Archive for the ‘Sri Lanka’ tag
DailyMirror: "Lanka rejects visa for Akon"
I don’t like Akon that much anyway. But still I was planing to go to his concert in Sri Lanka. Only because I didn’t want to miss an opportunity to have fun. I did not visit any of the earlier events of international artists. Mostly because of the fears of being at a large gathering in a country at war. I didn’t have the money to buy tickets anyway. But this time both of the problems are resolved, so I was planing go there. But later I changed my mind. I just don’t want to be around when bombs go off. Probably terrorism is still here, under a different name and a face. I hope that I am wrong. Most probably I am. But if I am right, I don’t want to find that out firsthand. Anyway, based on this news item on dailymirror.lk, Akon event will not happen unless something change in near future. I hope it’s over for good.
Induruwa Beach Resort, Bentota, Sri Lanka – From an eye of a local
I am definitely not the guy to give you travel advice. But recently I happen to be in this hotel and it seemed a nice enough place to write something about. So far it’s the best place I have visited. It’s a very nice place with lots of nice views, nice people, nice friendly service, and nice everything. Of course there are things they can improve. But I’ll come to that later in the post.
Induruwa Beach Resort is located at Kaikawala, Bentota, Sri Lanka. When traveling from Colombo, you have to pass Bentota town and reach Kaikawala. When you are traveling down the Galle Road, you can’t miss it. Hotel entrance is right at the Galle Road.
What I like most about the hotel is, it had the best quality/price ratio out of the hotels that I have visited so far. Full board package at a deluxe room cost around LKR 8000/= for locals. It’s about 85/= USD for non-locals. However it did not include evening tea, which will cost you another hundred bucks (LKR). Room was quite large and comfortable. They have nicely layed out the hotel in a way that you get a good view of the sea where ever you are. Unfortunately I don’t have much snaps of the place to show you, because the idea of writing this came after I left the place. But you can find plenty of images from google image search or from hotel website. Following are some snaps I took at the beach just outside the hotel.
131st "Battle of the Blues" Starts Tomorrow!
Royal-Thomian big match is one of the oldest continuing annual cricketing events in the world. It continued for 130 years. Even the world wars could not stop it. I guess I don’t have to tell you that it is played between Royal College, and St. Thomas’ College. 131st installment of it will start tomorrow, 11th March 2010, at SSC Ground. This is not a full post. I just wanted to say, GO ROYAL.
How Not to Buy a Camera!
I like photography. Not that I am good at it or know much about it, but I just like taking pictures. I always had a camera with me since I was a kid. Not a fancy one, just a regular auto-focus thing. This post is about how I purchased the camera that I am using now. It’s an old story. I dedicate this post to my H3, for surviving almost a year (still alive) with probably the worst camera user alive.
This happened in 2008 April. To be specific, it was the poya-day, just after new year holidays. By the end of new year holidays I was sick of staying home. So I decided to go to work even though it was a holiday. But once I got to office, it turned to be a bad idea. There was no power to workstations, and no one was around to fix it. Then I decided to go on window shopping only to find out that most of the shops are still closed after new year.
Releasing Baby Sea Turtles Back to Sea – Kosgoda Sea Turtle Hatchery
Sea turtles are fascinating creatures. They are born under ground (under sand to be more accurate). Then they find their way to the surface, and to the ocean, after which they start a life filled with many dangers, where only a few will make it through the growing years.
As I wrote in my earlier post, I had an opportunity to visit Kosgoda Sea Turtle Hatchery recently. It was perfect timing, there was a batch of eggs hatched previous day. Guys that run the hatchery were planing to release some of them back to sea on the same day we visited. Releasing baby turtles was a very unique experience. And there is nothing like holding a baby turtle in your hand.
Unfortunately, I don’t have much images to show. We were too busy chasing baby turtles that are going the wrong way, as well as chasing away falcons who were looking for an easy meal.
Kosgoda Sea Turtle Hatchery – A boring post about an interesting place!
Kosgoda Sea Turtle Hatchery is a pioneering sea turtle conservation project in Sri Lanka. And it is a great place to visit if you have few hours to kill. Obviously it’s located at Kosgoda 
. Fortunately, thanks to double public holidays falling on a weekend, I got a full weekend to rest after a long time on 27th and 28th February. Best part is, no MSc classes. 1st of March was also a holiday at my workplace. So we decided to go on a trip. Thanks to a slight miscalculation in 4th dimension (time), we had few extra hours to kill and we ended up visiting this place. I am not that much of an animal lover, but I thought it’s fun to write something about this place. I mean writing, I cannot guarantee that reading this post is fun. You are advised to read at your own risk.
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Tech Job Hunting in Sri Lanka – Part 2 – To the Interview and Beyond!
This is the sequel to my earlier post “Tech Job Hunting in Sri Lanka – Part 1 – Getting that Interview!“. If you haven’t read the first post yet, please read it before you continue. That will probably change your mind bout reading this one. Part 1 was my thoughts about the application process. This post is about what will follow if you have done the first part right. This is even longer and more boring than the first one. Read it if you really don’t have anything more interesting to do.
Tech Job Hunting in Sri Lanka – Part 1 – Getting that Interview!
These days there are so many people looking for jobs. But only few are hiring. If you find one, it’s even harder to keep it. Whether you get to keep the job or not does not depend only on your performance. It depends on your employers performance too. If you lose yours, don’t get too depressed about it. There is always another one right around the corner, if you play your cards right. You might notice that there are people waiting without jobs for longer period due to recession. But in my experience it happen mainly due to the choices they have made, knowingly or unknowingly . At least in tech sector in this part of the world, there are jobs if you know how to get them.
Each of us did our share of job hunting once we leave the school. Number of times I had the opportunity to help few friends who were having a bad time securing a job opportunity. There are often comments on the web by students complaining about difficulties of finding a job. They keep blaming on everything except on them self. But more often than not it’s because of their mistakes they lose the opportunity . Over the years I learned a thing or two about job hunting. I was hoping to write something about it for a while. But I did not find much time or motivation for it. Even if I wanted, I did not have a place to write it until I start this blog.
I am not an employment adviser. Therefore don’t consider this as employment advice in any way. If you want to take this as advice, please do that with your own risk. I don’t know much about all sectors of employment. I’ll try to focus on tech field in Sri Lanka. That is where myself and most of my friends are working. But some of the points mentioned here might be applicable to other fields/regions too.
Following are few things that I think important for effective job hunting. Even though I have put them in a list, they do not happen in sequence. Most of them are on going activities. And most of them happen in parallel. I hope this is not completely useless.
I was originally putting everything in to a single article. But it turned out to be bit too long. So I break it to two posts. This is the first part, it talks about the application process. Grab a cup of coffee and take a seat. I said coffee, not tea. It’s going to get boring 
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Eton or Not…!
This is bit of an old news. I was planning to write something on this some time back but could not find time. If you have studied or are studying in Royal College you already know this. It’s about the articles on BBC News website and Lakbima News Online Edition. If you have no clue on what I am talking about, please read this article by BBC News website, and this article by Lakbima News Online Edition, about the BBC article, and Royal College, College Song.
This began as Royal College celebrates its 175th anniversary in year 2010. This is a proud year for all of us. Royal do not pass such milestones every day. And not many schools in our country have such a long history. BBC posted an article about it. A small part of that article compared Royal College with Eton College in UK. To be honest, when I first read the article, I went like “What the hell is Eton”. I figured that the article is about Royal College because I recognized the photo in the article and I knew it’s the Royal College that is passing 175th milestone. By reading the article I assumed Eton is a leading private school in UK. Then I googled. I am not trying to insult Eton in any way. Honestly I didn’t know much about it. Writer must have compared those two for their leading position in education field in their respective countries. That’s what I first thought. May be Royal has some similarities with Eton. Wikipedia article on Royal College says Colombo Academy was modeled on Eton when Hill Street Academy was converted to Colombo Academy in 1836. But I don’t know much about it. Also BBC article had some questionable facts. I am not here to defend neither BBC article nor the Wikipedia page.
If you are not from Royal College you might wonder what all these academies got to do with Royal College. In 1835, Royal College originally started as a private school under the name “Hill Street Academy”. Then in 1836, it was converted to a government funded school and named “Colombo Academy”. In 1859, it was affiliated to University of Oxford and renamed to “Colombo Academy and Queens College”. It was renamed “Colombo Academy” again in 1869, and finally renamed to “Royal College” in 1881.
Outsource…..!
Assignments, Student Projects, Assignment…! We all have gone through that hell. If you are too young to say that well just hang on your turn will come. Some of us copy pasted stuff from web, and we helped each other to do the assignment. If you are lucky enough you may have been offered money to do other peoples assignments. Also there is a number of outsourcing/off-shoring web sites in which most clients are students who are trying to get someone else to do their work. This is nothing new. But all of them had one thing in common. You never did that as an open business.
Recently when I was browsing through Facebook pages I noticed this interesting advertisement . It reads “Nothing to worry about your projects and assignments. We will do it for you…”. Not only that, the advertisement carried the logos SLIIT and BIT (UCSC BIT). Even though it’s too late for me to use such a service I couldn’t resist clicking this link. I was not surprised to see people doing assignments for money but this guy (I really doubt that this is a company) has taken it to a complete new level. An open business with its own marketing.
