Nirmal Jayasinghe

It’s my birthday and I’m on my way to get me a little something. When I get into 138 from Nugegoda [my local town], I notice some sort of commotion on the opposite lane of High-Level road. Apparently someone has been run down by a cement-mixer truck. My bus conductor is giving a live commentary: oh yes, one man run down, yeah, he’s covered in newspaper, oh, it’s blood everywhere. There he goes. Everybody’s rubbernecking as if Father Christmas has crash-landed and is giving away free gifts. Even delicate women. I cannot imagine. I can’t even listen to the ‘commentary’, leave aside looking. The poor guy is sprawled on the road and has a big crowd gathered around, just staring. There’s a big looking police officer skulking around toting a walkie-talkie. No sign of ambulance, the most-required thing. There’s another police officer at the controls of the truck: the driver has possibly fled for life, comments my conductor.

 The truck is being slowly driven to the edge of the road by the police to ease the congestion. My bus is also leaving. “If that was a bus, it’d have been burnt down. No one burns down cement-mixer trucks!”, sulks the commentator-cum conductor. The driver chuckles. The conductor is so moody he even forgets to give me a ticket. Some anger, ha ha.

  It’s only now I also remember what I should’ve done was not freeze in horror but to call the ambulance. What do we carry mobiles all along for, anyway? So today before leaving home I loaded my mobile with all emergency numbers, police, fire, ambulance, 119 etc. Next time it should not be only a blog post.

var sc_project=1739239; var sc_invisible=0; var sc_partition=16; var sc_security=”8ad9c6a0″; My friend has earned one of the most sought-after state university grants in Sri Lanka to study medicine. He’s at the University of Sri Jayawardenapura and he took me round one of the most notorious universities in Sri Lanka. People there seem, uh, so much, um, like people from another world. You have to greet senior batchmates when you meet them. They have those stupid-looking jargon for everything. And everybody seems to be entangled in puppy love, and they think it’s the best in the world. It doesn’t seem a free place. I’m from a non-state university, and I saw a striking difference in people and attitudes. They’re free to be free, but have constrained themselves. I don’t know how it started. And there are all those darn unions, driven by political parties outside. But of course there are a few good people, but most of them, too, get spoiled my the system it seems. People doing it in university think they’re top of the world, but they’re nothing but puppets. I actually never felt good about SL state universities, and I guess my fears were proven during my “guided tour”.

What a darn weekend it has been! Saturday was packed with Software Engineering and Embedded Systems Design. Sunday with Transmission & Interface Design and Engineering Management. Well seemingly nice subjects but the timetable is really packed. And what’s more, we have the tutorials right after the lesson, sometimes even without a break. They should schedule tutorials of one week to be done next week. Well I have thought about telling them but here the management doesn’t very much pay attention to student requests. They only send us a stupid feedback form at the end of the year. Nothing doing!

Right now [2:25 PM 7/23/2006] I’m stuck in Sri Lanka Institute of IT’s  15th Floor Computer Laboratory. “Prestigious” 15th Floor Computer Laboratory as we call it, the prestigious part stemming from the fact that this lab is equipped with the best computers available to the undergrads of the institute. What great stuff we did here! Today’s been a ’sucks’ type day, with most of the lessons cancelled. I was just about drafting an email to the department head!