Dreamsmademe Blog

I don't find this surprising and obviously Wedding Plans take quite a bit of stress and running around for anyone.

When we prepare for the day, initially nothing much was done. Anyway here when dates are closing in last couple weeks we were actually ridden by this stress course.

Looking for places and people to do the needful seems interesting, quite involving. But for us this means long drives and tired weekends since things happen in three different remote places. We live in Colombo, the wedding will take place in Nuwara Eliya and the home coming is in Kandy. So this preparation is killing our peaceful weekends. I miss my long sleep in the weekend, the Sundown, unwashed clothes, uncleaned house, empty pocket and then ultimately the fresh Monday morning. Meanwhile the lack of exercising bulge my tummy out.

And this all leaves us in somewhat always tired mood.

Hope these days are will soon be over or as one of my friends put it, he says for getting married, " You'll see, it's only the beginning" :-) And I wonder will life be the same again?

Until yesterday, as Jonathan says in his post. I would too say that I was fully satisfied with my newly brought Treo 680, and in fact that it still holds true in many ways. It does just about everything I throw at it. and I love it. That said, even after 7 years of being a loyal Palm OS user, I find myself wondering in this morning, shaking more and more about something that doesn’t run Palm OS or Windows which are essentially a part of my life. Palm, Microsoft releases every darn kind of products all over the year but I have never been so overwhelmed by any other hi-tech product release. Not even with the original Treo, not even with the iPod.


The display is awesome

Listen Palm. I’m already sold. Though I’m loyal to Palm, but in many occasions I have felt that Palm isn’t treating me right as Apple does with iPod experiences. I have lived the iPod generation for two years now I am yet to get a trouble either in my iPod or in iTunes which it syncs with. In contrast since the initial Treo 650 release with problems all over, whining Palm TX which my girl has, buggy slow LifeDrive my brother brought, and my early Sony CLIE with problems that I don’t recall now.


The Interface is the Industry Best

The point is, you get a Treo expecting bliss, instead you get a hiss in your earpiece. You're thinking Palm should fix it soon.''Not the case here. Palm take ages even to acknowledge that there’s a problem at all and washes it's hands of responsibility and tells you to deal with your own ROM updates and third party developers (like VolumeCare) which figures out by some geek while Palm lies in it’s laurels. Palm never learns, even with new Treo 680 there’s a network time sync issue which circular around public forums but Palm hasn’t even acknowledge that yet. I lived it all and still I never really thought anything else as impressive as the Palm device I’m holding, until now.


Desktop scale browser in your fingertips

So suddenly, for me iPhone kills many birds in one shot. Being in Asia I’m away from holding this beauty in my hand anytime soon, not a happy feeling though good that I can save some money for the big day. Got a number of months to follow this up and close, let Apple fix whatever the shortcomings with it. No offend Dear Mr. Ed Colligan. I guess here you are wrong this time around. I work for a software company and do consider as a promoter and power user of Treo. In the next January my money surely will go to Steve Job & Co. if unless you release a 320X480/ Wifi Treo by then. If Treonauts can figure out how to make officially unsupported FAT32, SDHD, WIFI supported on their beloved Treo 650s. The iPodians will make theirs what they want in no time. The iPhone accessory market will be in prime time with all sort of QWERTY, BT keyboards, devices for what iPhone isn’t. Don’t forget Steve hinted that this beauty can handled the native Mac OS beast apps as well. I can assure it seeing the fluid motion the iPhone works, this will change the mobile industry. Smartphone segment in no time.


The flid motion is intuitive and really realistic

The business case for it, the TIME Magazine here outlines pretty well. Good reading.


Any destop widgets at your disposal

As TIME says, either it’s Nokia basic or Palm Treo 680 our phones are broken and Steve Jobs & Co. seems to fix it. “When our tools don't work, we tend to blame ourselves, for being too stupid or not reading the manual or having too-fat fingers. "I think there's almost a belligerence—people are frustrated with their manufactured environment," says Ive. "We tend to assume the problem is with us, and not with the products we're trying to use." In other words, when our tools are broken, we feel broken. And when somebody fixes one, we feel a tiny bit more whole.” Exactly!

Hay, kudos for pointing out this very truth. Either in USA or in Sri Lanka, the problem and the solution seem the same. This story is inspired by the post here at PalmAddicts.

This is roughly the same way I do to get things done most of the time. These morons, the bureaucrats and the front desk officers in most of the places hardly help you out or solve any matter on behalf you even though they are paid for to "help" customers out.

So to get done things you have to raise the voice, make the point loud and clear and they may be reach a ranked man.

Two days before I went to the cinema with the girly to watch the hyped "Pirates of the Caribbean - Dead Man's Chest" film Ceylon Theater run Majestic Cinema in Colombo. I asked for ODC tickets (Don't know what it means, but it's the back middle rows where you can get the best view without breaking your neck), the fellow gave me two without saying anything so we went in. Assuming that they were ODC.

To my surprise the back was all full, except two middle (best view) rows saying "Reserved" .The film was about to begin. I tell the guy inside, I asked for ODC tickets so we should get one of those. Then the fun begin. He was saying that they are “Reserved” (yeah, I can read) and they have a "flat rate". There's no ODC all the blah blah and did not allow us to get a seat but directed us to the neck breaking empty front rows. If there is a “Flat Rate” the logic seems there can’t be reservations and we should be able to sit anywhere we want.

No point arguing with the poor guy. I came out, went to a guy who seemed a bit ranked one, raised my voice and told the story asking a reimbursement for our tickets.

Bingo! We were straight away directed to one of the “reserved” best view seats in the middle with no further hassle and we enjoyed the movie in full.

A suicide attack targeting Defense Secretary Gothabaya Rajapakse has injured fourteen security personnel. Luckily he was not injured. My friend Dilum was also caught in the middle of this crisis.

 

The attack has been carried out at Dharmapala Mawatha (Piththala Junction) opposite City Bank at Kollupitiya in Colombo today at about 10.25 a.m.


Not much clear though foremost one is our van

 

Several vehicles have been damaged and Dilum was also driving along at the same time. He was lucky to escaped unharmed though the van is severely damaged. A few of other vehicles were seen burning at the time and this photos was taken from a camera phone.

2006 November monsoon season is a disastrous one for Sri Lanka. Specially the last Sunday 12.11.06 was historic.

All of this environmental debacles in recent time has something to do with improper planning, unauthorised land fillings and buildings. It brought  more chaos and misery for this war-torn country. Floods, land slides and lost of lives reflect another abandoned and raped issue in this paradise isle. For whatsoever the excuses made by the authorities and the people, I think this should be expected and we are all responsible for this kind of nature's revenge.

The Sunday, we eye-witnessed and were lucky to stay unharmed some of the late breaking news on the TV  in the evening.


Picturesque Nortonbridge Reservoir

Story goes like this. Since we spend the weekend in Nuwara Eliya. On our way back, yesterday, there was a big land slide at the Colombo-Hatton road in Ginigathhena. To avoid that and come to Colombo we had to take an alternate route. We were suggested a route thro Nortonbridge Reservoir. It was a beautiful narrow one but finally completely blocked by all out-bound traffic to Colombo. Then few others and we turn back to Ginigathhena thro another narrow road in the Nortonbridge Caslteriegh mountains. From there some headed to Kandy road. Since Kandy road was also uncertain and very long we looked around for an alternate. For our surprise we were to find one. It was a most bizarre kind of small barren by road, a risky one, that we didn't know at that time, roughly 10-15 Km long, that leads back to Colombo main road avoiding the land slide. We came out unharmed though we seriously felt that we shouldn't have taken that road risking our beloved Chevy and our lives themselves. A slight mistake, a drift over, a gas running out, a flat tyre, anything could have left us stranded. A night without sleep.


Nortonbridge mountains

It was raining cats & bulls and as dark as midnight around 5.00 pm. Starting part of the road was okay and fun to drive when it wasn't broken. But in one particular abandoned section (nearly 10 km block) was an utter nightmare. Continues heavy rain had uprooted all the road foundation stones and rocks all over the path. Steep. Water was drifting all over like we were in a rocky stream. As driving on rollers on a wet slippery land we were descending at a slow pace. Wheels were creaking locked by pushed to the wall brakes but still sometimes the car was sliding and moving downward. Boy! No way up now either. I was praying for our Chevy's tyre's not to give up on us. Our beloved Chevy, warm and nice inside, while nature takes it's heaviest toll on it's outside, kept our spirits high, we were safe inside, or so we felt. Finally hours later we reached-back the main Colombo-Hatton Road safely.

And it's only when we came to the civilisation that we heard elsewhere in Kandy – Gampola Road a land slide was taken place with few vehicles underneath killing 5 or so people on board.

Gosh! It was a main road while we took even worse not-on-the-map road to come back to the Colombo main road.


Land slide in Kandy-Pussellawa Road killing a few people



Most flood gates were open


Imagine it could have been us

People had died here too

On the same day elsewhere in the country it had flooded many places. In Hatton Town (the way we passed) there was another land slide taking few lives. Reservoirs were filled and spilling. Most flood gates were open. Rivers were filled without their banks. People were drowning. Roads were blocked. Some leaving no sign where they were. All chaos and misery brought by the monsoon rain.

Now I leisurely lie down on my bed and jot down this blog post though It's been one heck of a day. We travelled nearly 350 km while it should have been somewhere 200 km thro the main roads.

Sadly unlike other times whole adventure was without pictures due to sub-zero visibility and all the time we were dealing road worries than getting a chance to touch the camera. Above shown ones I have picked from various media reports.

 

I've been trying this for long. Post picture to Flickr and use those images in the blog. Doesn't seem to work as it should even now. The problem is I am behind a firewall may be. Or something else.

Anyway I figure out this way, first post the pics to flickr and then say "blog" this from there. It's a way around it but still it make me happy so that I can save some web space where I have hosted the website.

This weekend we spend some nice time in Nuwara Eliya.


Cold mountains…

After a long drive from Colombo, those beautiful tea capped mountains, the wind, the mist, the fog and the cold were the sings of a heaven in a paradise.


Sometimes the visibility was sub-zero levels…

On our way to the Nuwara Eliya area the landscape seems more polluted and disturbed than ever though we enjoyed the drive.


Trees cut the barren land is exposed to land slides but still beautiful…

Following day was awesome with the beautiful sun shining all the day. For my surprise there wasn't any rain while Colombo and most of the country was about to be flooded by the heavy rains. I think this is the sheer beauty of Sri Lanka having all kind of whether at the same time.


Clouds were seen below us…


Dreamy roads…

It is sad our morons too still continue to cut even the last forests we have in these misty mountains started first by the British for the tea plantations.


It was cold and rainy all the way…

Gayani says we would have been much better off without those tea plantations or the British invaders. It is arguably correct though I guess our moron politicos had enough time to correct those if they really wanted. But they never did and now it's too late. At least the British did it to a plan our ones still doing it in a hap hazard unplanned manner.


These historic big old trees can no longer be seen in the landscape…

Gee’s sis’s little one was so much of life bundle to have around…


So we never missed our fun putting five for five ;-)

(Sorry, the low quality pictures were taken form a video footage)

This is fantastic. Now if I want I can directly post my blog posting from Treo itself. The software is called HBlogger from Normsoft the maker of famous PocketTunes mp3 player for Palm.

So this is the first test posting thro my Treo!
Cool! Isn't it?

[Posted with hblogger 2.0 http://www.normsoft.com/hblogger/]

Surprise! After long long delays BT Option (Sri Lankan dealer for Palm and Apple products) have finally sent me my long awaited Treo replacement for my troubled unit. Old one had some memory issues having a loop-reboot.