Why Do We Love You?

For me, farewells always ignite an aura of boredom; one reason because after the farewell you find yourself wondering how to adjust to the change. The other reason for this aura of boredom is the fact that you end up remembering all the good times, which will be hard, if not impossible to come by from now onwards.

This note salutes, a friend we all love and will dearly miss. Although it is possible the man has gone in search of greener pastures and possibly better looking village divas, having given us the excuse of finding a better job, we all wish him well and very best of luck in either upgrading his status or his bank account balance!

“We are all travellers in the wilderness of this world, and the best we can find in our travels is an honest friend” , said Robert Louis Stevenson a Scottish Essayist, Poet and Author. It hardly matters if you have read any of RLS's work or not, for the point of this script is to highlight a remarkable individual who breezed into few of our groupies' lives and breezed out just as swiftly.

For someone who has been in many soups other people just pushed toward me, a dependable person is quite hunky dory. I am indeed very grateful for this high priced individual to have been the salt, the pepper, the carrots and the leaks of all my soups, which not only ended up tasting great, but also made them other folks want it more! (yes this soup is vegetable because I don't eat meat!) If you ever have found yourself in a situation, where you would desperately want a person to say yes, you know the relief you feel when somebody pops up out of nowhere and says yes! This note is dedicated to such an individual who resisted the butterflies, the threats and most importantly the risks of failure just to stand up and say yes when needed.

Deliverance is a strange thing! We often see deliverance loafing around places where it is redundant. The past few years has been a time which deliverance did not fail the few of us who needed it the most. If you ever wanted to see deliverance, packed in a spectacle-d, brown, fat belly package, our subject will be that package!

People around the place I spend most of my time, have a lousy sense of humor. This is probably due the fact that most of them have spent 2/3s of their lives being geeks. Sadly, the few times one manages to strike a funny chord, us the normal folk actually feel sorry for the fellow for his/her tepid efforts. Our subject in discussion however, was never short of smiles and madness, which added the much needed life and color to a seemingly gloomy environment.

During his time, this individual has got accustomed to this strange habit of hibernation. Unfortunately for him, his choice of hibernation location was as lousy as some of the decisions he has made in his life! We hope for his sake he finds a better hibernation joint than a data communication lab when he moves on to the brand new terrain. The fellow inhabitants of his designated work area, (especially Miss Muffet) was quite annoyed of this hibernation habit. Having witnessed the constant mid-hibernation interruptions, I am not sure our subject got the sleep he was looking for! Let Deliverance be upon him to bless him with a brand new hibernation joint, with comfortable chairs and air-conditioning and less of Miss Muffets.

We hope the adventures ahead of him will be exciting. If he is lucky, those adventures will be as exciting as the adventures he is leaving behind. He leaves in the terminator style; with a loud flash and a "I-will-be-back". Having seen the predicament of his predecessors, we highly doubt if he will be able to keep up with this promise.

The man hopes to fall into some track once he settles down in his new environment. Sometimes I wonder if this track is visible only to his type, for he has been falling into this track for ages and never seemed to finish falling into it. For all goodness he possesses and he shared with all his friends, let's pray he finds this track or the track finds him, which ever comes first! :)

Adios friend. We shall not draw the curtains nor close doors. You are loved and will always be loved by more than just one person.

Why Do I Need Money

Loot, regardless the form and the source of its origin is a treasured commodity. People usually complain about big numbers if the numbers are about hip size, waist, or weight. Fortunately for loot, bigger is most definitely better. It is one of the few phenomenons in this world that one can not have enough of! Let's pick an everyday mortal and ask if he/she has money. I think I have a better chance shedding 20 kilos than that person giving a yes to that question! Loot requires respect and a whole lot of it! One would speculate, looking at the seemingly neutral bills and coins that its relatively harmless and is ready to execute whatever you demand. This is wrong! As far as loot is concerned, going from hero to zero is not decided on how many zeros are added where, but WHO adds how many zeros where.



According to social norms, the one possessing loot is a respected person. Now I see most of you jumping up and down vehemently trying to deny this statement. This denial is usually accompanied by philosophical outbursts such as "it is not money, it is the virtues that value", "people with money are usually morons and thieves" etc. Sadly for us, we are not governed by philosophy. One fine thing to note however is, neither is money! :)



So, why do I need money?



I need money to be a geek.

Sure! To travel all over the world, attending this meeting, that convention, this presentation, that workshop, start a geeky business, spread the geeky love... the list is endless. Exhibiting geeky grandeur is a favorable trait, for many of us can not do that. I don't think geeks will rule, but I am sure with the truckload of money they own (doing similar geeky things), they are pretty close to ruling at some point in future.



I need money to be fun(ny).

Entertaining people is hard work. The worst is entertaining old people. I think with age, like the other 206 bones we possess, the fun(ny) bone too turns brittle! Entertaining old folk, therefore is a costly adventure, which usually returns more complains than complements. It is an accepted fact that fun people spend to remain fun. Funny people on the other hand earn to remain funny!



I need money to be rich

Loot brings riches. Unfortunately, the inflow of loot paves way to unthinkable out flows. Such is the bizarre properties of loot! It takes more than luck to be rich and remain rich. What do you need? More loot.



I need money to be in debt

There is this friend of mine, who earns a salary, pays the debtors and still manages to be in debt. It is amazing how that person does that, and that specimen certainly is study-worthy. One hopes, one day that person will find the balance of loot as the Avatar found the balance of the four elements and defeated Fire Lord Ozai.



Come the day loot loses this talent to make us want to be one thing and the opposite of that thing at the same time, we will all lose interest, literally. Regardless, its loose ends, I love loot. I am not sure loot loves me, because it never seems to stick with me. Despite the rejection, my door is always open... for loot!

Big T and the Big Bee

The room I used to stay in was a funny place and it still is. People crash land, people take off, and people like me just swing by hoping for some cheap entertainment & gozz!

Come the day the newcomers arrive, people living in that room get overly excited. Is he/she good? Is he/she a moron? Is he/she like so & so?, countless questions pop in and out. In the dwellers' defense, it is quite fair any incoming foreign bodies create a lot of stir. The room had had more than its share of hooligans and baboons. Records show that, such foreign baboons create messy situations (note to reader: all apes are messy), cause issues and just take off when the other branch falls within reach (more notes to reader: recall ape-behavior).

Miss. Muffet in particular, is one dweller who accepts all foreign bodies with open arms and most noticeably with an open mouth. Unlike the one who sat on a tuffet closer to the ground, Miss. Muffet can usually be seen sitting on anything, which places her higher than the elevation of a chair. Miss. Muffet is yet to take a fall from her high altitude existence, basically thanks to her great levels of friction and the forever-on-grin plastered to her face. However, falls have come from other avenues where friction had failed Miss. Muffet. We have to thank her bike for that! Thus we see in clear light as to why destiny left The Miss. Muffet eating her curds and whey on a tuffet and not on wheels.



Big T was a breeze! T just flew in & flew out just like the modern day gust of polluted air. Miss. Muffet thought the T was her cup of tea, a breath of fresh air after a long period of dismal days and was particularly dismayed when T took off. T has earned a reputation among the gang for being quite the source of entertainment, fun, laughter and most of all bad luck. The writer has no idea the depth to which the roots of bad luck had run, thus will refrain from making larger than life comments. However, the writer does have an axe to grind with Big T, for she with a few others lost their personal retreats at work, 48 hours after Big T moved into her area in the building! Since this note is to celebrate the spirit of T, no further mentioning of T's desperate search of Leprechauns will be made! It seems luck has its ways of letting T know of its existence. It is just too bad the method of awareness raising luck has utilized has scared T out of his wits, so much so that he has turned to be a believer of hocus-pocus. While we all firmly believe a whole-vegetarian diet is good for anybody any day, we are skeptical of the effectiveness of results owing to its short (very short) life-span. In search of the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, T is venturing out into greener pastures. For all goodness as a human being he possessed, we hope and pray he finds only jump-able bumps in his road, and no rats or cockroaches in his brand new 5x5 cubicle.

Miss. Muffet was heard missing Big T very recently. However, T's loss is inadequately filled by the Bee. Miss Muffet feels, T and Bee complemented each other to perfection. What Miss. Muffet is not aware of is the fact that she is inadvertently coupling two perfectly straight gentlemen in her head! The Big Bee is a little ball of spitfire! Contrary to popular belief, this Bee is usually seen being the comedian in the crowd. These days the Big Bee is busy making his hive in the Electrical Engineering department. Sadly, the Queen bee seems to be pissing him off. We all feel that the Queen bee should stop trying to run the Big Bee's honey dry, because if not her there are and will be plenty of other queens for him to drop his honey on!! The Big Bee has earned a reputation for being an athletic catch. The golden or the bronze chance the Big Bee had to exhibit his cricketing skills was rudely washed away in the rain. Since the talk in the town is to have the take two of the rain-dance equivalent pretty soon, we all would soon get to watch the swings & misses of the Big Bee.





Since of Big T's departure, a strange attraction has developed between a certain chipmunk and the bee. The root of this peculiar animal coalition is nourished by pheromones coming in from the direction of the Electrical Engineering department. One should appreciate Big T's effort in not letting the Bee get into the wild side. Luckily for the Bee, freedom was available a hop, skip and a new system engineer job away. Now that the ball is in flight we hope this would be one swing the Bee won't miss. We further hope the chipmunk will be within reach, ready and waiting to catch the ball before it hits the ground!!

And so we open the gates to the best zoo under the sun & moon!

Sil Today

It was the commemoration of the 2600th year since the Lord Buddha attained enlightenment. True enough, the day is special, the times are decisive and we as mortals must engage in something which can actually be carried forward to the next lifetime. So, instead of wasting my life doing what common place mortals do (tissue paper, paste & tidbits), I tagged along with my mother to observe sil.

I must be getting old or nearing the D-day so to speak. Although staying put with 7000 others (stats quoted from an organizer) was grueling, it all paid off well eventually. I actually learned a lot, sighed to myself, burned under the sun, was ruthlessly woman-handled and also started hoping and praying I won't turn out to be some of them so called "upasikawo" when I turned 50+.

The sermons: 6 or 5 of them if I counted correctly, all carried one message. We as Buddists are far from where we ought to be. We get to listen to preachings 24 x 7, yet we fail miserably at practicing what is preached for even a fraction of that time. Our brains are not developed (so it should be nearing THE END, according to one sermon), which usually means we do things out of practice & not because we truly understand the deeper meaning. Frankly, it was depressing to hear how the world is going to end, and what plight we mortals would be in when the world ends bla bla. The good news however is, being where we are in this space-time continuum, we already possess what's needed to prevent ourselves from plunging into doom. The bottom line: Time is now.

Although 6 different bhikku's said the same thing in different words, not much seemed to have reached the active segments of people's brains. Sil day meant a whole lot of pushing and shoving, especially when it came to daane times. The 8 precepts, to some extent meant discipline I reckon. Sadly, discipline was one thing many lacked both verbally & physically. Once I was unfortunate enough to sit and bake in the sun, next to some "daayaka sabha activists", having a ball of a time enjoying other people's misery, gossiping about how a baas has done some construction without using iron & how the ven. nayaka thero was going to be upset at the baas and chasing people jumping over shrubs they laboriously grew and watered. Funny thing was the shrub was ok to be jumped over by their friends, and it was detrimental to be jumped over by some stranger. So much for self-discipline!

One actually feels ashamed to be a part of an afternoon sermon. Apart from the fact that almost 60% of the crowd was female, a considerable proportion of that crowd was dozing off or completely out catching Zees right in front of the thero. The effort put in from the reverend's side is commendable, just to keep the ladies looking alive, but why they had to sleep right in front of his face is a question I seem not get!

People are rude. Either that, or they have the urge to establish dominance. Most of the organizing folks seemed to be suffering from some disorder which caused them to haul crowd into all places and shapes they desired. "move or no food", "clear the road", "hurry up" bla bla... was all they could say the whole day. No "please", no respect nothing. One wonders what one must possess to become a dayaka sabha member; obviously a loud mouth and thug-like attitude!

So, it has been 2600 years, since we have been shown the way. No wonder they say we have small and apparently useless brains. 2600 years and still we are groping about in the dark!

Happy Vesak Everybody.

May you all be one step closer next year!

When The Best Goes Missing!

It is true that one never starts missing the best until the best is out of the picture. It is also true that the replacement to the best is usually some busybody dropped out of nowhere, whose presence has become a painful experience to many in more ways than one. One would only hope the world would just stop spinning at the busybody's feet! On the contrary to most of our expectations, the world just loves proving the hope wrong. I for one am slowly becoming aware of the magnitude of the void the best has left behind. We hope for the best's sake that this bad patch will not last long, and at the end the best would come unto the living with blinding flashes and deafening noises.

Silence is often a strength. Often people find it extremely difficult just to shut up when it is absolutely necessary. As has been proven so many times in the recent past, opening one's mouth at the worst possible moment gets many into trouble. The best is a person of few words. The best is aware of this danger, and often with the best's characteristic smooth moves manages to beautifully avoid unpleasant situations. We see the best's talents leave many wondering what they can't be like the best. Well, technically there can be only one best. :)

The best knows about respect. I admit this word has become a common occurrence in many penning. But it is the very word that brings about many uncomfortable situations. Sadly many of these could easily have been avoided had the responsible loose-heads had the gnats of a brain to realize the importance of respect. It is the fact that the best knows how to respect the surroundings that has earned the best a lot of respect in return. People do not talk behind the best's back. When they do talk behind the best's back they usually do not regret the fact that they have met the best.

The best is disciplined. A totally kick-ass disciplinary I might add. It is still awesome the best does not have to attend the so-called boot camps for discipline. In fact the boot campers themselves can learn a thing or two about what it means to be a disciplinary courtesy the best.



The best is not a showoff. Showoffs are good people. They add such positivity to the world. Commonplace people can realize that there is still a level that everybody else can stoop so low without reaching the level of showoffs. This is one teeny-weeny incident where being a bad person can actually make you good! If the matters were discussed on the right ground, the best probably might have lots to flash. However, being the superior human being the best manages to find less catastrophic methods to keep the best entertained.

The best has the best sense of humor. Jokes as a matter of fact can be both humorous and humorless at the same time. The person possessing the best's charisma would take the joke as a joke without shooting back venom in return. The best's lightheartedness is extremely commendable. You would see the best wearing a million dollar smile any time of day all days of the week. The best part about that smile is that it is not a smile of cynicism or sarcasm or insult, but an expression of the humane quality of an ordinary human being!

May your goodness be long lived!

The Tea Maker, The Body Maker and The Rat

The room I stay in (will be for a tad bit longer) is a funny place. The moment one steps inside one is appalled by the plainness of the walls, the boring feeling the typist chairs exude and the dusty un-carpeted floor. People living in this room are sort of fancy-like. Fret not dear readers, the people living in this room are not in the least bit dusty, plain and boring! It is still funny to see another person trying to make a small room inside this room we live in. Since the person has apparently too many cupboards the small room he dreams of living has walls made of cupboards! Oh well... people and their visions!


This room serves two purposes: housing for six and pit-stop for four. Those who treat the room as a house are sour about those who are using the room as the pit-stop. The so-called "boarders" are a bunch of scavenging mortals who have developed a unique sense of smell. Their sense of smell has evolved to be so acute that one scavenger can sense a packet of biscuit being open from more than 50 feet away. The boarders basically come looking for food. And food, dear readers is found in abundance in this little space we call our room. A certain dear departed used his infinite brain power to drag in a rotting filing cabinet into the room, which basically houses all the goodies we have along with some other trash we have been too greedy to throw away. Discussions on making the rotting filing cabinet look not so pathetic were short lived. Truth be told, the cabinet has not failed us yet and continues to save the scavengers the food they would die without, from a certain other character which will soon be mentioned in this chronicle.


The guard boy who is stationed next to the door is a funny one. Infinitely talented but dead scared of his own verbal prowess. People revere the guard boy, because he picks up teeny-weeny things that keeps the fellow roomies entertained for days. The guard boy has the knack of picking on a certain other individual in the room. We term the person individual and not roomie because the individual has many refugee camps in which the person takes refuge. The tales of this individual may come on a separate note in the future. One wonders if it is the two eggs the guard boy consumes per day only affects his hearing, which of course is devastatingly sensitive.


Then cometh the tea-maker. A lady who seems to be lost but not lost for real (we hope). The tea maker, other than keeping a good track record of making tea, is also a killer singer. Sadly the tea maker suffers from a dubious disorder of wanting to climb on tables. Much as she is encouraged to do so, the desire is still dealt with, which leaves us wondering what next for the tea maker. The tea maker's latest passion involves a bike. We hope the tea maker finds her calling on a bicycle built for two very soon.


The body maker, the newest addition to the group is a wow factor. Extremely knowledgeable on bone structure, muscle structure, cell structure and Sri Lanka Postal System structure is simply a man who can not be moved. The writer has actually tried and realized how immobile this wow factor can become when it comes to pushing. One may fall for the cream complexion & the earthy look this individual carries, but reliable sources say that this man is a dangerous poker who knows how to poke equally dangerous places.


The rat is a rat. And has generated much wrath of all house inmates. Gnawing on gum bottles, soap and the most annoying habit of all, leaving poop all over the place, is looking at its imminent doom proudly sponsored by the diva in the room. We hope for everybody's sake that it will not suffer terribly at his demise. RIP.

That Last Meeting

Last meetings... a phrase that can erupt euphoria, suspense, regret, hope, hatred, disgust, a fountain of other emotions and unthinkables is often used but seldom cared for. Being me, although the general preaching is to forget the past and move on, I go against the default. For me, the last meeting has always been THE meeting. To be honest, the first impression about anything or anyone does not get to my brain until the last meeting. Information influx to this little workplace atop my shoulders is extremely disturbed. Thus, the first impression usually takes a vacation during the time information is coming in through my senses, searches desperately for my brain and finally settles in. By the time the troops have settled in, "Bam!" it is the last meeting.



Speaking on the sunny side of life, reliving the last meetings is one way of procrastination as far as I am concerned. Good last meetings are, in short, good! Good last meetings are the kind of which you would think about when you have nothing important to do, stuck in traffic or when useless people start a conversation with you. I often regret the technological advances not being swift enough to come by. What I want for my 250th birthday is a time traveling device. So all you tagged readers of this note, start saving. You have a fat buffer during which you can work and get me that time traveling device. What would I do when eventually get the time traveling device? (Carefully note the WHEN and not the IF in that sentence.. *hint *hint). I would of course revisit those last meetings. The last meetings that were good. The last meetings that made everyone want to hug everyone else, but couldn't because it would seem inappropriate!


The floating like effect has been a rare effect in my life. Well, weighing at 75Kg, it would be jaw-dropping just to see the act "float" in my list of to-dos. But you know, everyone comes across that time in which all impossible seem and feel possible. A good last meeting is something that gets me to that impossible-seems-possible moment. And believe me, floating feels good, although your feet is still touching the ground! :)


Isn't it just too sad that some good last meetings are extremely short lived? True enough, good times have this weird knack of playing hard to get. But it is just not fair they have to just rush off when they eventually get there! But then again, good times must be worried about us getting bored of too much of a good thing! How thoughtful!


Regardless the form in which last meetings come, man-to-man, phone calls, and other forms of Web 2.0 methods they all carry the same level of emotion. Well, maybe some of the methods would of course leave more bitterness about than others. Last meeting or any meeting for that matter is about respect! Even if you happen to be in a meeting with a real sour sole, whose occupied space in this universe is a total waste, that person deserves respect. Respect carries neither bitterness nor regret. Attitude makes sure that when you close that door behind you, you are floating with feet on the ground.