Wadduwa

So Dinuka was asking me about a hotel for him and his friends to stay not too far away from Colombo. I managed to get him a deal from a hotel at Negombo but for some reason they didn’t take it. They’ve somehow booked a hotel at Wadduwa and asked me whether I would like to join them. I initially said no because I had something planned during the last weekend of January.

The plan I had in my mind didn’t work out so I joined with Dinuka and his friends on the Wadduwa trip. We started the journey at round 10 am Saturday 30th January 2010 and straightaway went to the hotel called ‘Shalimar’. Well it’s honestly not a good place, rooms are not good and the pool was not clean. But it wasn’t a big problem for us guys. There were couple of funny things happened during the trip. The first was the welcome drink, Oh my god it was way too sweet, then the Lunch. As I know for the people who are in a Full Board package any hotel allows the guests to take the lunch buffet, but not in this hotel *sigh

The only good thing happened was the Guitar Jam. Unlike the other hotels the housekeeping didn’t bother us for the noise we made. The Guitar Jam went till early morning and it was truly awesome.

The Guitar Jam

Poker

No; that's not how I celebrated the New Year. This is the card game 'Poker'. I know a friend who lost big time while playing Poker. I have never played Poker before but I was invited a couple of times to play it, finally I thought I’ll give it a shot.

Lahiru and I met over a friends place and he popped the idea on this. Then I said that I’ll be free on Sunday and the next day he called me up saying come to Rajeev's place to play Poker. First Lahiru gave me a crash course on rules and stuff. Then we started playing it. It’s mostly about guessing and you don’t really need much of a brain to play that. I'm not saying it’s not much fun but it surely is a waste of lot of time, for those who plays it for money then it’s a waste of money: P

Arugam Bay II

I’ve been to Arugam Bay before in its tourist season and it’s an absolute beauty. The waves the wind and everything was so perfect. However in the raining season it’s not the case; you cannot even go out because of the rain. In the raining season it’s very hard to find a day without any rain. Thanks to a weather forecasting website I was able to find a day without any rain. It was 26th December 2009; the day is exactly 5 years after Sri Lanka was hit by the Tsunami in 2004, and surprisingly Arugam Bay is one of the very first coasts to get hit by the Tsunami in Sri Lanka.

A set of old friends of mine was planning on a trip and my initial idea was to go to Hikkaduwa and have some fun, somehow the destination happened to be ‘Siyambalanduwa’ a place where many people haven’t been to. Siyambalanduwa is closer to Arugam Bay, just 30km away to be precise. So we planned a three day trip, the route we chose was a little long. We started the journey in the early morning around 4.45am from Colombo on 25th December 2009. We were near Rathnapura by 7.00am and we went to Bambarakanda waterfall, the tallest waterfall in Sri Lanka. It was about another 40km off our route. We went to the waterfall and had breakfast there. After that we went to Diyaluma waterfall, the 2nd tallest waterfall and probably the most famous waterfall in Sri Lanka. We didn’t make a stop there like earlier because the waterfall was clearly visible from the main road.

Bambarakanda waterfall

Diyaluma waterfall

After watching the waterfalls we continued our journey to Siyambalanduwa. We stayed at Piyum’s house at Siyambalanduwa. In the first day we didn’t do anything other than watching the two tallest waterfalls. We went to bed early as we were planning to go to Arugam Bay in the next day morning. We got up early and went to Arugam Bay. The sea was not beautiful as before, there were no surfers and it was not much crowded. But fortunately my forecast on rain was correct, it was not raining and the skies were clear. December is not the season for tourists but by 11.00 am there were many local people coming to Arugam Bay especially from Colombo to enjoy their long weekend.

Arugam Bay

Since the lunch was already arranged at Piyum’s place at Siyambalanduwa we left the beach early, on our way we went to an ancient place called ‘Magul Madu Viharaya’ and headed back to Piyum’s place. Passing ‘Lahugala’ we saw a wild elephant, they were very close to the main road. First we thought we were lucky to see an elephant around but then again we saw many wild elephants on the way.

In the third and final day we visited another historical place called ‘Biso Kotuwa’ a big swimming pool of ancient times :D. The route we chose to get back to Colombo was even longer than what we used to come to Siyambalanduwa. But it was even better, we came through ‘Udawalawe National Park’. The Udawalawe National Park is a paradise for elephants. We saw about twenty individual elephants here and there.

A wild Elephant at Udawalawe National Park

It was raining heavily throughout the journey way back to Colombo; however we managed to get back safely around 7.00pm on Sunday.

Return of the Master: Schumacher

The news cannot be much better for the 2010 Formula 1 Season. Michael Schumacher has returned to Formula 1 after 3 years, well he was there with Ferrari for the past 3 years as an advisor but not as a race driver.

Schumacher will be racing for Mercedes (formally known as Brawn GP) alongside Nico Rosberg; another German Formula 1 star that raced for Williams in the previous season.
There have been lots of changes in Formula 1 this time, the rules, the teams, the drivers and pretty much everything.

While Ross Brawn remains as one of the team principals, I hope Mercedes will come up with a competitive car for the 2010 season.

An Illustration of 2010 Mercedes Formula 1 car

Finally, welcome back Shumi :)

Indoor Cricket

I’m not a fan of Cricket except for watching those 20 over matches. Udara asked me whether I’m interested of playing some indoor cricket. He has already booked the Indoor cricket court at Austasia and invited myself and my brother to come with them. Me and my brother were on our way for something else and luckily it finished early. So we came to Austasia.

Playing Indoor Cricket at Austasia

Indoor cricket is something different to outdoor version of cricket we know. The rules are totally upside down. However playing indoor cricket for 2 hours is quite a workout.

Batch Trip - 2009

After we left school most of our batch mates got together at the Batch Re-Union, there we talked about organizing a batch trip, so it finally happened.

We booked a hotel called 'The Paradise' at Negombo just for a spend a day. Not everyone who came to the Batch Re-Union was there for the trip but most of them were present. We were planning to start the trip early as 8.00 am but we were able to leave Colombo after one hour delay, however it was not a big issue as Negombo is just 30 kilo meters away from Colombo.

We arrived at the hotel before 10.00 am and had a lot of fun till the lunch time. After the lunch nothing interesting happened since all of us were tired by then. Finally we left the hotel around 4.00 pm.

TNL OnStage 2009 - Finals

TNL OnStage 2009 - Finals held at the SLECC. Like the last year a special performance was done by ‘CivilizationOne’ and it went extremely well. ‘CivilizationOne’ had to come on stage for the second time as they couldn’t ignore the demand from the crowd.

There were some bands performed equally well, the winning band was ‘Five Minutes Apart’ and the winning soloist was ‘Sam’.