Vaango… Vaango…

This is about the third day of my tour, in which now in Chennai. The most of the day I spent going around the city of Chennai. It just happened with out planning and i didn’t spend time in site seeing but in going around.

Going to BOC…
Appa wanted me to go to Bank of Ceylon(BOC) Chennai, to meet a Sri Lankan there. Around 11am when I was ready to make a move from the room, the guys here were still sleeping, so i thought not to disturb them and to go alone. I had the address to BOC which is somewhere in Poonthamalli Highways, near Thinathandi office. I also had a parcel for Mr. Rajendra, which he wanted me to give at BOC. So i took a trishow and went there, which is a very long distance that took around 1 hour on road. I reached that place when it was around noon. The only known person to me there is Linda, whom I’ve met already when she came down to Lanka for a training. So met with her first, then met Mr. Chandru also.

On the Roads…
When I was coming out of BOC I thought of going to the Tamil Nadu Tourism and to book a tour. So called that place and asked for the address which is Triplicane. I thought of taking a trishow and going, but then decided to walk along the road for some time. As it was already 1.30pm I went in to a good vegetarian hotel to have lunch. I had some kind of a dosa and then started walking again.

Just in 50m from there I saw the Central station, so went around it and the online booking center, and walked along the road in front. In the mean time I saw the buildings of Cooperation of Chennai, Museum, and hospital. Then I took a trishow to Triplicane and went to the Tamil Nadu Tourism. In that complex they had many other offices of tourism divisions of other stated. I took a brochure from there and walked along the road in front.

Digital Camera…
There I saw a Konica Shop and just went in to check out some cameras there. There were many cameras and the Canon PowerShot A430, which I had planned to buy was also there. The price for that was fairly OK for me, and they were fiving a 512MB SD card free, so I thought of buying it there itself. The guy at the counter went on to explain all the functions of the camera, and then bought it and they gave a set of chargeable batteries with charger for free. Then I thought of going back to the room by bus from there, and asked the guy at the shop for the bus route.

Spencer Plaza…
I was supposed to take the 23C bus to Besent Nagar. The stopping was somewhere in front of Shanthi theater. A bus came crowded after awhile, and I was on the foot board of the front door, while the bus was moving I saw the board of Spence Plaza, and thought of going there. When the bus stopped near the signals got down and went into Spencer. It is a big shopping mall with many shops and there was a Sri Lankan center too.

More on this day:
Laptop Shops
Riche Street
Movie

I’ll write about these soon… Stay tuned…

Hi,

So you came back to to read what I’ve written today. (Or may be seeing it today…) My second day in Chennai, being a Sunday I couldn’t do much, no shopping, etc. So I thought of calling some Leo Club person and having a meeting to discuss some projects with them. Beside to that there was no much happenings. In the morning went to a near by place where these guys give their dresses for ironing. Saie and Arun were not there during day time and i got some my USDs changed to INRs from Arun. Had lunch at a place called Murukan Idli Kadai, which indeed a good vegetarian place to eat.

Leo Meeting…
Leo Prakash from the Leo Club of Nightingale is one person of whom I had the contact no. So i contacted him and arranged a meeting in the evening. He asked me to come to Barrister at the Besent Nagar Beach. Arun took me there and dropped at 5pm. Prkash was there and we got ourselves introduced.

We waited the for a while, as their VP was on the way. When she came in we ordered something and went on to discuss what kind of activities we could do. I told them about the twinning of clubs and other banner patches which they could get. They were ready to twin the clubs and we also discussed about another small project which could be carried out during the time of my stay. The Nightingale Leos said they know a Children’s home where they usually do their projects and to have an interactive session there on the 20th. It was very useful meeting for both the clubs. This meeting ended around 6pm and again Arun came to pick me from there.

Later in night the guys in the room cooked dinner, rice and chicken and had a bit late dinner and slept. But today I couldn’t get any chips because there were a little available.

Finally…
That the end of day two. Hope much more activities will happen. I’ll have to do the Leo activities, sight seeings and much more… Stay tuned to my blog… I’ll keep updated…

Thanks for reading this long blog(not applicable to those who read the first and last line only )…

Vanakkam to all,

Folks, I’m in India now, just came yesterday. No much activities yet. But I want to keep this blog updated through out this tour. So keep tuned.

Why…?
Hey, you all must be thinking, ‘for what the hell you went to India?’.
Of course there is now one single reason. Mainly its all of a touring, because here after in my third and fourth year I want be getting any much vacation I suppose. So wanted to have some break over here. Then I always had idea to visit India, so decided to come down here. And the other purposes are like, Leo programs, shopping and stuff like that.

How…?
After making the decision, it was not difficult coming down… There were some difficulties in getting the visa, because of much people travelling here. The whole tour of my is sponsored by my father, (so noprobs )Beside that everything went fine. I got tickets for Air India Express on 7th. Then e got to know that one of my father’s friend (Mr.Rajendram), who works in Chennai, is also flying on the same flight. So Appa wanted me to go with him, and indeed it was helpful through out my journey. The flight was OK, fine I think, because as this is my first, I can’t compare. Flight was at 9.20am at Katthunayaka International Airport(CMB), but it was delayed and finally took off at 9.50am. We landed in Anna International Airport(MAA) at around 11.00am. Mr. Rajandra had arrange an trishow for me, there was no problem in travelling. Though he didn’t know my destination exactly, he brought me safely to this place and he was a nice guy. I think his name is Thirupathy or Pasupathy, not sure.

Where now…?
I had already arranged with one of my friends in Chennai to stay at his place. Saie, is doing Sound Engineering at SAE, Chennai whom have known him from Colombo. He is staying in Besent Nagar, a.ka. Lakshmipuram. He is staying with a group of guy here and all of them are unique, but all a fun loving guys.

What happened…?
So when I came to the house, Saie was not here, but two of his friend were here. They were both sleeping at that time, and the guy called Arun, who is a big bulid 6.3, came and received me in. There was the other guy Priyalan, who was ‘at his night’ at that time. Then around 2.30pm Saie came and I just checked my mail. Saie was chatting with someone online till evening around 5, when the other two guys got up. Later the Third guy who is staying with them, Prem came from his college.

These guys went for lunch at evening and had it as the dinner
They went to a place where there is a KFC and all other restaurants. Prem didn’t come, and Arun, Prai, Saie and myself went there. We had dinner there and then they went to the Besent Nagar beach. It was a so crowded beach, and we stayed there for-a-while, ‘sight seeing’. At that time Prem came with his girl friend and he stayed there for a while and went.

One main think I noticed there is here don’t say anything to the girls passing by like in Wellawatte. I heard if they do they will have to ‘gutikanna wenawaa’. Another advantage the Lankans have there is they can talk anything in Sinhaleese and no one understands. After a while there we came back to the house. mean while Arun gave me an extra SIM he had to use here. Then a guy called Paulo, a Malayaali came there. They _ _ _ _ Then after that we played cards for a while and slept.

Finally…
That the end of day one. Hope much more activities will happen. I’ll have to do the Leo activities, sight seeings and much more… Stay tuned to my blog… I’ll keep updated…

Thanks for reading this long blog(not applicable to those who read the first and last line only )…

This is about a different meeting I attended some time back, on the 15th of October 2006. The monthly general meeting of Lions Club of Colombo Circle (which is the parent club of my Leo club – Leo Club of Colombo Circle) was held at Hotel Western, Colombo 4.

As it was the “World White Cane Day”, which has a very close relationship with Lions, the organizers had invited two guest speakers to the event. The first speaker is a famous Tamil writer, and the second one works at the Social Services Department, and both of them were visually handicapped – blind.

Here I’m going to share some of my experiences and knowledge I gained from their speeches, specially the second speaker, Ashoka Bandula Weerawardane. His speech was about how technology and computers could be used by blind people. We are in a world where we run for colorful GUIs and run behind ‘Mr. Bill’ to get his so-said ‘USER-FRIENDLY’ operating systems and I thought they would be doing some typing and easy stuff like that.

He started his speech by saying, “You all would know many more things than me on computers, but I’ll share the fraction I know”.

First point he started with was the narrator software, and his choice was JAWS. He said that with this software, the blind can understand the interface which we see. When he mentioned the words, “Dialog boxes, Check boxes, OK buttons, etc”. I was stunned. I was surprised to here that he uses a ‘CRACKED’ version of JAWS which is a proprietary software and the crack was also done by some ‘blind-programmers’.

His thoughts about office packages was, “They are easy for us (blind), and I hope nothing for you all (sighted)”. He had used all of them and “I can even insert pictures and effects to slid shows, but you only can see…” was his comment about them. He also mentioned about many other latest tools for graphics, monitoring, navigation, printing, trans-coding, etc., but I was unable to grab those, simply because I didn’t understand those. He also know some basics of Linux and open-source software. (Mr. Bill, you might lose another guy, so bring in some more ‘crazy’ laws to CLOSE the doors, ASAP.)

Another important point from his speech is – blind people and Internet. He said “I have browsed many sites on the Internet, and I think Firefox is a good browser, having used browsers like IE, Netscape and Opera”. He said that we can chat with him when he is online, and he had also used Skype, which he thinks is ‘blind-friendly’.

The final point was about a web site, which is meant for blind computer users, www.blindprogramming.com, where they teach from ‘assembly-to-Java’ specially for blinds.

Quoting him once again – “You all would know many more things than me on computers, but I’ll share the fraction I know”. Who know the fraction, me or him? The answer is ME..

NEWS

A Ponzi-style fraud that was masquerading as an Internet based outsourcing company, shut up shop Wednesday (25-10-2006), leaving thousands of Sri Lankans defrauded of millions of rupees. Two Indian nationals (we all know Indians are ever famous for their chit-cheat fund schemes) who were king pins of the scheme are now believed to have fled the country. A Ponzi is a variation of a pyramid scam where the people who joined first is rewarded with the money taken from those who join later. They are named after Charles Ponzi an Italian immigrant in the United States who offered high returns for investing in a business which in traded postal coupons.

Mount Lavinia police stated that the operators who ran the scheme have fled the office and they had no idea how many people had joined the scheme. The operators claimed it was a BPO operation. The firm had offices in several other locations in Sri Lanka.

PAST

SeagullSoftwares.com, which claimed to offer Internet based data entry work for a monthly payment first asked people who joined the scheme, to make a deposit of LKR6,500(~US$65) to purchase what was called a ‘slot‘ before this easy ‘work from home’ job begins. At the end of the month each user gets a paycheck of LKR4,000(~US$40). Basically, the user can cover the amount he or she spent on the registration with the second paycheck.

PRESENT

Several members of the SeagullSoftwares.com are believed to have developed a website to discuss the issue at www.seagullmembers.com. They invite all who lost to register into this site.

For Related Information:
How To Avoid Investment Scams That Target Groups
SeagullSoftwares.com on Lanka Business Online
Domain Information – seagullsoftwares.com

Now its past. The Sri Lankan and Indian police are ‘very’ famous in catching frauds. Also there is no workable solution to refund those who lost. I warned all my friends who were in to this and I even showed them how this can be worked out as a fraud scheme. Work hard to earn money. Don’t fall for schemes like this in future…