Earth Hour 2012

Image from www.earthhour.lk

Let's switch off as many electrical appliences as possible on Saturday 31st March from 8.30pm to 9.30pm.

Visit http://www.earthhour.lk/

Eating out : Good service is as important as good food

I was battling through mentally and physically draining peak time traffic in Colombo trying to reach home after an equally grueling day at work. As I was passing one of our favorite take away joints, it just dawned on me that I was supposed to bring home dinner tonight. I had passed the turnoff and I was in no mood to make a U turn in this heavy traffic. Briefly thought about calling for a pizza but quickly dismissed the idea after remembering that I was supposed keep fast food away from the kids as much as possible.

That meant only one thing, eating out. After a quick call to one of my good buddies in the restaurant business, I decided to take the family to Bayleaf.

We reached Gregory’s road around 8pm. There was an unusually cool breeze and a slight threat of rain. We chose the verandah to enjoy the breeze. Mercifully the place was sparsely occupied. And the diners were well behaved and didn’t talk loudly.

The kids chose pizza after all – well, at least it was gourmet. I chose the seafood ravioli and my wife, bacon spinach fettuccini. Kids finished their meals without us having to make a fuss – the pizza must have been pretty good. I haven’t had ravioli in years and quite enjoyed it. My wife loved her fresh fettuccini too. All in all, the food was good.

What really made an impression on us was the service. We ordered a few drinks. The strawberry margarita was garnished with a large fresh strawberry. Both my kids love strawberries and had to grudging share it.

Few minutes later, to our pleasant surprise, the waiter brought a couple of large strawberries for the two kids – on the house. That thoughtful gesture made our evening and will be remembered I’m sure.

We left Bayleaf quite satisfied and wanting to come back just as a light drizzle started to come down.

(C)orporate (S)ocial (R)esponsibility

CSR has been a buzz-word (or a buzz-acronym) in the last few years in such that it had become almost fashionable to be able to belong to one. Despite it being unceremoniously brandished about, it is serious business – or at least it should be. Anyone who has gotten involved with a proper CSR effort would know how effective it can be as a tool in contributing to the society in a multitude of ways.

While the company I work for has done quite a bit of CSR projects in the past few years, my first hands-on involvement was in February. We travelled to Oddusunde (in Wanni region) and helped build 51 houses in a village that was decimated by war few years back. While most of it was hard and backbreaking labour, it was nothing compared to troubles those villagers have gone through during the war, and the hardship they are going through now trying to rebuild their shattered lives with nothing but a few pieces of meager belongings.

Picture by Subhash Edirisinghe

Despite losing so much, it is heartening to see the resilience of the villagers. It was easily the most satisfying effort put in by me in the recent past. It is so addictive, that I will probably volunteer next time the opportunity arises as well.

Crates or Sacks?

If you are living in Sri Lanka, you would definitely be aware of the major commotion related to the change in laws for transporting vegetables. Most seem to think the intention behind enforcing such a law is good, but the process of planning and implementing is poor.

On one side, the farming community (including the middle-man, or should I say middle-person?) are trying to save every cent to maximize profit. On the other side we seem to have a minister who is not willing to compromise having being frustrated by delays in enforcing the law and also smarting from a slightly bruised ego.

I quite like the article below (if you ignore the political brownie points it seems to be trying to score). Looks like this Harsha dude knows what he is talking about (at least in this instance).

http://www.lbo.lk/fullstory.php?nid=1755694470

So what is your take on this? A country like India seems to be wasting as much as 40% of veggies during transportation and storage. I believe it is much less here in Sri Lanka. Nevertheless, will crates save a considerable amount of wastage as indicated by the minister? Or is he just trying to get rid of some plastic items probably offloaded to us by our big brother China? Do the farmers have solid reasons to oppose such a law? Or are they just resisting change just for the sake of it?

Let's have your say friends....

“Internet Not Found”

Your alarm goes off. It’s 6.30am on a warm Tuesday morning. You know you have an early meeting to attend and hurry into the toilet clutching your blackberry in one hand. You sit on the throne, and start checking your email on your smartphone. Wow, no emails, you are relieved to see that. But wait, your colleague in USA should have gotten back to you on that proposal last night – today is the deadline. You immediately start typing a “reminder” email – must hurry before he goes to sleep. You press “send” but after a while you see “Sending failed” message. You try again, but in vain.

Cursing the mobile provider, you bring up your browser to catch up on your favorite news site. Strange, there seem to be a connectivity issue again. What’s going on? Let me try Google, surely that cannot be down? But wait, it doesn’t connect either. It must be this damn mobile service provider. You cannot waste any more time on this for now. You get dressed, gulp down a particularly strong cup of coffee and jump in your car.

You tune into your favorite radio station while driving to work. The morning news bulletin is unusually brief, almost as if no interesting news to report. But then one item catches your attention. There seem to be widespread complaints that most internet providers having technical problems this morning. “That explain it..” you mutter to yourself – “I hope it is not that undersea cable again”. What a disaster that was.

You arrive at work right at 8.15am. You have 15 minutes to check your email and a headline or two on the internet. But alas, your office internet provider seems to be suffering from the same issue. No connectivity to internet!

Suddenly you realize that a lot of people at work are giving each other nervous looks. Someone even mentioned that this connectivity problem is not just local; it seems to have affected other countries too. What? Can that happen? Surely not?

Learning to ride a bicycle

They say cycling is the most efficient mode of transport. It’s a pity that Chinese moved on to gasoline vehicles and then again to Hybrids now – they should have stayed with bicycles.

Since of late, my eldest (10 year old) have been asking us to get her a bicycle. I suspect it is more because some of her friends having bicycles than her love for the same. In any case we went shopping for one over the weekend. Ended up at a place in Galle Road which sold foldable bikes – wow, now that’s a neat trick. It only came in silver/black combination. Luckily my daughter loved it too (she is growing out of that usual ‘pink’ phase). So we got it. After also buying a helmet, the question was whether we get some training wheels or not. Although my daughter was looking forward to owning a bike, I was quite sure that she will put up a tantrum when she has to learn how to ride it (She did the same when she got on a horse the very first few times). So I am pretty certain that if I had offered her training wheels, she would not really grow out of it. So I decided not to bring it up.

Now that we brought the bike home, I am trying to figure out the best way to train her to ride it. Should I hold it from the back and run behind the bike as some parents do? Or should I ask her to ride/learn on her own. I honestly cannot remember how I learnt.

Any advice?

Colombo Election

I can almost hear all the Sri Lankans out there sighing with disgust at the mention of the word “election”. But why don’t we like them? Is it because they are more frequent in Sri Lanka than the chances of garbage collecting man turning up? Or perhaps there are more candidates than the number of bees in a bee-hive? Or even maybe because none of the candidates come up with a proper election manifesto? Not to forget the likelihood of selected candidate swapping sides soon after the result,… I am sure you get my point here.

But to me, this election is slightly different. At least I see it in a different perspective - mainly because I got some insights into some of the candidates. It made it a wee bit interesting.

• For one thing, most candidates seem to be online these days. They promote their campaigns on facebook, twitter and through their own websites and blogs. Perhaps the election laws prohibiting the usual “election poster” has resulted in this exodus to the internet.
• Banning the election poster is one thing, but enforcing it is another. Although the posters are being taken down by police, more new ones get pasted at the same places by the next morning. I reckon what you need is the ability to financially penalize or even disqualify a candidate instead of merely tearing down their poster.
• Then there are these crafty ways to get around the advertising ban. Y’see, apparently the ban is on advertising “Vote for this number”. So some candidates advertise websites that include their number and the “cross” (sign for voting). There are also candidates who organize events (like musical shows) on the day that match their number (ie. someone with number 20 would organize a musical show on the 20th of the month). And advertise in bold letter the organizer’s name (which happens to be the candidate) and the date of the event (which is their number). Too bad if your number is greater than 31.
• Just got to know about a certain candidate who had come out with a poster indicating that he was rubbing shoulders with the president at a certain prestigious international event. But the truth of the matter seems to be that he was neither with the president nor at this event – it was a hoax with a bit of photoshop involved.
• Out of all the people, the “mudalali” at my local grocery shop is also a candidate this time. It takes him a considerable amount of time to figure out the change when I purchase anything from that shop. So he is not the brightest I have met. But then again, level of intellect or qualifications doesn’t seem to be a prerequisite for this job.

Few days back the postman delivered my voting documents together with a large sheet of paper. The paper listed out all the candidates. There were 11 groups and 26 candidates in every group. Making it 286 candidates in total. Last time I checked, population of Colombo city was less than 650,000. That is one candidate for every 2,200. To put it in perspective, my school (which had 5,000 students) would have produced 2 election candidates.

All this may be interesting but doesn’t encourage me to get off the sofa and go to the polling booth. After all there will be two interesting world cup (rugby) matches on the 8th.