Tag: Sri Lanka

How to make watalappan in a microwave?

Watalappan (or wattilappam or vattilappam) is a popular in Sri Lankan desert seemingly with a Malay in origin. It is more like a custard or pudding made with “jaggery“, coconut milk and eggs as the main ingredients. Traditionally this is steam cooked and would normally take about 45 minutes to 1 hour to prepare.

Here is my take on the same recipe with a little twist where I cook it in a microwave, which takes about 5 minutes for preparation and 5-8 minutes of cooking time. This is a quick and easy recipe for a delicious dessert, even for a guy like me.

Watalappan - Made in a microwave

Ingredients:

  • 5 Eggs
  • 250 ml Coconut milk, thick
  • 250 g “Jaggery“
  • 1 Cinnamon quill, broken
  • 1/4 tsp Salt
  • 1/4 tsp Ground cloves (Optional)
  • 1/4 tsp Grated nutmeg (Optional)
  • 1/4 tsp Ground cardamom seeds (Optional)
  • 1/4 tsp Vanilla extract (Optional)
  • Butter, to grease
  • Raisins and roasted cashew nuts, to serve

Directions:

  • Add the eggs to a bowl and whisk them well
  • Add “jaggery” and all the spices and mix them well
  • Add the mixture into a greased microwave-safe bowl
  • Cook it in microwave covered for 5-8 minutes
  • Sprinkle some raisins and roasted cashew nuts
  • Let it cool before serving

Notes:

  • “Jaggery” is an unrefined sugar typically made from sugar cane or date palm sap and often used in Indian and Sri Lankan recipes. You can substitute it with grated dark palm sugar
  • Cooking time can vary on depending on the microwave power or amount of the mixture. I would suggest start at 5 minutes and increase by a minute each time while checking if it is cooked.

PayPal now in Sri Lanka

PayPal the e-commerce business which allows payments and money transfers to be made through the Internet, has now arrived to Sri Lanka. PayPal did not allow registrations from Sri Lanka till very recently, which many of us wanted to do ‘many’ transactions on-line.

Today when I was just roaming on the Internet I accidentally went to the PayPal site and just looked around for registration. And for my surprise they had Sri Lanka in the countries list. Also they are accepting both credit and debit cards. So I got a account registered. But I’m having problems in Adding a Card, as I don’t have the ‘correct’ billing address.

So I hope I’ll do that soon, and let you guys know when I’m done.

Regards,
NiMaL

SeagullSoftwares.com – A Ponzi-style fraud!

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.

The process requires access to Internet once everyday, that’s to log-in to SeagullSoftwares.com and to obtain the tasks for the day. The Seagull Softwares head office automatically assigns 5 products (5 tasks) with external web links (eg. View Sonic, Benq, Acer, Dell, HP), and the user has to prepare a specification for each product in a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet, once the five product specifications are saved into five individual .xls files, the user has to compress the files and upload them back to the SeagullSoftwares.com data-base. It’s a 5 to 10 minutes job and that’s just it.

Also each user was allowed to have unlimited accounts with SeagullSoftwares.com, depending how much time the user can spare sitting in front of the PC everyday, and many of the ‘scheme members’ had more than one ‘slot’, some even up to hundreds. The scam started 9 months back has attracted many people around the Colombo areas. There were so many people from the government universities and other private colleges joined this scheme. Some net-cafes in Wellawatte area were dedicated to SegullMembers, and even they had SeagullExel classes. There were even some people who did it as a full time ‘job’.

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.

This SeagullSoftwares.com has no connection to the UK based company Seagull Software or the Sri Lankan company Seagull Group of Companies. But these fellows had used a similar logo that of the UK company.

For Related Information:
How To Avoid Investment Scams That Target Groups
SeagullSoftwares.com on The Sunday Leader
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…