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High Scool Graduation Uppsala 2008

2008-06-08T09:41:00.002+02:00

This is how students celebrate their end of school life. Very interesting.

Watch this youtube clip as well for more information about their celebrations.

Guess what we are thinking...

2008-06-08T09:24:00.003+02:00

HunnasFalls

2007-10-14T07:58:00.003+02:00

It was getting dark when we reached there. Road was little difficult. It was one of most beautiful shight I had seen. We had lot of fun walking arround the large garden of HunnasFalls. There is a small golf course. In the morning it is more beautiful. The final photo of this show the Hunnas water fall.

Nottingham

2007-08-25T09:38:00.000+02:00

Robin Hood

2007-08-20T09:29:00.000+02:00

Oxford

2007-08-14T08:19:00.000+02:00

I was able to visit Oxford. The flood had hit Oxford. We had to take alternative roads to reach Oxford. The city is very beautiful. They had been able to preserve the architecture of the buildings even up to now. I think there are very rigid customs with that.(As always the case in UK)
Piniwan took some photos of me in the university and in the town. I have uploaded few of them here.

Waves2007: Reading UK

2007-08-14T08:17:00.000+02:00

I participated to the The 8th International Conference on Mathematical and Numerical Aspects of Waves (Waves 2007) which was held at the University of Reading, from 23rd July to 29th July. I arrived Heathrow airport on 22nd about 10 am. It was very difficult to go through the airport to the bus terminal. It was really inconvenient to find the way through. It was little disorganized to me. I took the bus and it was about 30 minutes from Heathrow but it cost me £13. I thought it was expensive compared to Sweden (of course to Sri Lanka).

As I noticed Reading was a nice little town with very less number of people. I got the bus to the university the bus fair was £1.50 but had to pay £2 since the driver does not have change. As I later noticed the bus drivers do not carry coins (May be due to security reasons). The people are very helpful and social here. They help me without even asking to find the bus stop. (They may have thought I needed help badly, since I was looking at the map and the name boards to locate myself).

The university has very good residential facilities. I had breakfast and dinner from the restaurant in the WhiteNight hall. The lunch was served at the conference. The dinner was very good throughout. But I started hating full English breakfast after two days. It was the same everyday which contain lot of fat.
Eddie and I walk to the town from the university. We noticed that all most all vehicles can be seen in one street only. It had been raining in UK during that period causing flood threats. There was one very big shopping center in the city. It was a nice beautiful city. The houses did like the ones we found in Nuwara Eliya in Sri Lanka.

The conference was also nice. While I was staying there one of my friend Thiwanka phoned me and said that he would come to pick me up on 29th.

Mihintale

2007-07-07T19:03:00.000+02:00

Erandi and I with two of our friends on May 2006 traveled to Anuradhpura for 2 day trip. First day we visited Mihintale which is one of the most valuable places to Sri Lankan Buddhists. It was here, Ven. Mahinda, who brought Buddhism to Sri Lanka, met king Devanampiyatissa the king of Sri Lanka at the time.
This first picture shows "Kalu Diya Pokuna" translated as "Black water pond". The color of the water is caused by the reflections of rocks and shades of trees in the near by jungles. The pond is 200 feet long and 70 feet wide. It is the largest pond in Mihintale complex.

The second photos show the rock where the Thero Mahinda was waiting for the king. It was very warm and the rock was really heated at the time we visited. We can not wear shoes there since it is part of the temple. So we decided not to climb the rock this time.

The third photo is how you can see the new Buddha statue from dagoba. I found a nice and informative site about Mihintale here.

Our Wedding

2007-01-31T15:47:00.000+01:00

I got married to my loving Erandi, on 25th January 2007. The wedding was held hotel Bright Bravo, Kurunegala.

PhD party

2006-09-30T10:41:00.000+02:00

In Sweden after finishing the PhD research you have to defend your thesis in public defense. There was a one such defense yesterday(19th Sep). It was Jonas who successfully defended his PhD.

There is a party in the evening to celebrate the PhD. Normally the person who is defending the PhD invites all of the people in the department. The invitation which I received can be seen in the red picture. The invitation is in Swedish, but it is not difficult to understand that. It invites me and any respective person(you know who) to the party at Uplands nation at 18 d.k. 18 d.k means 18 + double quarters that is 18.30. It further says coat should be the dress. To participate to the party we have to pay 320 SEK.
I went to the party in the evening with some of my friends. It is a formal party so there is a formal procedure. It is same with all the formal parties. At the entrance there is a board with seating arrangement. It basically told where we should sit.

We had a drink and chat until 19.00 and then sit in our places. Jonas named the the toastmaster for the party. And the toast master was Linda. Ones in a while toastmaster disturbs us with announcing if someone wants to say something to Jonas.
At the end of the party we all sang a famous Swedish song. I have posted it here. It is really nice. The final part we have to sing standing on our chairs. It is the same song and same practice in all Swedish formal parties. So I asked Martin(my adviser) why they sing final part by standing on chairs. He gave a nice answer. At first he thought it is the tradition. But later realize that no one wants to sit on the chair after they stand on that. So basically they have to leave the hall.

After that people went to the bar and bought drinks and had informal conversations here and there. It was like Sri Lankan party by then. Some people danced and some chat with other while drinking. We left the place at about 12.30 a.m. And it was a nice party.

Geek Test 2

2006-09-29T15:32:00.000+02:00

The first geek test was posted about one month ago. Eddie gave me the that one. He has seen my blog and told me the second geek test today. Here it is...

IF ONLY YOU AND DEAD PEOPLE CAN READ HEX, THEN HOW MANY PEOPLE CAN READ HEX?

:-)

Fire Alarm

2006-09-26T12:22:00.000+02:00

Today at about 11.15 am the fire alarm went off near my room in MIC. I and one of my friend(Sri Lankan) went outside the room and see what it is about and did not see anyone running or shouting. In Sri Lanka we can hear people shouting and running in an emergency. We were in the third floor in the building. Looked down through the window all the people are outside. I am sure I came out within 30 seconds after the alarm went off, but by then all Swedish people have gone out.

Within 2 miniutes Uppsala fire brigade came. There were about 8 vehicles, ambulances and it was unbelivabaly quick. After few miniutes they figured out that was a false alarm. There is a repair going on ground floor. May be something has happened there. I was not worrying too much since I had the backups of my great work at home unlike Olof Rudbeck.

The town was distroyed during the famous fire in 1702. A drawn picture of that fire is available here. Most of the work done by Olof Rudbeck was lost in the fire that destroyed most of Uppsala in 1702. During the course of the fire, Rudbeck himself directed the people of the city, shouting orders from a roof while his house burned down. Shortly after the fire, Rudbeck died.

Swedish Election 2006

2006-09-18T11:14:00.000+02:00

The Swedish Election was held on last Sunday (17th September). The election was very calm and did not notice that there is an election. It is obviously very nice expereince to be in Sweden in an election period.

There were some huts made my different parties in the city center. Of course adjacent to each other. No fighting like in Sri Lanka. Everyboady is very nice and no violence. No posters in the city and it was a clean Election.

I will post some photos which I took during those days. There was a power shift from Socialist Party to Moderate party.

The most intersting party for me was the Pirate party. The main theme of the party is to revise the exsisting interlectual property law. The Pirate Party captured 34918 or 0,63% of the overall votes in their first participation at an election for parliament since the founding of the party less then 10 month ago, becoming the 10th biggest party of more then 40 among the parliament vote. A voting result less then 4% does not qualify for seats in the Swedish Parliament. Getting less then 1% of the vote further means the Party will not get financial assistance from the state for printing ballots nor state-fundings for the next election which requires a result of at least 2,5% of the votes.

The other intersiting party was the Feminist Initiatev. The party only got 37,954 votes which is only 3000 more than the Pirate Pary.

BIT Numerical Mathematics Circus 2006

2006-09-09T11:25:00.000+02:00

The BIT Numerical Mathematics Circus held on Nordic Blue Hotel on 31st of August and 1st of September. The focus of this meeting on numerical mathematics was to let younger researchers in Nordic countries to present their work.

The Nordic blue hotel was on an island belongs to Stockholm Archipelago. The boats can be seen always. The boats are going to Finland, Estonia from Stockholm. One boat service providing this trip is Viking Line.

The place was really beautiful. The one of the best places of Sweden. The island Lidingö is 15 minites away from Stockholm. But we had to taka the train from Uppsala to Stokholm then subway from Stokholm to Ropsten and then the bust to the island. Lidingö municipality is considered one of the richest areas in Sweden.

We reached to hotel on 31st August 12 noon. Started with the luch. The food was really good. The meeting started as 1 pm. There were about 27 speakers for 8 hours. Each one get 10 miniutes to talk. The time was little bit short. Had tea/coffee break at 3 p.m. The hotel had pure ceylon tea. It was very good. Many people enjoyed it.

The dinner was served at 7 p.m. It was very good. Played pool for the first time in my life and i played really good as a first timer. In the breakfast we had Guanabana and Passion fruit to drink. Guanaban tasted just like Anoda(Anona) which is a Sri Lankan fruit. It was very good. The meeting finished at 3 pm. It was a really really nice conference. The next meeting will be held in 2 years time probably in Norway.

New students arrived at Uppsala university.

2006-08-30T12:29:00.000+02:00

It was really different to my Sri Lankan experience about new students in unversity. I saw some student getting ready with strange dresses since the summer. When I aksed who they were, I was told that they were the student leaders and preparing to welcome new student who comes mid Auguest to the university.

The student made huts infront of the department. There were different huts for different sections. Seniors dressed with funny cloths. The most interesting was the computer science students. Almost all of them(male students..!) had beard. They tried to get the geek look.

The new student were given paper egges. Interestingly the size chages from person to person after few days. I leant that the person who has the biggest wins finally. And the size of egg increased when they did someting bad or something innavative i geuss.

They played nice games and enjoyed very much. It lasted for 2 weeks. But unfortunately I was not in the department during last two days to see what happed finnaly to the person which had the biggest egg.

Playing Carrom

2006-08-04T08:07:00.000+02:00

I was able to play Carrom last weekend. Carrom in Sweden? Well it is at Lalith's house. Who has brought a Carrom board from Sri Lanka. Carrom is one of my favourite games.

It is not very complex game if you play for fun. But there are lot of rules to learn. But knowing a few of them you can start playing it. The complete rules can be found in the websites of Web site of All India Carrom Federation and Carrom UK.

Carrom can play with two people with is called single or four people with is called double. The equipment needed are a carromboard, carrommen and striker. It is obvious the need of table, stools or chairs. There are standards for all these items. But when we play for fun we do not care about those starndards. It is also needed good even light to avoid shadows.

The carrom is mostly famous in Indian subcontinent. But it is popular among many Europian countries. The details can be found in International Carrom Federation website.

The first(1991) and third(2000) championships were held in New Dilli India. The second (1995) and fourt(2004) championships were held in Colombo Sri Lanka. As I can remember the world championships were Indian team and the runners up team was Sri Lanka in all those championshops. The full report
about the result can be found in Australian Carrom Association website.

Carrom is very interesting and relaxing sport. It involves lot of stratergies, and planning. Snooker is a similar game. But Carrom is easier.

Italian Friend

2006-07-31T08:58:00.000+02:00

I met an Italian guy who is doing a summer course at SLU in Uppsala. Well for the moment I can not remember his name. (I will mention his name and post a photo later.) I was ivited to Lalith's house for a dinner. He also has passed out from Faculty of Engineering, University of Peradeniya, about 8 years before me. At present he working for Nokia in Sweden. We planned this for weeks. Last week we planned to have a grilled meal at a park, but bad weather prevented us doing that. So this time we did not take a risk for going outdoors, so we end up in his home.

The Italian guy is from Bologna in Italy and he is doing his PhD in Bologna University which is the oldest university in Europe. He is delighted that Italy won the worldup this year. He said he watched the match in one of the nations in Uppsala. He said in finals it was only two Italians were there to watch the match and all others were French and Sweds. He told the best match played by Italy is against Germany. I also think that is THE MATCH of the world cup too.

He was little bit worried about Sweden. He told that Swedish food is not good for him. He said about Italian pasta and pizza. His city is famous for sausages. He said people here are too silent. They say "Hey" and that is all. They do there work alone and don't like to be disturbed by others. He had hoped to go out to dinners with people in afternoons and mix with them. That is before coming to Sweden. He said he considered to be little shy in Italy. So he had wanted to mix with different people to overcome that. He is disappointed that he made the wrong choice for the job. He said in Italy people knows almost everything about there neighbors.(Same as in Sri Lanka :-) It is called gossiping right?)

He further said coffee in Sweden is too soft and can drink liters. Actually I was astonished with that remark. I was under the impression that Swedish coffee is the strongest. It is undrinkable for me. I dilute coffee with milk around 1:10 ratio. Still it is strong for me. (I can imagine that Italian coffee should look like tar.) He is very worried that Swedish boys are girl engaging very early and living together. He said he is turning 30 next August and still single; means not engaged. He seems very worried about that, I mean not finding a Swedish girl. May be one of his aims of the journey.
He is very worried about Sweden and was talking and talking about all the negative things about Sweden. Then we asked whether there is anything good in Sweden. He said yes there are many good things too. He said driving is very easy here. In Italy is a chaos. And pedestrians knows that vehicles do not stops at crossings there. But here it is opposite. Education is free here and very well planned. He said everything is very well planned and running smoothly. He told the self confidence of Swedish girls are very high too. He does not want to learn Swedish. He said he doesn't have enough time for that. He told that he is trying to improve his English. English of Italian are very weak as he said. All the television channels telecast English movies dubbed in Italian. So they hardly get a chance to learn English in Italy. I think Swedish has the best English, among the countries where it is not the mother tongue.

We had an interesting conversation with Sri Lankan dinner at Lalith's home. As he told, in short, Italy is complete opposite of Sweden. I think Italy is nearly equal to Sri Lanka in many cases.

Cricket: The best partnership ever...

2006-07-30T13:03:00.000+02:00

Cricket is the most popular sport in Sri Lanka. It has been popular in the island long before Sri Lanka winning the world cup in 1996. There is no suprise for the popularity when we look at the achievements in cricket by this small island. Sri Lanka has been breaking lots of world records during last 10 years.

Yesterday it was another record went down. The record for the highest partnership was broken by Mahela Jayawardena and Kumar Sangakkara with mamoth partnership worth 624. The recieving end it was South Africa. The elier rocord was also eshtablished by 2 Sri Lankans, Sanath Jayasooriya and Roshan Mahanama in the famous test against India in 1997. The list of highest partneships can be viewed here.
test series.
Mahela is the captain of Sri Lankan team and Kumar was the vice captain of the team batted for more than 10 hours to achive this which remarkable runrate of nealy 4 an over. Mahela went on to score 374 which is the fourth highes score in test cricket and achieved the highest score by a Sri Lankan beating 340 of Santha Jayasooriya.

It was less than a month where Sri Lanka achieved the highest ever score by any team in an One-day internationals, scoring 443 against Holland. Last month Sri Lanka humiliated England by winning one-day series 5-0 and drawing the
test series. Sri Lanka won 7 matches in a row int that series. Sri Lanka is in good form hope will continue it for a long time.

Cricket is very complex game with lot of rules. It is very difficult to explain cricket to someone who is totally new to it. I was aked to exprain about cricket by Per Lötstedt a professor in the department in a coffee break. It was really difficult me to explain it. Cricket is not simple to explain. And person from outside it may see as a boring game. But there a lot of stratergies involve in the game. Ones you know the game you will be crazy about it.

Rome

2006-07-29T17:20:00.000+02:00

The series begins in 52 BC, as Gaius Julius Caesar completes his conquest of Gaul after eight years of war, and prepares to return with his army to Rome. In the senate Pompey Magnus declare Caesar as an enemy of Rome and remove from the head position of Rome. This cause Caesar and Mark Anthony to invade Rome with their army. When they arrived Rome Pompey had fled to Greece.

I learnt that Julius Caesar had seizures in the last two years of his life, possibly caused by a brain tumour. Caesar was known to have fallen convulsing into the River Tiber. By this time, epilepsy had become known as "the falling sickness" because the kind of seizures that made a person lose consciousness and fall down were the only kind then recognized as epilepsy. The series shows how he tried to hide this sickness from others and that is very interesting too.

Notable caracters are Mark Anthony who gives lot of support to Caesar. We see the same problems today - crime, unemployment, disease, and pressure to preserve your place in a precarious society. It shows how pathetic the slaves were at that time.

When you watch the series you feel like you are in the Rome. It is a huge production and is a nice TV series and never loose the interest. These days the series is on Swedish television. I learnt that the series "Rome" is a co-production between HBO and the BBC, and it is one of the largest co-production deals ever by the BBC for an American series, and marks the first series co-production of the two networks.

Cycling in Uppsala

2006-07-28T08:00:00.000+02:00

In short, everyboday cycles. That is how you can decribe Uppsala. The easiest and cheapest way of getting around is cycling. Being a university city with more than 50 000 undergards it is not a surprise. The first sight when you get down from the bus or train from centralstation is an ocean of bicycles. The municipality has provide the citizens separate cycle paths. And all the places have places to store bikes for free. The trafic rules are biased towards cyclists. Reusult everyboday cycles.

But it is compulsory to lock your bike. If you park it overnight it is better to lock it to something rigid. Because you can never trust drunken Uppsala students and there are people who steal bikes as well.

I got my first bicycle in Uppsala, last week. I was walking from the apartment to the department. It is 3.5 km walk and take about 30 miniutes. The path is along the river and only cycling is allowed there other than walking. It is quite relaxing to walk becasue you can think while walking. It can be something related to research or something entirely crazy. The second one is the more frequent one though. One my friend Malin told me there are bicycles left by people in the department. I manage to get one. The seat was very high and was imposible to ride. The person who used it earlier must be taller than 2 meters. I had to lower the seat before riding the bike.

The cylcle has a different kind of break system than the one we are used to in Sri Lanka. The rear break is on pedal. It is somewhat confusing at the start. But seems more reliable than the conventional system we have in Sri Lanka. The seat is very hard and very difficult to be seated for long time. I do a evening ride almost everyday, to the places in Uppsala where I haven't visited earlier. Now I am enjoying cycling.

Expedition with Bruce Parry

2006-07-27T13:56:00.000+02:00

It has become a habit of mine to blog about TV programs. I try to minimize that. But this program is very interesting and thought of sharing with you. The name of the program is Tribe, a BBC production. Bruce Parry a leader of a BBC expedtion team is the main actor(I think he is not acting). He goes searching tribes arround the world. The most facinating one was the expedition to Kombai tribe in dense forests of Papua in Indonesia.

Bruce goes there and start getting friendly with the tribe. At first they all are reluctant. But after sometime they start talking with him. There is a an air strip and a church built by missionaries. The people arround that area are used to the tourist. The preacher of the church can speak English. But when you go inside to the jungle you find the native untouched tribes. Most of them believe to be cannibals. One man described how he killed a man and ate his brain.

Brue is really mixing with the tribe. He goes hunting with them. Eat warms as they do. It is really interesting program.

The program is on Swedish tv SVT 1 on Monday at 20 00. I missed program one. But managed to watched 2 and 3. BBC has lots of interesting educational programs and Swedish tv is telecasting them frequently. I wonder why Sri Lankan tv is not telecasting those kind of programs. The photos were taken from the gallery in Tribe program webpage of BBC website.

Dances with Wolves

2006-07-26T10:54:00.000+02:00

Dances with Wolves is one of the best film I have ever watched. It is nearly 4 hours long. The film is about a US officer in 1860s who get friendly with Sioux Indians, a native american tribe.

The film was shown in one of the Swedish television channels. The most of the dialogues in the film was on Lakota language. It was subtitled in Swedish. But still it was not boring. I tried my best to translate Swedish subtitle into English. The start of the film was little boring and I changed the channel few times. But after about 15 miniutes it was very intersting and never changed the channel.

There are some user comments on the film here. It has won 7 Oscars awards and nominated for another 5. It has also nominated as the best film in Golden Globe.

Geek Test

2006-07-25T13:23:00.000+02:00

This is a Geek test. Eddie did this test for me some time back. Passing this one doesn't mean that you are a Geek. This is the test for you. (You have to answer within 10 seconds and try adding the answer as a comment.)

There are 10 kinds of people, those who undestand ........... and those who don't.

Tour de France 2006

2006-07-24T11:38:00.000+02:00

One of my friends told me that I am a sport geek. Because I am interested in many sports and following them. It doesn't matter it is cricket(the most popular sport in Sri Lanka) or Curling(which is impossible to play in Sri Lanka) I love watching and reading about them.

I could not help me blogging about tour de France 2006 since it had a very interesing finish. It was very uncertain this years because no more Lance Armstrong. No Jan Ullrich, no Ivan Basso. They were the top players in tour de France 2005. Who the hell was going to win the 2006 Tour de France? was the question 3 weeks ago.

But it was Floyd Landis who won the tour finally. It was the hardest fight back I have ever seen in cycling history. He dropped to the 11th place in 16th stage with about 8 minutes behind the leader, which is very big with 4 stages to the end of the tour. Next stage with a solo breakaway of about 120 km he reduced it to 30 seconds and in 19th he achieved a lead of 59 seconds.

Eating Meat according to Buddhism?

2006-07-23T09:26:00.000+02:00

One asked me whether eating meat is prohibited in Buddhism. I said it is confusing. Some say it is not allowed and some say it is not prohibited. My personal view is eating meat is not encouraged and it is not prohibited as well.

According to my knowledge there are restrictions to eat meat in Buddhism. Killing beings are totally prohibited according to the five precepts. If someone killed the animal with you in mind, then eating its meat also said to be sinful. For example you go to one's house who killed one animal to serve you is not good according to this.

Some argue people kill animals because you eat them. So if you stop eating meat that animal may survived. According to me we have to do it in large scale to make that effective. It is an indirect effect. If we think about indirect effects one step further, then we can not eat or consume anything. For example eating vegetables causes use of insecticides. Most of the people in western countries eat meat. So if anything produced there causes killing animals too, because the workers most probably eat meat to get energy.

But I believe meat is very inefficient way of consuming energy. Meat is in the bottom of the energy cycle. So when thinking about environment eating meat is not conducive.

Buddhism need a strong mind for understanding the path of truth. If you do bad things you are not strong inside. When you try to calm you mind with meditation you will understand that. That is why I think Lord Buddha introduce five precepts into Buddhism. So my view is if you think eating meat is not good you stop it and if you think it is no problem as long as you don't involve killing them it is OK. It is you mind. But killing animals is always not good.

My Mathematics

2006-07-22T12:18:00.000+02:00

It was raining all the day today. Suddenly it struck me how all these mathematics we are using came. I was thinking and thinking about Mathematics and its origin since there isn't anything to do. How could it have been started. Must be from numbers. But how?

When we see two oranges and two apples, we can see there is a one common thing. That can be called a number? The value of it can increase or decrease by adding apples or eating apples. The concept of equal and not equal must be the first concept of mathematics. Then we can have part of an apple. It can clearly see the mathematics started as a method of communication. It is a language. Different people know different ammount of it. But we all use it today without thinki ng about it.

What is zero. When there are no apples then there is zero apples. That is how we see it these days? Does "no apples" equal to "no oranges"?. What!!! am I getting crazy now? What are negative numbers? Can there be a negative apple? No there can not because it seems like a crazy idea. It is an abtraction of the real(real according to our senses) concept. But have we never felt that it is an abtraction.

I am thinking now, is it the same how I see this consepts and how you see. May be or may be not. How can we verify? There must be something common. I see color red and you see it too. We both can differentiate. BUT is it the same way we are percieving. U may see red as i see green? Damn now it is getting worse. I should stop here. Don't try to understand what I am saying by reading this. Because what I perceive in my mind can not be put into words. And even if I put that into words, how u perceiveit after reading is completely different. So don't try to do useless things. One question "what is an useful thing?"

Being a PhD student in lonely summer.

2006-07-19T14:18:00.000+02:00

In the beginning of month July, the department becomes almost empty. In this summer there are only around six people left in our division(Scientific Computing). Except me and Mahen(my room mate) others are finishing their PhD in Fall. Otherwise it would be only two of us here.

The weather is very good. Sun is shining from 3 a.m. to 10 p.m. Due to the high refraction of sun light it is bright from 2 a.m. to 11 p.m. For about a week it never get dark in Uppsala. But we do not see Midnight sun here. Have to go little bit north for that.

When there are no people around, become lazy. I do not understand why that happens. There is no night time to sleep. Birds start singing (shouting??) early in the morning. Crazy creatures....

Town also like deserted. There are very few people in the town. Most of them must be workers in super-markets, cleaning staff and PhD students. There are about 40 000 undergrads and 2 500 grads students in the university.(See figures) And can you imagine when there is about very few students like me left alone.

Sometimes I think what the hell I am doing here. There is nice country called Sri Lanka with nice food(I have fed up eating our own food now....) and weather. It is also one kind of experience in one's life. Can think about the life lot. The photo is me alone in the department.(Me alone??? Finding who was behind the camera as left as an exercise to to the readers.)

Sleeping beauty

2006-07-18T12:29:00.000+02:00

Have you ever seen a sleeping swan. I saw it today in the pond at Uppsala town. There were only two adults until last winter. But now there five small ones. It is really a nice scene.
People stop by the pond to feed them take photos. They are really cute. There are lot of duck in the pond. Buth swan family is the most interesting. Can wait there for hours, it is really relaxing.

The small ones sleep on the water with their heads hided. They keep floating whlie sleeping but wake up just before they hit on something. The other interesting thing is they are not white. They are still ash in color. Don't know how long it will take until they become pure white.

Uppsala Castle

2006-07-17T11:16:00.000+02:00

Uppsala Castle in Uppsala, Sweden, was constructed during the Gustav Vasa era in the 16th Century. The castle was the administrative centre of Uppland for many years, and is today the residence of the County Governor of Uppsala County.

The Castle can be see from almost anywher from the city. The shape is different at different place. The best view(I think) is from near the pond in the uppala town. The first picture is from that place.

The castle was seriously damaged by fire in 1702, being reduced essentially to a ruin. Reconstruction took many years, and was indeed hampered by the remains of the castle being used as a quarry for stone to be used in building Stockholm Palace.

Rikssalen, the former Hall of State, whose uses have included that of drying closet for the governor's wife, was restored in 1932 and is now Uppsala's most glittering festive location.

It is nice place to visit. The most parts of the city can be viewed from there. The castle must be the highest place in uppsala. It seems the guns at the castle are aimed at the church. Not sure whether this is to show the power to the church, which had been the center of power in Sweden for many centuraries.

Gamla Uppsala

2006-07-15T11:49:00.000+02:00

We went to Gamla Uppsala on 12th July 2006, which is the old city of Uppsala.



Eddie(on the grass), Sven-Erick (on his vehicle), me (on the bench) and Mahen (behind the camera) had our meal just after reaching Gamla Uppsala. We had about 7 km walk from city center. It was a nice walk along the Fyrisån river.
On the way we saw a nice art work. Which was earlier next to the Uppsala castle. Sven-Erick told that people did not like that moder Swedish artwork and had remove it from there. Since they have spent lot of money on that the authorities were reluctant to trow it away. That is how this art work came here.

The Royal mounds are the three large barrows which are located in Gamla Uppsala. People also have been buried in Gamla Uppsala for 2000 years, since the area rose above water. But only few are left. Still people are buried in here. But for that they have to be member of the church and pay the church fee. People can left the church but they have to pay burial tax to the government.

The church at Gamla Uppsala is very old built in 12th centuary. The church was close due to renovation. So we could not see the inside of the church. The roof of the churh was wood. I think most of the church must be wood.

The Gamla Uppsala museum was a nice place to visit. There were lot of infomation about Vikings. Unfortunately we were not allowed to take photographs. But were able to take a photo of Viking alphabet.

The museum is full of details about how famous professor of Uppsala University, Olof Rudbek argued that Scandinavia, specifically Sweden, is identical with the sunken Atlantis.

Oba Apple malak wage.....

2006-07-15T11:20:00.000+02:00

An Apple flower in Uppsala. (Summer 2006)
There is a sinhala song which means "You are like an apple flower" in English. But haven't seen an apple flower for real, until today. Hopefully now I can understand the meaning of the song! :-)

Thailand

2006-02-01T17:54:00.000+01:00

Had a transit in Bangkok on the way to Stockholm. Bangkok is a bigger city when compare with Colombo. More organized thant Colombo. There are lot of girl on bycicles through out the city.
There are lot of temples in and arround the city. We had chance to look at some of them and they were really nice. It is obvious that Tailand is very much used to tourism.
People (at least in tourism sector) are very well organized.
I was raining at the time we were there. So, had to limit the visit. It is a nice city with culture is quite similar to Sri Lanka.

My web blog

2006-01-01T11:43:00.000+01:00

I have been inspired by some very interesing web blogs. I was thinking whether i should start one. Finally decided to start one. But still uncertain about the format or the content of the blog. Well I decided not have constraints on my contents. I will be able to see where it evoloves after few years.