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.

A Hole Digger Is a Gold Digger

Holes...a subject of euphoria for the tactful, conniving & ingenious souls which were put on earth by some miscalculated force, also happens to be a tender topic for many others with myriad taste sensations. A hole; an empty confined space characterized by its stuffy, musty, dark environment is not a place of merriment for many unless of course you happen to be a mole. In a mole's perspective, hole digging is a gift of nature. Sadly, those who are at the top of the food chain, supposedly with better intellectual powers try to outsmart the wise selections of mother nature & morph into hole diggers themselves.



A hole is often associated with dirt, or some other form of waste that must be put away. Like the mole goes in search of the delicate areas of land to create its curvy caves, human hole diggers go in search of "dirt". This "dirt" is meant to be meddled with, turned up, ploughed through and additionally shared among similar hole digging enthusiasts. Human moles are cheeky and have the knack of going off the radar for considerable periods of time. Unlike the moles of nature, these "moles" work round the clock, in rain and shine going in search of... yes.. dirt.



Moles of nature are harmless critters. They just make an exasperating mess that can easily be dealt with. Human moles on the other hand are walking time bombs. Oh wait, forget the time adjective. Human moles are just walking bombs, capable of irreparable disruptions, many a fixes and worst of all, loss of goodwill.



A good thing about a mole digging a hole, as I see is the fact that it is only the mole who is getting dirty at the end of the procedure. He does not create a big mess, except underground. Fellow moles do not go on strike, shun the poor critter, or expel him off the company. Everybody is happy. Unfortunately when human moles start poking about in the dirt everything from A to Z ends up in a soup and the soup is also in a bottomless bowl!



I wonder if a mole pats himself on the back when he finally emerges from his twisting trench. "Oi..I did a damn good hole" kind of a thing maybe? It is about time you moles started doing that because human moles regardless the significance of their work, just love to brag. Ever heard of "making a mountain out of a mole hill" proverb?



The hole digging process exposes a lot of hidden treasures. Now, for a mole the most valuable treasure would be some edible thingy, a vegetable or a grub worm. To human moles however the definition of the word "treasure" varies. Today it would refer to gold, tomorrow it could refer to dirt! Greed and desire lubricate the digging process in human moles. I am not sure what triggers the digging desire in moles though. Any clues anyone?



Moles are blind yet sensitive to darkness. Makes a lot of sense considering their natural habitat aka holes. Human moles, most of the time are not blind (although what they do sometimes raise serious questions with regard to their visibility). As for the sensitivity factor, well let's just not make a mountain out of a mole hill shall we? :)



Unguarded man-holes, often trigger public outcry. Why, for the obvious danger that is associated with it, a far steeper hazard for health in comparison to mole holes. You see... holes are dangerous, yet the digging continues...



And so we forget..

Again...

As to why we were put on this earth...

To Fix The Match

On my way home today I happened to hear the not so oooh aah news on the radio which said a certain player in our Sri Lankan Cricket Team has allegedly been involved in a match fixing scenario. Although the news is supposedly true, a lot of backfence talk is going on with regard to who the culprit behind the scandle is. The funny thing is despite being slow in catching up with the trends we Lankans sure find savvy ways to be under the spotlight albeit the thumbs-down. ;-)



I am thinking match fixing could happen both ways. Paying to win & paying to lose. Paying to win, we do not hear much. Even when we do hear paying to win scenarios, such events call for glamorous celebrations all over (e.g IPL?). Yet paying to lose is the situation that generates plenty of hullabaloo, in the big barracks, in the news, and in the streets.





To me, all these bookies (although commit a sin according to my religion) are a bunch of ingenious businessmen who know exactly how to exploit the human mind. It is just to plain bad that they decided to use the ingenuity to something that gets everybody into trouble. But then again had they opted to be righteous we would all lose on a good topic of discussion. So there... go be bad boys, but know what you gonna do when "they" come for you (hearing Bob Marley sing :D). We, humans all have a price tag atop our heads. Yet only a few entrepreneurs learn how to read that tag. Sadly for us the majority of the few are such illicit dealers! The moment one learns how to read it, the owner of the tag becomes a puppet. And there is nothing worse than being a puppet of a puppetmaster whose head is screwed. Money can do wonders to us human beings. We all like to claim how we value the work we do & how morally & principally just we are. Speaking bluntly the truth, money is one element in the world that can swing one into all sorts of directions despite the upholster we put on. People, with all the sophistication going around, have forgotten the fact that we all have had animal ancestors. Bait to an animal as we all have seen, can make it go into extremely unwholesome states, (e.g imprisonment, death) For us humans the only bait we have evolved to respond is money. :D



We are not hard workers. We all like to sit back, relax, do the bare minimum & live the life. Making a quick buck to most of us is an exciting venture. The essential clause in this service agreement is "do less". So if I were a sportsman & I was going to fix the match the best thing I would do is play lousy & hope that nobody would notice. Now that I have written that sentence, all of a sudden the concept of match fixing to win sounds extremely stupid. If I were somebody else other than a sportsman, then we all know the ends we reach trying to "do less". No need to gloat on that I reckon. ;-)



Thus the booky principle is economically ingenious. Exploit the trend & maximize the gain; win-win all around.



You walk along the street and pass a little brook. You see a person with a fishing rod sitting patiently on the bank waiting to get lucky. The immediate thought that would cross your head is that this man is committing a very bad sin. You go home. Hungry, you grab half a loaf of bread, ruffle through the pots and pans & stumble onto a fish curry. If a second person saw you eating fish & bread would you be questioned of your morality? :D



And match fixing goes on... inside this 3rd planet from the sun.

Feeling Very Wiki-ish

Despite the fact that I had tons of work pending, I just spent 2 hours of my morning creating my first wiki!


After 2 hours of googling, brain wrecking and writing content the child was spawned and christened Writum Wiki. I have to say that the effort was totally worth it. The wiki was born leaving me with the feeling of wanting to come back for more. :D

It was amazing to see how easy it was to create the basic layout just after a few click hither and thither. All you need to have is a basic idea (a map in your head) of what you need to put in the wiki and presto...everything else will magically fall into place. There are tons of wiki hosting sites, some of them are generously free. I chose Wikidot to host my wiki. Wikidot has a great set of cool tools for content authoring, site management and user management. In order for you to create your own wiki, you first need to register with wikidot. After that you are meticulously guided through the creating of a wiki process. You may restrict authoring privileges of your wiki. The level of restriction may vary from one person to unlimited number of people (public wiki). In my case, I selected a set of people I would like to see contributing to Writum Wiki. These users will have to register with Wikidot first. In order to induce them to join the wiki, Wikidot has an inbuilt email notification system, which can be used to send emails to approximately 200 users. I have to say I was more than a little eager to use this feature! ;-)

It is also possible for you to receive email notifications whenever content is updated. You can customize your notification settings along with other configs that are applicable to your user account.

What I like the most about Wikis is the sense of community it exudes. Moreover, you are free to come up with a site that perfectly matches your style, your taste and your need. Wikidot also has a super community to assist you in case you found yourself in a bit of a soup with regard to your site.

So, come, partake in the most wikish method to share knowledge.

I LOVE YOU

"Sach... have you ever said the three word sentence?" asks my female confidante. "oh yeah!" out comes the reply. And I let go of the flood gates, which harbor a whole deal of churning thoughts. The churning thoughts somehow magically find their way in to these notes; my surreal fortress of concession.



This female confidante is one persistent little spitfire, who knows how to make me talk. Can't blame her though, for some weird twist of fate we are stuck to each other. I for one am feeling so mighty glad that we are stuck to each other!!! As taken over by instinct, she persists. As frank as I could get, I narrate. The Tale of Woo!

So there, I have uttered the three word sentence. Quite uncanny it is that the first few times I had to say it, it came out of sheer politeness. :D Hence, no meaning, no feeling, no relevance... Debate arises with the question of my trying to mislead the unsuspecting recipient. But then again, if I sufficed the sentence with the phrase"I mean it" I would be cheating two people instead of one; myself and the recipient. True enough it is said that two is better than one, but me thinks the guy who said that must have been extremely pedantic.

To me, the title phrase carries very little meaning. I feel a whole lot more comfortable for as long as I do not hear it. The moment I hear it I am caught in a limbo, not being totally sure if I should succumb to tradition or be unorthodox. Being unorthodox in romance does not have the best of histories, while the sugarcoated sweet talk could get you from point A to point B without a single hair being ruffled. It is just amazing to see advantages one could get with sweet talk should you happen to be with "a recipient" who possess a sweet tooth. It is still sad that supposedly the most prettiest sentences in the literature is brutally exploited by many of us, so much so that it has completely lost its fire and charm...

And so, you the reader might already be squinting your eyes at this little inscription. Oh! you self conscious little miss righteous indignation... bla bla... So be it. Words alone will get me as far as the distance an ant could move me :D Don't I believe in infatuation? Of course I do. We all are bound to make that profound mistake at least once in our lives. When we do eventually commit the crime, time stands still, the earth stops spinning and we begin to see the world in colors we have never seen before.

Respect; that be the word I would be replacing LOVE with. Not only the newer version is hard to mouth if you don't mean it, it sounds ridiculously stupid to the recipient if he/she does not see you behaving accordingly. As far as I am concerned, respect comes bundled with trust, honor, humility and a superior emotion compared to the sugar coated love! Plus one need not bother thinking too much when one says that one respects one. The state is entirely binary; either you respect or you don't! Unlike with regard to love, which has almost a million intermediate stages like "complicated" , "I do but he/she doesn't", "just a crush", "a thing for so & so", "a fling", "no strings attached.." etc. Respect is action-driven. As for love...well...y'all know what drives what!

Actions always speak louder than words.

- NOT OPEN FOR DISCUSSIONS -

In The Back Seat Of Your Car!

The back seat of a ride is a place of excitement for people of many tastes & attitudes. There...a rather mundane opening for another one of mine self-generated, randomly inspired chronicles. Stories about maniacs, scum bags, screw ups, idiots, grown ups who have refused to grow up.... in other words, us!

Rides with tinted shutters have always fascinated me. To be frank, I myself was toying with the idea of being the chauffeur of a tinted shuttered ride, but for some cause unknown to me(and to which I am so frikkin thankful for) the fantasy never materialized. Absence of light, to many people mean plenty of privacy. Absence of light also means security in the same context to the same group of people. Human beings tend to cut themselves lose when it is dark and the environment is closed up. Much like all those werewolves & vampires people have invented to vent out the darker sides of their inner selves. To me,
although those mythical beings are unreal, they are the most violated group of people ever to be spawned. How hopeless pedantic it is to be able to spring into "action" only when the full moon perches itself up on a cloudless sky? For all we know, it is full moon only once a month. It is not like those people
can hitch hike on a random form they happen to meet at a party, run into on streets or meet online....I am guessing it must be extremely boring when you know your self-inflicted curfew lifts itself only once a month!!!


Egad...a derailing!!! As usual!!!! Now let us break free from this temporary indulgence in werewolves and get back to tinted shutters....

Cutting lose, more often than not leads to oneself being a little too careless & finding him/herself at the wrong place at the wrong time. Human beings have needs. Sadly for us, the most demanding of our needs usually require closed environments. Take peeing for example. I am not sure many of us will find it pleasing to relieve our bladders in public. We, somewhere down that long dismal time line of evolution been blessed (or cursed?) with the requirement of wanting darkness when it is time to let go. Once provided the seclusion required its winter wonderland to all of us...Like they say...when you gotta go, you gotta go!!!

Takeaway point: Feelings are hard to put a lid on...


And so we crash down on our object of discussion; rides with tinted shutters. They come bundled with an assortment of VERY favorable properties for the "needy". It is mobile, it more often than not comes with just the right amount of space to do just the right type of things, it comes at zero cost, depending on where you decide to land...etc. and when you do find all properties smiling at you, beckoning you to loosen what you have been harnessing so laboriously in you, you just do nothing but giving in....O! sweet succumb...

Takeaway point: Convenience is not always a blessing...


Who do you normally like to accompany into the seclusion a tinted-shuttered-ride provides? How dense can I get huh? Is that a question to ask? Well....If you are still questioning yourselves whether or not to answer that question in your heads let me help you. You don't need darkness to have tea parties!!!
*Wink*. The quality of the specimen who happens to accompany you into darkness matters a lot AFAIK. It can invariably be your lifeline if it be the right specimen. If not....well....then you can get down on your sorry ass & start hoping for the best. One thing that mustn't elude you though, is the fact that when it comes to the moment, hope sure has the knack of leaving you!

Takeaway point: Beware of who you are with in the darkness...


Seclusion has two faces. It can provide you security. At the same time it can put your life on the line. Well, if you are somebody who happened to make a living out of being alone that is entirely a different story. But I doubt the majority of my audience is in that category. With all due respect, let us read on. One thing I have come to realize over the course of my life, is the fact that there is no such thing as "harmless fun". First of all, that phrase is not logical. Harm & fun should not be in the same sentence to begin with! It has also come into my realization that when fun comes tagged with the word harmless, there are 101 ways things can go hideously wrong. To an observant eye, it must have come into focus that excitement and seclusion go hand in hand in many a occasion. Human beings can excite one another in an assortment of ways. Be it from a gentle touch, a word, or by sharing some substance (coffee, juice, ahem ahem...). Excitement, like seclusion has two faces. It can make you feel good the moment the right buttons are pushed. However, the general case is such that, human beings tend to be extremely negligent when they reach the peak of excitement. Negligence, has a wild reputation on putting a damper on all your glorious moments. Aren't you just tired of my euphemisms!?!?


Takeaway point: Seclusion may provide opportunity and rob you of opportunity...


Opposites are a cocky invention of English language, I reckon. Simple words like give, take, up, down, can generate myriad of emotions in the reader's mind so effortlessly. The opposite of darkness is...yes...light. And such a delicious opposite it is don't you think? A sudden flash of a torch and you are jolted back into reality, out of darkness, into light. With light, strangers may infiltrate your tinted sanctuary. Light provides clarity & strength of mind to most of them who barge in. Does light really provide strength of mind? If you are afraid of the dark then I am sure you would "see" my point! Have you realized that, all Gods (in movies of course) appear amidst bright flashing lights? Good Gods in bright light, and bad Gods in ominous light. Where does this analogy take us? Light can accompany both your saviors and your destroyers. Scary thought don't you think? Light tends to make you see things in a whole new different perspective. Things that you have missed in the dark, you begin to see in haunting clarity when there is light. And then comes all should have s, could have s, and would have s, which usually make you feel even more miserable, should light happens to come on at the worst possible occasion for you. The question comes up; come unto light they say, but do you really want to?

Takeaway point: You ought to be scared of light if you are in the dark for the wrong reasons...


Strangers who come with light usually carry questions. The usual "what" "who" "where" "how" that require you to answer regardless your willingness to open up. People are rather shy of "opening up" when there is light. *Grin* Hence they go in search of darkness! Unfortunately, answering questions in the light may prove to be more difficult than answering them in darkness. For instance, when you are in the dark a question like "what are you doing?" can safely be silenced in the most delicious ways imaginable. *Mondo Grin* However, when the same question comes up when there is light, delicious answers would probably be the last thing on your mind! Moreover, your questioners would not exactly be looking for delicious answers. When the questions are fired, no tinted shutter is going to be good enough to protect you from expectations of strangers.

Takeaway point: Two is company and three (or four) is a crowd...


Then there is indignation! "This is my life, my game, why can I not do what I want? What is wrong with doing this?" etc. attitude. Well paley...that is just the way it is. There is no room to do what you want around here. This is not "the promised land". Nor there are good Gods wandering about us at your disposal to come in all their glory for your rescue. Should you happen to be somebody who has the "need" minus the "iron will" then you might as well take the chance and pray and hope lights will not come on before your party is over. You may not have been the first to break the rules. But somebody before you did break the rules and broke 'em bad. And now we all are doomed to be shackled by all these restrains until we get the green light. I myself have always been a fan of rules, hence I have no complains. A set of rules, like it or not, is a hideous guise to your perfect safety net.

Takeaway point: Respect the rules & rules will respect you back...


And it all happens... in the back seat of your car!!!