Heathrow was just as amazing as I remembered. At one point when we were waiting for the gates to open, the fire alarm goes off and everone's asked to leave the terminal building. Funny thing was nobody was in a real hurry and just walked out slowly only to return a few minutes later. (What I realized though was that if it was something like a shooting where people actually panicked, it would've been absolute chaos with so many people and the available emergency exits.) Well at least how many people here have had to evacuate the Heathrow terminal on an emergency eh? Who da man now ah?

The trans-Atlantic leg on Virgin was good. The Entertainment on it is very good. I got three seats all to myself. So after a meal watching 'The devil wears Prada', stretched out and got several hours of sleep. This was super as I was nearing my limit of exhastion.

Immigration at Newark went very smooth. So was baggage claim and everything else. I'll be staying in Jersey City in the office apartments for the first two months. Got there and there was a slight problem with the keys but got it sorted out. Then a coupla people from there called with an invite for dinner. Went over and ended up having beer and a bit of barcardi to go along with the bbqed chicken. Finally went back and crashed around 2 in the morning.

So there you go. That's how I got here. Work's gonna be a killer but I'm out to have some good times as well. Will try to update the blog as well. So till next time boys and girls....

Good bye home...

2006-10-04T23:50:00.000+05:30

Yes, so apparently I've got to leave the paradise island and head to NY on a work assignment. Not just for some short period. If everything goes according to the current plan I should be out for at least one year! True to our company style everything's been at the eleventh hour. Well, actually I've know of the possibility for several weeks. Got the visa stamped today. Will be flying out on Saturday night. Hardly any time to get things arranged. Got most of the shopping done. Very little time to meet up with people, grrrrrrr. Funnily enough everybody thinks its for a short visit when I tell them first and go "WHAT??? ONE YEAR??? SUDDENLY!!" when I tell them the full story.

So anyways, works gonna be absolutely hectic there. But ain't no place like the Big Apple on earth. So lets see what happens.

System of a Down left WHAT on the table?

2006-09-28T12:49:00.000+05:30

B'fast conversation at work turns to songs and somehow to chop-suey by SOD. I try to sing
Wake up
Grab the brush and put a little make up
Hide the scars to fade away the shake-up

(almost spraining my tounge with the third line)

and my collegue joins in

Why'd you leave the Ketchup on the table

For a moment I stare in shock, and then we uncontrollably laugh our asses off for five minutes. All sorts of fast food franchise and other jokes come out.

Hmmm.. That was way more funny in real life....

Back to Earth

2006-09-24T18:58:00.000+05:30

If the Royalists were up on cloud number nine last week, they've landed on their asses this weekend.

The Bradby: A superior team, with better dicipline and a superior strategy ran over a very confused bunch on the other side of the field. It was one of the worst games of Bradby ever played overall although the Trinitians were a treat to watch when they were working their phases. At one point I had this sick feeling in the gut that Royal was in for a over thrity five point hammering but somehow they managed to cling on to the last bit of dignity. What was wrong? I primarily blame the coaching.

The Royal Team and the Season: Lets face the facts. This was not a team like the ones we had during the early 2000s. However it was also not as bad as last year's disastrous fifteen. This was a bunch of players who could on average be categorized somewhere between above average and good with a few gems with a touch of brilliance. Some years you get teams that will out-play their opponents with the minimum coaching input while in some years the team will be realistically beyond hope. But this is the kind of team I thought that will show how good the coaching is. They had the skills and they had the hunger and zeal (as we saw at the first leg ). What they needed was proper training, a strategy and dicipline. Instead they got to play some second tier teams throughout the season which hid the chinks in the armour. I'm no expert, but I'll tell you what makes me think none of the above were received by the team.

Training: What on earth was wrong with our place and touch kicking? At this level of competetion can a team afford not to have a trained place kicker? I think Omar Hassen had a so-so season and then the last few games were a disaster. He missed a coupla penalties in the first leg early on the game. In the Thora game the fullback fluffed all seven conversions! Was that all forgotten because of the 35 - 0 score line? In the second leg our chosen one missed two plum penalties. They were good chances to put some pressure on Trinity early on but to no avail. Our fly hald had a horrible time with finding touch, gifting the Trinitians with easy possession every so often. One of the props had to be warned repeatedly for collapsing the scrum by the ref who had to resort to teaching the poor lad the proper techniques on field!

Strategy: Was there any other than "pass to Warnakulasuriya"? Our guys looked absolutely lost with no ideas in the offensive except to just pass around and wish for an opening. Trinity defense was far too tight for that, and didn't we know that already? Half way thorugh second half it seemed like we were just playing for time. True we lost our 'playmaker' center to a 'kakul mattu' early on but that shouldn't bring the rest of the line to a stand still.

Discipline: At least we didn't give away too many penalties, but what the hell was that number 6 thinking? Is he the king of late tackles or what? The ref went soft on him early on in the Pathana game where he repeatedly tackled the poor fullback following clearance kicks. Later on though he was sent off for the same offence. This game too he made the same stupid move and got sent off (rightly so). Trinity scored twice soon after. How can one allow his players to let his team down like that, especially when they are fighting for thier dear lives?

Well in the end we are stuck in the B division and have lost the Bradby with just memories of "what might have been" left behind. What a waste...

Commentary: I was stuck in Colombo, so had to resort to the TV coverage. Great job by Sirasa TV (rugby coverage being one of the few things about the channel I like) with cool aerial shots of the grounds and what not. However they have to improve on the commentary team. What the hell was Ajith going on about? Its okay to tell a story once in a while but when you go on and on about how some dude made a superb pass at a game in 1962, how his cousin was also a Trinity Lion, how they once went out to have hoppers after a game and almost got hit by a running train, how Superman saved them and had sex with Wonder Woman on the Kandy railways station and so on, it gets a bit irritating. Dude, you should get a hint when 'Chandrashan' is trying to stop you from talking too much!!!

Murder on Reid Avenue

2006-09-17T00:47:00.000+05:30

Yesterday the Cinnamon Gardens poilce arrested fifteen suspects in connection to a mass murder taken place at a public event earlier in the evening. The victims who are all believed to be from Mt. Lavinia had been beaten "black and blue" before being executed. Eye witnesses to the crime have revealed that the suspects were able to carry out the massacre despite repeated attempts to spoil their plans by a man in a green jersey with a whistle. The young suspects have been charged with 35 counts of murder and although the victims had supposedly tried to fight back, not a single murder has been attributed to them.

So close yet so far... and a 'Weddah'

2006-09-10T12:36:00.000+05:30

Final score Trinity 21, Royal 10. Trinity scored everytime they came close to the Royal line. That tells me two things. One, Trinity was very good at converting chances to points. More than that, our team made a right royal fuck-up of a grand percentage of possession they had. It was unbelievable. Don't let the final score fool ya. Right until the final whistle the score was 14 - 10. Last minute goal made it 21. However points are points. A month from now everyone will forget how close the game was. Royal has only themselves, actually their stupid mistakes to blame. It was there for the taking. Unbelievable number of chances created by them, fluffed by themselves. It felt worse than last year. Cuz that time we were out-played. This time around we committed suicide.

In fairness, props to Trinity for the defense which caused our guys to make mistakes, but still, that many chances? Surely we should've converted. I'm not exaggerating when I say were in Trinity trritory for nearly 80% of the time. Some of our guys, especially the number 8 and one of the flankers had a very good game, but didn't much support at crucial times. Well, what's to be done? Kandy seems so far away.

From incessant bitching to the 'weddah' bit of this post. Well basically as usual we got tickets only at the last minute, which meant we were on the 'other side' of the stadium as opposed to the grand stand. Usually that side is divided in two, one side with Trinity supporters and the other with Royal fans. We came in a bit early (sorta midway through the second XV game), and took the Trinity side entrance as it was the closest from the road hoping to walk across to the other side. So we are walking past a healthy contingent of Trinitians (not everyone's in yet), me following my buddy. As we pass bunch of most probably schoolboy Trinitains, one of them shouts "Oye Weddah!!" and a couple of his buddys go "ha ha, weddah, ha ha". (Weddah as in the Sri Lankan early settler tribes people you find in Mahiyangana and Dambana. For the benefit of those who don't know, 'weddah' is also used in slang to mean 'uncivilised person'.) Well I assume reason I was called one was probably becasue of my long, uncombed hair. Its a really mild name to be called and I wasn't really offended but I couldn't resist the chance. So I HAD to turn, point in the genreal direction of where the sound came from and tell my fiend loudly "Ado maara scene eka, mung Nuwara indang awilla apita weddo kiyanawa! Pissuda oye?" (Translation: "Dude, these buggers from Kandy are calling us weddahs, what laugh.") I think the buggers never expected anything like that, and were sorta shocked, and I slid away before they recovered as I like my face the way it is now!

As for the 'interesting sights' at the game, is it me or were there less chicks than usual? It certainly seemed like that. Plus most of the girls who were on that side of the stadium would've been ones between the ages of 12 - 15, I kid you not. See, I can't even bring myself to call them chicks!

Well I tried the web for any pictures of the game but this is the only set I've found so far.

Pre-Sleep List

2006-09-07T00:41:00.000+05:30

I'm so fucking exhausted. Last coupla weeks have been crazy at work. Gotta work tomorrow regardless of the poya holiday and might have to work throughout the weekend. Came home planning for an early sleep, but still up waiting for a reply from a client contact. (Ah, how I wish the world was flat and had only one timezone.)So while stayin up staring at the monitor, thought I'll write something. Something insignificant.

Music is a big part of my life. I've got a few favorite genres but also am open to a wide variety in general. The time of day and mood is a critical factor that decides what I listen to. I've always had a list of tracks that I listen to just before I hit the sack. Basically listening to is the last thing I do for the day. Following is the current pool of tracks from which I pick a few or all these nights.

Btw, these do not necessarily reflect my favorite bands.

South - Paint the silence
Stereophonics - Maybe Tomorrow
David Gray - Please forgive me
Mazzy Star - Fade Into You
Thievery Corporation - Lebanese Blonde
Finley Quaye-William Orbit - Dice
The Verve - Lucky Man
Deepest Blue - Deepest Blue (Probably will never grow tired of this one.)
Telepopmusik - Just Breathe
Zero 7 - In The Waiting Line (The ultimate 'take me to my happy place' song for me)

There you go. Ten more minutes and I'm gonna go sleep. Fuck them.

No Monkeys, but Wet Chics on the Beach

2006-09-03T22:41:00.000+05:30

No Monkeys: The Arctic Monkeys that is. I've been meaning to get my hands on their album "Whatever People Say I Am, That's What I'm Not" for a coupla weeks. Sadly no shop in Colombo seem to have it, not even 'Marriot CD World' at MC which usually has a very good selection. Its been out of stock there for a past few weeks (or so they say). At least they know who the monkeys are. At all the other shops people go "Huh? What monkeys?" when I ask for it. Grrrr... Hopefully some idiot will (at least accidentally) include it on their shelf.

Beach Party: Surpassing all obstacles in our way we managed to get our asses over to Buba this saturday night for the party organized by CNL. Only four of us made it as all the others dropped out for various reasons. There awas also the slight complication of a tricky work situation. Yours truly was in 'High Alert' level on call for work because of certain things being scheduled for the weekend at the client site (bloody time zones).

By the time we pick-up all four its raining. Everyone's sorta having second thoughts but we went anyways. It was still raining when we got there but nobody seemed keen on leaving. So after the initial 'bloody hell, it had to rain tonight eh' feeling we suddenly realize that the one thing that's better than a beach party is a beach party with wet chics.

And chics there were. Dressed in all sorts of outfits but mainly very nice short stuff. Many were in bikinis but worn underneath something, which was a shame. There were a few foreigne chics running around in proper bikinis. Btw the average age of women must've been around 17. I had to stay relatively sober till late with calls coming in from work, but we had an absolute blast. Super scene. Half of Colombo seemed to be there. Met a lotta friends, and did I mention the chics? Barcardi-sprite, a bit of weed, mostly good music, the beach, the chics... aaaahh I could get used to this.

Father and Son

2006-08-31T23:46:00.000+05:30

While browsing through achcharu today, came across this post on 'London Lanka and Drums', which got me thinking of the often strange relationship sons have with their fathers. It also reminded me of this story that I've heard (can't remember where I heard it at) which I thought I should put down. So here goes.

Basically the following is what a son thinks of his father at different stages in his life. It shows the son's age and what he thinks that that age.

1 year : Wow, my dad is GOD!
2 Years: Wow, my dad is the greatest
4 Years: Wow, dad's like a super-hero
6 Years : Dad knows EVERYTHING, he's so cool.
9 Years : Dad knows a lot of things
11 years : Dad knows certain things
13 years: Dad doesn't know anything
15 years: My dad's crazy
16 years: Dad's totally cramping my style. Ugh.
18 years: Aaaah. I hate my dad.
21 years: I'm God! Dunno why I EVER listened to my dad. Ugh.
25 years: Well, dad's sort of got a point.
28 years: Hmmm... Must check with dad.
35 years: Bloody hell. How did dad do all this stuff?
45 years: Man. Wish dad was here.

Heh heh, this is for all the great dad's out there. Rock on!

Crazy Weekend Already

2006-08-26T12:15:00.000+05:30

Bad start to a Saturday. Why? Cuz I've been woken up at 8.00 in the morning. Don't like it. Why? One, its a frickin sat morning and I like to sleep in late on weekends. Two, had a drunken night and got home at 4.30 in the morning. Three, there's a problem at work. Someone from the US client site calls and apparently we have a problem. Had to call up people, make some arrangements to get the ball rolling and hauled my ass over to office. Coupla dudes are looking into it, so thought I should write about a couple of strange incidents that happened last night.

So, after a fucked up week at work a few of us decide to go out and get smashed. Everyone leaves the vehicles at home and cab it (alcohol, here we come). My regular bunch is at Tabu, we decide to hit Zanzi first. Get there around 11-ish. Not a big crowd there, and only three of us. Thought it was gonna be a quiet night but suddenly within like fifteen minutes around mid-night, the place gets absolutely packed. Unbelievable. Lotsa foreigners, but major local crowd as well. It turns out to be real fun. Gin-tonic and tequila (woo hoo). Music although not perfect, pretty damn good. And lotsa eye candy, of all types. Hotties. Hottie hotties. Semi-hotties. Wannabe-hotties. White ones. Black ones. Beige ones. Yellow ones. Mature ones. Under-age ones. Dressed in casual. Dressed to kill. Dressed in sari. Cool ones. Crazy ones. Drunk ones. What not. Super scene.

Two things happened that I thought was bizzare. Strangely enough, both while I was in the loo. Some background info. If you haven't been to Zanzi, the mens loo is like a 10 X 10 storage room converted, with two urinals, a cubicle and a wash basin cramped together.

The first time I go to the loo both the urinals are taken and I get into the cubicle. Halfway through my happy pissing, I can hear some woman talking at close range. Normally when the main loo door is closed the outside noise is drowned out. So I thought some guy must be talking to a girl in the corridor with the door open. I step outside the cubicle and face the wash basin, there's a guy washing his hands and there's a girl looking through the half open door and she's telling him sternly(more like commanding) "wash your hands, wash your hands, wash them properly". The guy proceeds to do so without a word and walks out with her. I'm left there thinking WTF?? I dunno. Maybe there's something I don't get here, but that's got to be one of the most bizzare things I've seen at a bar.

Much later, I go in again for the second time. Everything is occupied. Coupla minutes later one of the urinal dudes leave. I squeeze past the occupant of the first urinal and set myself up for the piss and whoa, there's glass in the urinal half filled with what seems to be orange juice, probably mixed with vodka. This time I actually point and say "WTF" out loud. The other urinal dude looks and goes "WTF? These crazy fuckers. Blah blah blah". So I proceed to finish my business into the glass. That's a first for me. Never pissed into any glass before.

Well anyways, later we go to Tabu to meet the rest of my gang. Everyone's drunk and happy. But after the zanzi visit Tabu feels kinda boring to me. Oh yeah, and they don't fail to play 'fairy tales'! After a sometime headed home thinking of a long sleep into Saturday. Bloody well that turned out to be.

Anarkali WTF!!!

2006-08-21T19:21:00.000+05:30

Well, I'm at work today and someone sends me this link. What it basically says is that the 'Child and Women`s Bureau of the police' has charged that Ranjan Ramanayake has sexually abused Anarkali! The base for this is that he made her wear some reavealing clothes, or as the report says "the actress was asked to pose semi-nude in dancing scenes" when she was a minor!!! And I'm like (as Drac would say) OMGWTF!!!

First of all, I don't give two hoots about Anarkali. Never thought she was hot. When I saw 'Hiripoda Wessa' I thought the 'teacher' chic completely out-shone Anarkali, and sometimes when I see her in TV ads I want to slap her. (By 'sometimes' I mean 'EVERYTIME and even after five minutes of seeing it'.) But apparently she's the next big thing in the Sri Lankan movie celebrity scene, lotsa people seem to like her so public opinion rocks. And second, OMGWTF!!! Are they seriously fucking nuts??? Aaaaah.. I'm not gonna say anything more. (Unless something very different and important that's hidden in the story now comes out later.) I just can't frickin believe the sense of priority in this country.

So, ten minutes after the first mail, someone else sends a mail with some pics of Anark. Basically they are stills taken from Hiripoda Wessa. A couple from the infamous 'on the beach in a bikini' scene and a few more from that scene where everyone's dancing in the stream and apparently she and her 'two friends' are feeling very cold (ahem). What surprises me is how anyone got the stills in the first place. Its not like the movie is out on DVD or anything is it? No i'm not gonna post them pics cuz writing about her is one thing but posting pics? NO SIR.

P.s: The accusation is for the movie 'One Shot' (which I never saw) and not Hiripoda Wessa.

Update: By popular demand the pics have been uploaded. They could be found here. Be warned that there's nothing much in it.

Sunday Miscellaneous 13 Aug 06

2006-08-13T22:56:00.000+05:30

Movies: Managed to watch a few movies this week. Finally watched 'Munich'. Pretty okay. Didn't feel it was too long as many had suggested. Can't rate it as being 'great' though. Also watched 'The Boondock Saints'. Pretty neat although the ending was a bit so so. An interesting piece of trivia for the movie is that the word 'fuck' and its derivatives are used a total of 246 times! Last but not least 'Run Loala Run' or 'Lola rennt' as per the original German title. This was undoubtedly the best out of the three. Use of music and visuals was fantastic. A definite add to the favorite list.

Btw I'm eagerly awaiting the release of 'Ghost Rider'. Was elated when I saw a trailer recently, as the dude was my favorite childhood Marvel Comics super hero. Double bonus as Johnny Blaze/Ghost Rider is played by Nick Cage, one of my favs. Hope they don't ruin it.

Rugby Update: So CR won the Clifford Cup after some seventeen years or so. Manged to get some decent seats to watch in person Havies getting their asses kicked 37 - 7. If only they had done this several weeks ago during the second round of the league, bah. Zulki who surprisingly started ahead of Buksh had a super game. So did Anuja (If I'm not mistaken about the name) who had replaced an injured Viraj Prasanna. Omar Shariffdeen too had a much better game than the ones in the recent past. Another thing to notice was that Abdulla Yousuf - who captained Royal in '98- had taken over as the head coach of CR.

Kandy of course didn't participate. Reason being all the major games being played in Colombo I think. I don't know who's more absurd; the organizers who decided to have both the semis and the finals at Longdon Place or the professional rugby club which literally has half the national line up that refused to play.

In the school scene Royal had beaten Vidyartha 31 -7. The word is that they were trailing 3 - 7 at the lemons. Will have to improve on that if they are to beat the high flying Pathana and Trinity in order to get into A division next year. One good thing is that all the tries had been converted.

Alcohol: Damn. Still got some runnin in the blood stream from last night's partying me thinks. The fact that I discovered Tequila much too late into the boozing and still went ahead with it didn't help. Oh and did I mention that it was a open bar? Fuck this. I'm gonna hit the sack now.

Gojibiland Chronicles: Protestorgy

2006-08-09T15:16:00.000+05:30

Disclaimer: General Gojibiland disclaimer applies.

Important Definitions
GLA: Gojibiland Army
el Titty: A bunch of terrorists who want their own chunk of Gojibiland to put up a big ant farm. (Warning: Those who tend to choke at the word 'terrorist' should use alternatives such as 'rebels' or 'free-dumb fighters' (as used by a world renowned news org.).
DFP: Dudes For Peace, a Non Govt Organization dedicated for a piece.... I mean for peace. Citizen Dim works here under his extremely humanitarian boss.
Bolongo: The capital of Gojibiland, several hundred miles away from the area of the Island which the el Tittians claim to be their Mommy-land.

Episode plot outline: The el Tittians have recently cut down the water supply to several thousand Gojibi civilians. After failed attempts to convince the Tittians to restore it, the Gojibi govt had sent its forces to do the job. The Tittians meanwhile attack a town called Buttur and attempt to take it over. The GLA counter attacks to prevent this. Thousands of Gojibians flee the Buttur area.

Scene 01: The DFP HQ in Bolongo: Sleepy time after lunch:

Boss: I say Dim, did you read about this mass displacement of people in Buttur?
Dim: Yes boss. Bad form eh?
Boss: Indeed. I think we should do something serious about this.
Dim: Excellent! What do you have in mind boss?
Boss: Release a statment immediately.
Dim: Errh, that's all? Boss, this is a major crisis, we'd better do something more effective.
Boss: [to himself] Damn! Why the hell did they hire this annoying bugger.
Boss: True true. But what else can we do?
Dim: Boss, we can use our funds to provide the basic necessities to the fleeing Gojibians in the short term. We can also use our connections to urge both parties to stick to the CFA. Ah, and maybe we can work with someone to get some water to the areas where the water has been cut-off.
Boss: I say Dim, have you lost your mind? I have a better idea.
Dim: [to himself] Oh no, not another bright idea.
Boss: We'll protest!
Dim: Huh? Protest?
Boss: Yes protest! Carry placards, shout, look angry on TV and the whole works. Ah, just like the good ol' college days.
Dim: So, what are we gonna protest against?
Boss: People fleeing Buttur of course!
Dim: But, they don't have a choice. They're caught in cross-fire and are running for life!
Boss: Hmmm. How about against the GLA? That's always fashionable.
Dim: But boss, can't really expect them to not do anything when a Gojibi town is under attack eh? How about we protest against the root of this? How about protesting against the water cut?
Boss: Water cut? Oye, I didn't know there was a water cut today. Must ask the wife to collect some water. No point protesting against the water board men. I'm sure those buggers don't even watch TV. Oh, must call the chairman and ask about this nonsense.
Dim: [banging his head on the table]
Boss: I got it! Lets protest agianst violence! That's intense enough to draw attention but general enough to not piss off anyone! I'm a frickin genius! Oye Dim, Don't just sit there. Go organize this thing.
Dim: Okay boss. So we should leave early morning shouldn't we, to get there in time?
Boss: Leave early? To go where?
Dim: We are gonna protest somewhere close to Buttur aren't we? So that the Tittians will get the message?
Boss: Are you crazy? We are gonna protest at the Gibson Circus tomorrow morning?
Dim: But boss, the Gibson Circus is right in the heart of Bolongo!!!
Boss: You bet it is. I want to be back for lunch. Plus have to take the wife shopping in the afternoon.

Back from the hills

2006-07-31T21:18:00.000+05:30

So the weekend consisted of a five hour drive to the hills, another five hour drive back and a whole heap of fun in between. Hit an obscure spot in Makeliya. The place was just awsome, although the road to get there is anything but. Two log cabins near a stream, completely isolated. With some gin, ghost stories, bathing in fucking ball freezing water, a guitar and some crazy-ass company it was just super. One dude had got some brilliant pictures but can't really post most of them without revealing the identity of yours truely.

Grrrrr. Body aches like nothing right now after a game. Gotta go n hit the sack.

Gojibiland Chronicles: Detective Dim

2006-07-17T20:11:00.000+05:30

Disclaimer: All characters and places are fictional. Any resemblence to real life situations is either purely coincidential or caused by a common mental condition known as itscalledus dejavues.

Episode plot outline: After five successful years with the local police department, young Dim has been accepted as a detective of the CCRU (Criminal Catchers R' Us) division, a much sought after position. Today is the first day with the new team. Dim is highly excited and is hoping for a high profile criminal busting assignment.

Scene 01: Dim's home: Early Morning:

Dim: Ammaaaa... I'm gonna go now.
Mom: Ah putha. May you have blessings of all the gods. I'm so proud of you. Here, give me a hug before you go.
Dim: Aiyo amma, no time for all this, got to run.
Wife [from a distance]: Waaaaaaiiiiiit... waaaaaaiiiit.
Mom: Wait putha, she must want to wish you ne?
Dim: Aiyo, can't get late on the first day itself.
Wife: Wait wait. Here, can you bring some green chilli on the way back ah? Forgot to buy them yesteday.
Mom: Huh?
Dim: Do you know what day this is?
Wife: Ah, good point. Its Monday, and they might have not so fresh stuff ne? Its ok, just green chilli no? Get about 250g.
Dim: WTF?!!!

Scene 02: CCRU head quartes briefing room: Morning:

Detective1: Ah Dim! Congrats man. Welcome aboard.
Dim: Thanks. I'm really excited. Hope there's a good assignment.
Detective1: You should get some interesting work. Lots of things happening these days.
[The chief sends off party by party on different assignments]
Dim [to himself]: Ah, only three of us are left. Might be some undercover operation chief wanted to save for last.
Chief: Hello Dim. Welcome welcome. Good to have you here.
Dim: Thanks chief.
Chief: Okay now, you three are gonna do something very important today.
Dim [to himself]: Oooooooh, excellent!
Chief: Alright. You guys go close down that cable TV station.
Dim: WTF????!!!!!!!!!!!!
[The other two let out a collective sigh of relief]

Things to do checklist. Coldplay live: Done

2006-07-12T22:52:00.000+05:30

Disclaimer: I like Coldplay. If you have a problem with that, fuck you. I don't give a shit if you don't like them.

Ever since I bought the brilliant Coldplay 2003 tour dvd I've wanted to see them live. This Monday I did. Following are some of the highlights of my tour.

Rush of blood to the head: So Last Sunday I read about the SriLankan airline's special promo package for the Coldplay 'Twisted Logic Tour' Singapore leg. The price seems reasonable. Check with regular friends, none of them upto it. Monday I go to office, tell people about it, G is interested (bless him). Tuesday we go to SriLankan and book the tickets. Wednesday they call and say they can't give us the hotel they promised, but to compensate they'll upgrade the concert tickets. We pretend to be annoyed but accept the offer! All ready to go.

Clocks: Flight's at 7.05 a.m. Sunday. G arranges an airport express to pick him at 4.45 and me at 5.00 so that we can be there by 5.30ish. Around 5.00 I text him joking that its a wake up call. They get to my place around 5.40. Apparently my text was INDEED the wake up call. To make things worse the driver is going at crawling pace. His phone rings every 5 minutes and he answers all of them much to our frustration. Got to the airport around 6.15. By this time apparently one of the good seats that S had managed to get for us is no more. No choice, at least we got in.

Its a plane, Its a bird, its: Superman! The movie had been released. G was a big fan and eventhough I had heard many not so good reviews it was one that you HAD to see. We managed to catch it on the first night at Sing. Found it to be not that bad, maybe since I went in with low expectations. There were some unnecessary scenes but think its commendable that they didn't go overboard with the effects, considereing its a superman movie.

I will try to fix you: One theory is that Zidane was just trying to wipe the sweat off his baldy head on Metarazzi's jersey and the latter dived successfully! Maybe it was some harsh insult but dude, grow up already! Or take some lessons from crickers. It is frickin unbelievale everytime I see the clip. Like a WWE enactment.

All that aside, I was a happy camper watching the game at a pub. It wasn't a big or a 'super' crowd but heck, the Azzuri won. The idiots switched the damn thing off just when the game finished so no awarding ceremony for us. A gang of Italy supporting locals on semi cool bikes were hogging the road at one point during the return to the hotel, poor bastards, don't think anyone took them seriously.

The gig: Fucking brilliant. I know some people claim that Coldplay is an overhyped mediocre band. Mediocre my ass! They sure knew how to put on a show. The music was perfect. Chris Martin's singing was on key. The Lighting and the effects were awsome. (I was hoping for the green laser lights for 'Clocks' but they had red ones.) They proved why they are one of the VERY few BIG bands in the world at present.

Moses and Rush of blood to the head were notable absentees from the set. It was not like a gig in Europe or US I guess but to their credit the Sing crowd was pretty darn enthusiastic and we had a bloody good time. Unfortunately cameras were a big no no, so no decent pics could be taken. My phone did manage a few shots and a few video clips but the qality sucks. (The pic on this post is one of them.)

Immigration Blues: Well its true that I have kinda changed in appearance since my current passport pic was taken in 2000, but so far I haven't had trouble with any immigration officers (not even the Us or the UK ones). At Changi, this dude looks at my pic and my face several times repeatedly going through his mental checklist and suddenly says "can you brush your hair back a little?". I'm thinking "Dude stop hitting on me already" and he goes "I want to see your ears". Oh ok. No more hassle and I get through with a suggestion from him that maybe I should change the pic. I don't learn a lesson, and leave my hair in the usual mess and the face unshaven on return. The Sri Lankan immigration officer makes a big fuss. He even checks my previously issued visas with an ultra violet light or something. Anyways after a lot of questions, lot of staring at me and different pages of the passport I finally get through. *Sigh* In my own damn country. Bummer.

Twisted Logic

2006-07-11T22:37:00.000+05:30

Didn't get a chance to update the blog this weekend, although there were a few events that I wanted to cover. Why? Well. I was away. Doing what? Being part of the Coldplay's 'Twisted Logic Tour 2006' in Singapore! Yes! I've finally seen them. Got loads to say but don't feel like it now. Might write a but about it tom.

For now I'd just like to say that it was a frickin amazing experience. Absolutely super.

...like a curry with no salt.

2006-07-02T14:48:00.000+05:30

Soccer World Cup with no Brazil that is. Or as one of my friends' dad would've said "Brazil nethi World Cup eka nikang parippu nethi hotale wage".

Well sittingnut says saturday was perfect in terms of sports. I say close, but not quite. It did start well though. First, in the local rugby scene, CR beat CH to set up a potential league decider with Kandy at Longdon Place in two weeks time. Scrappy game but the end result means unless the Havies pull off a highly unlikely victory against the reds, the stage is set for a thriller.

Then it was the massacre by the master. Jayasuriya. What a display of batting by him and Tharanga. I'm not a big fan of cricket but that was just unbelievable. Actually I was in a sorta crappy mood because certain plans for the night had not worked out well but that man single handedly cheered me up. England white washed at home. Super.

Then it was the England Portugal game. Though I do generally like the English at soccer this time around my support was for Portugal. A pretty good game I thought. Pathetic display of penalty shooting by England. Christiano Ronaldo driving the final nail in England's coffin had me cheering like a mad man. Made me feel better after that heart breaking loss of Argentina on Friday. Whatever happened to them? WTF was that penalty shootout? They were nervous like a bunch of school boys. All dislikes aside, the Germans were a treat to watch at the penalties. Absolute confidence.

Well, such was the happy saturday. I was so sure that Brazil was gonna make it through, didn't even bother stayin up to watch the game. Imagine my surprise to read the scores this morning. That really sucked. I know they've won enough in the past but still. Its frickin Brazil. They can't be out yet. Aaaarh. So its an all Euro contest now. My favorites are Italy followed by Portugal although I have a feeling that it might turn out to be a France Germany final with the latter lifting the cup. What a bore! Go Azzurri!

*The Pic: What's a game of soccer without eleven men who play the beautiful game in the middle with lovely ladies like these cheering them on ?*

Sunday Miscellaneous 25 Jun 06

2006-06-25T22:35:00.000+05:30

Long and Strong: That's the name of a new brand of shampoo by Sunsilk. Everytime that ad airs I can't help but snicker as when someone says "long and strong", hair isn't the body part that comes to my mind. (Actually that used to be my answer of choice to the question "How's it hanging dude?" *grin*) However the ad features a fit bird, so...

More Comedy: Managed to download two half n hour long clips of comedians Nick Swardson and Stephen Lynch recorded on Comedy Central. Swardson was so so I thought. Lynch was brilliant. The whole routine was made out to be as if he's having a story telling session with a bunch of kids. What's even more special is that the whole routine is done as songs with him playing the guitar as well. I wasn't too sure at the begining but he pulls off a great show. One song about a NY taxi driver is frickin hilarious.

LBR: So I accidentally caught the last ten minutes of Lanka Business Report (a weekly business programme that's locally produced and aired on a local channel). To my amazement the presenter happened to be a VERY fit bird which is quite unlike our usual programmes (and this show is usually hosted by a guy if I recall right). Anyways I think the bird is actually the current Miss SL. The few minutes i caught, she did a pretty darn good job of presenting apart from looking all fine (complete with thick rimmed glasses and what not. Grrrrrrrr...).

In a totally unrelated story, I've made up my mind to be completely aware of what's happening in the business sphere in SL from today onwards. Wonder if any related good shows? Ahem...

Rugby Update: Well, you know what happened to the Kandy CR game. In other news, CH had beaten Army 32 - 20. No details though.

Pouring Misery

2006-06-24T18:32:00.000+05:30

Fuck it all. This is certainly not my week. Everything's been fucked up. Health, work and of course sports.

Today was the much anticipated CR vs Kandy first leg, played at Nittawela in Kandy. CR going into the game undefeated with Kandy following close with just the one draw. Needless to say, crunch game. Not in the mood for a proper review, so just going to write whatever comes to mind.

Kandy a played a very mediocre game but pulled off a 15 - 14 win. CR forwards dominated so much it wasn't even funny, but sadly some idiotic play at crucial times meant at least teo easy tries went begging. One chance missed by Anuranga Walpola (for whom I have immense respect) where CR was on the line was unbelievable. A five meter scrum was pushed right onto the line by CR forwards and all the number 8 had to do was pick it up and touch down with no defence but he tried to pick with just one hand and knocked on. Unbelievable.

Mid way through the second half it suddenly started raining and the everything changed. CR forwards couldn't get the grip they wanted they were handling the slippery ball badly, basically things got fucked up. CR was leading by a mere point when Weerakkody got an relatively easy penalty which he put through. Knandy then managed to hold on for the next five minutes to win.

Pressure or I dunno what but CR's Zulki had a crappy game. He practically half-gifted Kandy's second try with an idiotic pass to Rodda which reusulted in a five meter scrum. Nobody was sure why he played that long with mistakes all along the game with Amjad Buksh on the bench! Buksh was eventually put in but it was a tad bit too late. His level of skill shone out even during that little time although it looked as if CRs playing method is not entirely compatible with that of his. (Lot more practice required.)

Anyways, Kandy fucking won and should now be at the top of the table. This is like a recurring nighmare thats been happening for god knows how many years for now. All is not lost though as the second leg will be in Colombo, by which time CR would've hopefully learnt from the mistakes. But for now I'm put in a really crappy mood to end a fucked up week.

So fuck the rain, fuck idiotic play, fuck Kandy and fuck EVERYTHING!!

License to Get Jiggy

2006-06-22T23:19:00.000+05:30

Well lookey here, apparently some funky ideas 'av been trickling out of our honarable minister of power! (Btw, doesn't 'Minister of power' sound like the superman of the cabinet?!) Apparently he's gonna get some law tpassed that will require TV stations to pay out a million bucks a month if they intend to telecast programs after 10 p.m. More interestingly, he wants everyone to turn off the lights at 10 p.m. as well. (At this point I must come clean and admit that all this is hearsay as I don't get invited for press briefings and nor do I read anything useful in the newspapers.)

Now, a lot of people have been making a big fuss about this whole thing, and I don't know why. I think its a brilliant idea and I know all you bastards are all just pretending to be against it. Lets see what this means.

Lets consider local TV for a second. The second has passed and end of discussion. There's absolutely nothing to be seen on local TV after 10 p.m anyways. Cable? Well, all you dear customers of CBNSat and LBN please stand up, please stand up. The big bad boys of the CID have taken TV away haven't they? Awwww. (If you do have Comet, invite me over to watch the games damit!) So basically nobody's gonna miss out on much anyway eh?

Now consider what'll happen if and when the law is passed. You come home after work, take a shower, grab some dinner and before you know, its 10 p.m. You gotta turn the lights off, but say if you are used to sleeping at mid night, you can't just change your sleeping time overnight, so you can't sleep. (Biological clock's a bitch ain't it?) So lets see. Its dark, you are comfortable, you can't watch tv and there nothing else to do in the dark. Or is there? Mmmmm? Hmmmm? Lets seeeee. What else can we do at night which doesn't require power? If you are thinking "I know, play scrabble!" just shoot yourself. Buuuut, if you thought "na na na na na na getting jiggy with it", way to go.

See people, this is why I like this minister dude. He has basically issued a nation wide license to have sex! I can see the guys loving this already! Guys, no more more excuses from the woman. She might try to pull a few, but after a few days she'll HAVE to give in (I mean with no Oprah, what else is there?). Its gonna be every night hereafter! The minister of power is the best thing that's happened to men since viagra. Ladies, if you look close, this is good news for you as well. Did you notice that the lights go off at 10 when you can only sleep at mid night? You know what that means? TWO HOURS! No more five minute fiestas. Your man's gonna have to keep on going for two full hours (foreplay and what not). Its gonna be like having you own Energizer bunny! Be warned, he's gonna try the "honey, I'm exhausted after work today. Lets just get it over with" line. Be smart. Attack the sexual ego. Its every man's Achilles Heel. "Oh really, that's too bad. I heard from Mrs. Perera that Mr. Perera's been doing it for three hours every night." *sigh*. "What? That skinny bastard? You know honey. Idon't feel that tired after all."

So, there you go. Everbody's happy. Even ugly people will get laid! (Its dark dammit.) What would we do without such considerate and innovative public servants? I love this country.

Monkeys Frogs Dragons and Sloths

2006-06-19T20:58:00.000+05:30

I know that sounds like a Chronicles of Narnia version gone wrong but they are all related to my latest Sunday evening.

So I managed to drag my ass down to Barefoot yesterday to be part of the long awaited Brass Monkey Band gig. I don't want to get into a proper review of the show but will just jot down little things I observed. My overall impression was that the show fell somewhere between 'not so great' and 'okay' in the greatness scale.

One of the first things noticed by many was that it was fucking hot in there. However some fans were brought in, much to the relief of the sweating crowd. There was something not quite right about the whole set up I thought. The seating arrangements sorta killed any potential crowd participation. The sound set-up wasn't that great either. I'm no concert expert but felt as if the set wasn't structured properly. All sorts of songs were played here n there. A lot of people including us left before the gig ended. Many were a bit bored and feeling extremely hungry (probably due to the 'not early/not late' timing) coupla hours into the show.

Mr. Lead singer was getting a bit annoying at one point. For one, he kept on saying "Don't light the sparklers now! Don't do it! Its for the video shoot! Don't! I can see you. I can see yooouuu!" over and over again. (Sparklers were provided at the entrance and later on we got to know it was to be lit at one point for a video shoot.) Then he was threatening/commanding/begging people to come forward and get all funky at the designated dance-floorish area. Thing is when you are the lead singer of a band and ask people to come in front, you either make sure they get there (set some people up beforehand/play some good shit that makes people wanna do it/ be VERY authoritative) or if people aren't interested pretend it never happened after a few calls. This dude never learnt.

There were two side shows. Anil, Malinda and Azlan (of Cold Fusion/DL21) did a coupla songs. Nothing worth writing there. Didn't look prepared. Then there was also a little stand up comedy routine by Gehan Dias (of TNL radio's 'Random Noises' fame). Couldn't hear much of what he said because I was standing right at the back and people were making a lot of noise, but the bits I heard were quite funny. He too wasn't enrirely prepared me thinks.

Anyways my final verdict; all in all it was a below par performance by a very talented band.

SO, the other big event was a pleasant surprise when I got to meet some cool bloggers at the show. Viz, Kermit, Drac, Sloth, Gumz and Edg (not sure what the URL is). Unfortunately I couldn't spend much time with these guys. Could only manage a little chat with Drac over all that noise. This is a really interesting bunch by what I've read on their blogs so maybe should meet up with 'em some other time at a less noisy place. Also spotted Indi in the crowd and think I saw Electra as well.

Well, ended up at a place close by with my regular bunch to get some dinner and catch some of the Brazil vs Aussie soccer action. That bit was quite entertaining as most of the girls were quite drunk by that time and were having a ball of a time (boredom at the gig had led to consumption of much alcohol I think). Got home early around mid-night and hit the sack thinking of the wonderful Monday to follow.

Sunday Miscellaneous 18 Jun 06

2006-06-18T11:50:00.000+05:30

How to be Dead: Apparently lots of Gin Tonic on ice and a bit of Tequelia running through a late night is not a good idea when you have a cold and a slight sore throat. Dammit, someone should tell me this shit. So, after a really tiring week with late nights due to work and weddings, yours truely thought it was a grand idea to join in the above mentioned activity on a Thursday night. Friday was cousin's home coming ceremony, and still I was feeling okay. Even made plans to go out. Towards late evening though things were getting bad so scrapped the plans and rightly so. Had that Fiday night happened this blogger would've been resting in peace by now.

The whole of Saturday was absolutely fucked up. To put things in perspective, say if Charleze Theron had walked into me bedroom and said "hey Spectral, I want you right here right now", I would've muttered "grrr.. mfff...ghghhh.." and fallen asleep. THAT bad. Feeling better today though. Must try and go for the Brass Monkey show.

Rugby update: Woo hoo. Kandy held to a draw by CH! 13 all the scores. Yippie! The CR boys must be doing the funky chicken! Saliya Kumara who fluffed a coupla penalties and gifted a second try to Kandy made some sorta amends by putting through a last minute (of regulation time) 40 meter penalty to tie the scores. Several CH players had been dropped after last weeks game with CR and the team played good defence. Radhika Hettiarachchi was a great disappointment though. Hope he'll pick up his game as the season progresses. The ref (never seen this dude before) played almost 10 minutes of injury time in the sencond half! So next week it'll be the much awaited first leg of CR vs Kandy to be played in Nittawela I think.

The other big news in local rugby is that Amjad Buksh has crossed over from Kandy to CR! This is still an unconfirmed report though.

C'mon Mavs: So, the Heat has taken full home court advantage and bounced back in the NBA finals to tie the series at 2 games each. Damn, I wanted the Mavs to win atleast one game on the road. The next game in Dallas is a must win for them now. If Miami manages to win the championship, it'll be only the third time a team has come back to win after being down 2 - 0 in the series.

Sunday Miscellaneous 10 Jun 06

2006-06-11T22:37:00.000+05:30

Cocktail: In my blood stream that is. White Rum and Gin Tonic on Friday night and Whiskey, Gin Tonic and a little bit o' beer on Saturday night. (All under control though.) At four different places. This along with early Saturday morning wake-up calls had made yours truely a very sleepy boy on Sunday.

Weddings: Holy spark plug! Is EVERYONE getting married? Three weddings in two weeks. To add to all that, every random conversation seems to lead to news of someone getting married. Had to run and find a shirt for tomorrow's wedding. (My current "wedding/other special occation where the shirt is hidden by the coat" shirt has been hacked enough.) Trying to shop alone on a poya Sunday spells disaster, but managed to find a super shirt almost by chance.

Reality or Imagination?: Driving around in Colombo on a Sunday afternoon (sometimes even Saturday) with good music usually has a nice therapeutic effect on me. Today was no exception. At one point was cruisin down Marine Drive. Close to that new-ish hotel/apartment complex (if I remember the place correctly) saw something interesting. Four very nice birds were walking side-by-side on the land side of the road. Looking good in what I saw as casual outfits. Looked as if they were after a shopping spree. I know it sounds ordinary but there was a very surreal effect at that time. Vehicles slowing down and what not. Almost like being in an ad or a movie. I didn't even honk the horn.

Rugby Update: Couldn't watch any game this weekend either. Damn, cant believe that we haven't been to a single game three weekends into the seaoson. CR had beaten CH 18 - 0. Go CR! Apparently there had been a few 'incidents' as well. Kandy had beaten Havelocks 42 - 12. Poor Havies.

Watchout for that punch!

2006-06-10T10:27:00.000+05:30

I'm generally a non-violent person. There are certain times though when I feel like sucker punching people right in the pie-hole when they say stupid things. I know those lesser beings can't help it and I also know regardless of how often they get punched idiots will be idiots, but I'm gonna punch them anyways. Basically from now on if you say any of the following, make sure you have a 'punched for idiocy' cover in your health insurance policy.

"Look at that idiot wearing shades/a cap indoors": News flash. YOU are the idiot. Its called a fashion statement. If everything what we wore was just for functionality purpose, us folks in the tropics should be wearing potato sacks with three holes in 'em shouldn't we? I agree, some may wear inappropriate shades or caps but lotsa people have their general dress sense fucked up as well. Diss the individual if at all, not the concept.

"Did I wake you up?": "Oh not at all. Because everyone knows that I'm a sleep-talking freak"! One, don't EVER call me before 11.00 a.m. on a weekend unless you are a 36-24-36. I can't imagine any emergency situation in which you'd rather call me than a doc, a cop, a fireman, a hooker or someone who gives a shit. If you fail this level one stupidity test and still call me, at least don't ask that dumb question.

"Just be yourself": Now, I'm not gonna go into too much detail here because this topic begs a separate post for itself. Please try to understand that we have to 'play' different roles every living day and that's life. Believe me, if I ever decide to just be myself, you'd never talk to me again, and they'd cut my 'you-know-what' off and lock me up in a dark room forever.

"Why can't you treat every woman like they are your mother or sister": Because that'll be SICK you moron! No one would ever have sex again and human race will be wiped off the face off this planet. You can't treat an entire gender equally. Each one is different and I'll treat them based their relationship to ME. Every woman is someone's daughter but that shouldn't stop me from doing some nasty shit with some of them. Come back and talk to me the day you can think of all men as your dad (or the day you decide to call me 'Daddy' !).

"Can I ask you something?": "You already did"! Well, this is not really THAT bad but have you noticed that this one is ALWAYS followed by a question? Not even a pause in between. "You are not really giving me a choice are you? Had me for a second there."

There you go. The world has too many idiots who say too many stupid things, so these are only some of the most common.

Vakratunda Mahakaya

2006-06-10T09:15:00.000+05:30

Well, that's the track that's played in the infamous starting plane crash scene in Garden State. Its a prayer to the hindu god Ganesh (or Ganapathy). Apparently the Garden State people found this on a Ganesh alarm clock!

Unfortunately I haven't found the proper clip yet. I've downloaded a few but all of them are recordings of actual prayers and the melody isn't the same as the track on the movie. The same prayer is also found at the begining of a song called 'Sa ni dha pa' by the Colonial Cousins. (Remember them from the late nineties MTV India?) Downloaded that as well and the prayer in it actually sounds closer to the one in the movie although its sung by a man.

So the quest continues. This is what I do. I hear some obscure track and then get a mental itch for finding it. More often than not its some mostly-instrumental house track which I can't explain to anyone. But I do have a knack for finding them. (One of the recent being 'Calabria' by Rune.)

Memorable Movie Moments

2006-06-06T08:39:00.000+05:30

My movie memory usually sucks. It’s horrible actually. However there are a few scenes on various movies that are etched in my memory. Following are some of them. (Disclaimer: This is NOT a compilation of the greatest movies. Just certain scenes that I probably won’t forget for a long time.) (Warning: Here be spoilers.)

Shawshank: The scene where Andy (Tim Robbins) locks himself in the warden’s office and plays a record on the PA system for the whole prison to hear. Andy sitting with his feet up on the table, prisoners stopping their work to listen, guard listening in disbelief, while the music’s playing in the background. The expression on Andy’s face is just priceless. Brilliant stuff. The kind of scene that makes you share the experience of the characters.

Cruel Intentions: The final scene where Katherine’s delivering the eulogy. A student walks in and whispers something to the others and everyone runs out to read Sebastian’s diary. All this while Bitter Sweet Symphony’s being played so powerfully in the background. It depicts Katherine’s fall from grace in one well put-together scene. (Btw, was Sarah Michelle Gellar hot in that movie or what?)

Face-off: Cage and Travolta (I forget their character names) are trying to hunt each other down towards the end. At one point they are on either side of a wall with their backs to it. They both turn pointing the hand guns towards what they think is a door, and it turns out be a mirror on both sides. So each of them is pointing a gun at their reflection, but in the reflection they see their enemy’s face. Physically, they are directly pointing guns at each other on either side of a wall. Brilliant concept.

Wicker Park: The final scene where the guy finally meets the real girl at the air-port. It was a really moving scene especially with Coldplay’s Scientist being played in the background. (It’s serious shit when a cold, insensitive ass like me says ‘moving’.)

Garden State: The opening plane crash scene where Andrew (Zach Braff) looks calm in a sorta disturbing way while there’s chaos all around him while an Indian chant’s playing in the background. (I’ve tried much without any luck to find that track, if anyone’s got it please share or at least tell me where to find it.)

That’s enough for now. Will put down some more later.

Sunday Miscellaneous

2006-06-04T22:01:00.001+05:30

Zanzi Idol: Checked out the Karaoke lounge at zanzi last night to celebrate N's B'day. Made complete asses outta ourselves trying to sing with all that booze. Thankfully no one else was there. I like the place. The selection of songs is much better than any other place I've been. There was stuff like Lithium, stairway to heaven, fire water burn and basket case! Wanted to hit H2O afterwards but stayed put at zanzi because the music was great. (Btw, we scored a 100 points singing 'Kiss from a Rose'! How Dat!)

Rugby update: CR had crushed Havelocks 62 - 7 (6 goals, 4 tries). Poor Havies seem like they are gonna be the punching bag for this season's segment A. Loss of Ganapathy and Saliya Kumara to CH will tell a major tale me thinks. Anyways valuable points to CR. Watched the last half an hour of the Kandy-Army game on tv. There was a controvertial decision given against Army when a try by Sanjeeva Jayasinghe was ajudged on by the touch judge although the replays showed he didn't quite make it. (I'm getting really annoyed with the sirasa tv live at 55 in the middel of the game now. Missed the whole scene becasue of it.) This was sort of a mental equivalent to a kick in the nuts to Army at a time the game was evenly poised. Kandy pulled ahead thereafter and won 23 - 9. They too looked rusty in the first game just like CR last week.

Fluffy Pink Bunny: Holy crap. Just noticed that bunny has taken over as the front-runner in the achcharu poll. Dammit, someone's rigging the poll like nothing. Hope there's no 'Italian connection' to all this!

btw, am I off achcharu as well? Don't see my earlier post on 'TIme' on it.

Crazy thing called Time

2006-06-03T14:42:00.000+05:30

The measurement of time is something that has baffled me forever. I just can't understand why something so tightly intertwined with every little thing we do has to be so complicated. What am I talking about? Lets see.

Who on earth designed this whole second, minute, hour thing? Were they playing some sick joke on generations to come?. What's the deal with all the weird numbers? 'Sixty' seconds in a minute, 'sixty' minutes in an hour, 'twenty four' hours in a day! What's with the obsession with multiples of six? Why can't we have simple multiples of ten?

First, who decided the length of duration of a second? I think two tribal leaders were having a little post dinner chat, one guys sneezed a coupla times and the other said "Whoa awsome dude, that 'second' one came real fast. That was quick brother!". The next time something real quick happened, that 'second' was the benchmark. Later on, someone who couldn't count beyond 'sixty' put everything together and came up with this shit system. What they should've done? First consider the duration of a day. (That's fixed as its based on the time earth takes to rotate around its axis.) Then divide it into 'ten' equal pieces and call it an 'hour'. (Imagine the 'happy hour' with that arrangement aye!) Then divide the 'hour' into a hundred equal minutes and a minute into a hundred equal seconds. Easy and simple.

Lets go to the biggies. That's where things really get weird. 'Seven' days in a week, 'Four' weeks in a month and 'Twelve' months in a year! WTF? The number of days in a month can be 28, 29, 30 or 31! This system is SO screwed up, we have to add an additional day once in four years! So they are robbing us a quarter of a day every year. If someone died in the middle of a leap year, he's lost three-quarters of a day forever! I mean seriously, who decided on a 12 month calendar? Apparently July and August were added to the year to commemorate the two uncle caesars Julius and Augustus! What? Just because they beat the crap out of some unorganized bunch of European tribes, do they get to add two frickin months to the year? That's crazy! I say, take number of days for a year (that's again fixed), decide on a sane number of days for a month, say fifty. That'll give you seven solid months. What about the remaining 15 days you ask? Put them all together and call it 'Vacation'!

Anyways, I think its high time someone did something about this whole stupid time business. Change it to a simpler system where even mathematically challenged people can easily follow the whole damn thing. Then again, this screwed up system might very well act as a defense mechanism someday. Imagine if some aliens came around to destroy the human race. During their pre-attack check (believe me they always do this) they'll realize how stupid our time scheme is and will go "Dude this is a bunch of fuckin morons man. We'll just let the idiots run around, they can't be any serious threat to us intelligent folk. Better still, lets put this on inter-galactic cable network as a reality show. Muah hah hah haa".