To Me,

I am you from the future. In the future, people like to write letters to their younger selves. No, I am not joking, people are lame like that now. You have to get tagged to write a letter, but since no one tagged me (probably because I only started blogging 5 minutes ago) I decided to buck the trend and write it anyway. Yes, you become hardcore like that.

Most people decided to write lame letters pleading that their past selves be more cooler, chilled out, smarter, thinner or more sophisticated. Since you’re as good as it gets already (ladies, hint hint) and since none of the other stuff really matter, I decided what you needed was a bit more pocket money. So here we go.

Monarchos is the winner of the 2001 Kentucky derby. And Australia wins the 2003 and 2007 editions of the world cup. I’ve also included a list of winners of significant sporting events at the bottom of the document. Bet all the money you have on the winners. Yes, that includes the money you got for passing your O/Ls. And yes you pass all your exams, stop worrying about it. Also, bet anyone who’d care to listen that the war will be over by 2009 and that a black guy will be the president of the United States. You should get good odds. Now you should have some seed money to throw around. Now we start the real stuff.

Start buying all the gold you can get your hands on. The price of gold is going to go through the roof in ten years. Helped by the fact that some countries decide to keep their reserves in gold.  Don’t worry about the selling, I’ll be doing that. Just raise some money by using it as collateral.

In 2004, you’re going to hear about a company called Google going public. Your main aim will be to collect all the money you can and buy as many shares as you can from the IPO. And sell out by October 2007, that should earn you about five hundred dollars per share.

Next up is real estate. An apartment complex boom is going to hit Colombo soon and it will tank around 2008. Buy as much land as you can around Colombo 4, 5 and 6. So while all the other 16 year olds will be exploring their changing bodies (pubes for guys and boobs for the ladies), you will be buying up key real estate inside city limits. Start selling the properties around early 2008.

By 2008 you’ll notice that you are in fact, me – since unlike most people we are only 9 years apart. What with you taking care of all the real estate and the stocks, and me taking care of the gold, we’ll be sitting on top of a nice pile of money while everyone else will be copulating like rabbits on acid because their present selves don’t get enough action.  Now that we’ve got a substantial amount of money we can,

1. Buy a Gulf Stream
2. Get sexy

Now all we have to do is put all that money into low risk bonds and wait till my 35 year old self sends me a letter with the other details.

Dear John Pereira of 16.

You are awesome.

Love, John Pereira 25

P.S. – Don’t worry about losing weight. By 2009, fat people will be ruling the world and Sri Lanka. Most of them are in the Cabinet.

The more astute of you browsers might have noted the half done look of the site. That’s because it is half done. I haven’t blogged in over 4 months and I thought I might as well get some design work in before I start again.

Ergo, the site is under construction and is immune from criticism. The more foolhardy of you may feel brave enough to browse but do not send me whingey comments about something or other not working or not being readable. Don’t blame me if something falls on you or mice eat your eyes. Shit happens.

If your life is a meaningless husk without my words, go here : http://twitter.com/jomanlk

Danke.

Step 2 is to become an Associate Software Engineer.

In other news, I am now an Associate Software Engineers (surprise, surprise). Which explains my prolonged absence in all forms of the Internet. I got promoted and I got assigned to an urgent project, which means I have less ‘john is doing stuff come again later’ time.

This post is just to inform any of you regular readers who still visit my blog (in case there are any in the first place) about my status. Regular blogging activity does not seem likely to resume at this juncture. Hopefully I’ll be able to work out something new.

On the plus side, I actually get paid to do what I was doing for free in the first place. Developing I mean. In case you get any other ideas.

P.S. – And those of you who tagged me for “10 things that make you happy” will have to wait a bit longer to find out what gets my freak on.

P.S.S. – Work on my new site has paused for the moment. You can get a sneak peak here – http://www.incrediblebulk.info

This is a list of all the things that I will NOT be doing this year. These are New Year resolutions gone bad. Passed over to the dark side. These are the New Year resolutions you would not like to meet in a dark alley. This is what happens when you don’t hug your resolutions.

This document contains a whole cart load of ‘NOT’s. Because of this it may contain confused sentence structures. I’m very sleepy as I write this so I haven’t been able to keep track of all those negatives mixing with each other and becoming positives only to break up in a huff to become all negative again.

Without any further interruptions I give you, My New Year Non Resolutions

1. I will NOT spend another needless year learning things that I need to know in order to do a job that I am already doing. Which means, come hell or high water I will NOT be a lazy bum and spend my time NOT studying so I can NOT sit for exams to complete my degree.

2. I will NOT be taking over the world this year. I mean, come on, have you heard of anyone without at least a masters trying to take over the world? It’s always Dr. whosit or Dr. whatshisname. So frankly, without at least the BSc to add to the end of my name I’m hardly capable of taking over the world. I’m NOT competing with the likes of George Bush without being able to spot market trends or NOT being able to give the probability of it raining when a family who goes out to fish toss a coin to decide who gets to use the hammock. (Which is what I’m NOT learning since I am NOT attending lectures for Probability and Statistics – 203)

3. I will NOT be a poster child for how NOT to manage your money. As of the time of this post, I am Rs. 1600/= and two weeks away from complete and utter financial ruin. I will NOT be a credit card company’s model customer. I will NOT give up getting my hair cut due to destitution.

UPDATE : I have just received payment for leaves NOT taken in 2007. I am NOT staring at a financial meltdown at the moment. I did NOT just make this up. It really didn’t NOT happen.

4. I will NOT let my shoes melt into the road before I purchase a new pair. I will NOT be the proud owner of one pair of shoes. Instead, I will be the proud owner of two pairs of shoes. I will NOT wait till my socks are thicker than my shoes to purchase a new pair.

5. I will NOT be the centerfold for ‘How NOT to Behave at Social Gatherings Monthly’. I will NOT freeze whenever someone makes small talk with me for the first time. My social graces will NOT be ridiculed.

6. I will NOT be a great dancer. I will NOT be caught dead on a dance floor, unless it is to walk across it to reach the bar. I will NOT look like an arthritic hippo doing a jig.

7. I will NOT have anymore pending birthday / Christmas (Yes, I have pending Christmas gifts L) gifts this year. I will NOT be caught dead with an IOU. I will make my gift giving habits legendary. I will hone my abilities to such a peak that people will talk about my gift giving habits for a long time to come. Following is a conversation that did NOT happen.

The Bob : Did you watch the documentary about 21st century John’s gift giving habits?
A Bob : Oh yes! It was amazing, I wish I had someone like him to buy me gifts. Just thinking about someone like that makes me giddy.
The Bob : Yes, I know what you mean. I’m going to have a lie down.

8. I will NOT NOT watch Broke Back Mountain. This movie is now in my official “To Watch” list. I will NOT laugh at the thought of straight actors acting gay or gay actors acting straight.

9. I will NOT make New Year Resolutions.

And that’s it. I give you full permission to print this list out and frame it. Don’t be shy.

Well, it’s the first New Year I’m coming around to after starting my blog. I haven’t posted as much as I like but I suppose it’s doing ok. Haven’t gone into the list of ‘Fantastically Successful Blogs’ yet but there’s always next year I suppose.

Where do I begin? First I’d like to wish everyone have a Healthy Wealthy and Wise 2008. I’m not sure whether that is grammatically correct but I suppose that it will have to do. I chose it because I’m going to review the year in that order. And we begin.

Healthy

This year was a rather unhealthy year for me. I caught the flu twice which was rather unusual since I only get the flu once a year and that’s it as far as sickness goes. But this year I got,

Sore Eyes
Flu
Diarrhea
Diarrhea
Flu
Diarrhea
Diarrhea
Food Poisoning
Diarrhea (During Christmas )

As you can see Diarrhea was the sickness of choice this year. I have no idea how this came about. My stomach was never a delicate affair and could handle anything put into it. Even taking into consideration the unhealthy combos that I put up with. Nothing major at any rate for which I am thankful. For example, I could have been afflicted with Jumping Frenchman of Maine. Let me tell you, the firecrackers would not have been fun.

As a result of being afflicted with Diarrhea I am one of the few people who actually weigh LESS after all the Christmas food. Sad situation. I have also got fully acquainted with our loo. I can navigate it in complete darkness. Even with the mop and brushes and things lying about.

Wealthy

Since my last job, my salary has more than doubled. So has my work but I enjoy it. Of course, With Great Wealth Comes Great expense. Due to this I have been financially destitute for most of the year. Always on the brink of financial collapse. But needless to say I made it through the year with only the equivalent of one month of salary as debt. This is worrying since I don’t even live a life of debauchery. I debauch very little in fact. Mostly during the weekends. I will be adding budgeting and money management to my New Year resolutions.
Still didn’t win a lottery though.

Wise

I completed the final year of my degree. Which would technically make me a degree holder if it wasn’t for the fact that I have a few subjects from the 2nd and 3rd year to complete. I never thought I’d get through the final year so I was dumbstruck when I found out I had gotten through. For the final exam I studied a grand total of 6 hours for each subject for a total of 1 day/s. Did I mention that I did not go to lectures even once? I didn’t even know who was lecturing us. That’s why I was dumbstruck. Sometimes my amazing awesomeness amazes me no end.

Learned about industry standards and such. Trying to put all that into my website. Nothing much to be seen there as yet because it’s a work in process. As usual I’m on the cusp of giddy success.
What else happened during this year? A lot of things actually. This year probably saw the most amount of change for the good I think.

Best of 2007

Discovered My Chemical Romance. Took me awhile to like them and after that they have not left my phone the entire year. Discovered Breaking Benjamin and Arctic monkeys as well. These three bands were the holy trinity in my music list. Yes I realize I lived an empty life before I found these musicians.

Made a bunch of new friends. Most of them from the forum I idle at when I’m supposed to be working. Great bunch of people. No one can call me anti-social now because I did the whole meetup thing and everything. Although I was terrified most of the time.

Fell in love with V for Vendetta. That was the best movie by far for me this year. I don’t think it was released this year but I only got to watch it this year and loved it. Notable mentions movie wise are –

Transformers (This has got to be watched in the theatre! So awesome!)

• Hairspray (I sooo wanted to dance for this movie)
• Resident Evil (Watched it just last week)
• Bourne Ultimatum (This guy is cooler than James Bond)
• Blood Diamond (Who thinks that South Africans speak the coolest English?)
• Casino Royale (Daniel Craig makes for a much tougher Bond)

I have a pretty basic movie taste. I prefer to just switch off my brain when I watch movies. I love shallow movies with lots of stuff happening.

Started wearing jeans. Heh heh heh.

Started spending loads of time on the Internet as well. At least 10 hours a day on it. This is because of work of course. But now that I see the advantages I’m trying to exorcise my PC of the dialup connection and get ADSL. Dial up is a device of the devil.

I was depressed for a couple of weeks. Complete and utter despair. No joy at all during that time. It was quite the experience.

I found out that I am terrible at first meets. Absolutely horrendous. I just can’t seem to make any conversation. This gets better after the first meet though. But the first meet is always tough.

All in all 2007 was a roller coaster ride. The highs were really high and the lows were really low. I’m hoping that 2008 is going to be better and I think it will be better. All the signs are that next year is going to be the beginning of something really beautiful.

Happy New Year Everyone.

me down the moment one of their crawlers pick this post up. The bastards.

Well onto the Suicidal Peacocks and Homicidal Elephants of Habarana.

One week of silence (from my total of four weeks) is because I went to Habarana last week. I am still recovering from the emotional and physical after effects. We left on Thursday and came back Friday night. It was an office trip so we didn’t have to pay. For once I agree that the best things in life are free. I took lots of blurry pictures of trees, dust, elephants, dust, monkeys, dust, friends and dust. My friends took pictures of flowers and lakes and things, none of which I ever saw. I doubt we went on the same trip.

A highpoint of the trip was the elephant safari. It involved a trip into the Minneriya reserve. The safari can be succinctly described thus,

A jeep safari which involves forty minutes of traveling through and tasting various types of dust (brown, red, powdery, sticky) punctuated by twenty minutes of looking at elephants, peacocks, foxes, eagles and cows (bloody cows are everywhere apparently) followed another forty minutes of dust tasting during the return trip.

Don’t get me wrong, I loved every minute of it. Forget the fact that all of us had brown tinted hair and that my brother is still removing dust from inside his ear (which leads us to the conclusion that he does not bathe regularly). We were traveling on the back of an open top TATA jeep. There were eight of us in all, including four bloggers – Jester, Chamara, Jahufar and of course me. The common denominator was that we were all somehow connected to Proporta (benevolent employer). Chamara and I work there, Jahufar used to, and Jester is the sibling of a good looking and intelligent current employee (moi).

The safari started out pretty tame. We went through a path that had lots of trees and dried up streams. And plenty of dust. It didn’t take a rocket scientist to realize that it had not rained in a while. We passed a few peacocks that that kept trying to jump in front of the vehicle. I think they were depressed. Who’d like to be called a peacock anyway? If I were a peacock I would kill myself too. Saw a massive eagle (at first I thought it was a seagull but then my friend pointed out to me that we were nowhere near the bloody sea) take off right over us with a fish clutched in its claws. Failed to take a picture of that though. Then we turn a corner and BAM! Elephants. Masses of elephants. A herd in fact. None of them had tusks though, which was surprising.

The next bit was exciting because it happened without any warning whatever. Our driver took us towards a particular elephant and passed it at a distance when suddenly it charged us! An elephant was charging the vehicle! It was right behind us and closing fast. The driver slowly accelerated away but the elephant kept chasing us for about fifty feet before it gave up. The driver stopped the vehicle. The elephant charged again. This time it got closer before the driver accelerated away again. The second time it chased us it was trumpeting loudly and hissing as well. Apparently the reason for this behavior (as the driver told us, it might be a yarn) is that the elephants offspring was killed when it was hit by a truck (not while inside the preserve) and it had been attacking vehicles that got close to it ever since.

We don’t have much video evidence of the chase for the simple reason that everyone was trying not to piss their pants and holding on to the rails around the jeep, which meant that all the cameras ended up filming our feet. Needless to say it was dusty. Some of us managed to get the chase on cam the second time and I will be posting them soon. In the comment section some people may allude that I uttered words to the effect of “holy shit! We’re all going to die”. I categorically deny that I ever uttered those words. Even if video evidence clearly shows that someone is uttering those words there is no proof it was me. All the witnesses were unreliable since they had just been chased by an elephant. End of story.

Apart from that the trip was like any other. We played cricket. Some people played really well and others not so well. Our team captain (again the same bunch that went on the jeep ended up on the same side), Chamara was the pick of the bowlers. As usual I was the loudest and played horrible cricket, although I did bowl a couple of nifty overs.

I thought I’d have a separate paragraph talking about the food but then I realized I would be too hungry by the end of it. Pissu forewarned me that the food would be great, armed with this knowledge I put my plate to good use. The food was delicious.

Well I think that just about covers my trip to Habarana and my post for the month. I guess I will have to keep this up until they ‘discover’ the auto updating blog. In any case I doubt I will be posting anything again before my exams are over at the end of this month. Wish me luck.

EDIT: Since embedding Youtube seems to break my style sheet, the video can be found here

First video. End of the second chase.

Horny Monkeys

Drunk Monkey 1

Drunk Monkey 2

P.S. – If you really have nothing else to do with your time and you want to look at blurry trees and strangers and such you can find pictures here and hereP.S.S – Videos to follow

A couple of days after the mid terms were the dreaded Mid Review Presentation. Contrary to all logic and semantic rules in the English language we were supposed to have completed 90% of our project by this time. It was all good except for one hitch, we had nothing at all to present during our presentation. As team leader, I naturally absolved myself of all blame and put it squarely on the other members. Like all good team leads I delegated the blame equally among the other members with just a hint of bias against our lead programmer. The gentleman in question had been courting a lady friend during the time he was supposed to have built the simulator. True to form a great enterprise devised by Man had been bought crashing down by Woman. Eden, Troy, Superman and our project, all have one thing in common. We were all bought to ground (or in our case, never got off the ground) due to the instructions hardcoded into our systems to dance around the (supposedly) weaker sex. I seem to have drifted off in my narrative, back on track again. Anyway after some late night coding on the part of the developer guy we had just about nothing to show.

After some monumental team leading on my part, in which I moped about prophesying doom and gloom, we consoled ourselves to an extended stay at SLIIT. But, and this is a huge but, we had a guardian angel!! Our supervisor came through for us like a knight in shining armor. I have no idea why he did it at all, but during the question part of the presentation he asked us questions that made our disaster look like the elixir of everlasting life. The rest of the panel had nothing to add when we finished. The presentation was over and we had come through unscathed. Our supervisor had helped us package our mole hill into a mount Olympus look alike. We were so happy we were shouting and high fiving outside the presentation hall!

Even more good things were in the offing. We had to submit our mid review report but since we had not done anything up to that point I had nothing to create the report with. Handover time was approaching fast and I had still not got any information to complete the report with. Then suddenly, surprise surprise, the deadline got extended! Having gotten a second wind I started work on the report but again fell short because I had nothing to work with. Deadline reached. Deadline extended. Again! I finally got the application and in two days created a fifty page technical report with no real information about our project in it at all. And this time we handed it over before the deadline was reached. I have no idea why the lecturer in charge of projects decided to extend the dead line twice; maybe a lot of people were having the same problem, only the lecturer knows. All thanks to my superb leadership skills. Yes, I know I’m brilliant.

During that time, the highs were really high and the lows were really low. I don’t think I‘ve ever been through a period like this. It was really cool! The two earlier posts were also written during this time. I have no recollection of why I complained about Smallville. It seemed important at the time. Apologies to the Smallville fans. I should have complained about Charm. Stupid series that it is.

I also pissed off some of my friends during this time. So if you have been wronged by my snappy responses or general tetchiness, my apologies. The period of ‘trial by fire’ is now over. I will return to my generally fuzzy and lovable self now. Sarcasm extra.

What you will find below will shock you to the core. Sexual exploits, criminal activities, anti-social behavior all revealed in a shocking 7 point format that is designed to satisfy even the most gory appetite.

Also I’m sorry but the only blogs I check out regularly are Maddox and Gizmodo (not a blog actually), so if you tagged me and I didn’t reply you know the reason. That was a nice ego booster. Now onto the dirt.

1. I give out the image of being an egotistic, narcissistic, megalomaniacal, elitist person, but that is just a persona I like to portray. Most of it is just tongue in cheek fun. Of course sometimes people just don’t get it and they create a completely incorrect impression of me which leads to some discomfort. Overall I’m a highly optimistic person with a bit of cynicism mixed in. Sort of like a Transformer in car mode, ‘more than meets the eye’. Thank God the movie came out on time to give me an appropriate tag line.
2. I don’t wholeheartedly believe in the Bible, or God’s word or the Christian life style or whatever. I argue with people for hours over the existence of God (I really do believe in God) and then turn around and say that I don’t believe the Bible. Some people find it hard to understand this viewpoint so they do what all humans who are intellectually challenged do, open their mouths and look like landed fish. I think this has something to do with going back to our roots in the sea and warding off predators by telling them ‘My mouth is in fact bigger than yours, therefore I suck harder’. A bit science for you there. That’s what I love about myself; I’m a roly poly bundle of misinformation.
3. I have bad dress sense. I mean real bad like green pants with brown shirt, dark blue slacks with cream shirt, black pants with maroon t-shirt. That’s how bad it is. And my clothes lack that certain pizzazz. A hobo has better clothing than me. I look ok in work clothes but the moment I go casual any semblance I may have to a well dressed person is purely random. You don’t go ‘man, I would like to get into that guy’s pants’ when you see me. I meant girls don’t think that. Not guys. Optimally, guys should see me and think ‘man, I would love to find out where he buys his clothes’. And no, I have never worn a pair of jeans. Ever.
4. If you think you are obtuse then stay away from me. I have no problem with ‘duh, I can’t understand how the angles in a triangle add up to 180 degrees’ but if you’re a ‘I told you the US would not get stuck in Iraq because Bush said the war is over’ type, what the hell are you doing using up all my air? And keep the hell away from me because, contrary to all evidence, idiocy may be contagious. Please, everyone just try to have an open mind. I know it’s difficult for you to actually use more than a handful of your neurons but you’re giving the rest of us (me) a migraine and possibly premature death by cardiac arrest.
5. I love programming. Although sometimes I don’t seem to do anything at all, I may suddenly get caught up in a project and I start doing new things. Here are some samples since I started learning PHP (some of them are works in progress so you can’t actually do anything with it). I get a weird thrill from seeing the computer do what I instruct it to do. And for all you domination fans out there, put your whips back in the closet, I was not talking about that sort of thrill. I think most of the satisfaction comes from creating something (probably tying to make up for my lack of artistic talent). And the best part is that a lot of people are actually ready to pay good money for something that I would have done for free.
6. I have two story arcs continually running inside my head. It’s larger than just idle daydreaming and quite an interesting experience. Whenever I find myself bored or idling -BOOM! – I’m taken into one of the story arcs. One story consists of a Warcraft and LOTR (what else?!) inspired mythical land on the brink of war. Most of the characters are pulled right off of fantasy books that I have read. In this story line there is one primary character that I thought up and several other sub primary characters from things I have read, played or watched. The other story is inspired by Halo, MechWarrior and StarCraft and Excession among other stories. It’s made up of several characters with intertwining stories which come together in one big bang. Both are works in progress, so to speak.
7. I’m 23. At the writing of this post that is. You may gasp in shock ‘my God! How can you be so young and talented? Not to mention ruggedly handsome?’. Yeah, I know some guys like me get all the luck. Did I tell you I look good in a suit? No? Anyway, my only flaw is that I cannot dance. I am as smooth as a lame hippo with arthritis on the dance floor.

Yeah I lied about the sexual exploits and criminal activities. At least the anti-social behavior was included right? What did you expect? My parents occasionally check it out so this will remain as clean as a whistle.

I suppose there are more than seven things in there about myself. You may be surprised to learn that I do not enjoy writing about myself. I mostly stick to fiction and the skewed vision of reality that I hold dear. It’s so much easier making things up that sound real as opposed to writing about things that are real. That is probably the reason why I did so well in English Literature and not so well in Accounts. Apparently there is a technical term for that in accounts; I think it’s called ‘Cooking the books’.

At any rate you have my ‘seven’. I can’t say I enjoyed writing factual information but the experience has been somewhat satisfactory nevertheless. Any prospective stalkers can go through it and contact me on 1-800-IAMANASS and I will be sure to get back to you. As is the case of all viral activities I now infect seven other people to spread the germ.

And the nominations for ‘Next in line for infection’ are…

Chamara of Apramana fame. You really have to bookmark this blog if you want to learn about designing.

The Goddess of Abundance from The Dark Asylum. Another ‘more than meets the eye’ transformer for sure.

Niroshinie who is always off on a tangent.

Niro of A week in Sri Lanka

chanux

Hak

N of Child of Twenty Five

I would tag Jahufar as well but his blog is down. And he is too pedantic.

P.S. – Yup, you found me out. These are indeed people who commented on my blog.