Archive for the ‘Sri Lanka’ tag
Buying Local is Overrated, At least for Web Hosting!
When it comes to buying services and complex products I always prefer buying from a local seller. This makes it easy to communicate and handle any matter that might come up when using the product or service that we buy. But in some cases the typical Sri Lankan customer relationship attitude make it a nightmare.
This happened way too often with my hosting provider. To be specific the X hosting provider. Not that this blog is some mission critical application, but when ever there is a problem with servers or downtime, a simple proactive mail from the host can save lot of time for customers. Instead they just make us panic and wonder what is going on. And in most of such incidents it takes ages to get a response from them.
Empower Farmers, Without Burdening Government or People!
MAHOtrain recently posted two posts on their views on farmers problems and solutions that they propose. This post is an attempt to continue and expand on the discussion they started. But with a slightly different view.
Should the farmers problems be governments problem?. Well as far as the politics and votes are concern, yes it should be. They represent a large percentage of voter base outside Colombo. But should it involve itself at the level it does today? I don’t think so.
Farmers has many problems. Their crops are not market driven. Their decisions are driven more by tradition than science and economics. There is a disconnect between them and the market. They have very high production costs and low returns. They import fertilizer and machinery, but the product is locally consumed. And when it comes to selling their harvest the middle man is pretty much a monopoly, which farmers can’t control.
I agree with MAHO in many of its points. Specially about the gap between science and farmers on the ground, Diversification, Proper Planning and Organization. But I do not agree when it comes to government should do this, that and what not.
On Parking Fees in Colombo City and Our Vehicle Owners
Yes! parking cost is high in Colombo. Specially if you don’t want to park your vehicle under boiling hot sun and leave one of your biggest assets at the mercy of robbers. It’s high not because some people trying to rip off vehicle owners, but because the gap between supply and demand has driven up prices. Sunday Observer recently ran two articles on this topic (this and this). And they shed some light on this issue. How ever what took my eyes was the pathetic situation of hippocratic in the minds of our own people exposed through these two articles.
We all have at some point used all the sorts of car parks in the city. Most outdoor parks has little or no sense of security, (I have lost few parts of the vehicle by parking in those places and it has cost me lot more than what I could have saved by parking there) and bake everything inside the car if you park during the day. Then there is those indoor parks attached to main shopping malls in the city. They have better security (at least you feel that way) and better protection from elements. And for that there is a higher demand to park there and the prices are high. Also these are not public parks by definition. Those parks are setup by those companies for customers who are shopping in those malls. But we all take those for granted and happily use/misuse them. We all know where we prefer to park between those dusty hot outdoor parks and nice indoor parks.
Drama over ‘Enna’ (Banned Sri Lanka Cricket World Cup Song)
This is not a post to defend Lahiru Perera, his music or anything. This just what I see from all the drama happening over his world cup cheer song ‘Enna’. If you have listened to any of Lahiru Pereras songs, you must have realised that he is not Amaradewa, Suni Edirisingha, or not even Sunil Perera or Iraj when it comes to music style. He is in a different class, popular among some and not so popular among others. In songs like Rambari and this one, his lyrics are mostly a meaningless bunch of words thrown together in a way that rhymes. Nothing more. If some one is trying to measure his music with a measuring stick any better than that, I don’t think it is practical. Because any one can see that his songs are mare entertainment and not serious art work.
No Papare Bands At Cricket World Cup 2011 Matches?
If you have subscribed for Ada-Derana news updates, you must have received a message saying “Banners, parsals, musical instruments, glass bottles, crackers, laser lights, sharp instruments are not allowed in World Cup venues in SL”. And some time later you must have got the message “Following appeals by public IGP has allowed spectators to take posters & banners promoting cricket & players ….”.
This news item in Daily Mirror says that SLC will provide music so the bands are not needed. What the hell! At SL-Canada match there were some bongos that never fit in to the picture and some DJ music which were annoying. In Sri Lanka there is nothing that can boost a cricketing atmosphere like a papare band. It is something unique to Sri Lanka and a part of Sri Lankan Cricket identity. If we are to promote cricket and Sri Lanka that’s what we must promote. Not bongos.
A Case For Going Hybrid!
These days there is a bit of a hype about hybrid cars, mainly fueled by slashed tax. Of course they come with an interesting promise. But can we really utilize its full capacity?
Main benefits of hybrids are ability to run more on less fuel, or reduced cost per km and reduced carbon footprint. This is achieved in two ways.
By having an alternative energy source in the car, hybrid can work around some deficiencies of internal combustion engine. In a regular car you need to have larger bulky engines which suck up more fuel and deliver more energy to support acceleration. But when you are cruising you don’t need that much energy. A hybrid can have a smaller, efficient engine and/or run it at the efficient RPM level, while electric powertrain is compensating for the rest of it. Also when decelerating, a regular car will slow down by evaporating its energy as heat through friction. It means that energy is lost. A hybrid use regenerative brakes, which is just a fancy name for the mortar doubling up as a generator to absorb that energy back to its batteries. As a result hybrid accelerates, runs and decelerates more efficiently. Because of it hybrid can get good mileage in slow city limit driving too. Also breaks will generate less heat, and engine will do less work resulting reduced maintenance.
Unlimited Terms for Presidency Good Thing?
I am not a political writer and politics is not my thing either. But recent news on unlimited terms for executive presidency made me think. This is not a well thought through post either. I am just putting out some thoughts that came to my mind.
Main argument that I have heard so far is, if a president is good enough to retain majority support among people (lets assume he is not influencing the election result in any way other than doing his duty as the president to meet or exceed the expectation of people) it is unfortunate that such a president will not be able to serve his people longer than two terms. Well that sounds logical.
Also we are in a post war situation where there is a lot to be done in terms of development and reconciliation. It requires to have a continued strong policy and a strong man on the job for longer than two terms. But that is a temporary situation.
A WALK FOR A PURPOSE – THE ROYAL PARADE 2010 – Only Two Days Away
Royal College which started in year 1835 is celebrating its 175th anniversary in year 2010. Need not to say that this is a massive milestone and time to celebrate service rendered by Royal College to its past and present students, and to this country.
Royal Parade 2010 and “Party on the Street” will be happening on 3rd July 2010 as a part of 175th Anniversary Celebrations. This is a once in a life time event all the Royalists and Old Royalists can take part with their friends and families. If you a Royalist or an Old Royalist this is not an event to miss.
Parade is expected to start at 3:oo pm from Royal College Junior Gate. Hopefully you have already received information about the event. If not, following are few information extracted from the e-mail sent out by organizers.
Should We Privatize Higher Education? – Is That Even the Real Question?
This is a response to post “???? ????????? ???????????? ?? ??????” in ‘Middle Path’ blog. I was originally going to post a comment to the same post but my comment turned out bit too long. Also I am no good at Sinhala written language (not proud of it by the way). Therefore I ended up writing this post.
Writer recognizes that higher education is a basic right but not a privilege, every one who pass A/L must be given higher education. And he/she also recognizes that government can no way provide free higher education for all. But at the end, he try to make his point in the form of 6 questions, and state that even though he recognize that all should be given higher education, there is lot more to be done before that.
I will try to share my view on these questions and generally this topic. I am not expert of education system. This is simply based on my experience of going through the education system for about 18 years. I believe that the writer has assumed that opening of private universities means the closing of government-run universities. Which I believe is not correct. Government will continue to have public universities. And there will be a tight competition to get in to them, even if the selection method is not perfect. But the question is where should the rest go? At least that’s the “Democratic – and – Socialist” way of doing it.
Moved from Dialog 'Unlimited' Student Package to Mobitel Zoom 1290
I was a happy customer of a Dialog Mobile Broadband Student Package for more than a year. In fact, after getting my student ID of the MSc program, first thing I did was signing up for a student package (So far its the only useful thing I got from this MSc). Signal reception was pretty damn low at my place. No bars at all. But E220 modem managed to connect and deliver around 40KB/s downlink speed on manual network selection.
Recently my girl friend purchased a Mobitel M3 connection. It turned out that Mobitel gives a 8Gb data bundle at LKR 1290/= + Tax. Which is damn better than Dialog student package (5Gb for LKR 1500/= Tax). Dialog connection is pretty damn useless after you cross 5Gb limit. Dialog offers a package with 10Gb data bundle but that is almost LKR 3k/= + Tax. I did a bit of math, and it turned out with a Mobitel Zoom 1290 package, I can use 10Gb per month for a cost of roughly LKR 2k/= including taxes. When you add the taxes for Dialog 5Gb student package, it is almost LKR 2k/=.
