Bag it!

It is pandemonium at the local supermarket. Eggs, Crisps, Fresh meat and Baby dipers all in the same bag. Customers cursing all the way from checkouts to their vehicles. They have stopped issuing free bags at the checkout. Either you are supposed to buy those plastic bags, or bring your own bags. The reason? – Another step towards protecting the environment. A good initiative I must admit, but they don’t seem to have planned the implementation that well. They could have issued quality paper bags instead of the plastic ones and avoided all the fuss.

Any comments?

Are you a 'Java Graduate'?

Let me be serious for a change.

I recently had the opportunity to work with a highly talented bunch of individuals from a leading University in Sri Lanka. From what I have seen so far, them lot seem to be die-hard Java fans. Being as old as I am, I was brought up as a C/C++ programmer. But I had the opportunity to work with many other programming languages since then; one of which was Java. I thought it might be useful if I share some of my views in trying to answer the age old question that software engineering students seem to be having when coming out to the industry.

“What language should I specialize in?”

Naturally, we tend to side with the programming language which we are most familiar and good with. At the start of your career this is good as it gives you a jump-start at your job placement. You have enough things to worry about than having to learn a whole new programming language.. right?... well, the answer might not be that simple.

Yes, it is good to do the thing you know. But generally speaking, you will know a particular language well mainly as most of your course work would have been based on that language. Maybe a particular lecturer was better in teaching you one language as opposed to another. Maybe the course syllabus was setup a few years ago and at the time a particular base programming language was selected as the most popular in the industry. Maybe you had friends out there who were experts in one language and your judgment was biased based on that.

Maybe you shouldn’t be worried about a specific programming language after all. Wouldn’t you like to shock the interview panel of your first job by saying “I can program in any object oriented language out there”? Can you really do that? What if I tell you that most software developers with more than 7 years of work experience generally think like that? Given the opportunity they really can. True, they might have to get a quick refresher course on the latest technologies associated with the new language, but the language syntax is fast becoming a non issue. Online and compiler help is so good these days that I was able to learn Java on the job within 2 weeks.

But can you do that as a fresh graduate coming out of the University? Perhaps not on your first job – as most of the time, it is the hardest to secure. But from day one, in my opinion, you should think as a software engineer.

After all, your degree is in software engineering – not in java programming (or in any other language for that matter).

Brain Freeze

When Kelso did the Brain-Freeze thing on “That 70s Show”, it brought back memories of me trying to gulp down a cone of Allerics ice cream before the “Ice cream Van” left. Yes, those were the days, when any half decent ice cream was delivered to your doorstep on those famous Ice cream vans. And Allerics was the preferred brand those days. Of course the impending arrival of such a van can be heard miles away by its instantly recognizable tune – before you could say “where is the change”, all the neighborhood children flocked alongside the road with a few rupee coins clinched in their little palms.

Just the other day, I saw a familiar sight, a white and green coloured van, with a catchy tune playing and of course those unmistakable “tube-lights” on it’s roof… I started walking up to it almost as if I was in a trance. My heart was racing – could it be an Allerics comeback? Alas, No, it was “Elephant House”; the next best thing to Allerics I suppose. I captured the moment with my camera-phone. But strangely I was not in a mood for an ice-cream cone this time.

Divine intervention required - Parking available.

I was able to snap this on Castle Street, Colombo recently. Funny eh?

It got me thinking. As Joan Osborne puts it, what if God was one of us? Some might cry out “blasphemy!” even at the thought of God being compared to mere mortals. I mean no disrespect by this. But think about it; what if????

For one thing, I’d certainly like to know what he (by he, I mean he or she) drives. Would God drive a fancy fast car, a classic limousine-type, a common man’s Japanese car or maybe an environment-friendly hybrid? I’d bet on a hybrid... y’know him inventing the world an all... I’m sure he’d like to keep it clean.

Whatever it is, he will have no problem finding a parking space … at least on Castle Street.

My perfect 10

I must admit, when Santhoshi said I was “tagged” my initial reaction was “huh?”. Then I checked out her blog and figured out what it all meant. So here goes…

1) Innocent smiles that my two girls give in their sleep
2) Chocolate biscuit-pudding (with extra dark chocolate)
3) Smell of freshly cut grass (don’t get excited, I meant grass as in what makes up your lawn)
4) A good Paulo Coelho or a Arthur C. Clarke novel
5) A close F1 race with Raikkonen, Lewis and Alonso battling it out in front.
6) Beach
7) A good night out in Colombo with Live music, Dancing and my closest friends
8) Italian food
9) Access to internet from anywhere
10) The thought that someday I will learn to play the guitar

It’s my turn to do the tagging now. I wish to tag…

Charith
Seshi
Mithila
Sujeewa
Dilan
Chathu

Mayday Mayday Mayday!

It was the 1st of May or May-day! Simple interpretation – yet another holiday. The fact that there was a high probability of lesser traffic on the roads made me decide to visit Kandy and do some long outstanding social calls.

But what I didn’t bargain for is my car throwing up Air-Conditioning problems halfway on my way to Kandy. Yes, it did just that.

Over the years, Air-Conditioning (or AC) has become a vital component of some of our lives… especially with people living and working in the city. We’ve got accustomed to it so much that we find it difficult to cope in a non-AC house even for the weekend. So I had two options, either to turn back and head home or wind down my shutters and go for it. Being a member of the Male gene-pool, I chose the latter.

With hindsight, it was one of the worst decisions I’ve ever made… it is right up there with me trying to conquer my fear of heights by climbing onto the cashew tree way back when I was 12 years old. My elder brother had to climb after me to get me down in that instant. I was never able to face my friends who were there that day for quite some time afterwards. But then that is another story.

The problem with holidays is just that. Just like you and me, everyone else like AC repairmen are also on holiday. So by about 2pm I was really feeling the heat. The winded down shutters blew in all sorts of smells and smoke right into and thru my car. By the end of the trip I smelled like a garbologist at a smoker’s convention.

It was an incident worthy of a Mayday call right on the 1st of May or May-day! Is that weird or what?

Sree, Bhajji and the White man.

What an absolute disgrace! Men slapping other men. Men slapping? Men don’t slap. They punch. That is the manly thing to do. And grown men sobbing in public like a 5 year old girl who just dropped her lolly? What is going on?

These Indians are crazy. Either they are in-your-face-agro like what they did in Australia a few months ago or crying their hearts out like they’d been hit by a canister of tear-gas at a JHU may-day rally. Anyone who can see through a Klinsmann fake dive at a soccer match can surely see through the sorry sight of Sreesanth sobbing after the cricket match the other day. Surely he was trying to milk it for all it’s worth. I’m sure he didn’t bargain for Bhajji to be handed out a 10 match ban for all his trouble.

As for Bhajji, he had it coming… sooner or later it had to happen. He really deserved to be punished.

And what do the Aussies think of all this? I bet Symmo and Pointing must be having a good laugh over a pint. The problem with these sub-continent types is their “white-man-complex”. Either they go all out and lick the white man’s boots, or they call everything a racial conspiracy and try to get the upper-hand that way. The latter worked somewhat in the nineties, but it is not fooling anyone anymore.

So maybe they must invent something new. Forking out some serious cash and getting the white man into the IPL might just be the tip of a grand “iceburg” of a plan.

Only time will tell.