Dear Tulie…

26Nov09

This is a letter from your future self in 2009. Don’t be sceptical, it really is possible.

At the moment you are probably snorting your way through a Jughead Time Police comic and wondering what your favourite comic book series has come down to but it really is possible.

Well, we haven’t perfected time travel yet but I am able to write to you, aren’t I?

Anyway, 16 years old eh? Seems just like yesterday though it was all of 12 years ago

You are going through a very rough patch in your life now, aren’t you? For the first time in your life, you are feeling clueless in classes and feeling like one of the dumbest kids in class instead of one of the smartest.

Don’t worry, this is a necessary experience for you, unpleasant though it be.

You were always a little too arrogant about being the youngest as well as smartest kid in class. Yes, I know you were always outwardly placid and courteous and took care not to associate with the bunch ot snobs in school who banded together, virtue of their ’superior intelligence’.

Nevertheless, you place too much value on intelluctual capaciy and IQ and are a little too smug inwardly (or at least you were uptil a year ago) of your own intelligence.

You need to understand how it feels like to be a dumb kid in class for a change. As soon as you finish your A’Ls in a couple of months, you will teach in a school for underpriveleged kids and this experience will help you to be more compassionate and focused on the backward kids in school instead of concentrating only on the intelligent ones as most teachers tend to do.

You will look back and remember the time now, your two years in High School doing A’levels as two of the worst years of your life. But the best two years of your life are to immediately follow.

You will surprise yourself by finding in yourself the capacity to be a really good teacher – a talent you were not aware of before. This will do marvels for your self confidence, something that will stand you in good stead when you move on to work in the corporate sector and your ’superiors’ deliberately try to undermine that hard won confidence.

You will learn during these four years that high marks on the report card does not automatically translate into high intelliegence. You will also learn that repeaters, back benchers and the so called ‘under performers’ are generally bright and intelligent people.

Unfortunately, you would be one of very few people in this world to make this unique discovery.

The rest of the world tends to judge people by their academic records and if they don’t do well academically, then it’s a safe bet to say that their future careers are not going to be too bright, no matter how talented they are.

Yes I know you have read of high school drop-outs becoming great successes but get real… Bill Gates and Richard Branson could be part of fairytale land for all that counts…

I have some bad news for you – you are going to flunk those A’Levels.
It’s not your fault, the teachers were all bad and incompetent – your bad karma to be caught in this particular experiment of the school

I won’t go into all your education related woes from hereon in but it would seem your time as a sunshine girl in school is over.

You will be doing useless courses and encountering useless ‘teachers’ (and I use that word loosely) in rapid succession hereafter.

Right now(Whoops, thats relatively speaking isn’t it? I mean 12.50 pm, November 26, 2009), your 28 year old self is typing this letter to you in her Dreamweaver class in Journalism College.

The teacher is one more of that useless kind and so I am pretending to work while typing this to you instead – as I have no clue about how I am supposed to do what I am supposed to do

Yes – you have finally achieved your life long dream of becoming a journalist

It took several years of whining to your parents (but I think the clinching factor was your repeated flunking of CIMA, that put paid to their high hopes of seeing you as a respectable, high earning number cruncher) but you’ve managed to achieve it at last.

Don’t worry, you make a damn good journo (even if I do say so myself) but all the years in between, trying to struggle up the corporate ladder has given you a complex about your lack of qualifications.

So now your 28 year old self is in a prestigious journalism college because, though she knows she is talented, she doesn’t want an M.A in English Literature or Journalism or some such crap walking in later and lording it over her. Believe me – that’s a very realistic fear, most of these nerds are clueless when it comes to the actual work but think no end of their own superiority thanks to their qualifications (that wouldn’t have taught them anything worthwhile in the first place).

So you are now in a ‘professional’ college that gives you hands on training instead of useless academic skills.

See, this is the thing – If you work long years as a good journalist, that still somehow lacks lustre without a good ‘qualification’ but in oder to get that qualification, you need to attend colleges like these, which if you lucky enough will give your some worthwile practical training instead of worthless theory.

So now, in this college, I am doing the same thing I did last year, except now I am a student who doesn’t get paid for my stories, have to find and pay my own way around instead of getiing a vehicle and don’t have a media ID to back me up and get me places to get the story

Journalism is a really fun job, you learn a lot of interesting things every time you go out but somehow it is not so much fun when you are a student, forced to find a happening story every day. You don’t have the access and prestige the real media do and people are not as willing to talk to a ’student’ doing only a ‘project’.

You probably would have learned far more had you continued in your line of work but the way this world and its values are structured, you unfortunately do need that qualification and so are sticking it out.

Let move on to brighter things shall we?

Erm.. well… You still haven’t found the love of your life, If he even exists, he is taking his own sweet time in showing up.

BUt the good news is you’ve finally settled in Sri Lanka now as you’ve always wanted to

The war is over now (can you believe that???) but the country still has some way to go in uniting its peoples. *fingers crossed*

All the others who discovered this method of sending letters to their past selves dished out lots of advice, some even gave gambling tips and financial advice but I don’t want to do that, mostly because I don’t know what advice to give

You were always a goody two shoes who was afraid of putting a foot wrong. Well, you haven’t changed much, you still are in 2009 (for all the good thats done you )

The only thing I know for sure looking back is that you should have chucked Cima and gone in for journalism from the start but you always knew that didn’t you?

Try to be a liitle more assertive, even though they are your own parents, who fancy they are doing only what’s best for you.

…er…No, I still haven’t upped the assertiveness quotient as of 2009 but try to work on it all the same

Well, that’s enough for now wouldn’t you say? Cheer up, I know you are going through a rotten phase right now but good times will soon follow.

Perk up and walk straight. Academic qualifications are not all there is to it. You are still basically a good person and what’s more, you are an intelligent person – don’t ever stop believing that.

It’s Ok – there are several pitfalls along the way but you will get up with each one, sometimes hurt and scarred, sometimes strengthened and emboldened.

With all your cautiousness and care, you still can’t avert adversities in life – they are a fact of life and you have to learn to accept them. They are not going to go away with that ostrich like attitude you put up everytime something happens so pull your head out of the sand and face them head on.

Also relax, unwind, enjoy yourself a little – That’s something you never did much of.

With lots of love from your future self – don’t worry so much that no one loves you – I DO

Tulie

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Ruminations (NOT the Bovine variety)

07Oct09

The only time I ever blog is when I’ve something else to do – and don’t want to do it.

Hmmm, I wonder why I don’t blog more often then?

Anyway, I am in the college computer lab with a three hour deadline for some assignment so here I am – putting my time to good use as usual

Let’s see, what facet of my fascinating life can I inundate you with now?

umm…uhh…err……

Damn it, I DO have a fascinating life; I am just so modest that I can’t see it

Oh well… I still don’t want to get back to my assignment, what to do?

So let me tell you something which fired up my hardy little soul recently (hope I don’t get sued for this…)

According to my features lecturer, Readers Digest edits all its articles 28 times before publishing! um… errr… Is that supposed to be a good thing? Seems to me that the original freshness of the article would be thoroughly killed by that thorough an editing.

Standardization is becoming the rule everywhere. Maybe it works at a certain level as KFC and Pizza Hut seem to prove but the creativity, the art form inherent in the work would go for a toss.

Too many cooks literally do spoil the broth, no matter how good they are. I don’t fancy an article of mine going though 28 editings and rewritings to be shaped into a standardized house style. Writing, especially feature writing is a creative art form and to edit it so much would kill all its freshness and spirit.

When and where exactly did we start worshipping the demigod of standardization anyway? Most of the time, all it does is make a poentially very good product being created by a very creative producer – substandard.

And that applies to anything whether it be the food industry, garment industry or writing industry.

uh oh – I just read back that last sentence. Don’t inundate me with theories of economies of scale, mass production etc – I don’t want to hear it

I know I am taking a rather one sided view on it and perhaps I am not really qualified to comment on how standardization works in other industries but at least in the journalistic profession – especially feature writing, I just can’t see the advantage.

My lecturer was all for this standardization; when I drew a dissenting voice, she brushed it aside and said Readers Digest was a very popular magazine so obviously, the policy works.

Huh – Well I dunno, they just lost a potentially great writer on their staff

Anyway, my lecturer wouldn’t let me air any of my objections further and I am still broiling mad so I am venting it on you instead

I thought dissenting voices were supposed to be encouraged? Oh – but not in a standardized world; there is only one correct way to do things and no other, therefore there can only be one opinion.

Beware people, if you don’t rise up and act soon, you will soon live in a Big Brother world and have even your physical features standardized

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Tales of a Professional Procrastinator

27Sep09

Hello Ladies and Gentlemen of Kottuville… *Deep Bow*

I am sure most of you don’t know who I am; The few of you who did know me would have forgotten my existence by now I am sure.

I was never a consistent blogger and now it’s been three months at least since I last blogged. I assure you I wouldn’t thrust my presence upon you now if it weren’t for a very valid reason. You See, I have a lot of work to do and very little time to do it with.

So I am staying up tonight because all my fellow students in the hostel are working very, very hard and are callous enough not to hide their efforts from me. They have absolutely no sense of the finer points of sensitivity.

Instead of thoughtfully hiding their industrousness from me so that I wouln’t feel inadequate or lazy, they are slaving away like ants and what’s more, to add insult to injury, are constantly giving me ‘ant-to-the-grasshopper’ type lectures.

So in a huff, I took out my laptop, spread all my notes around me and set purposefully to ‘work’.

I am sure all you students out there would sympathise with me when I say I got hungry soon after – like about two minutes after.

There’s nothing like some serious studying to get your digestive juices flowing. So, I got up and polished off a packet of pineapple cake I had. My hunger still wan’t satisfied though so my eyes swiveled round the room, hoping to light on some other snack I might have bought and forgotten about; Nothing but one raw egg…drat!

So I boiled the egg… Then I figured it wasn’t good enough as a snack, I needed to garnish it. Walked across to the canteen to get some chillies and an onion and then took the trouble to make an egg salad.

*Yummmm!* Delicious

Finally satisfied that I had done all I could to satisfy my hunger, I conscientiously took up my laptop again.

Eureka, the Wi-Fi was working. I hadn’t checked my mail in ages, it had been all of six hours already, I just HAD to check my mail.

Well, no new mail in my hotmail, gmail or yahoo accounts (Sigh!) but I did catch the Puppeteer with her habitual ‘Busy’ sign online.

Well of course I just HAD to chat with her, we hadn’t had a good chat for over 24 hours.

So, after spending about 1/2 an hour with her, I began to feel guilty again and signed off. Closed all my mail accounts and got down to serious business.

But then I started thinking… it’s been ages since I visited my favourite site, youtube; Ages since I watched my beloved Simon Cowell – I could watch video clips of that man again and again… and again

So, I opened youtube, only the download speed is rather slow, I have got several tabs open downlaoding youtube videos right now.

In the meantime, so as not to waste time, I am blogging. I am nothing if not conscientous – I never waste time

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Is English Really Necessary in a Sinhala Speaking Country?

20Jun09

Don’t look at me folks – that’s not really my title, it was just the tiltle of a debate in an English Day program I found myself at recently.

I was rather startled when the topic of the debate was announced but that was before it started. After that, I was just plain flabbergasted.

The round was started by the team that argued for English’s necesssity.

“Good Evening, Ladies and Gentlemen, my topic this evening is: ‘is English really necessary in this Sinhala speaking country.’ I say yes, English is necessary in this Sinhala speaking country because blah, blah blah…”

And then the leader of the arguing team got up.

“Good evening Ladies and Gentlemen, my topic this evening is ‘is English really necessary in this Sinhala speaking country’ and I say No, English is not necessary because…….”

And so on and so forth it went between the two teams comprising of three girls each until it ended with the closing team insisting that “English in not necessary in this Sinhala speaking country.”

The ‘Moderator’, another school girl finshed saying that the judge would decide and give the conclusion but there was of course no judge on stage to give his/her views on this…er….thought provoking subject.

So while the rest of the program moved on, I was left literally speechless with shock. I had been listening carefully to all the arguments for and against to see if there was any mention of other communities and the need to converse with them but no, apparently whoever had coached the girls was not aware that any other community other than the Sinhalese who all spoke Sinhala lived in Sri Lanka.

Oh and BTW, that wasn’t a real debate, they were all pre prepared speeches all drumming the ‘Sinhala speaking Country’ into almost every sentence of all the speeches, either for or against.

The team arguing for English only brought up globalization, the job market and education.

The team arguing against, insisted that we needed English only if we went abroad, but if we came back here, “We all speak Sinhala.”

? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ?

I ask you, in this day and age? What the heck was that about anyway? At first I was inclined to give the teacher who trained them the benefit of the doubt and assume whoever it was was just a singularly stupid person moving within very narrow confines and had never chanced upon another non-Sinhala speaker. But now I come to think of it, unless this person was living down a mine shaft for the last 30 years, he/she could not have possibly missed the war and its origins or at the very least all that has happened over the last couple of months.

I discredited the obvious racist theory at first only because I couldn’t believe a racist could be that stupid but now I am not so sure.

An English day being held in Colombo, various dignitaries as well as the media invited and this is the message that has been approved through several screenings and rehearsals to come on out?

Wow!

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Wealth Can’t Buy Health

15Jun09

Tell me about it, not that I have got a lot of wealth to impart in trying to buy health but…

Sigh, Today is the closest I’ve felt to ‘normal’ in more than three weeks.

Got a whopping case of Gastritis

I have always been an unhealthy little brat (and it sucks, coming from a family of disgustingly healthy folks, they tend to suspect me of hypochondria), but I had forgotten how terrible my gastritis, when it acts up could be because I hadn’t had it in over two years.

I was following this specialised yoga course that had been guaranteed to pep up my health and it really had worked. Only it spoiled me a bit too. Where before, I had learnt to live with constant aches and pains and frequent rounds of really bad illnesses like gastritis et al, I had now learnt to enjoy good health (or rather take it for granted)

To such an extent that I made a royal fuss both at home and at work, when I fell ill after two years’ reprieve. The folks at home were OK (means a leeetle bit sympathetic and not too cynical) and at work, I had the Puppeteer waiting on me hand and foot

I won’t drone on about all the details of my sickness though I would love to. I don’t want you to start thinking like my meanie of a sis that I am a hypochondriac, so if that is what you are thinking, you can bloody well keep it to yourself, Humph!

Why can’t people understand that all I need is a lot of Tender Loving Care?

My own mother goes on and on and on, Mrs. Bennet style about how it’s all my own fault, how I eat too much fatty/oily/spicy foods, how I never pay any attention to my health blah, blah, blah.

And then there’s my sister. If she doesn’t stop sniffing and snorting all over the place while I am moaning in my bed and my parents are fussing over me, she is going to get her nose punched in soon.

Its not like I have it all. My own mother has inflicted on me, her flesh and blood, a constant diet of saltless, spiceless food. How could she do this to me? I don’t want boiled vegetables, I want juicy, fresh fruits, I want coffee, I want all the spicy, fried snacks she makes…Waaah!

It’s mango and rambutan season now, two of my favourite fruits and I am not allowed to eat them because they apparently stir up heat

And so my very considerate family keeps them out of my sight and would have me believe they are abstaining for my sake. Warms my heart – indeed it does, especially when I see all the peelings and seeds in the waste bin.

A couple of days back, I convinced my mother that I should be allowed to eat atleast water melon as that was considered cooling. She relented so I ate *ahem* half a huge water melon. Don’t look at me like that, I am a hungry kid these days.

Ah, It was sweet and lucisious and felt good but…

*Sigh* As soon as I finished I had chills all over my body and came down with a mild temperature. Goodness, the scolding I got. All mothers-to-be should be given mandatory lessons on coddling their children, mine is seriously lacking in that department.

The next day, I woke up with pincers around my heart. Some crab had somehow sneaked in and gotten hold of the miserable organ. I knew better than to update my family about this latest development so I kept quiet and went to work as usual, clutching my heart all the way like I was about to have a heart attack. Actually there were several times on the way when I thought I was having one.

But there was consolation to be had – the puppeteer was her usual solicitious self – thank goodness for some things

So, after playing on her heartstrings for awhile (I could have gone on at it indefinitely but I guess she got tired), she recommended that I go see a doctor.

A doctor? I hate doctors. I hate hospitals and nurses too. I hate the smell of hospitals and I hate the smell of doctors and nurses – they all give off this horrible antiseptic smell

I think I have blogged about this before. If I have to, I prefer to go to a veddamahattaya rather than a doctor. Vedamahattayas don’t smell antiseptic and they don’t stick injections in me.

So NO, I refused to go to a doctor with her. Then she came up with the diagnosis herself that the gas was trapped in my chest and that we needed to get it out. Well BRILLIANT! It’s gas caused by gastritis, we know that much but how to get it out?

“Drink Coke!”

Huh?

That was the puppeteer’s solution, to drink coke and get me to burp out the gas. In the first place, I had been forced to see a doctor sometime before who had warned me off all soft drinks. And in the second place (don’t you DARE sneer), I don’t like coke. I like Fanta and Sprite well enough but Coca Cola in my opinion is one of the greatest hoaxes of all time. Some foul tasting medicine like stuff that people have been conned into believing actually tastes good and is cool to drink.

If I had to choose a soft drink to go against doctor’s orders, it certainly wouldn’t have been coke but she insisted Coke was the fizziest and the one most likely to get me to burp. (Just had your lunch and feel grossed out reading this? Ha sorry! Burrrrrrrrp )

Anyway, I finally grew tired of the constant pinching on my heart and was desperate enough to give anything a try, so she went off to get a can of coke. And in short order, I found myself on the balcony away from prying eyes and delicate constitutions, trying to burp my way through a can of coke. But seeing that I wasn’t all that used to chugging coke, I wasn’t too good at it.

What the puppeteer had in mind probably was for me to go BURRRRP, BUARRRRP, BUUURRRPP but instead every so often after a lot of effort, I went bpp, bipp, blp.

But hey you know what? IT WORKED

The tightening in my chest eased off and I was able to breathe properly again.

Moral of story : When next you have gastritis, avoid fresh fruits and wholesome meals and drink plenty of coke

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Tagged – eep!

03Jun09

Uh oh! I have to describe five words on how I feel about the end of the war!

Considering that I spent most of the weeks preceding the war’s end imitating an ostrich with its head firmly shoved into the sand, I really don’t know what I am supposed to feel.

Of course I am relieved the war is over but other than that, I am rather less informed than 98% of the citizenry of this country as to what actually happened in the war zone. Working in the media, I quite deliberately went out of my way to avoid all media reports on anything disturbing, especially the situation of the IDPs.

I am like that, I just can’t stomach too much negativity. I deleted all e-mail forwards, youtube links etc that purportedly showed IDPs suffering. Just accidentally coming across one of Whackster’s posts detailing one such incident made me feel ill.

I deliberately blocked my thoughts to all aspects of the war and the human suffering it caused and went my own way, living my own life without for the most part, allowing any part of the war to touch me.

I am a rather strange (or really not so strange) breed, a tamil who grew up away from her country and for the most part was out of touch with the country’s situation or ground reality. That does not in any way make me any less a Sri Lankan, I fiercely love the motherland and am excessively proud to be a Sri Lankan, perhaps the more so because I grew up away from here as a ‘foreigner’ in a foreign land.

To be able to come back and live in my own country amongst my own countrymen has been a long cherished dream. Though I came down only after the 2002 ceasefire, I still live that cherished dream and refused to budge when my frantic parents tried to get me out of the country after war erupted again in 2006. No way was I ever going to be a second class citizen in another country ever again.

I loved being in Sri Lanka, loved being amongst my people, be they Sinhala, Tamil, Muslim or Christian and the feeling of blending in that I never could get in the country I grew up in.

I don’t want to sound blonde but it has always been unfathomable to me why so many people would leave the paradise they were born in for foreign shores. Sri Lanka even at the height of war was still a far better country to live in in my humble opinion than as some belittled refugee or asylum seeker in some other country.

I understand that those actually caught in war zones might have wanted to leave but I know several such people who did leave for such reasons, then pine to return home even before the war was over. Ultimately, there is ‘No place like home’.

Except for one freak incident in my childhood while visiting Jaffna on holiday, I also haven’t had the misfortune to experience any aspect of the war and so it is not my prerogative to judge others. As I said, while my family and the rest of the community were highly concerned about the IDPs and what was happening to them, I blocked myself completely from reading or viewing anything on the situation. I couldn’t for the life of me see what I could do about it so I didn’t want to know about it either. That leaves me very little informed to comment about anything on.

I am extremely relieved that the war is over and the predominant sensation is hope – hope for a united, dignified and prosperous Sri Lanka. Many in my community are skeptical of such hope. They fear that Tamils will always be second class citizens in Sri Lanka.

In the six years I have lived here now, I can’t say I have come across a single instance of bias towards myself as a tamil. But then, neither does that mean it doesn’t exist – all I can maintain is that it doesn’t exist at the predominant level that the rest of my community fears.

It wasn’t until I read up on the ehtnic conflict and its causes and read especially of the ‘83 riots and what happened then that I understood my parents frantic worry in trying to convince my sister and I to go abroad and my community’s sense of animosity.

Till then, having returned from another country where I never fit in due to my culture, language and citizenry, I was simply reveling in the feeling of being ‘home’ at last and could not understand why so many tamils would go through so many humiliating procedures to get foreign visas and then endure even more humilations in whichever country they went to.

An incident comes to mind. As soon as the ceasefire was declared in 2002, I pressured my family to allow me to come back to Sri Lanka on my own. They arranged for me to be escorted by an elderly Tamil gentleman who was coming down on some work related issue. At the airport he asked me why I was so eager to return to Sri Lanka when most young people were desperate to get out of it.

“I just can’t understand why they would want to go to a new country where the culture would be so alien to theirs. I grew up here, knowing that this was not my country, that I was an ‘outsider’, that I was from an alien culture and that always hurt. I just want to be in my own land and want to fit in”, I replied.

Having also been discriminated against as an alien, I was thoroughly fed up and my hunger to return to Sri Lanka knew no bounds. So, since I hadn’t appeared to convince him of the wisdom of my action, I added “I just want to be in a place where I know I belong, where I will not be treated as a 2nd class citizen.”

To which he patiently replied, “I am still living here even though I ought to have retired and gone back long ago because I prefer to be treated as a 2nd class citizen in a foreign country rather than a 2nd class citizen in my own country, which is how Tamils there are treated. You will learn this bitter truth the hard way like I did, soon enough”.

Well thus far, personally speaking, I have not yet learned any such bitter truth. Whether it is naive of me to think so I do not know, but despite all the ugliness this country has witnessed post insdependence of a racial nature, all I can do is hope for a better future. I sincerely believe that Sri Lanka can have such a future and what’s more that It like the war’s end will come to pass much sooner that most people anticipate.

With regard to the five words – I won’t talk about sadness or despair or the other negative words that most of the other bloggers used. Since I deliberately kept myself from feeling anything, I shouldn’t be hypocritic now and admit to any such emotion.

So it will have to be

Guilt
Relief
Hope
Hope
And more Hope

Everyone else seems to be tagged already so I won’t tag anyone either. Thanks for bringing me out of retirement Chavie – Hope it was worth the effort

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Tweet, Tweet!

07Apr09

Utterly jobless and bored with it. Well not jobless literally, just that my line of work involves doing nothing most of the time and while my own mind is a fascinating companion, there’s only so much I can take of it.

That’s why I am writing this post – to prevent me from thinking too much. Got one of the computers unblocked yesterday by complaining that I couldn’t do any proper research for my work with so many sites blocked.

Unfortunately, they unblocked Papare Boy’s computer. The ingrate, he’s been grumbling about how slow his computer has become ever since. Anyway, I snitched his computer when he went off somewhere and now he’s continously hovering behind my chair asking when he can have it back. Well, not anytime soon!

Anyway, pointless as this blog is, let’s try to give some meaning to it – I believe I had a vague idea of blogging about twitter.

Right, Twitter – the new rage sweeping the globe, answering that all important question to all those who want to know – What are you doing?

Duh! Obviously I am doing nothing or rather, nothing constructive if I am on twitter 24/7.

Here is where we get to know all about the fascinating details of others’ lives – Like did you know that Jerry bused it to work this morning? Dude, if you gave us some updates about the laiiideee, we might be interested but not if you are going to inundate us with whether you bused it or hitch hiked it to work today. (Unless you hitch hiked with a serial killer and are now writing from beyond the grave – how come we never hear of incidents like that in Sri Lanka?)

The Messiah of Madness is already addicted to twitter. Worse, she’s got me to join the band wagon. So today, PB came along and decided he had to join too. But he took exception to being teased about joining the band wagon, apparently he is doing it only to see what all the others in kottu are up to. He is NOT doing it because everyone else is doing it. Right! Just so long as we have got that sorted out.

Chee, he’s still on my case to get off the computer. I am trying to shame him into acting like a ‘gentleman’ and not harass a ‘lady’ but he’s not that stupid (pretty stupid but not that stupid)!

Oh well, signing off now. See you on twitter if your are there. Cheerio!

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The Grand old Art of Job Motivation

02Apr09

Out of the millions of people all over the globe who have jobs they don’t particularly like and even those who are frantic for such a job because they are unemployed, I know I am one of the lucky few who does have a job that I really love.

You would think that would be motivation enough for me to do my job properly wouldn’t you? Nopes! Well, it’s not exactly that I don’t do my job ‘properly’, it’s just that I drag my feet and wait till the last possible minute of the deadline before handing in my work, even though I have been given plenty of time.

Considering that my current job is one I have always wanted to do and considering also that I got this blessing rather late in life, before which I had a series of crappy jobs which I hated, I am rather surprised at myself.

I didn’t think I would need any pushing to be constantly motivated on this job but somehow, I guess I am one of those lazy, laid back people who always need a push. Ugh! The problem is, I don’t particularly like the ‘pushing’ either. Most Sri Lankan managers have never heard of the ‘positive motivation’ that they keep carping about in management books these days. They still live in the grand old days when motivation of the masses was through the threat of cutting off their heads or throwing them into the dungeons.

It works though – I find myself too lethargic to start and get through with my work until the deadlines draw near. And then, I rush around in a burst of adrenaline and successfully finish the job at the last minute because I know I’ll be hauled over the coals otherwise.

I had been given a week to do some fairly simple stuff that would take only two hours to do but since the deadline is tomorrow, I was taking my own sweet time about it as I usually do. Then suddenly and completely unexpectedly, I got called into the superior’s office and asked to hand in the work. Huh? I had not even started on it! Of course I wasn’t stupid enough to tell her that – i just gave an obviously lame excuse like I was still working on it and that I still wasn’t done ‘researching’ on it.

Whew! By the time I left her office, I felt about two inches tall (or is that small?). I couldn’t help feeling irritated either, if she wanted it well within the deadline, she could have told me and I would have done it. That however is not the point. I know I should finish my
work as early as possible instead of as late as possible but somehow though I keep telling myself that a dozen times a day, I am simply not motivated enough to keep away from the siren like call of kottu,facebook or youtube to settle down and do my work. (Well, at least I am not the only one – thanks to these same tendencies in my colleagues, most websites are now blocked at the office. I really ought to write another post about this someday. Its just like the race between the scientists who keep coming up with newer and newer vaccines and antibiotics and the micro organisms which keep on evolving to counteract it. They keep blocking various sites and we keep coming up with various proxy sites).

So today, I gave myself a good talking to; If I didn’t want to feel the whip on my back again, I better speed up on my own. This reminds me of a motivational lecture I once heard (though I didn’t consider it very motivating at the time).

Japan is one of the world’s biggest fishing nations with its people having a seemingly insatiable appetite for fish. So much so that fish caught around their own waters is not enough to cater to the demand and Japanese trawlers keep going further and further out to sea to increase the catch.

The only problem was, it took a couple of days or even weeks to get back to shore and so the fish wouldn’t be freshly caught. The Japanese being err… highly refined in their taste buds objected to this, they didn’t want frozen fish. So the fishermen kept the fish alive in small tanks till they got back to shore. The fish however were apparently despondent at being taken out of their roomy abode and being dumped into slum like dwellings which they had to share with several of their fellow beings and so didn’t swim around perkily and cheerfully as fish are wont to do.

The discerning Japanese palate detected a taste in the fish here too. They were apparently still not as tasty as the freshly caught fish which had been energetic until the time of its catch. How to solve this dilemma? The ingenious fishermen came up with the perfect motivation to keep the fish energetic and get their blood pumping – They introduced a predatory fish into the tank. The predator ended up eating a few of the fish before the journey back to shore was over but it was certainly successful in keeping all the other fish constantly on the move.

End of Story!

This was the trainer’s idea of what can be achieved if the proper motivation is induced. I have since wondered if the discerning Japanese palate didn’t notice a difference in taste because of the stress induced in the fish. I mean shouldn’t the fish be happy and carefree when caught to taste better? Guess I will never know now.

What I do know is that I am going to be swimming around quite frantically on my own now. I don’t want a piranha introduced into my tank to keep me motivated.

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Ancient Wisdom Vs Modern Science

25Mar09

Yeah, a really original topic, I know! So sue me, I have always been fascinated by all that’s old – I am a history buff. But more to the point, I have always believed in the superiority of ancient sciences such as indigenous medicine and yoga to modern Allopathic medicine and aerobics.

Yes, yes I know – Live and let live and don’t knock others beliefs etc, etc. It is not I who am contemptuous of others’ beliefs. The sole reason I am writing this post is because I am irritated with some of these ’scientific’ know-it-all, skeptical types who always knock down ancient sciences as barbarous and useless. They never keep an open mind, they have already made up their minds it’s useless and so carry out laboratory experiments with the sole objective of proving its useless in mind and then say something like ‘our unbiased, scientific experiments in the laboratory has conclusively proved this is useless’.

The arrogance of some of these so called ‘educated’ people who think they know everything there is to know and that their ancestors were just a bunch of barbarians with nothing noteworthy to teach them, is almost unbelievable.

In addition to taking it upon myself to be the champion of these highly misunderstood folks, I am also a mind reader. What you are thinking right now is ‘What the hell is this rant about?’, right?

OK, I’ll get to the point. A while back, I had to do some research on the prevalence of snake bites in Sri Lanka and the remedies available for it. The only remedy modern science has to offer is something called an antivenin which basically (as per my limited understanding) works like a vaccine. Now all you animal lovers take a great big note of this – I am sure you all know how our highly civilized modern scientists treat our animal brethren anyway but…Ok, so first they have what is called a snake farm. They breed all kinds of poisonous snakes and then milk the poison from them. This is then injected into horses. The natural antibodies the horses then produce to counteract the venom is then sucked out (as in sucking out colossal amounts of their blood) and then with some ’scientific’ type stuff done on it – ta da – you have got antivenin, the panacea to all snake bites.

Er…No, That’s not quite how it works. If it were really effective, I could understand (not condone but understand) the cruelty to the horses and the snakes, but these bloody things are not even all that effective. In most of the cases I researched, the people who got the antivenin died. There were always ’scientific’ explanations for this – they had waited too long, they had wasted time by going to the vedamahattaya first, the antivenin did not work because it was made in India and though it was for the same species of snake in Sri Lanka, environmental circumstances had made the snake and thus its venom, evolutionarily different etc, etc.

And in about 60% of these cases (that was the figure they gave, I am inclined to think it was much more), the patient developed a violent allergic reaction to the antivenin which had to be treated (before which they usually died anyway).

But the message I continually got from the experts were, ‘Sri Lankan people still are stupid enough to believe in the vedamahattaya. We need to change their mindsets and make them come rushing to the nearest hospital where we can cure them.’

I had not been fortunate enough to grow up in a village where snakes and vedamahattayas are the norm (though I come from one originally) but nevertheless I had always heard stories of how the village vedamahattaya cured snake bites – usually with the simple means of some ground herbs. So I asked these experts about the success stories of the vedamahattayas. ‘It has never been proved under laboratory testing. They are all a bunch of charlatans.’ Oh Ok, But I personally know of people who have been cured. ‘Oh, That’s because not all bites from a poisonous snake are poisonous. Some are ‘dry bites’ where the snake chooses to withhold its venom.’

Well gee, so much for the science of the ancients, so we’ve all been hoodwinked all these centuries? I was really annoyed with the medical authorities who were all sanguine in the belief that antivenins were the only answer and the vedamahattaya had nothing at all to offer – except wasting the patient’s precious time when he should be at a hospital instead. The consensus was that only all those who went to a indigenous medicine man after a snake bite were ignoramuses and should be properly educated about the ineffectiveness of indigenous medicine and the absolute effectiveness of modern medicine.

Well excuse me? Even after all this research, If I were to be bitten by a poisonous snake (Not that I would know a nonpoisonous one from the other), I would still try to find a vedamahattaya experienced in treating snake bites (yikes, Do we have any of those in Colombo?).

As part of my research, I interviewed a lot of people as to what they would do if they were bitten by a snake and had access to both an experienced vedamahattaya and a modern hospital. I started with my own family.

My father (who was brought up in said village) thought for a while and said he would go to the hospital first and then the vedamahattaya. Why the hospital first? He gave a sheepish grin. Apparently he had given in to the collective thinking of society that modern science was superior to the ancient ones. My sister said, ‘Of course the Hospital’, and my mother said, ‘Of course the Vedamahattaya.’ They were both shocked at each others answers, one was completely certain the vedamahattaya was a barbarian who belonged to the past while the other was equally certain that modern medicine was more trouble than it was worth.

I couldn’t believe my own family could be this divided. I then went further afield to my acquaintances and friends. Almost all who had been brought up in the city were sure the hospital was the only way to go. To my surprise, most who had been brought up in the village said the same thing as well. I am inclined to suspect that they said it only because they did not want to come across as ignorant villagers. Atleast one, a young woman doing her PhD in the highly scientific field of microbiology, admitted to this.

I think its sad that a bunch of know-it-alls in the scientific community should so have brainwashed society into believing that modern science is the only way to go and that only ignoramuses would seek out practitioners of the ancient arts of healing.

So where do you fit into all this? Do you think that indigenous medicine has nothing to offer? If bitten by a snake, where would you go?

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Grooan, Why Me?

28Feb09

God, every bone and muscle in my body aches. Can Bones ache? I don’t know but it surely feels like it.

I spent the last two days cleaning and dusting in order to move into a new house and it still isn’t over yet. I just can’t believe that one person can accumulate this much of junk – and before you ask ‘why did you accumulate it then?’, no, it wasn’t me, it was my dear mater.

Ye Gads, She has got stuff from the time SHE was a baby still stored up.  I never knew a worse hoarder in my life (well, maybe I do, quite a few actually). I complained to my father and according to him, its something to do with our community and its culture.

He quoted an old proverb to prove it. It went something along the lines of, ‘ Don’t even waste a piece of straw. It could be used as a toothpick.’

Yeesh!

That about epitomizes my mother’s attitude to all her possessions. She never, ever throws anything away because ‘You never know when you might need it’.

It’s driving me CRAZY! Aaarrgh! All the junk does is clutter the house, act as a receptacle for dust and grime and is a nightmare to clean. And it’s absolutely no use, trying to reason with her. To just cautiously suggest that somehting long broken, rusted and absolutely useless be thrown out is to invite a tirade on how kids these days dont the value of things, blah, blah, blah.

So what exactly is the value of a headless coconut scraper anyway? Especially since she also possessed an electric coconut scraper.  Since she never listened to reason, my sister and I waited till she went on a trip to India and threw all the junk out.

Ha – few moments in my life have been as liberating.

It took her a Long time after she came back to discover everything that we had thrown out and even though it was over five years ago, she still hasn’t stopped moaning to her friends about  all the ‘valuable stuff’ we threw away.

Now that we are moving into a new house, she wanted new sets of everything, a new gas cooker, a new rice cooker, new pots and pans, new utensils, new everything.

Well and good, we agreed with that, she has been using the same stuff for years and they are worn out now. But…. after buying a new set of everything, she wants to take the old ones too.

What on earth for?

‘Because you never know when you might need them.’

That’s when I finally lost my temper and put my foot down.

‘NO, YOU ABSOLUTELY WON’T NEED THAT STUFF. THROW IT OUT!’

Goodness, a battle royal followed. I was determined not to give in, she wasn’t the one who had to clean up all that stuff, I did!

Just when the neighbors were probably wondering why the neighborhood cats were doing it up so much in the middle of the day, my father butt his inevitable head in. My sister often says that he fancies himself as the Eric Solheim of the family. The problem is, he more often ends up playing India rather than Norway.

Dad : What is the matter?

Mom : She is trying to dictate to me about what I can and cannot keep of my own belongings!

Dad : Here, why are you upsetting your mother? It’s her right to keep whatever she wants.

Me : She wants to take all the old stuff along when you have bought her brand new sets of everything?

Dad : Honey, Why do you want that? You have new ones after all?

Mom : Waah! What will I do if the new ones break down suddenly? You don’t know the value of things, you don’t know how much I suffer, Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah….

Dad : All Right, All Right, you are right, you can keep the stuff!

Me : But…

Dad : Never Mind! Don’t upset your mother. Can’t you see how stressed she is?

Sigh!

So I gave up on that and went to pack the clothes. My sister and I have filled our entire wardrobes into two tiny cupboards. A huge steel Almeira which is so packed that clothes tumble out every time we open the doors, contains half her wardrobe. The other half is jam packed into several suitcases.

While going through them, I discovered hundreds of sarees and even more saree jackets. in every shade of color imaginable.

‘Mom, these are sarees you haven’t worn in several years. Why not give them away?’

‘They are in perfectly good condition, I can still wear them.’

‘But you don’t.’

‘I will.’

Sigh!

‘How about these saree jackets? You haven’t worn them since you were a skinny 20. I can’t fit into them either. ‘

‘Keep them, I want them.’

‘What for?’

‘I want them.’

‘WHAT FOR?’

‘I SAID I WANT THEM.’

‘HEY, DIDN’T I TELL YOU NOT TO UPSET YOUR MOTHER?’

Oh dear God, please give me strength!

And then I moved on to her boxes of piles and piles of magazines. Magazines that date back to the 1980s. Magazines that are older than I am.  (And to one particular friend of mine who might sympathize with this and tell me about the nostalgic, feel good smell of books, NO – these books didn’t smell nice, they just gave of f whiffs of dust which has still got my nose itching).

You would think I would have learned by now, but I am basically an optimistic person.

‘Mom, What do you need all these old mags for? Can I give them away to a 2nd hand book shop? ‘

‘Are you crazy? Those books are irreplaceable!’

‘Why would anyone want to repalce them? They are just ancient magazines?’

‘They are very valuable. Keep them, I want them!’

‘You haven’t gone through them in years and its not as if they are collectors’ items in mint condition. These are just a bunch of dirty, dog eared old magazines. What on earth do you want with them?’

‘WAAAH!’

‘FOR THE LAST TIME, STOP UPSETTING YOUR MOTHER!’

I gave up!

So for the last two days, I have been packing up thousands of magazines, every kind of saree ever printed since the 1970s, every blackened and broken utensil I can find and then some.

Why me?

 

 

 

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