There's nothing like a good baila!

Yaman Bando Vesak Balanna

There's absolutely nothing like a good baila to get a party going.. I got this email saying that you have got to be Sri Lankan to get it on to baila.. N maybe that's true.. But think about it. Even the stiffest of the stiff could probably get it on to baila! I'm pretty sure when they see how people let go of themselves to a classic - like Desmond's one right here, their toes would start tapping.. N that would reverberate to the rest of their body.. Possibly resulting in really odd looking dancing.. But then again.. One doesn't have to have any particular style of dancing do they? If they could just let go of themselves and move - something I need to seriously consider learning how to do.. Oh well.. Until then.. At least you'll find me standing in a corner tapping my toes to "Yaman Bando Vesak Balanna"

Personal Development

A few weeks ago, I came up with an initiative to do this personal development training for my team at work. This is a training program that I'm recreating, after having gone for a full day session organised by a company specialising in such trainings. It's a popular program and those who have come for it thus far have given the program an average rating of 3.8 out of 5 and given me, the trainer, a rating of 4.6!

The thing is that all this while I've been doing this training organisation wide - advertising it through email. This email however, never gets to my team mates as such, because they sit on a different network and aren't exposed to what goes on in Virtusa unless they're directly a part of it. Knowing this is why I decided to organize such a training at all.

How did it go? "How'd it go?" you ask?? Horribly!!! Absolutely horribly! 8 people showed interest in attending the training at the time that the invitation went out and when I had session 1 yesterday only 6 people turned up! None of them part of the original 8 who showed interest! It got even worse. Of the 6 people who did show up, only 2 of them were even serious about it! The other 4 were just there for the heck of it. How pathetic is that?? When it came to today's session, thankfully, only the two who were serious about it in the first place turned up so I told them that I'm cancelling today's session and am gonna organise one for the entire company - structuring it such that they could attend today's lesson and leave.

It seriously disappointed me though - to think that one would not be interested in developing oneself as a person. It seems as though the only thing the people in my team care about is the work they do. That's all. They're all just frogs in a well - doing as they've been instructed to do - not doing anything at all to lift themselves out of that well. I'm just waiting for them to wake up from their little day dream and realise that they're jobs have disappeared in front of their eyes because they've been taken over by someone with either the same or even less technical knowledge than them - but someone who's a far more rounded person on the whole. Because that's what today's manager is looking for.

Horoscope

Devotion knows no boundaries. Even so, your loving attention might not be required for a day or two. Be an individual. Find yourself again.

And how true this can sometimes be. I couldn't possibly agree with this wisdom anymore. Sometimes we all get to that point where we need to take a step back and breathe. It'll do us all some good. Don't let yourself be taken for granted. Make your presence felt. If it isn't, then your absence definitely will be.

I've got a new blog!

Hey everyone!

Welcome to another week. Just a quick note to let you'll know that after much pondering and deliberation and delay, my creative writing blog is finally off the ground! Please take the time to go have a look at it and let me know what you think. I might not change over night, but your criticism will definitely be taken into consideration and I will see what can be done about it. Bottom line - rants and raves are both welcome. The blog's located at http://cre8iveme.wordpress.com. Hope you guys have an absolutely brilliant week ahead.

Happy reading!

Thilanka

Technorati Tags: Thilanka Randunuge,Sabarish Mahadevan,Odel,creativity,Thushara Peiris,Kalpa Alawatte,Thilanka,Sabarish,Thushara,drawing

There's a girl in my team at work - Thilanka being her name - and that creation pictured above is something that she solely deserves the credit for. According to her, that drawing is nothing great.. I beg to defer. When did she do it? While we were on an onsite update call. On what? Some rough A4 sheet of paper that was left lying around on a conference room table.. Just like that.. Took the white board marker and started doodling.. And that was the result! I was completely wow'd!! I told her she can definitely design t-shirts for Odel or someone.. She can make money with her creativity.. And she IS creative!

The drawing pictured just above is something she doodled on a desk.. Again on an onsite update call! I'm guessing Sabarish, Kalpa and Thushara (mostly) are her inspiration.

To tell you a bit about Thilanka the person.. I wouldn't know where to start. To begin with, one of the things that first struck me about her is how big a heart she has. She's the kind of person who you could play the fool out of from morning to night and she'd still come back for more (of course after threatening to hit you a million times and sometimes even carrying out that threat). I've had the pleasure of working with her for about a year now and that year has been dotted with all these different experiences - all these crazy little things that Thilanka does that make you want to burst out laughing. The best part of it all is that she isn't even afraid of what other people may think and therefore isn't really afraid of making a fool of herself. She'll go and do something crazy and then come back to office and very proudly tell the whole team about what she did as well! Most people I know would rather die than let other people know about something silly they did - a good example of this was getting blasted by the security at the World Trade Center for running up an escalator going down and then even falling and grazing her shin! And what was amazing was while relating the story to us she was laughing herself!

I already mentioned the fact that she has a really big heart but let me elaborate on that.. Recently my dad wasn't well and I had to take a half-day's leave from office to take him to the doctors etc. When I came back to office, she made it a point to personally come up to me and ask me about him.. And then told me about a similar experience she had with her dad and about the stuff that she had to go through - which to me she needn't have done.. I wasn't expecting it.. But she did and for that I am thankful.

Bottom line, she may be a tom-boy in her mannerisms and she may hit other boys with stuffed toys at random - just for the heck of it - but as a person.. On the whole.. She's worth her weight in gold..

As for me - it's been a pleasure getting to know Thilanka and working with her on a day to day basis.. She's the sort of person who would go out on a limb to help a friend - no questions asked - and this is something one rarely finds anymore.

Here's wishing her all the very best with her t-shirt designs - lets hope she makes some money out of them - and doesn't forget us peasants on her way up.

Happy 2008 everyone!

Technorati Tags: 2008,Beyond Borders,Kola Kenda,New Year,Silver Pixels,weekend

Hey everyone.. It's a weekend again.. After many many weekends I might add :) I just checked out my blog, only to find that the last time that I did submit a post was as far back as October last year! And even that wasn't a proper "post" post, it was just to let everyone know what I had submitted for the Silver Pixels photo exhibition at Virtusa. Quick update on that - I didn't win :( Oh well.. What I did notice though was that a lot of the winning entries were doctored in Photoshop with their colours adjusted n all.. And the pics looked like they'd been taken with an SLR - as opposed to a crumby point n shoot so yeah.. Or it could just be that I'm a sore loser.. Either way.. Result remained the same. Hopefully next year would look better.. Once I get myself a nice SLR and finish studying Photoshop off those DVDs that I bought for 150/- each :D I love Sri Lanka.. Hehehe..

So what else has been happening with me? Hmmm... If we should go as far back as my last post.. Well then life just became work, work n more work.. The project got seriously hectic and although I wasn't working late nights or weekends, I was just stressed as hell! In addition to that, I got pulled in to help with the organizing of what we call RAVE (Recongize And Value Everyone) Day at work and then this Open House thing as well.. In short, it was one mad rush! I did get to liaise with some of the top ppl at Virtusa, so from a recognition perspective that was nice... But stressful nonetheless.

Things slowed down comparably in December on the work front and I went on leave! A good two weeks off work.. Only having to go in for a couple of hours on the 24th and 26th. That too though to this new location that we've moved to - from the prestige of operating from the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center to a dilapidated building that the JVP had set fire to in 1983 and had not been in occupation since. This coir mattress company called Cyntex used it as a factory, which was when it got burned down.. And now they've happily carpeted the floors and put pre-fab on the cracking walls and Virtusa's calling it Orion! They're planning on having 5 floors of us there and currently the luxury of having our morning and evening tea delivered to our desks is but a dream. But that's the least of our worries. The place itself is so dusty with all the remnant cement dust having coated the air-conditioning system and that spewing all the muck possible out of it is messing us all up in a big way! But obviously they don't really care.. They're saving 60% of the money that they used to spend when we were at the WTC. So for them it's like "JACKPOT!!!" Who gives if the guys that get us the money fall sick? There's always more people who are "willing" to work extra hours to get the work done right? Which is when people start leaving the company - but then again.. Who cares! There are hordes of people just clamouring to get into Virtusa but there just aren't enough places. Oh well.. That's their lookout I guess.

I was forwarded a link to a rather interesting blog - belonging to a collective calling themselves Beyond Borders. They've gotten together and appealed to all those creative Sri Lankans out there to submit stories of a thought provoking nature - of experiences they've had in Sri Lanka - and now the book's been published. This is something similar to the Chicken Soup series and they've Sri Lankan-ized it and called it "Kola Kenda for the Sri Lankan Soul". The ebook's available here and is free to download, copy, print and distribute - provided it's done on an as-is basis. If you want to find out more about this collective, they can be found at http://beyondborders.wordpress.com/. Having printed this book out myself, and using it as "throne" reading, I was thinking its been a while since I exercised that left side of my brain as well... So taking from that, I've decided to put together my own little creative writing blog - this is just a heads up.. It's still a work in progress - but no sooner its ready, the link to the blog will definitely be posted here.

On a closing note to all these random musings, I would like to wish everyone an awesome 2008. May it be the best one yet, filled with new opportunities that fulfill your life's aspirations and at the end of it, may you look back and think to yourself "Man! What a rush!!" :D All the very best for an absolutely brilliant year ahead!

What finally made it to Silver Pixels

And so we've come to the final day of selections. All the votes have been taken into consideration and as much as all of you had trouble trying to figure out which pics to put through - here's where the majority pointed:

The Colombo Swimming Club at Dusk

The two boys at Matale

Fire

I did have yet another option however - that of the old man with the bicycle.. After having the bicycle photoshopped out as Hijaz (my cousin) suggested. And that looked nice. It sort of gave the viewer the impression of a man who had passed the prime of his life and everything was downhill from there.. Whose future was as bleak as the country's and he seemed afraid that if he didn't sell another broom that he wouldn't have his next meal. But then Hafsa (another cousin) had a look at it and she had an even more valid point.. In her opinion, the picture of the two boys was a better pick.. For the fact that they had a lot more expression in their faces. They were curious. They were inquisitive. They were excited. They were happy. They had their entire futures ahead of them and they just couldn't wait to see what lay in store for them. That sold it for me. And to think I took this pic with me to Millers when I was getting them done, but chose to print the old man over this.. Oh well.. Hopefully there won't be another protest that blocks us WTC-ites from the rest of Fort and literally cuts us away from the rest of Colombo! :)


A BIG thank you goes out again to everyone who mailed in their votes. You would see from my previous post that they were very seriously and openly tracked and if I do win (which I certainly hope I do...), it's because of all of you. I will be using my blog to let you know what happened eventually with these pics at Silver Pixels - so fingers crossed.. X. Thanks again :)