Catching Up, The You-Know-What (i.e. Exams), etc.

Wow. It’s been a while.

I’m happy to let you know that I’m alive and well. I hope you’re alive and well too.

That’s pleasantries for ya. Now back to business.

Usually whenever I have an exam, I get super-addicted to non-exam related stuff. This time it was YouTube. Yes, I know, I thought I couldn’t get more addicted to YouTube, but turns out I was wrong! I’m actually going to do a post soon about YouTube. Anticipate that. (Like you keep anticipating most of the things I’ve promised to do on this blog.)

I figure this blog post is going to be just general how-my-life’s-been kinda thing. Feel free to let your mind wander for the rest of the post if you find my life excruciatingly boring. Then again, how dare you!

I’m not going to talk about my exams (even though they went reasonably well). Instead I’m going to talk about stuff I found online while surfing the web as usual. Hope you find them interesting . Or not.

Oh, This is exciting. They’ve released two more new trailers for A Game of Thrones and also an 11-minute video titled Inside Game of Thrones.  The show is going to premier on 17^th April on HBO, and I’m extremely excited because not only am I a huge George R. R. Martin fan, I’m also a huge George R. R. Martin fan . You should seriously watch this series, and also read the books, they’re amazing, I tell you! And have I ever lied to you? Wait. Don’t answer that.

OK, OK, here’s probably my favourite of the teasers:

My second favourite:

Finally, the 11-minute video. Watch. It.

Aaaah, the excitement.

Now, I’’m also a big fan of YouTube channel Vihart. Here’s one of my favourite videos by her. It’s about Möbius strips, and it’s very very creative. Double thumbs up. Check it out too:

I found lots of other interesting stuff online, but I don’t want to overload this page with links but this web page was featured on Yahoo, and I found it hilarious. Check out 10 illegal baby names. It’s amazing what some parents want to name their kids. Thank God some of these names are illegal, I can imagine the kind of things some of these kids could’ve experienced in schools if the parents had had their way!

I started listening to some music as soon as I came home after the exams. It’s been a while since I had a chance to listen to music. Aaah, for some reason, I was listening to "Rambari by Lahiru Perera, and it brought back all sorts of memories of being in crowded buses and listening to Sri FM and that endless (and extremely annoying at times) Saagaraya se Aadarei radio drama. Chirist, I miss Sri Lanka. Well here’s the video, which I think is an EPIC fail, considering the lyrics, which are brilliant. I mean, I wanted to see the guys at a cyver kade tapping on tables and singing this song. I wanted to see fat merchants with beelte-leaf stained teeth in village shops. I really wanted to see a leaking roof, and some scrawny kids sitting inches away, their eyes glued to a black-and-white TV watching a John Cena wrestling match. This goes on to show how over-commercialized Sri Lankan music has become. I mean, somewhere down the line, some producer guy had decided that this is the video they should come up with, which doesn’t relate to the song at all. Bad. Very bad. Oh well… sigh.

 

I just finished watching the YouTube project Life in a Day, which is a documentary made from various people’s video recordings from 24th July 2010.  It’s really interesting because the videos come from all corners of the world. I was pretty inspired by it. Maybe I’ll do a blog post about that…

But that has to wait. I’m tired of typing this already. I need to go and get some well-deserved rest. So until next time, good-bye! And if you think you like this blog (you do? Wow!) subscribe!!!

 

If One Blog Wasn’t Enough…

Ted Williams (NOT Tad Williams the fantasy author. Ted. Not Tad. See?) was a homeless guy, and when this video became viral on media and on the net—and he ended up being hired by the MSNBC. Wonder why? Check this out (I don’t know if this is the original video though):

And here’s the guy, being interviewed by CBS a couple of weeks later (kinda emotional. In a good way.):

Just. Amazing.

OK, enough about Ted Williams. Time to get to another (non-homeless) guy with a (self-proclaimed) golden voice—me!

Unfortunately, my life has been less dramatic. For starters, I didn’t get hired by a media giant in the past couple of weeks. In fact, nothing interesting happened. But I guess that’s mostly because I was stuck at home, studying. Or trying to. There’s a hopeless mess of equations and formulae in my head right now… hmm… want to hear one at random? No? OK…

I needed to take my mind off the impending you-know-what. (That means e8x8a8m8s—when you remove the 8’s between letters. Seeing the word gives me a panic attack these days. *shudder*) So, to take my mind off the you-know-what, I started another blog. In Sinhala. (called “නිපුණගේ බ්ලොග් එක”)If you want to check it out, it’s at http://nipunablogs2.wordpress.com/. It still needs some work, I just about set it up. If you decide to read it, though, bear in mind that I haven’t written in Sinhala for quite some time—so the language comes out a little awkward. In fact, I’m worried that I’ll lose the ability to write in proper Sinhala. That’s one of the main reasons why I started that blog.

Last week, I was obsessed a little with secret codes and cryptography. I meant to write a nice post about cryptography (or what little I discovered about it—it’s a very broad subject and can involve lots of math), but I guess that’ll have to wait until my exams are over! So. Wait in anticipation. Sorry about the relatively short and meaningless blog post.

… and, just like that, another year ends!

Wow. 2010 felt like a roller-coaster ride. looking back at the year, from January up to this point… just wow. Honestly. This time last year, if anyone came up to me and told me that one year later, I’d be sitting in Liverpool as a physics student, or that I’d be writing a blog post about what a year it’s been , I wouldn’t have believed it. Not at all.

I was at APIIT at the beginning of the year, and I did have some unforgettable moments with the guys… I remember getting repeatedly stuck on my DBDS assignment—programs crashing all over the place—but then after hours and hours of hard work with my team we finally got the program to work, and even added a couple of extra features… and it was a happy day.

Then there were the VB assignments, and the familiar rush in the last few minutes to get the thing printed and submitted on time. I must confess that I feel a bit sorry for the printing shop-guy at Jubilee Hall. I mean the APIIT students may get stressed out four or five times a term, but that guy—he gets stressed every time there’s a submission at APIIT. Oh well, I guess he makes enough profit to more than compensate for the stress!

Possibly the most dreadful thing I had to do in 2010 was having to make that cartoon. After enduring hours and hours of Flash, and trying to make things move in a sensible way—I came to realize that animation was not my thing.  But, by actually going through the process, I developed a great respect for animators. The amount of effort they have to put into making a cartoon is just—astronomical.

Around this time my parents were back from Australia and all of a sudden, my dad decided that I should give a try to apply to UK universities again. And I did. At first there was a bit of confusion—whether I should apply for microbiology, physics or continue doing IT. My maths A-levels hadn’t gone as well as I’d hoped, and my parents were worried about me taking physics. There’s something about maths exams that gives me a brain-freeze. But I realized that what I had was a rare opportunity—and a once-in-a-lifetime chance to study the stuff that I loved. It was a life-changing decision. I chose physics, and held on to it.

In July I got the chance to go to Canberra. It was nice to be back in Australia again, even for a short period of time. It brought back all sorts of memories—and I had a pretty good time even though I didn’t get to travel much.

When I came back I had to apply for UK visa. It was nerve-wreaking. I remember filling the applications very, very carefully, reading through again and again, checking every full stop—it literally took hours. And then, after an even more nervous wait at the application submission center, my application was submitted—followed by the agonizing weeks of waiting to find out the decision.

The decision never seemed to come. But then, it finally came, while I was in a bus on my way home. After that, it was just a mad rush. I had to visit my relatives, arrange my travel tickets, buy things for the travel all in the space of a couple of weeks. But things somehow worked out, and then I suddenly found myself, saying good bye to my aunt and my grandparents, hopping into (well, more like dragging myself in with all the baggage) the van and going off to the airport.

The flight went to Dubai, where I got off for a transit, and had a moment of panic when I saw all the airplane schedules in Arabic. I was doomed, I thought, but it turned out there was a big screen with the times in English a couple of feet away. In my panic, it took me a few minutes to find it. And then at the security checks, I was embarrassed because I just couldn’t get my belt to remove itself and, as if that wasn’t enough, when I had to take off the shoes I realized there were holes in my socks. What a moment. Fortunately the officers didn’t think that I was a security risk, and then I was off to Manchester.

I stayed at a lodge in Manchester that night, and returned to the airport next morning to meet up with the team from University of Liverpool. Just to add more drama, a section of the airport was closed off that day because they had found some suspicious baggage. But it was pretty uneventful.

Later that day, I arrived at the Melville Grove, unpacked and walked around to find out where the shops were. Surprisingly, I managed not to get lost.

The next week was orientation. There were so many talks for international students, and then there was another orientation into the physics department.

Following that week, we (that is, the physics students) worked in teams to come up with a mission that would take people to Mars and bring them back. Hopefully alive. In the end, our team didn’t win (even though we still think that our design was the best) so we didn’t get cool T-shirts. (But we got Mars bars. Ironic, right? )

Then my lectures started, and I joined with the Scribble writers’ group of the Drama Society. I’m not a good writer, but being in the group allowed me to take part in two plays—something I love to do. There’s something about being on a stage that makes any other mortal experience seem pale in comparison. I still need to do a truckload (or a spaceship-load, if you find them more fancy) of work on my acting skills, but the experience was enjoyable.

I also joined the Physics Outreach Group, which conducts many physics-related workshops for school kids. I only got to take part in one workshop, but it was a rewarding experience. To see the kids (they were in grade 10 I think) actually learn something from your presentations— it’s just amazing. I also learned that corn flour, mixed with the right amount of water (so that it forms a non-Newtonian liquid), could be a source of endless fun.

And now I find myself at the end of another year—the most eventful year ever in my life—and a new year has just begun. (I started writing this in 2010, and I finished in 2011. You’re looking at a blog post that took an year to complete!) I want to take some time out to thank everyone who’s been wonderful in 2010, and to ask for forgiveness from anybody that I’ve hurt, intentionally or unintentionally. It’s ben one hell of a roller-coaster ride indeed. I still feel dizzy. Wonder what 2011 holds. Well, I guess we’ll find out!

All the best for everyone! And thanks for taking your time to visit my blog.

Happy new year!