Missing Karate

I have decided to come back to Sri Lanka soon. It’s been a nice experience here in Seychelles, for its uniqueness, calmness and natural beauty. I’ll be missing many things, like beaches, misty mountains, forests and specially my karate lessons. One of the best things happen to me here was being able to learn some karate, its sad to leave those guys in the club; we had some kid of strange bond with each other. Maybe it’s the respect, control & the friendliness we have shown to each other. Sometimes we get beaten so badly, but we never have any hard feeling with each other. We always admired those who fight well and try to learn from them. I have been badly beaten few times too, never felt angry, no revenge, only the desire to be better. It’s kind of a strange feeling when you get to know your strengths. Some one might look at me & think that I’m a harmless skinny guy with big ears, he could be right in the big ear part, but I’m more dangerous than I look (doesn’t mean that I’m the Greatest). It’s not about going around and hitting people, it’s about being able to control your mind. It helps you to control movements, to suppress pain and exhaustion. The most important thing is the synchronization between mind and body. Sometimes I feel it like a meditation, specially when we do difficult combinations of movements. I have only two more belts before I get my black belt, and I want it so badly. I hope and prey that I would get the same kind of training in Sri Lanka, because this, I don’t want to stop.It made me stronger, faster and confident. If you think you are stressed out, lazy, overweight, inactive, out of control or less confident, try some martial arts, satisfaction is guaranteed.

V-22 Osprey, a sucess ?

This is not an image from a science fiction movie, its the Americas latest model of aircraft that sent in to the battlegrounds in Iraq. This machine is a combination of a helicopter and a plane, could cost $119 million per copy. It can take off and land like a helicopter with the ability to fly like a plane . Sounds impressive isn't it? but this plane took 25 year to develop and killed around 30 test pilots.The Pentagon has put $20 billion into the Osprey and expects to spend an additional $35 billion before the program is finished.Thats not it, the machine is still dangerous and risky, specially in Iraq experts say. The V22 lacks auto rotating technique which helps helicopters to land safely if engine fails.It lacks forward mounting machine gun, and claims to have faulty chips and software glitches. Experts warns that many of these machines would fail in Iraq, lets keep an eye on the news. What a way to waste money.Click here to see the Flight risk of Osprey. Read the complete article about V-22 Osprey.

The Most Annoying Web Site

This web site claims that its the most annoying website on the internet, but I think its really creative,it makes you go until the end,like a good novel. Thumbs up for who ever created it, and sorry if I wasted you precious time. Oh, almost forgot, click on this link to visit the most most annoying website.

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy is the most famous book in the universe. Ford Perfect is a field correspondent of the guide who unfortunately got abandoned in the planet earth for 15 years. Arthur Dent, his friend, was lying in front of a bulldozer that was about to destroy his house to make a bypass not knowing that Earth is going to be destroyed that day. Ford saves his life just before the destruction of earth and finds out that universe is totally different from what he thought. He gets exposed to deadly Vagon poetry, Pan-Galactic Gargleblasters and 29 seconds of vacuum before rescued by the President of the Galaxy who stole the newly invented space ship with an infinity drive. He is surprised to find out that the answer to the ultimate question “why we are here?” is 42. He gets furious when he finds out that the guides entry on earth is a single word “Harmless”, later updated by Ford after 15 year of stay to “Mostly Harmless”. .Based on a radio series in BBC, written by Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy is one of the funniest books I have ever read. The book makes fun of things like politics, bureaucracy, human behavior and racism in a universal point of view. If you want to watch the movie, do it after reading the book. The book is sold millions of copies and translated in to many languages. If you want to get hold of a book that you can read many times with same excitement, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy is a book that I recommend. This is how its starts.

Far out in the uncharted backwaters of the unfashionable end of the western spiral

arm of the Galaxy lies a small unrewarded yellow sun. Orbiting this at a distance of roughly ninety-two million miles is an utterly insignificant little blue green planet whose ape descended life forms are so amazingly primitive that they still think digital watches are a pretty neat idea. This planet has or rather had a problem, which was this: most of the people on it were unhappy for pretty much of the time. Many solutions were suggested for this problem, but most of these were largely concerned with the movements of small green pieces of paper, which is odd because on the whole it wasn't the small green pieces of paper that were unhappy. And so the problem remained; lots of the people were mean, and most of them were miserable, even the ones with digital watches. Many were increasingly of the opinion that they'd all made a big mistake in coming down from the trees in the first place. And some said that even the trees had been a bad move, and that no one should ever have left the oceans. And then, one Thursday, nearly two thousand years after one man had been nailed to a tree for saying how great it would be to be nice to people for a change,……..

According to the book this is why the earth was built

There are of course many problems connected with life, of which some of the most popular are Why are people born? Why do they die? Why do they want to spend so much of the intervening time wearing digital watches? Many many millions of years ago a race of hyper intelligent pan dimensional beings(whose physical manifestation in their own pan dimensional universe is not dissimilar to our own) got so fed up with the constant bickering about the meaning of life which used to interrupt their favorite pastime of Brockian Ultra Cricket (a curious game which involved suddenly hitting people for no readily apparent reason and then running away) that they decided to sit down and solve their problems once and for all.

About Intelligence

It is an important and popular fact that things are not always what they seem. For instance, on the planet Earth, man had always assumed that he was more intelligent than dolphins because he had achieved so much the wheel, New York, wars and so on whilst all the dolphins had ever done was muck about in the water having a good time. But conversely, the dolphins had always believed that they were far more
intelligent than man for precisely the same reasons.

Walking Across Mahe

The day that I leave Seychelles is coming closer and desire to discover more of Seychelles is getting higher. I decided to take the path starting from Danzil and to the beach of Port Launay. The path was set across the Morne Seychelles national park, actually its a series of interconnected paths. I obtained some maps to decided which paths that we should take to get the best experience, obviously it was the longest path. There were 13 of us (some one said it was a bad number,but he was wrong) . We got on board a truck and set out for the starting point of our walk. The driver took the wrong turn and we asked instructions from some local boys. They show us the path and told us that the vehicle wont be able to climb up to the starting point. So we started climbing along the steep road towards the starting point of the trail, but we started noticing strange things,things like vehicles? Those boys were messing with us by saying that vehicles won't be able to climb the hill, local jokes I suppose. So we climbed, and climbed , and climbed, it was not even the starting point of the trail, some even guessed that we would be finished by then. Finally we reached the starting point, out of breath, full of sweat, cursing the fuckers.

Life is a lone journey, originally uploaded by poojitha.

After climbing virtually ninety degree path through the thick vegitation we reached a plane which was a good resting place. Cinnamon plants to be seen every where reminding us about the days of slavery.There was a small hut at the beginning of the plane, mist was starting to form around it, I was able to capture it in my camera. We walked past the hut to find some ruins of the Seychelles past , map said it to be a distillery, obviously run by slaves. It made me think of the hardship they went on during that days, it took us lot of effort for us just to climb up here. These paths must be soaked with their blood & sweat.I looked at the path and imagined people with legs and necks chained carrying heavy loads, not even having time to gasp fearing their masters whips.I could feel them still walking right behind us through the jungle, dreaming of freedom,dreaming if their loved ones, it made me really sad.

swiss Bridge, originally uploaded by poojitha.

Swiss Fathers were responsible for the beautiful stone bridge built in the middle of the valley. The arched bridge was so beautiful that it took us considerable amount of time to take pictures. Then we reached the beautiful panorama of Mare aux Cochons. We were standing on a valley surrounded by mountains, on one side there was the endless sea. The only thought occurred to me was that, "Why can't they build a 3D camera to capture something like this on film". Then we reached the fresh water marsh in the valley, the water was so pure that it reflected the whole mountain on its surface. The journey was only half way through. Finally we started descending downhill,through the jungle, over the rocks, under the fallen trees.It took us 6 hours to complete the trail,we were tired until some one suggested on having a swim in the sea. Don't feel like writing a lot today, enjoy the pictures.

port launay beach, originally uploaded by poojitha.

Shell Wildlife Photographer(2007)

Some of these pictures are truly amazing, photography is about being at the right place at the right moment, plus being able to identify that moment.The best photograph was Taken by Ben Osborne in Botswana, the picture of a bull elephant kicking and spraying mud in a water-hole.

Russian Sergey Gorshkov's close-up of a brown bear won the Animal Portraits category of the competition. In my opinion this picture should have won the first place, maybe judges were fascinated by the artistic nature of the first picture.

Canadian Paul Nicklen's aerial image of male narwhal whales feeding was the winning photo in the competition's Animals in their Environment category

Take the Pill, Live For Ever

Scientist dream of inventing a medicine which could make you live for ever, or at least slowing down the aging process. It seems that the dream is going to be a reality in the near future. Researchers in Cambrige , Massachusetts, Sirtris Pharmaceuticals is testing such a pill in humans in clinical trial. Its designed to increase the life span of a humans by reducing the aging process. It will take years of tests and trials to know if the drug will ultimately permit people to live to over 100 years old. Its all started on a chemical that SRT501 is based on,called resveratrol. .Professor David Sinclair announced in 2003 that this naturally occurring compound extends the lifespan of yeast. Then they tested this on mice, it worked! This substance is known to be in Red wine (not another reason to drink) since its found in grape skin (instead, eat grapes ). If you think of absorbing resveratrol by drinking red wine you will have to drink huge amounts which is practically impossible. Another advantage of this drug is that it can reduce the disease associated with aging like Type 2 diabetes. If they could increase the life span of humans dramatically It could create a huge problems in the future. Think about the population growth, jobs, pensions, retirement funds all these could be affected. But still, I like to live younger. Life seems to go faster than we think,so much to accomplice,so little time,soon I'll be 30 years old, I need that pill ASAP!

This article is based on : So You Want to Live Forever? -by David Ewing Duncan

Heaven On Earth

Surf Island, originally uploaded by poojitha.

I was there
Looking at the mountains
Feeling the sand
Smelling the wind
Listening to the waves
Sky was so blue
Sea was green
Felt like heaven
Fallen to earth

Resting

Resting, originally uploaded by poojitha.

When you take a picture its always not good as you think, but thanks to digital photography you always have another option. I used Photoshop to enhanced this picture. It came out really well, Photoshop is actually amazing. I took this picture when I was in The bird island, birds were preparing to sleep, it was a nice view but the picture came out dull due to bad lighting. Thank you Photoshop!

Its Supercalifragilistic expialidocious !

Have you ever came across this word? This could be one of the longest words in English . This word first became famous in a musical movie called Mary Poppins(1964).The song Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious!"was Written by Robert B. Sherman for the Walt Disney movie, Mary Poppins. This one has a very interesting history behind it, thought of tracking it down a bit. First things first,How do we pronounce this word? easy, just like this ;-)

su·per·cal·i·frag·i·lis·tic·ex·pi·al·i·do·cious /ˌsupərˌkæləˌfrædʒəˌlɪstɪkˌɛkspiˌælɪˈdoʊʃəs/ Pronunciation Key - Show Spelled Pronunciation[soo-per-kal-uh-fraj-uh-lis-tik-ek-spee-al-i-doh-shuhs]

Definition: a nonsense word meaning fantastic
ref-dictionary.com

Roots of the word have been defined, as Richard Lederer writes in his book Crazy English as follows: super- "above," cali- "beauty," fragilistic- "delicate," expiali- "to atone," and docious- "educable," with the sum of these parts signifying roughly "Atoning for educatability through delicate beauty."^{[citations needed]} This explication of its connotations suits the fictional character of Mary Poppins, in that she presents herself as both superlatively beautiful and also supremely intelligent and capable of great achievements.According to the film version of the song, "you can say it backwards, which is dociousaliexpilisticfragicalirupus".<sup>[Answers.com]

Well If you want to know the whole story behind it read the interview with the song writer Richerd M Sherman.

Here is the video of the song "Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious"</sup>

Watch Wikipedia & Flickr in real-time

I found two websites which are really creative. Both of them are based on the same idea of allowing people to see what’s being added to Wikipedia and Flickr in real-time. It can also detect the location of the person did the edit. They have achieved this by detecting the IP address of the person who did the edit and showing its location on Google maps. I watched someone in Japan editing a document about Pakistan, and then someone else in UK was editing something about Superman, while another person in UK was editing something related to Irish Americans. You can watch it whole day; specially the Flickr version which shows different photos from different parts of the world as its being added. Just have a look by clicking on this two links.

WikipediaVision

FlickrVision