What’s Next?

So tonight is the end of the Cease Fire Agreement (CFA), actually it ended some time back and now it is officially over. Well at least someone had the guts to pull out of it, and appease the patriots.

So now what? I hope that the patriots will do the fighting without living in luxury in Colombo and running around escorted by speeding Defenders and barking in parliament.

I know several people who came back to Sri Lanka after the ceasefire was implemented and now they are heading back to their adopted nations vowing never to return to this hell hole again. The Cost of Living is sky rocketing and either you have to be a farmer or a millionaire to survive. At least the farmers get some sort of subsidies and have a lifestyle that does not demand what the middle class are used to live with. A millionaire on the other hand has enough money to survive no matter how expensive the things are? Being Middle Class is like being under a curse in Sri Lanka.

There are explosions all over the place and no one is safe. There are rumors that schools are to be closed for about one to three months. The education process is also going to be messed up due to the escalation in fighting. If the LTTE are defeated militarily then it is good riddens to bad rubbish but if not then we are totally messed up. Is it wise taking the chance? I personally do not think so, since we have being trying for decades and have not been able to accomplish it. I still think a strategic political settlement that will trap the LTTE forcing them to stop the fighting is the best solution.

However no matter what is said and done it is not the politicos or the terrorist leaders that will face the burden of this conflict but rather the common man. Innocent boys and girls from both sides will face death just to appease the greediness and goals of politicos and terrorists who are well past their prime. If all fails and Sri Lanka is messed up the politicos will find refuge in the western nations that they so vehemently condemn and the terrorists will also move on to other nations or continue to terrorize the innocent civilians.

P.S : The last few months of 2007 was so horrible for blogging since I was loaded with so much work resulting in no posts in December. This blog is not dead and I hope to resurrect it once again in the coming weeks and months by making more posts. Oh and BTW here is a belated “Happy and Prosperous 2008 to all“. Happy! – must check the definition again, Prosperous! – this is for the millionaire/politico.

 

Post No. 200

This is the 200th Post on my blog. It has been a great journey so far. I first started blogging using Blogger in April 2006, then moved the entire thing to WordPress in November 2006 and so far so good. The first 100 posts took far less time that the second 100. The last couple of months have seen very few posts in this blog because I have been very busy, so I have been blogging when time permits. This week I took some time to check out all the themes in WordPress before deciding which one to use for this blog and after much thought I chose “Connections” by Patricia Muller.

In a period of about one and a half years I have got over 14,000 hits. Over this time period my posts have drawn their fair share of criticism and several names have been used to describe me but I am cool with that.

Over the next few days I may do some tweaking to this theme. I am now looking forward to the next 100 posts and whether it will be faster or slower than the last few blocks of 100 posts and the number of hits on this blog by that time can be seen when I reach post number 300.

A big THANK YOU goes out to those who have read the posts on this blog and those who commented on it over the past one and a half years.

 

Phew! What a week

It’s Friday, this past week has been a pretty eventful one. Several things happened. To top it all, well there is more than one thing that could have topped the list so I will not go through the trouble to name one. Time is passing as if it has just increased speed. Well I usually experience that once the month of September gets underway. In no time it will be December.

Life is passing as usual nothing much has changed except for the high cost of living and the traffic that seems to have increased on all roads.

This week has been tense with two to three Tsunami warnings and also some great sports action in the form of the Rugby World Cup and the Twenty20 World Cup. Not to mention that “E FM” a radio station that I stopped listening to a few years ago and only listened to it during Christmas time was relaunched as “e fm” (the difference is the simple “e”) on Wednesday. Mark who is one of my favourite DJ’s has joined this station resulting in me listening to it more often ever since. They have also abandoned their former format of music and now they play a good mix of music thereby adding to the options of stations to which I can switch to if I get bored with one. So in the music front my options have increased from this week onwards.

I am thinking of changing the layout of this blog and that should happen sometime next week. I hope that it will coincide with my 200th post which will be my next one if memory serves me correctly.

 

The month that passed!

Its great to be back in the blogging world after a lapse of nearly one month. It has been a hectic month ranging from a heavy work load to being down with the flu. Anyway I hope that I will be able to continue my blogging on a more frequent basis hereafter. Instead of writing posts in office during free time, I now hope to write them up at home and bring it to office and then to post it.

The saddest thing that happened over the last few days has been the death of my pet dog. She has been around for close upon 11 years now and I guess the old age finally caught up with her. This is third dog that I have lost to the claws of death. The first one died several years ago while I was schooling, the second one was poisoned and died about 3 to 4 years ago. A few minutes ago I got a call from home and it seems that we have just got 3 new puppies from a person who wanted to give them away. None of the dogs that I have had, have been the well sought after breeds and frankly I cannot afford to spend money to buy any of those. But pets are still pets whether we buy them or get them free.

The coming month is going to be pretty interesting since the Twenty20 Cricket World Cup and the Rugby World Cup would be held. So here’s hoping to be able to blog more frequently hereafter. Cheers!

 

The past few days…..

Oh my, it is nice to be back after sometime. I have been having a hectic time these days and could not find time to write up even a blog post. Trying my best to write posts at regular intervals so far with no luck.

Life’s been usual with no big surprises. Some interesting posts have appeared on Kottu over the past days. Read some could not read others due to time constraints.

My extension is being flooded with calls from a particular client since I am in the process of making updates to their software. The most annoying aspect is that when I visit the location they do not report their problems so that I can sort it out. However when I am in office I get several calls saying that one thing or the other is not working. So I end up sorting problems by emailing them the solutions.

I have been working alone since my assistant resigned. Had a recruitment drive over the past few days and the selected a suitable candidate who did not turn up for the final interview. I do not believe it since there are several who are unemployed at the moment and this guy who is also unemployed did not turn up for the final interview or even call and fix another date for the final. So I am still working alone and hoping to fill the vacancy at least next week.

The best part is that the weekend is only a few hours away and then it is one and a half days of relaxing since I have to go to church on Sunday morning.

Hopefully next week I will able to sneak in a few blog posts since I have only made three posts with this one for the whole of June.

 

Renting/Purchasing DVD’s vs subscribing to premium movie channels

I love movies and have been in the habit of renting movies from these video clubs or purchasing them for watching them over the weekend. For a few months though I have stopped since I found that subscribing to HBO on my Dialog TV(when I bought it in August 2005 it was known a CBNsat) connection somehow seems cheaper and more convenient. When I initially bought my connection and after HBO was introduced I was given Cinemax to the existing package costing Rs 900/= without VAT and Rs 1035/= with VAT, I did not subscribe to HBO since I did not want to pay the premium price for the movie channel. However I made it a point to rent a movie every weekend at a cost of Rs 100/= per DVD which cost me about Rs 400/= for a month in addition to what I pay for my pay television subscription. Of course I did not rent the latest movies since most of the new ones are camera copies and it takes time for a good copy to be made available. Therefore most of the time I rented slightly older movies until the good copy of a new movie is released and this takes at least six months. There is also the added hassle of going to the video club to the rent the DVD and then during the weekend I have to go to return the DVD to the club.

In addition to all this some of the DVD’s start skipping while watching the movie and then I have to go to the club again to get another one as a replacement. However the club usually does not have a wide range of English movies therefore I started to purchase some DVD’s and it easily cost me at least Rs 200/= per DVD with a single movie and I think about Rs 300/= for a DVD with a collection of movies. There have been months in which I have bought one DVD with a collection of movies for Rs 300/= and watched the movies in the collection for a whole month. This of course is very rare and has happened about twice, most of the time I end up spending approx Rs 400 to Rs 800/= depending on the number of movies I rent/buy. If there are more holidays in a month the cost gets higher since I sometimes tend to rent/purchase movies to watch during the holidays.

This made me seriously consider subscribing to HBO on my Dialog TV connection and after some contemplation I upgraded to the premium package which contains HBO and HBO Signature making the subscription Rs 1400 without VAT or Rs 1610/= per month inclusive of VAT in January 2007, ever since then I have not rented or purchased a DVD.

The fact that I do not mind watching a movie even after one year of its release helps me since HBO usually telecasts the movie about six months to one year after the release depending on the popularity (anyway even when I rent the movie or purchase a movie I wait about 6 months to one year till a good copy is available). At the moment Dialog TV does not have Star Movies and there are some movies that are not shown on HBO but are shown on Star Movies. Unfortunately I am missing those movies but some of them are shown on AXN, Zee Studio however by the end of this month Star Movies will be introduced on Dialog TV and then I will be able to watch them. I expect an increase in rental to watch Star Movies (it will be great if they do not increase the rental) but anyway it will be better than renting/purchasing a DVD. One thing is that if the cost of renting/purchasing equals or is slightly more than the cost of subscribing to HBO and Star Movies, I am still free from the trouble of visiting the club to rent and return the movie. In addition most of these DVD’s are illegal ones and by renting them we are violating intellectual property rights but when I watch it on HBO/Star Movies I am watching a legally authorised version. However I may reconsider my present decision if the cost of the subscription with Star Movies is much higher.

The downside though of watching it on premium movie channels is that I do not get the choice to watch the movie whenever I want but then they have several repeats of the movie over several months that it is guaranteed that at least once in a month the movie will be scheduled into a time slot that is convenient for my viewing. Power Cuts are the only thing that really spoil the fun since if there is a power cut I would have to watch the movie after missing a portion of it or will have to wait till the next repeat to catch it again.

I find it much easier to enjoy a movie now and with these channels there are movies 24X7 so I do not need to visit the club if I want to watch a movie and I do not have to repeatedly watch the movies that I have at home if I am bored.

 

 

A Suntel experience

Suntel, “The new generation national telecom network” which also calls itself “Your telecom partner for life” is becoming the worst telecom service provider than I have ever come across. The reason is because they disconnected my connection even though the due date had not been reached.

The disconnection took place twice and I was told that I have exceeded the credit limit which happens to be a paltry Rs 2000/=. After calling the hotline and telling them that my due date is still some time away I was assured that it will not be disconnected again.

Then in a few days time same thing happened and this time I was told that they will not reconnect it until I make the payment. After a heated conversation, I decided to report this incident to the Telecommunication Regulatory Commission and when I told the customer care representatives of my decision to report them, then the connection was restored. Then after making an on line payment a few days later the phone was disconnected again on the very next day after the payment was made. After complaining to customer care I was told the connection will be restored in 15 minutes but since it did not happen I was forced to call again and then the connection was restored.

I happen to know a person who is employed at Suntel but I decided not to call him since I did not want to resolve my problem by means of an internal influence. I have already made a complain to the TRC as well as Suntel and hopefully action will be taken. I have had a Dialog GSM mobile phone connection for over 5 years now and so far I have been experiencing excellent customer service and as soon as Dialog CDMA launches I hope to switch over to their network.

Those who are purchasing Suntel CDMA phones better make sure that they request for a credit limit of a considerable value. Supposedly they have sent me a letter informing me of my credit limit when I purchased my phone but I have not received it until now. I do not know whether this is a one time incident but I am told that Suntel Customer Service is good but I for one have changed the entire attitude I have of Suntel.

 

Last long weekend of the year 2007

Well did any of you notice that if you are able to apply for a holiday on monday then you are in luck because this turns out to be the last long weekend of the year. There is no more after this weekend until the Christmas holidays in December which is not as long as this one anyway unless you manage to take your annual leave.

At least I am in luck because I got holidays on monday in view of May Day being Vesak Poya and I hope that you guys out there too manage to squeeze in a holiday and if the company does not declare the 30th a holiday then you can either apply for leave or the simple “bad stomach” will do. Although I have a feeling that there will be many who get a “bad stomach” on monday.

This is going to be a great weekend with the World Cup final on Saturday and a few more things for me to look forward to, and for those of you who celebrate Vesak here’s wishing you a Happy Vesak.

 

Loan Adventures

I am trying to apply for a loan in order to fulfill an urgent personal need. So I went for a Personal loan and tried to start my adventures at Commercial Bank. Since I have already obtained a small loan from them they were weary of providing a second loan, so I looked elsewhere.

Adventure 1 : Hatton National Bank – This started out pretty fine. I had to look for two guarantors who had to sign on a Rs 100/= stamp in front of a Justice of Peace or Attorney at law. They had to declare their movable and immovable assets ( since the loan was for a relatively small amount and they do not like to declare their assets, so they did not do so). After all that hassle, I handled over the application at the bank. I was told to give about 3 days for processing. What I should have known was that it meant that the application will stay idle for three days. On the fourth day I gave a call and I was told that I should get the guarantors ready to come there and sign the application. I asked whether the loan is confirmed, I was told that they will confirm in the evening. In the evening I was told that a guarantor will require some sort of assets, so I have to get him to declare them. I was told initially that my basic salary will have to exceed a certain amount for the loan to be passed and my basic was higher than their limit but now they say that it is not my basic but it should be my net salary that should be higher. So this is when that I understood that my application is being looked at on the fourth day and it remained idle for the last three days. When I explained to the Loans officer what I was told by him before I was told to get the guarantor to declare assets and then it should be okay. After speaking to the guarantor, he said that he will declare his assets and the next morning, five minutes before I could call the bank I got a call saying saying that the manager rejected the application based on the salary so I cannot proceed any further. I was also told that the system does not accept the salary (so who approves manager or system).I have heard that these HNB managers need some sort of incentive to approve anything so I guess if I had met the manager and offered a certain percentage of my loan it would have worked out and the system would have accepted my salary but I was not prepared to do it since I do not like to bribe people and hate people accept them.

Adventure 2 : HSBC - Since I am a HSBC card holder, I was told that I can apply for a lifestyle loan from them. Upon visiting they checked my card details and I was told that I was eligible. I made the application. A few days later since there was no response from them I gave a call to check and I found out that it has been rejected. Apparently they say that there is some score that is very vital and it depends on credit card usage and my score on usage is not enough. So much for a lifestyle loan.

Adventure 3 : ICICI Bank - Called them up and they say that the salary should definitely have been sent to the bank and doing so from now is no point unless I do it for about 3 or more months and then apply. I get mine and hand delivered by the accoutant or the assistant accountant. Only “A” grade private companies and government institute employees are given loans by them if their salaries are not sent to banks. I am still trying to figure how they class “A” grade private companies.

Adventures 4 : State Banks - After my sour experience with state banks trying to get a lease to buy a computer I did not pursue them too much. However I called a few of them and there conditions are so high, I am not sure why anyone who can fulfill those conditions will ever try to apply for a personal loan.

Adventures 5 : NDB - Salary to bank issue exists and is the same as for ICICI Bank. In addition they need higher salary requirements and if I had that salary I would not be applying for loans.

So I have a few more banks on my list like Nations Trust Bank, Standard Chartered and a few other. I will definitely keep all of you posted on my adventures to obtain a loan.

 

Dialog Telekom employees killed accident at Seeduwa

Employees of Dialog Telekom Limited were involved in a fatal car crash at Seeduwa on Tuesday 13th March 2006 and out of the four traveling in the car three of them were killed on the spot. All three who were killed were employees of Dialog Telekom and out of the three I have met Dilan. Harsha who survived is still hospitalized, I am not sure of his place of employment. Dilan resides in Seeduwa while Sandeep and Antony reside in Negombo. My deepest sympathies to the families of the deceased, my prayers are with you at this moment. I hope and pray that Harsha has a quick recovery.

Name : Dilan Wendel Grero
Designation : Customer Service Officer
Division : Customer Service

Name : Sandeep Kaushal Jayasinghe Warapitiya
Designation : Customer Service Officer
Division : Customer Service

Name Obadawattage Antony Oldrin Laiton Fernando
Designation : Customer Service Officer
Division : Customer Service

 

According to a report in The Daily Mirror today it seems that the car had crashed into what they have described as a van but looks like a small lorry to me according to the pictures I got and then the car has come to a stop after crashing into a street lamp post.

** Please click on the photographs to enlarge them.