Dreamsmademe Blog

Sri Lanka Institute of Marketing had recently held their annual ceremony to tribute the Sri Lanka's best creative talents. SLIM Awards 2005.

The agency Leo Burnett had walked out with most of the Gold Medallions making it their Night of Glory. Congrats for you guys where I've got couple of friends working.

The Medals tally is as shown below.

(Sorry :-( the pictures are somewhat unclear)

Meanwhile I was trying to locate my early place Advantage Sri Lanka in the list. I know that they have gone through a change and must have altered their name which I wasn’t sure what.



So if the guys in this picture is belong to Rediffusion DY&R, thats it. Those are some of my remaining old friends and teachers in advertising, from Suminda to Srinath gone now to JWT and elsewhere, shown are Ajith, Shafee, Ravi and the clan I used to work with. Cheers!

So the story goes. I remember I loved those magnificent nights. Until lately I used to get a free-in though not anymore since I am not in the trade and lost many of my contacts.

Anyway I hope that the next year at least someone will take me there back to the memories! :-)

I love long weekends!

The problem is that they don't come much too often. Still sometimes you get office work, promised stuff that you can't get the best use of those.

Otherwise our guys normally come up with something for this kind of long weekends, a trip, get together, dance, karaoke session, something fun.

Until Friday nothing came up for this weekend. Probably all are busy except me. Bad seen. I just finished a project and a little bit of wild ride wouldn't hurt much. When I was thinking that I am gonna be halted for the next three days, Amma called me.

There you are...

She needs couple of things get done and probably wants me to drive her around. So why not, can't stay locked up in my annex, so I'll be at home in Kandy for the weekend. Looks like I am gonna be grounded though she will probably keep me busy and pamper me that I wouldn't mind in the least.

Note: This long weekend ultimately happened to be 5 days long since there was no diesel due to a gas strike.

Good! I don't mind if there is no gas at all eternally, hugh ! :-)

Well, a few people have asked me that they can’t post a comment here unless they get registered with Blogspot. True, well, They have initially set it that way.

Anyway now I have changed the settings. So that anyone can post a comment straightaway without going through that. Sorry about that before.

So now go ahead and say anything :-)

They say “Give chance a chance” in their latest ad campaign for their coolest new gadget. iPod Shuffle. OK I decided having the chance to mingle it a bit.

 

Next week probably I will be getting my first Apple product from US, an iPod Shuffle. We'll see!

Apple Computer is one of my well respected companies. I am grateful for what they have done to the computer industry. They have given us so many way ahead technologies. The Graphical User Interface, the mice, the USB(?), the firewire and WiFi are to name a few.

I was good a Mac fan and still in someways. But the problem is I haven't used a Mac since 1998. Until then I had been in advertising for nearly 2 1/2 years and shifted into the software industry. I love the both industries but preferred the latter. I could have still asked for Macs (at office) but since there was no lost love I okayed and adopted the Windows PCs. It fulfilled all my needs with a fraction of the cost owning a Mac. Period.

The advertising industry, its DTP part was purely and now still heavily depend upon Apple products. They have a practically solid products range from Designer Collection Hardware to loyal range of professional software.

I believe that they are better or equally impressive for any given computer task with the wow factor. But something somewhere went wrong for them and that's why I don't see a single Apple Macintosh Computer in general use, not in our office, not in software development firms unless for QA and testing, not in general offices unless in an advertising firm. I really don't know who made the mistake but they never took off as a main stream computer system.

The story is a history when Wintel group had all the fun Macs became the forgotten species. I can give you few good reasons for what happened.

1. I have used and liked Macs enough not to settle for the PCs but they have never been affordable to get one for myself. In 1998 a PC was still the hottest item so we brought one home.

2. They were never mass marketed to the public even though all the PC promotions and other advertising was heavily based on Macs.

3.  When all the hype of the Internet bubble started, Macs only knew how to do the photo editing and the layouts. While Windows PCs' got flooded with all sort of tools, utilities and general purpose software written by Windows enthusiastic crowd for free. Remember Winamp? I still have Winamp version called 0.20 which is 135Kb in size.

4. Talking about the entertainment part, When I was all wowed about MP3 and Napster, I didn't even knew how to play an MP3 on a Mac.

5. There were hardly any other software title for Macs than what had come pre-bundled with them.

So the bottom line is the general users never had chance to “Give chance a chance”

And now, not all that too late I guess, the Apple people again looking bright and shine. From iMac reincarnation to the iPop marvel they are hitting some new heights. But the “Attack of the Clones” continues you can hardly make me a non PC person now.

Anyway good luck and cheers for Apple, this time if you come back as the centre of my digital lifestyle, you are most welcome.

So this is a tribute to Apple Computer, a remembrance to my good old Apple Macintosh resource friend Shirantha and the clan who runs HAL Computers, the Sri Lankan agents for the Apple Products.

So if you need any of these new kids in the block, like iPod, iMac and that sexy Apple Cinema Displays, to “Give chance a chance”, he's the one to contact.

Shirantha Whehella
HAL Computers
43 Abdul Gaffoor Mw
Colombo 3
Sri Lanka.
Tel: 011 2467868

Yesterday I was again into Ambilipitiya. A brief visit.

On our way back, in a nice long stretch of road, there is a bit of jam up due to a slow moving heavily loaded truck. Incoming traffic and we were doing 80 or so mph. It was not easy to do a over-take. You gotta be patient on our roads when there is just two lanes.

One fellow behind us made a such big racket. Horned, signalled, trying to over take. There was no safe way he could possibly go on. After few attempts my friend who was driving teased, OK you gotta vehicle that can fly. So here you go! He managed to sneak thro the 5–6 long vehicle queue and disappeared.

After 30 odd mins or so near Pelmadulla we saw the guy had straightened up a bend and flattened a wall which I guess highway engineers originally forgot to do so.

We felt sorry for the newly registered mint vehicle which is worth the 3-4 millions. sigh!

Note: For your knowledge, the air bags had gone off and the fellow was in one piece.

Today two things just made my day!

I hardly update this blog with my personnel things. That's why I keep my www.dreamsmademe.com website separate anyway. But sometimes there are things that touches you so much that I should keep a note, may be just to myself.

Yesterday evening I received a lovely parcel. All my favorite things. A long story. I don't know what to say or what to do. When good things happen for all the wrong reasons life is much too complicated to comprehend. I can't help it. I can't make things any better or worse either. I can't create win win solutions to every occurrence I face. So I say it to myself, leave it there. Things should be fine.

I am always grateful that I am surrounded by such a wonderful people. People who loves me. Cares about me. Remember me. Friendships which speak of volumes. All the good things life has given. And when I get clueless like this I probably can't find the right words. All I can do is make the best out of the things life has given to me. The day may go pass by, the time will freeze but the good things will be remembered. That’s a promise!

Sri Lanka's Public Transport System is a disastrous mess. It's never been in order as long as I can remember since my school days. We had been given School Season Tickets but I always ended up spending my meager pocket money for traveling.

Rattling rusty dusty smoked coaches, If you aren't careful you are sure to get tetanus, seats are never washed or cleaned, jam packed, wants everyone in the block inside the bus, never on time, stops every darn corner, either eternally waits or tries to break the speed records if a rival comes behind, You go bending four times down or stretched out to two times of your height. You are free given all the ear drum breaking high pitched sweetest “Mal” songs or cheap FM Stations’ DJ biyla while the conductor's marcial law voice loudly commands you to go “Passata”

Well, That was a total harassment just to cover mere 2 Km from my home to the office, and you gotta pay these bastards for suffering all those. So I decided to end it all. If the county can't make things right, I will make it right for mysef. Period.

Option one: A vehicle is totally out of the question.

Mainly no point sitting on the clutch and shifting gears for long 25 mins just to cover 2 Km in the peak hours unless you are chauffeur driven.

They are here a really expensive proposition to own.

So here comes my savier:

TVS 75CC SCOOTY PEP SCOOTER

I love my Scooty because:

No stopping whatsoever the blockades are.

You’ll get free air conditioning all the time. 

No clutch or messy gears to shift.

Gas indicator goes down only once a week.

Can carry up all my weekly shopping baggage.

1/4 Cheaper than all my bus fairs combined with additional loitering.

Can take a loved one behind up and really close.

Sleek, curvy, modern and feminine.

And of cause “girls” do tend look at (wow factor!)

OK I admit I hate wearing the helmet but overall it was a sheer investment that is worth every penny I spent on it.

* “Aublic” in Sinhalese will roughly means chaotic.

This has become real nuisance lately. Neither we nor Police can catch who is responsible for this. This area was quite, peaceful and had no history of burglary that we know of, until now.

Now there is either organized or a random gang who breaks into houses and do the burglary. Last month we lost all four set of our vans' signal lights set while they were parked inside the garden. It was nearly a Rs.16,000.00 fine for us to replace. We felt it was some drug adicts work for quick cash and complained the Police. But nobody was caught eventually.

Today some have done it agian. Luckily nobopy was harmed though they have broken into my aunt's place and taken her jewelry and some other stuff.

Sniffer dogs, finger prints, left slippers and the Police came in but still no lead came out whatsoever to catch the culprits. It is like giving them a license to go for the next break in. I bet they will make a easy living out of it. Go ahead!

Unfortunately as everything else, Sri Lankan doesn't seem to have any effective Criminal Investigation Unit in operation or rather give way to the political reasons. Crimes are at large but nobody is nailing them.

So we bare up our losses and live in fear. Anyone?

I didn't realized this phenomena until I set foot in my neighborhood with my camera. Surprisingly it's gotta quite a bit of bio diversity. Nice.

Though it is difficult to catch it all this is what I could capture on my lenses. There's a bit of plants, flowers and wild life too. Mugati*, Kokku*, Korawaka *, Thala Goya*, Atikukula* and few other unknown birds and serpants. Unfortunately I don't know how to capture them on the move without a tele lense.

This shows the vast pool of Sri Lanka's Bio Diversity in a small area. Specially since this place is only 1 Km away from the busiest Colombo city limits.

Complete gallery could be found here. Enjoy!



(*)= All names are in Sinhala since I do not know most of the English names. If one can send me the names I can post it there :-)