The danger of being the obedient kid

We all have seen that kid.

He does all the school work and never eats from the canteen because the mother does not like it. (For the sake of gender equality, I will use “she” for the next sentences) She never buys a dress that is not approved by the father and she never cries thinking of the shoes that the next door neighbor has got for her birthday. She is happy with what she has.

It is the dream of every parent to raise an obedient kid. Even if the kid is nasty, parents wish he/she was obedient and it is not exaggeration if I say that such nasty kids have at least once heard his/ her mom saying “Look at that kid, he listens to his parents and never fusses around like you do. Look around and learn how to behave”

She had gone to the same school

Today I delivered a lecture to the inmates of a rehabilitation center. Most of the inmates there were either raped or sexually abused. During the question time, one of the girls asked about the schools that I have attended. When I told them about the schools, the girl who posed the question smiled, pointed towards her friend and said "මෙයා ගිහින් තියෙන්නෙත් ඒ ඉස්කෝලෙට" [she had gone to the same school]. The smile and the eyes said, "you see, you are correct. Deeps is educated in the same school as yours"

Who use ICT in Sri Lanka and why? - part 2

You can read the part one of this post here

Social Status and the Digital Divide

By the word social status, I mean the social class and the income level of the people.

Who use ICT in Sri Lanka and why?

Being a university student, I have had the opportunity to conduct researches on various topics. One of the most interesting researches I have done is a sociological analysis of the digital divide within Sri Lanka. This post is based on the research findings

chicken pox saga

I went to the doctor last month because there were some unusual blisters in my body. The doctor examined my mouth ,ears, back and forth and gave the verdict.
I was down with chicken pox. Well that was a bad timing, I had to rest in bed while my friends were busy working on

Why just colour, we need the size too!!

Im keeping myself out from the Facebook fun these days. The only reason for that is my increasing love for twitter as a social network. Its simple, fun and useful in many ways than facebook. For example, if i have a problem in ubuntu, twitter status update is the best way to get the problem solved. If you want to check out a film before you actually watch it, a simple twitter search would allow you to know how the people all over the world from diffrent walks of life think about it.

Managing life in the Internet era

Friends are those who enjoy being with us. Out of them, there are special friends who enjoy being with us in both the happy and sad moment. During the days when there were no phones and internet, it was not a hard job to select those few special friends out of the handful of companions. Simple logic, if there are 5 candidates for 3 vacancies, selection is easy for the interviewer.

Boys, Prefects and more

This post is nothing but some personal ideas.

These days are making history. A girl was killed inside a school and apparently, a phone, some prefects and teachers are to be responsible for that. Some girls and boys who were imagining that they were in love had eaten kaneru to frighten the parents. These incidents may be just news for the majority of the nation. For parents, it may appear as a warning and for the students it sure is a shocking news. Since many have talked of the incidents in the above points of view, why not blog about the way i feel about this whole thing as a past prefect?

I was the deputy school captain of my school for the year 2006/7 . more than 3 years back, my thinking pattern was very very different than the present one. there are plenty of reasons which you 'll understand by the end of the post.

I still have no clear idea what was in that mobile phone to make her suicide. But I'm sure the school has a big share over her death. if the same incident happened in a boys college, he would be punished, may be kneeling in front of the office and that is all. so , what is wrong with all this girls' colleges?

First and foremost, I love my school because it is the place which made me who I am. If you enjoy being friends with me, you have to thank my school too. How ever, that does not mean that I only have to speak of the good side of everything.

Going back to the incident, if I was the Head Prefect of that school,and if I had the power to decide, what I would do is to talk to the child and let her walk off with the phone. no problem to both sides, she will get the phone and I will get her abide by the rules of the school. But, that is not the case, all the senior prefects would have got together and they decide what to do. This "what to do " part is dangerous. Being prefects, they have the power, but using the power in the proper way is not taught to them by the relevant authorities or simply, as any other human being, they need to use power to gain wealth and status.

It is true that I also had to take some actions to some "actions" when I was working as a prefect. but now, they seem stupid. totally stupid. Once I was talking with a younger sister of the school and she was saying that she was afraid of me. I asked her why. she said that I was strict. well, I would have been strict during the school time, but now i am not (although i think so, its up to you to judge). so the reason to think that I'm strict and a monster to be afraid of?

Tearing up a picture of prince william in front of her eyes! I didn't even remember doing it, but it seems it was embedded in her mind. I continued the conversation. Akki I was born in UK and I love that country. Prince william is the royalty of my mother country. It is true that he is a "guy" but still its nothing but a mere liking to collect pictures of the people you love.

I was sad. but was helpless. during the time when I was a prefect, we had to abide by the rules and if went other wise, it means the end.

Thus, boys were out of everything. Being prefect, I had to be of an exemplary moral character and according to the idea of the world in which I was living at that time, being good is all about being good and being away from boys.

If I go for a debate, a quiz or any other inter school competition, talking with boys was looked down upon by me myself. It's not that I hated guys. It was more like a virtual dungeon. I was under the impression that talking with boys and joking was a bad thing and each time I talked with them I was mentally counting the time and make sure I end the discussion before hitting the red line. It was such a difficult thing for me to talk with boys, let alone having a boy friend.

It was the result of both the school and the family. On one hand, I'm grateful for both the parties for keeping me out of the company of boys and on the other hand, I'm so sad that I missed a great company during the school time.

That is all about being a prefect in summary

Since I missed the company of boys during the school time, now I know what I missed during the past. I personally do not like being in love during the school time. How ever, not having the opportunity to be friends with boys is sure a misfortune.

When a girl with lesser understanding about the creatures called boys come into a society, she a sure to be an easy catch. But today hardly any school would admit the fact. For most of the girls' colleges are walling up the avenues for their students to mingle with boys. Its just crazy....

When such students become citizens of this big society, they fall in to the trap easily. Guys would come as lovers, friends, study mates, project team members etc to your life and who knows what their real intention is if you have no understanding of the way the mind of guys behave?

For me, luckily I met this guy who very well understood my situation and helped me to get away with my boy phobia. But, we cannot be sure that each and every girl would have that chance. Although I had no close male friends at that time, I believed in him and it is my luck that he is such a good person to be with. what if he turned out to be a crazy moron. When he was being friendly with me, I thought it was love but he was just being friends. That was just because I didn't know how is it to be friends with a boy.

When he first phoned me, I thought it was a sin to answer.

But today I laugh at the fact.

The reason is that today I have male and female friends alike and I think it is a priviledge.

However, during the school time, it was not. talking with a boy was considered a taboo and I used to look down upon the girls who had male friends. Any girl with a strict family back ground and would think the same. The situation would be dangerous if she was brought up in a girls only school.

Then, let us consider the present situation in sri lanka.

Mobile phones being prohibited

Facebook banned

Porn sites blocked

Movies with adult only content censored/prohibited

If i was a prefect, I would say yes to all these.

But as I'm not a school child anymore, these things stand just like bullshit.

To start with, I would quote "ඕවා මේ ලංකාවේ බ්ලොක් කරනවා කියන්නේ අනාගත පරම්පරාවම අවුල් කරවන වැඩක්. මොකද ඔයා හිතාගෙන ඉන්නේ අපි බැඳපු දවසේ රෑට කරන්න ඕනේ දේවල් අපේ අම්මා, තාත්තා කියල දෙයි කියලද? ඒවා ගැන අපි දැන ගන්නේ ඕවා බලලා තමා."

Note that this was uttered by a school boy in a conversation he had with me about blocking the porn sites.

Although not 100% correct, he definitely has a point there.

I do not encourage anybody to watch porn, but at least you got to have an idea about sex, no need to explain as I believe that the readership of this blog is matured to understand what that means.

Going back to the words of that teenager,it reflects how young people find a way to quench their thirst of curiosity. If one way is blocked, they will soon find another way.

The issue is the same with all the other taboo topics.

Now you might wonder what the heck me being a prefect has to do with this?

Well, being a prefect, I tried to be a goody goody person. No jokes, no friendly talks with boys and no any other non-sense. I even avoided chatting, emailing and IMing in sinhala thinking that it would destroy the image that the public have of me.

But to day, I'm different, may be different than a traditional girl who would not blog about porn sites being blocked. Coming into the university and of course reading made me completely a different person. The bottom line is that when you hang out with people, you can get to know the society and it is not what the school offers us or at least it is different than what the school promotes. (Now, that statement is personal guys. so, please do not get angry over it.It is how I felt)

This difference between the actual society and what the school wanted us to be makes lot of troubles.

With all those hushed up thoughts and feelings, I came out of the school in 2007. when I was feeling that society was diffrent than the one that we had inside the school it was too late. However, being a prefect, i have got lot of experince on how to deal with people. Being a silent girl those days, i observed the society and of course, made some terrible mistakes too.

But still, being prefect gives you the courage to carry out any task succesfully in life. for me, today I have managed well in the company of males because being a prefect gave provided me the right time to be open. so dear sisters and brothers.think of the chance and act carefully. And parents, im sure if you are with your children and be friends with them, many disasters can be avoided

One country one nation......big thank you to all the sons & daughters who contributed towards it

(Pilimathalawa town celebrating the victory )


War is over. LTTE leader is dead.

People rejoice.

But who knows when and where they would start again?

How can we eat ‘Parrippu’ and ‘Bath’ the whole day along?

'Amma', what sort of crap is this?? How can we eat ‘Parrippu’ and ‘Bath’ the whole day?

For mothers, this sort of conversation is a headache and for the children it is an expression of anger towards the parents. But what of the children who don't even have ‘Parippu’ and ‘Bath’?

It is their story which won the MOST POPULAR FILM award in the 56th International Berlin Mobile Film Competition on the theme FOOD TASTE AND HUNGER.

However, the” story” is not popular as the “film” was. The reason may lie in the fact that “they” do not grumble as we do. No grumble, no attention. Every body lives happily ever after.

And no body knows this happily ever after has its own secret legend. This is a tribute to them for their bravery and courage in being grumble-less and for all the others, an eye-opener.

View this movie at cultureunplugged.com

Are you going to fight with 'Amma' again?

Guys I'm sick of your blogs

I'm jealous of pahan , indi and shakunthala because i do not know how they have developed such sites

I hate sudaraka because he makes my blog a website of a 5th Grader

I avoid visiting chamila and kalinga because they eat my time


And above all I m sick of all you guys for you all have proved that girls are dumb when it comes to computing( I m not talking about the blog posts. I m referring to the format, color combinations and the technologies that you have used to make the pages appear dangerously lovable)

As a victim of your brilliantly developed pages, I have the right to point my finger towards the
criminals.

some simple questions;

--how many times have you chased away your sister from the computer?
--how many times have you deleted your sisters' documents just to take revenge for a silly thing?
--how many times have you hidden music and movie files so that the sister would spend less time in front of the computer?

and, how many of you have given user accounts with administrator rights to your sisters?

guys I know your answer.

But you alone are not the criminals.

Our culture itself limits a girl to the kitchen from birth to death. When parents buy toys for
children, they go for dolls for the girl and cars for the boys. In few days, the girl becomes an expert in raring children and the boy becomes an excellent car driver.

The story continues.

When the girl wants to touch the car, the boy wouldn't let her.

The car and the doll reside in the beds of the respective owners without even being touched by the other.

Time passes, a computer comes home and the same story continues.

Touching the computer is prohibited for the girl as she would "break it". Most of the times, this rule is imposed by the boys on girls.

It is true that everything is best learned by experience. Then why boys don't let the girls experience and learn? why don't they allow girls to do mistakes? why don't boys remember that it is the way they learned?

I have been fighting over this issue for ages with my brother and this is what he had to say as a conclusion.

"I make mistakes and i do learn. but when it comes to you, you do silly things ( for example, changing the modem settings to see how the performance changes with the settings and leaving it as if nothing happened. cz I m sure he will kill me, if he knew i had done that) but you do them at least twice to learn."

Yes, an average girl is not the techno type, she would be into more feminine things all the times. For example, just take Facebook. Girls would be talking of all the status messages of the hot guys in town and about the number of gifts she had received. But a boy would be speaking of the security in face book and he might compare Face book to Linked In.

Girls do not talk of security in Facebook because it is none of their business. they just want to keep in touch with friends and that is it. she doesn't have enough time to spend in front of the computer and she is not expected to. have you ever heard of a girl who is referred to by the parents as a child who is always sitting in front of the computer? (i bet no. but if you have heard, you are lucky)

You see it is obvious that girls take a lot of time to learn.

Now to the point of view of the boys. you might say that girls do not have the interest in computing cz they can get everything done by boy friend or brother.

you are correct.

Any way, im lucky to have to have a brother who comments about my modem usage in the blog and say in person that i myself have to find the ways to control it. I think that is what you should do. let her experience and learn but ,support her to do it.(although my brother is too stingy when it comes to support)

On the other hand,as chamila said in comments of my previous post, most of the ladies think they cannot work as well as men.(ගැහැනුන් තුල (75% and decreasing) ස්වාභාවයෙන්ම තියෙනවා හීනමානයක්.. මට පිරිමි තරම් වැඩ කරන්න බෑ තියලා...). this is one of the key reasons for girls to give the field of computing.

But there are exceptions too, do you konw that the head of the Computer Science Department in University of Moratua is a lady?


After all, here i am, trying to edit the blog template for a week to get a share this button at the end of all the posts.

Guys now you can laugh at me( for i know, in your eye,i m a girl who downloads you tube videos this way)



The reason is that i know only a little bit of html and java. But at least i know that there are many things to learn.

The lack of knowledge made me helpless (In fact, it also made me sick of the nice blogs) and sick of our culture which nourishes the stupid idea that the girls are for kitchen.

And one important point.

It is learning and experience with the support of my brother.

If he does not allow me to use the computer through out the day, I would be thinking that blogging is just about posting and adding widgets to the template.

So guys, one humble request, help your girls and sisters to experience. If you take the initiative, they can come out of the "cultural shell"

and girls, please do not fear, experience and feel the challenge


PS:: The blogs I have mentioned above are the ones that I really love.

----There is never jealousy where there is not strong regard--- Washington Irving

Of blogging, debating, ragging and English

I seriously need to work with Sinhala Unicode. (try my web tutor) The reason is nothing but the mere feeling of outlandishness I experience when commenting on Sinhala Blogs in English. The valance of Sinhala Blogging in developing or diminishing the image if Sri Lanka in the web is a problem to be debated. However, it is nice to have at least a small portion of servers to store information that cannot be decoded other than by a Sri Lankan. if we have the resources, now we can even end up with something like Youkutube in Sinhala.

Now, some of the English Bloggers would say that Sinhala Blogging is just bullshit. Why waste server space for the use of a small number of people? The Chinese do it because China has the largest population in the world. The Indians do it because Tamil and Hindi and India are known through out the world.(This reminds me of a comment reply that i received in You Tube.)

And i have noticed a big difference between the English and Sinhala bloggers. Most of the English bloggers(I mean posting 100% in English) are equipped with good english and most of the popular bloggers are working in big companies. They are far superior to the sinhala bloggers who are mostly uni students, school goers and all the nitwits. (now, guys, i m new to this world and this is my first impression. if i am wrong, please forgive me.). Most of the Sinhala bloggers are fun type. but they are real Sri Lankans and you feel it when going through the blogs. For example, a Sinhala blogger would say"මම ඊයෙ හන්දියෙ කඩෙට ගියා පාන් බාගයක් ගන්න" and an English blogger would say the same thing like this" I went to the boutique yesterday to buy a loaf of bread"(pardon me,i don't know how to say පාන් බාගයක් in English). But හන්දියෙ කඩෙ is totally different from the "boutique in the junction". And consequently, the person who says හන්දියෙ කඩෙ is treated differently by the person who says "boutique".

It is a simple fact for the average Sri lankan. The fight and the discrimination is everywhere. School, University, Bus, market, Tuition Class and even the Bath Room..If you do not know the English Way of doing things, you are sure to end up using commode as the wash basin like BORAT (In fact, that had happened to me.. but yes, not literally)

In the school, i was in all this "English Socieities" . But my parents knew very little English. My mother once accompanied me to a debate to see how im doing my job although im sure she wouldnt have understood half of the things i said at the debate. But that is motherly love. Mothers love to see how well the children are doing. But that very "love" had made her left out in the audience. Apparently, the English had won the day. Love was a scrap. She was treated by the other parents as if she had drunken the waters of comed simply beacause she was not good at kadu fighting (English) and she did not fit in the "make up all over", "posh","wearing expensive clothing" society. When all the people are speaking in English, a non English speaker would keep the mouth shut. She did that too. The conclusion was that she was a misfit.

That was the first and the last time she accompanied me to a English drama, debate or to any place that i had to deal with English speaking crowd.

And hats off to you who guys did it. Now i know when to use English and when not to use it.

"Mother like daughetr" ---Darcy is correct (If im still ok with the loving memory of Pride and Prejudice). Im going through the same.

University Life is the latest. I did my A/L and got into the Uni to become a member of the Non-Ragging student community. As a Buddhist, im really happy that im not hurting others nor get hurt by others in the name of "orientation" or "Welcome" . I have the freedom from seniors to do what ever I want. I really appreciate that.

but,

when the freedom itself becomes a cage where my true self is tormented. It hurts.

I dont know how to speak, dress and eat like a daughter of the elite class but i was chosen to be among them. May be to watch and learn how to dance and speak English Fluently and practice the elite etiquette like they do. But Lord, God who ever you are , your decison dosent work for me. Still im a misfit, just like my mother.

I feel nervous when talking to the receptionist at ACHE (in English) because I Know Im sure to make a mess in front of every body. so I tend to speak with a low voice. Then they hear the simplest thing like "close the door" as "I wanna go to the toilet". I may be too timid and they might have also thought that I belong in the dust bin.

Yes, that is the place for all the (English speaking) girls with a parentage who does not know English,unshaven legs and hands, no expensive car and the no high society etiquette. People say that you have to learn English, but believe me, it is not enough, you have to be like one of them. Until then, you will be a misfit. Just like how English comments in a Sinhala blog would sound. Another important thing,"හෙට මට ශොපින් යන්න තියනවා මෙයා" is always laughed at(by the Godaya and accepted by the other group) and "හෙට මට කඩෙ යන්න තියනවා" is always accepted(by the Godaya and laughed at/ considered uncommon by the other group).

But

Im not broken.
Im happy and proud of me, myself and I
I will not change

And

I will grow with the people who accept me as this