Sigma Xi research grant award: I got it yehhhh....

Recently I won the Sigma Xi Scientific Research Society Grant in aid research grant for my proposal on "Human Oculomotor Plant Modeling: Is there a significant change or deficit in oculomotor function of mTBI patients compared to normal vision in healthy subjects? ". This is the first time a student from the Texas State CS department won this prestige and competitive research award.

The Sigma Xi Grants-in-Aid of Research (GIAR) program has been providing undergraduate and graduate students with valuable educational experiences for more than 80 years. By encouraging close working relationships between students and faculty, the program promotes scientific excellence and achievement through hands-on learning.

The program awards grants of up to $1,000 to students from all areas of the sciences and engineering. Designated funds from the National Academy of Sciences allow for grants of up to $5,000 for astronomy research and $2,500 for vision related research. Students use the funding to pay for travel expenses to and from a research site, or for purchase of non-standard laboratory equipment necessary to complete a specific research project.

A quote from Bowling Green State University Sigma Xi grant recipients page.

"These students show particular promise in their research careers," said Dr. Paul Moore, a professor of biological sciences at BGSU. "This grant is a stamp of approval that they are doing good research," he added, noting that "the list of excellent scientists who got their start with Sigma Xi grants includes Nobel Prize winners and some of the top scientists over the past century."

The Grants-In-Aid of Research program is the oldest of its kind, providing undergraduate and graduate students with educational experiences since 1922. The program promotes scientific excellence through hands-on learning and close working relationships between students and faculty. "

If Obama was born in Sri Lanka?

This is hilarious, got this email from a chain letter, and see how funny it is. Yep. This is the reality of our government or better to say who ever governs the government get the power. See the Rajapaksha Regime, Younger brother Gotabhaya Rajapaksha Secretary of Defense, Elder brother Basil Rajapaksha MP and a Senior advisor for the president, and the power behind the throne, middle brother Mahinda Rajapaksha President/Defense and Finance Minister, Another brother Chamal Rajapasksha MP and Minister of Port and Aviation, brother in law chairman of the Sri Lankan Airline. This is only some of popular guys, but how many are there hidden?

The Da Vinci Code - second round

Today I watched the extended version of the “Da Vinci Code” movie by Ron Howard (I guess this is the second time, first when it released in 2006, a camera copy – too dark and wobbly, and now a crystal clear DVD rip with subtitles and extended clips thanks to torrents). When watching movies in a PC, its hard to stop yourself by dragging the mouse to forward scenes that we don’t wanna spent time, right? Whatever the movie I guess. But there are some limited number of films I watched for entirety, “National Treasurer”, and this movie “Da Vinci Code” are on the top of the lists. May be I go more with films kinda sci-fi, treasure hunting or detective/adventure stories like “Pirates of the Caribbean”, or “The count of Monte Cristo”.

The USA, TNT television is telecasting the movie again, it started on Friday, and I couldn’t finished watching it to the end. And its scheduled to repeat again tonight at about 7pm. Problem with watching a movie in a TV is you are reluctantly interrupted by advertisements and its really annoying specially if the movie is one you wanna watch so badly. So I turned to my good old friend torrent to do the downloading.

I don’t know how true the story is but whatever the way, it’s nicely done. Specially the scene where “Sophie”, the last descendent of the Jesus Christ, un-reveal the truth of her life, you feels like something stuck on your mouth or wanna cry loud, yehh I bet you felt the same when watching the movie. What I can’t believe is how the person who wrote this book imagined and related all this history to a legendary story like this, and it’s fascinating how each puzzle works and fit each other (even they are imaginations of someone). Same thing in “American Treasurer”, it’s so nice how they stick all those bits and pieces of history into a work of art. I’m impressed.

May be this I want to do someday, craft a book like this, a fiction like Arthur C. Clarks “2001” or something like “King Solomon's Mines”. Something rim to a truth, definitely not something like “Indiana Jones movies”. I liked the first one or two Indy movies but absolutely not this new one “Indiana Jones and the kingdom of Crystal Skull”, no way……..though I like the Indy PC games.

Driver License and Identification Certificate to Non-Citizens New Rule : State of Texas, USA (Bad news for international Students at Texas)

In July 2008, the Texas Department of Public Safety proposed a new administrative rule, Subchapter K, SPECIAL PROVISIONS FOR NON-CITIZENS, 37 TAC §15.171, concerning the issuance of driver licenses and identification certificates to non-citizens. This administrative rule recently became effective and implementation will beginning October 1, 2008.

This rule states:

§15.171. Issuance of Driver Licenses and Identification Certificates to Non-citizens.

(a) An applicant who is not a citizen or lawful permanent resident of the United States must present valid documentation issued by the United States Department of Justice, United States Department of State, United States Department of Homeland Security, United States Immigration and Naturalization Service, United States Bureau of Citizenship and Immigration Services, or any successor agency of the aforementioned that shows lawful temporary admission to the United States.
(1) An applicant whose lawful admission period is more than six months but less than the full term of a driver license or identification certificate will be issued a driver license or identification certificate with a status date displayed that coincides with the expiration of the applicant's lawful admission period in the United States.
(2) If the lawful admission period in the United States indicated on the document presented by the applicant expires in less than six months from the date of application, no driver license or identification certificate may be issued.
(3) If the document presented by the applicant to demonstrate lawful temporary admission indicates an indefinite expiration date, the driver license or identification certificate will be issued with a status date displayed of one year from the date of application.
(b) In the event the applicant's status is updated or extended, the applicant must present valid documentation of such status change or extension to obtain a duplicate driver license or identification certificate with an updated status date.
(c) The driver license or identification certificate will be cancelled if within 45 days from the status date the applicant is unable to present valid documentation showing a status change or extension of admission period.


Note: Yep. This is really really bad rule for internatioal students, because, they have the status as d/o, that is for duration of stay. This is for indefinite expiration date, and due to this rule, students with D/O needs to renew their driver license or state ID once a year (with a renew fee). No rule or law for those f****** ilegal mexicans. They can drive, they can hit and run they can work..........all this shit is for legal international studnts with legal visa status.....Shame on you Texas.......................If they can grant duration at least for 2-3years (Consider minimum degree period for MS 2years, and Bachlars 4years, Phd 5years). Or else, they can grant it for the duration of the visa expiration date!!!!!I'm glad that I got my license long before this rule, and glad they are not gonna do anything for those people. So, hope they are not gonna impose this rule when we are ready to renew our Drivers License??????

Launching the new personal web site: Web Maze

Finally I’m done with my new personal web site. Name, “Web Maze”, and I’m damn proud it. Yehhh.After number of initiatives, and different designs, this looks better, I guess. Just finished the final touch-up with a Guest book, php server support from the CS department. I used to upload all my previous web stuff into Texas State web server, but find out they have no support for the server side scripting. But our CS department web server is fully functional with mysql and php plus, remote login to the server, what else to expect ha?

For a long time, I was thinking about doing something like this, with all my stuff, research, academia, personal into one place and have a professional looking web site. Yeh….finally I’m there.

Check out the web : Web Maze

Hurricane Ike – Hope this will stay away the 150miles as expected?????

Yep. First experience with a hurricane like this. As I learnt, the closest we can expect this going to be from our location is about 150miles. I mean the center of the Hurricane Ike. Today, (September 11th) it’s about 700 miles away from San Marcos, TX, at the Gulf of Mexico. And the land fall from the coastal area of Texas going be Friday or Saturday morning, probably Freeport, TX.

I’m just wondering, how big this going to be? Hopefully not bigger than the 150miles of radius, right? Our college web states that for the moment, all classes are on time and no changes, but they are on continue monitoring with the situation, due the fact that the circumstances can change at any time.
This Saturday 7am, the Hurricane Ike center will be 40miles away from Houston, TX. Hope things won’t be so ugly like Hurricane Katrina.

Here’s a nice web site to check the current situation and the path of the Hurricane Ike. U can click on each predicted center position and get the distance from it to other locations. Nice work.
http://www.stormpulse.com/

"Google Chrome" web browser- Awesome

I just installed the new Google web browser "Chrome". Its awesome, page loading is super fast. Some problems are there working with sinhala fonts, thats fine this is just beta right folks?

I like the interface pretty much and its quite simple design, i guess that may be the reason for fast performance.

We'll see how the things moving.........

Update: I kinda settled with Opera :)

What Hurts the Most - Boyce Avenue (another different view)

Another song from my wife’s favorite picks, end up in my most wanted list. “What hurts the most”, a country song, with that breathtaking violin part, I feel pretty much close with country songs now, I guess this is because of my bond with acoustics (just a wild guess). It was bit confusing because there are two official versions one from a band called Rascal Flatts, then Cascada. So, I tried the help of Wiki to see who’s original was this, But I wanted to share with you a different version of the song, with a different band someone not popular but extremely extremely fantastic how they are playing this specific song. The band called Boyce Avenue. I think my liking is different, same thing happened when I picked the Hallelujah song, it’s how you feel the song in yourself. I don’t care who played the song first, but I follow what I feel most. I guess my wife Nim too agreed with that……………………

Here are some quotes from Wikipedia.

"What Hurts the Most" is a country music song written by Jeffrey Steele and Steve Robson. It was originally recorded by American country music singer Mark Wills on his 2003 album And the Crowd Goes Wild. It was to be released as a single, but he was dropped from his label before the song could be released. In 2006, country music trio Rascal Flatts released the song as a single for their album Me and My Gang, and it became their fifth number-one single on Billboard's Hot Country Songs chart. In 2006, country music trio Rascal Flatts released the song as a single for their album Me and My Gang, and it became their fifth number-one single on Billboard's Hot Country Songs chart.

Boyce Avenue >>>>


Cascada >>>>



Rascal Flatts >>>>

Andy McKee

Its hard to stop blogging about this awesome guitarist. Its kinda sensation, which keeps on taking you to the YouTube videos and keep watching him playing. Yep I mean it. Here’s some of feats from Andy McKee legendary finger style guitarist. Need a testimony? Read some comments at the original YouTube post, then you’ll realize. Yep that’s for sure.

One thing that needs to realize on these performances, hard to believe but there is no background instruments whatsoever playing, just Andy McKee, his acoustic and awesome fingering believe me on this........................

Andy McKee - Rylynn



Andy McKee - Drifting



Andy McKee - Ebon Coast



Andy McKee - For My Father

Heathrow London, Paris France Transit Visa - Overnight Stopovers

***Update: I have a new post regarding transit visa here.

This is to help people who are regularly querying to know about stopovers in Heathrow London Airport. Last winter, precisely on January 10th, me and my wife spend almost 15hrs in London on our next flight to USA which is on next day morning around 10.30pm. I’ll try to give you some guidelines and advices as much as possible and that’s your responsibility to make your arrangements accordingly.

First of all, I’ll give you some idea on my visa and background issues. Me and my wife both graduate students at Texas State University San Marcos, and we both on F-1 student visa status. Our trip was from Colombo, Sri Lanka to Austin, Texas. Almost 2 stopovers throughout the flying, first in London Heathrow about 15hrs, and second in Chicago O’Hare 9hrs. This was our return flight from the winter break at Sri Lanka.

When we fly to Sri Lanka on December 13th 2007, we had a 9hr stopover at Charles de Galle Paris. Before our trip, I researched on the transit visa issues and couldn’t find precise information on Paris transits too. So, I’ll give you some idea on Paris transit visa too, in case someone needs to know on it. As I can remember we landed to the terminal 1 and depart from Terminal 4. Our flight f USA was from United Airlines and we thought we don’t wanna go out or do anything, and just stay at the airport for the next connecting flight. For the transit visa’s, there was no transit visa whatsoever required (at least for US F-1 Student visa holders) to stay 9-10hrs at the airport. But I don’t know there is change when you want to stay overnight at the airport for connecting flights. In case of the Heathrow London, you cannot stay overnight at the airport. I’ll come to this next. So, about CDG airport, its better to have at least 4-5hrs transit time if you travel to another destination. Don’t worry about spending that time if you are not in a hurry or in a business trip. In case our trip, we spend almost 9hrs in the next terminal (I guess it was terminal 4). Have some snacks ready, b’se we spent almost 10E (almost$20) for a yucky, ice cold sandwich. Everything really really expensive, so be prepared. Specially in terminals, for boarding there was a big line, so my advice is, if the boarding is started, try to clear that as soon as possible. If I’m correct the terminals are called satellites so don’t be confused with the names. So from my experience on this travel, there is no need of transit visa if you have a stopover at Paris, France (US valid Visa holders traveling from or Travel to USA).

Next information is for the Heathrow, London Airport. I’m not sure if you have a stopover at day time, then what is the situation, but definitely if you have a night stopover (in our case 15hrs) you needed to go through the immigration to get 24hr visa to go out from the Heathrow. So here’s the deal. Whenever you arrived at the airport, if you wish to go out or get 24hr visa, hurry up and don’t waste your time on going for restrooms or getting some break. Run as soon as possible to the immigration section, why? Because there’s a big line of people ahead of you if you wanna get your visa done. Especially if you have a limited time of stopover at London, then this is a must. This is crucial; we stayed about 1hrs on the line to get the visa done. There is no need of special paper work to get 24hr transit visa at Heathrow London.

But you need following documents mandatory for that.

1. Unexpired Valid US visa
2. Unexpired Passport
3. Immigration documents for USA, in our case (for F-1/F-2 student/dependent visa holders) I-20 issued by US College

4. Air tickets stating that you have prior arrangement to leave UK and your stay is just for transit via UK

The immigration officer didn’t ask anything other than this and it was just 1min interview to get the document stamped with 24hrs visa. Important thing is remember to get ready for your connecting flight and plan ahead. We stayed at Becontree, London and its about 2.5hrs from Heathrow. Believe me, next day we arrived just 1/2hr before the flight and needed to sprint through the airport to get the flight on time (Thanks to a helping hand from the United Airlines Officer at the check-in desk).

Let me know if someone needs more information on this. My email sampathid2003@yahoo.com

Windows Vista – How to Organize Start Menu All Programs

My first PC with windows 98 was with very much messy All Programs menu. I remember who told me and showed me to make it organize and clean. Thanks to Charith Gunasekara(Pola), I learnt one such a good habit. Make it clean your Start Menu All Programs list. I did this easily with all previous Windows Operating systems, except Vista which took some learning cycle due to not looking at the exact place. Windows 98, 2000, XP resembles same way of locating the start menu programs by going in to Documents & Settings and selecting the particular user and then start creating folder list to make it organize whatever the way you pleased (Not sure that the correct location in Windows 98, b’se its way back sometime).

Vista is bit different to do the same task. I tried to locate it in the same way in C:\ drive, but couldn’t find it anywhere. I did some Googleing to find it but no success. Lots of people suggest locating it in C:\Users…… or some other locations, but I couldn’t find those places. Oh one thing mine is Windows Vista Home Premium (64bit OS) with Service Pack 1. After some learning curve, I found we can easily do this without going to details in C:\
OK. Here’s how to do this,

1. Click on Start Menu and then right click on the All programs
2. Now from the popup menu, click on “Open All Users”
3. This will Open the window for your start menu all programs
4. Now create whatever the folders you wish to be at your all programs list. I usually create folders for Office, Entertainment, Programming, Graphics, Utilities, Internet etc…This is as you wish
5. Now close the window and go back to the start menu all programs and now drag and drop appropriate programs into each folder in the list. This is little bit different in Vista, where you need to wait a second on top of the folder name to open the list, then only you can drop your item inside the folder itself.

Again thanks Charith for enlighten me on this organizing thing; it makes the Start menu experience so much easier.

Free Asia cup Live Streaming ESPN360 – USA Only

Update (March 13, 2012) - This is one of my previous posts and you won't be able to use the stated espn link to watch the Asia Cup Cricket match online. I'm providing you 2 free links for that. Happy Cricketing. Don't forget to share the post in facebook, tweeter, google+ etc.

http://www.webcric.com/
http://lankacricketlive.blogspot.com/

Oh my God! This is unbelievable. All the sufferings for searching free live telecast on blogs and all sort of sites, online streaming interruptions……..everything gone. I wanna kiss whoever did this on ESPN360.com. Hey guys and gals in USA, here’s ur chance to watch ASIA Cricket series LIVE for FREE. ESPN360.com going to give you exclusive chance to watch free cricket on ASIA cup. Thank GOD again again and again. I don’t know is there any restrictions on internet service providers. But definitely Grande Communication is gonna support (cheers Grande). I saw this news on Cricinfo.com so thanks for cricinfo too. Remember this is only to USA.

Here’s the link : http://sports.espn.go.com/broadband/espn360
Happy Cricket ……………..cheers Sri Lanka , no doubt you are gonna win the ASIAN Cup.

Kung Fu Panda- Prepare for Awesomeness

Nice….What else to say. Spent almost 2hrs on it today, but its worthwhile. One of best animated film I ever watched. I’m not talking about the quality of the animations or sound or kung fu actions etc, but it feels the same sensation of how we used to watch the all time popular tele series “Kung Fu”. Don’t know when its gonna start showing at theaters in Sri Lanka, but hopefully it will be available on DVDs, at least as camera copies….right ;)

Here’s some quotes from Wikipedia,

Kung Fu Panda is a 2008 animated film about a bungling panda who aspires to be a kung fu warrior. Kung Fu Panda is directed by John Stevenson and Mark Osborne and produced by Melissa Cobb. Although the concept of a kung fu panda has been around since at least 1993, the idea for the film was conceived by Michael Lachance, a DreamWorks Animation executive. Work on the film didn't begin until 2004 and the film premièred at the 61st Cannes Film Festival in May 2008. The film was released internationally on June 6, 2008, but will be released in the United Kingdom on July 4, 2008. The film is distributed by Paramount Pictures.

Andy McKee - Legendary acoustic guitarist

Oh my God. You guys wanna see this? I bet ya’ll thank later. Yep, for sure. I was just surfing around to see some videos especially acoustic guitar pieces. I brought a guitar almost 3-4 months ago (it’s a gift for my 28th birthday from Nim). I’m sick of playing same old major codes with some songs from Clarence wijewardana (no offense). I tried some Kasuns kalhara’s songs. Ha too immature to play those (not kasun, but me on acoustics). Need some practice and patient to play I guess (time, ha that’s what I don’t have). Acoustic fingering, that’s what we called plying ha? Yep, that’s for sure.

I accidently found some video clips, a guy called Andy Mckee. Some acoustic pieces “Rylynn”, “Africa”, “Drifting”, What an amazing guitarist he is. Truly a master in his art. This is what wikipedia says about him,

Andy McKee (born April 4, 1979 in Topeka, Kansas) is an American finger style guitarist currently signed to the US-American record label Candyrat Records. His style of playing and his compositions have earned him a considerable fanbase; in late 2006, a live performance of his flagship song "Drifting" became a Featured Video on YouTube and MySpace, achieving over 14,000,000 views on the former to date and remaining one of its highest rated music clips. A handful of McKee's other songs have experienced lesser success on YouTube, such as "Rylynn" and "Africa" both eclipsing 6,000,000 views apiece.

Watch some video clips from Andy McKee

Deadlock - Not from Software Engineering or DBMS

This is a nice example for a Deadlock. The definition is not from the computer world, but worth to read and have a good laugh.

A Perfect Dead Lock Example...

Boss said to secretary: For a week we will go abroad, so make arrangement.Secretary make call to Husband: For a week my boss and I will be going abroad, you look after yourself.Husband make call to secret lover: My wife is going abroad for a week, so lets spend the week together.Secret lover make call to small boy whom she is giving private tuition: I have work for a week, so you need not come for class.Small boy make call to his grandfather: Grandpa, for a week I don't have class 'coz my teacher is busy. Let's spend the week together.Grandpa(the 1st boss ;) ) make call to his secretary: This week I am spending my time with my grandson. We cannot attend that meeting.Secretary make call to her husband: This week my boss has some work, we canceled our trip.Husband make call to secret lover: We cannot spend this week together, my wife has canceled her trip.Secret lover make call to small boy whom she is giving private tuition: This week we will have class as usual.Small boy make call to his grandfather: Grandpa, my teacher said this week I have to attend class. Sorry I can't give you company.Grandpa make call to his secretary: Don't worry this week we will attend that meeting, so make arrangement .

This is called a DEADLOCK

USA vs Sri Lanka Gasoline prices

Its gonna be a big deal, specially the new 30% price hike on gasoline. Even in USA the prices are really high. If you wanna know how things changed here, then here’s some details.

When I came here it was around $2.70 per gallon of petrol and around $2.99 per gallon of diesel. Now new prices are Diesel $4.49 per gallon and Petrol $3.89 per gallon. See how things changed. Even for us here at US , its unbearable, so nothing to say about the situation at Sri Lanka. But its pretty sad how people, specially politics guys make it a big deal. What they wanna say is this is because of bad financial management of the government or due to the war. First I wanna say, I’m not a supporter of current government. I hate those “amaththos” with luxury cars and all sort of gasoline subsidies not only them but for their dogs, spouse and “naadaa hathmuthu paramparawatama”. I know there is some sort of management problem. But lots of these issues due to the economic growth of countries like china, India and downfall of US economy. Its just a childish thing to say Sri Lanka is suffering b’se of war or something else. How many luxury cars we have to maintain?? Especially from the government side? What about opposition. Are they going on economic cars? I don’t think so. They too have Montero’s, Prado’s, BMW..etc right? They wanna change the government to start same sort of rapacious earnings. I don’t know how stupid us to vote UNP, JVP or SLFP or whatever. They want just power and money. I heard that newly elected East provincial council pilleyan guys gonna get luxury vehicles and a European tour. What a pity.

Here, oil prices won’t make a big change in other stuff like food or transportation. But countries like Sri Lanka gonna feel it from next day, whenever there is a price hike. Bus prices, food even a plain tea gonna feel the heat of newly adopted prices. I’m soo sad about my family, relations, friends and all common people at Sri Lanka (Except those f***** ministers and parliamentarians).

IEEE Graduate Student Member

I got my graduate student membership from IEEE and it’s an honor to become a member of this privileged society. I have a new email alias from IEEE sampath.jayarathna@ieee.org

Cheers for IEEE

Doomsday : December 21, 2012.

Few weeks ago, I got an email heading “Doomsday” and never bothered even to open it. Now I’m convinced that its not just a fake idea, especially after last night Sci-Fi channel documentary “Mystery of the Crystal Skull”. Normally I just throw away email about mysteries like end of the world or something similar in manner, b’se its not a possibility (may be I don’t wanna die so early), or not with adequate facts (how science guy thinks).

Read more about the Mystery of Crystal Skulls documentary herehttp://www.scifi.com/crystalskulls/ Just wanna mention why December 12, 2012 end of the world phenomena is so fascinating with some facts,

1. Scientists have noted that when Jupiter and Saturn are aligned on the same side of the Sun, the solar activity is at its minimum; when they are on opposite sides of the Sun the solar activity is at its maximum. The positions on December 21, 2012 are ideal for extreme solar activity.
2. The last solar cycle was at its maximum in 2001. Each active solar cycle has a period when the flares are strongest, usually happening near the solar equator, called the "solar maximum." This is significant because the next "solar maximum" event will coincide with December 21, 2012.
3. Our solar system is part of a huge disc shaped collection of stars and planets called the Milky Way. We're located somewhere on the edge of the disc, slightly on top of the narrow disc. But very soon we'll be moving to the bottom of the disc. This change, from top to bottom, begins on December 21, 2012.On the same day when our Sun is at it's solar maximum, something will happen that's never happened before -- the ecliptic of our solar system will intersect with the Galactic plane, called the "Galactic Equator" of the Milky Way!
   
   
   The date, December 21, 2012, is a special day. It represents the maximum possible influences for solar flares that the universe can provide. Undoubtedly the Mayans, or the civilization that influenced them, somehow knew about these things.
   
   Read more about Doomsday here http://www.viewzone.com/endtime.html
   
   Yep…..it’s definitely a good idea to think and work at the forefront for our life after death

Listen or Wait

A young and successful executive was traveling down a neighborhood street,

going a bit too fast in his new Jaguar.

He was watching for kids running out from between parked cars
and slowed down when he thought he saw something.

As his car passed, no children appeared.

Instead, a brick smashed into the Jag's side door! He slammed on the brakes
and reversed back to the spot from where the brick had been thrown.

He jumped out of the car, grabbed the kid who threw the brick and

pushed him against a parked car shouting.

"What was that all about? Just what the heck are you doing?"
Building a head of steam he went on.
"That's a new car and that brick you threw is going to cost a lot of money!!"

"Please, mister, please. I'm sorry, I didn't know what else to do!!" pleaded the youngster.

"I threw the brick because no one else would stop..."

tears were dripping down the boy's chin as he pointed around the parked car.

"It's my brother," he said.

"He rolled off the curb and fell out of his wheelchair and I can't lift him up."

Sobbing, the boy asked the executive, "Would you please help me get him back into his wheelchair?

He's hurt and he's too heavy for me."

Moved beyond words, the driver tried to swallow the rapidly swelling lump in his throat.

He lifted the young man back into the wheelchair and took out his handkerchief and

wiped the scrapes and cuts, checking to see that everything was going to be okay.

"Thank you and May God bless you," the grateful child said to him. The man then

watched the little boy push his brother down the sidewalk toward their home.

It was a long walk back to his Jaguar ... a long, slow walk.

He never did repair the side door. He kept the dent to remind him not to go

through life so fast that someone has to throw a brick at you to get your attention.

God whispers in your soul and speaks to your heart. Sometimes when you don't have

time to listen, He has to throw a "brick" at you.

It's your choice: Listen to the whisper, or

wait for the brick.........

China: Beijing 2008 Olympic Symbol

I don't know whos work this is, but niiiccccccccccce.........

Lilly: 2yr old World Map Master

Hey its 2008 already? Ha, I checked my last blog post, amazingly it was on November 2007. So, almost 2 months without a post right? OK thats fine, I was on my winter break at Sri lank and it was not a good experience to blog 47kbps dial-up connection at Sri Lanka compared to my 100Mbps cable connection at US!
Hoping to spend some time to do posting on my wedding (yee we are done with the wedding) and some pics from the Becontree, London trip to Shayamilee Akkas home. Goona be a hectic week, lots of stuff to do on the research and studies.
But I thought its better to post this video. Saw this amazing video about master map reader. Can you believe, she’s just 2 years old and she even knows where the Sri Lanka is, amazing ha Ye I guess lots of people who are away from Sri Lanka know how difficult to convince people from other countries that Sri Lanka is not a part of India. Whenever I say I’m from Sri Lanka, next best thing was to say that it’s not in India; it’s a separate Island with unique customs and traditions. Even then we need to say, we don’t speak hindi, and our language is Sinhala and its also something unique. This is true even for our Asian neighbors. My Indian friends sometimes forget that I’m not speaking hindi, or theligu or whatever their language, then I used to say hey guys I can’t speak your language I’m speaking only Sinhala and English, not even Tamil.

Watch this video and see at 3.50 she’s showing where the Sri Lanka is on the world map. Cute ha

Watch Lilly here