McLaren’s have come out strong once again

Having topped both Practice 1 and 2, McLaren looked strong in Friday’s practice sessions. During the Practice 3 the McLarens were placed 2nd and 4th by the RedBulls getting 1st and 3rd position. We only saw little action from Ferrari’s and the Mercedes. During the Qualifying having topped both Q1 and Q2, Lewis Hamilton impressed his fans. However the Top 10 shootout didn’t work for Hamilton that well. RedBull’s secured the Pole Position for the 4th consecutive time at Chinese Grand Prix giving Sebastian Vettel the Pole position.

It was a dramatic Grand Prix race indeed. Fernando Alonso’s “Jump Start” came out as a surprise for the well experienced driver. He was given a drive through penalty for that. Nico Rosberg, Jenson Button and Robert Kubica had the advantage on tyres and were virtually ahead of others by a very far. McLaren’s tyre strategy was again different for Jenson Button and Lewis Hamilton. Hamilton made 4 pit stops altogether while his team mate did only two. Nico Rosberb was leading in the early part of the race gave the track position to Button because of a mistake he made. Hamilton having to battle the RedBulls, Renaults and seeing the big red Ferrari’s in his rear mirrors managed to pass the Russian newcomer Vitaly Petrov with the massive Top Speed of the powerful McLaren. He subsequently passed Kubica and Rosberg and climbed up to the second position behind team mate Button. Hamilton was catching Button but then lost time and Rosberg was catching Hamilton. Hamilton however responded with the superb last few laps and was only a second behind Button when they saw the Chequered Flag.

It was a much needed McLaren one-two win at the end. McLaren are now leading the Constructor’s championship ahead of their traditional rivals Ferrari. Jenson Button is the current driver’s championship leader. Sabastian Vettel is indeed the man to watch. But there is an interesting fact. Nico Rosberb again both out-qualifying and out-racing his team mate Michael Schumacher is currently in the 2nd place of the driver’s championship. Nothing can be predicted because it’s only the start of the season. Lot more action can be expected when the races moves to Europe.

Start of the 2010 Formula 1 season

Have seen two interesting races; Bahrain and the Australian Grand Prix. In both Sebastian Vettel took the pole position with flying laps at the qualifying. But unfortunately for Vettel he couldn’t win any races even though he did amazingly well in the start of each race. Those Television commentators always talks about the reliability issues with new cars on the track but what about the RedBull car? In both races Vettel was forced to give up because of problems with his car. However his colleague’s car didn’t face any technical issues in either race.

According to the reviews there are 4 very powerful teams in this season namely Ferrari, RedBull, McLaren and Mercedes. In a media interview Lewis Hamilton has said that his car McLaren MP4-25 hasn’t got enough pace as the rival RedBulls. However having technical difficulties in the Vettel’s car McLaren did gain more points in both races.

There is another special highlight of today’s race despite for his poor qualifying result, Hamilton was chasing Robert Kubica for the 2nd position and at one moment he almost got through, but the surprisingly Hamilton came in to the Pit Lane and pushed back to fifth :( He was behind the two Ferraris for many laps and at the very last moment made contact with Mark Webber and lost another position.

Lot of changes has happened so far and I’m expecting lot of action from all the teams in the rest of the season :)

Speed Drome

Speed Drome

There is an outdoor Go-Kart track located near the parliament grounds. I’ve seen it many times but have never been there. I had no plans and I called Udara to check what he was doing. He said he is near Speed Drome with Dinendre. Then I asked them to wait there till I come so we can do some karting, he called back and said you need to wear shoes and he is coming home to get his pair of shoes. I asked my sister whether she is interested to come and she said ok. Went to Udara’s place and picked up Udara and his sister Bagya. Dinendre has done some karting and he gave us basic instructions when we arrived at Speed Drome.

The ticket cost was Rs. 750 for 10 minutes, so all 5 of us got the tickets. While we were waiting we saw another group racing karts. It was faster than I expected. And they were really good at drifting at the corners. Finally it was our turn and we went to the pit lane. Soon as we walked in we were given a paper which has the set of rules that to be obeyed. Then we were given helmets and a pair of gloves for each. Then we got in to these tiny Go-Karts and some guy came and stared my Go-Kart, I was racing from the very first second. Too bad I spun while taking turns few times. Then some instructor came and told me that I need to slow down at the bends and blah blah blah...

10 minutes was way too short, I really wished I could do few more laps. This is good for a change and trust me the moment I got out of the kart I was so exhausted. Karting is fun, should do it more often :)

Karting at Speed Drome

Link(s): http://www.speedrome.lk

Box-O-Noodles

Today no food at home so I decided to go out and have something for dinner. Didn’t feel like driving so I walked towards the Coffee Bean. Just before the Coffee Bean I’ve noticed this wired place couple of times but today since I was walking I managed to see it clearly, guess what I discovered... 'Box-O-Noodles'. I've heard about 'Box-O-Noodles' but didn't know where it was or what it really is; obviously it’s some to do with noodles :D.

Went inside and had a look at the menu.. funny names from top to bottom in the menu, whatever those are I decided to go with this 'Black Ninja' thing. Took about 5 minutes to prepare the food and I got it BOXED. So that’s why they call it 'Box-O-Noodles'

Box-O-Noodles

Links: Box-O-Noodles

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.