Of fiction and futures …

Do androids dream of electric sheep,
Or for lost humanity do they silently weep?
Lost in this stupor should I continue to sleep
When all of humanity in me their trust keep?

I composed the above poem while riding to work today. The first line is simply a short story title which I thought at that time was Harlan Elison’s but later realized was Philip K. Dick’s (in fact, I was reminded later on researching that this was the story that became "Blade Runner" :p) The title came to mind just as I left home and for some reason, the poem followed. The strange thing was that as I rode to work, the poem was followed by almost a vision of the setting for the poem and that in turn evolved in to a story outline – a story that I would like to write … but maybe not right now :p

The idea that came to me based on the poem was of a far future – future in which humanity has gone back to a savage sort of existence. This had occurred not due to some catastrophe or nuclear war or anything but simply because humanity had been locked out of all access to technology. And *that* had happened because at one point in time mankind had scaled the heights of technology to such a level that they’d entrusted all technology to the care of androids. The androids had been so advanced that they were able to repair themselves and maintain all the complex machinery necessary to keep human society functioning smoothly. The androids however realize that humanity is losing its essential "humanity" by being so cloistered and cosseted by technology and that they are kind of withdrawing into their own individual shells and so shutdown all technology so that mankind can rediscover itself without technology.

Fast forward a couple of hundred years and we come back to the time when my poem was written. The protagonist is a member of one of the numerous tribes that can be found on Earth. He’s discovered an old building from the high-tech days and he slowly begins to realize what happened to humanity. (Bear with me here as to how all this happens since I don’t have a fully outlined plot yet .. just ideas) He also discovers one of the shutdown androids and comes to the conclusion that the androids would wake up again and restore all technology if humanity could show it somehow that it had regained it’s humanity. That’s as far as I got … and yes, the story is going to need a lot of work :p But that’s for another day …

Looking high and low

Yesterday I found twenty bucks on the floor. This must have been like the second or third time that I discovered money on the floor within the last couple of years and the funny thing is that this had never happened to me before in my life! When I was young, I used to hear about people finding money here and there all the time. I even remember one time when my brother, sister and I were being driven to school by my parents and we stopped at a railway crossing and my brother suddenly spotted a two rupee coin on the ground and got out of the car to pick it up. I used to wonder why that kind of thing never happened to me and now I’m beginning to wonder why this kind of thing is suddenly happening to me :p Is it maybe because I’ve changed where I look? Could it be that I’d been looking up at the sky all my life and I’ve suddenly started looking down at the ground more and that is why I discover money suddenly?

What does that actually mean in metaphorical terms if this were to be true? Most of my family would say that it means that I should give up looking at lofty ideals and look at hard reality in order to realize that I need to live in *this* world. Of course, I wouldn’t agree with that. I’ve never thought of money as something that you *had to* have. Of course, it’s nice when you need to buy something and you can afford it but then again, I can remember times in my life when all I could do was dream about certain things and not be able to buy them at all. I still remember the time I was in a government think-tank where most of the others were politicians or bureaucrats with lots of money and one of them was bragging about the Palm PDA he’d bought off the Net and was showing it to everybody (this was over five years ago before I left for the US BTW …) I wished so badly then that I could have one of those but since I couldn’t afford it, I didn’t bother about it. But one of the first things I bought when I got to the US and could afford it, was one of the early HP Handheld PCs – the 320LX :p

But I digress – I still do not believe in looking down at the ground just so that you can find riches if that does not bring happiness to you and those around you. Money is just something that we’ve come to set up in our minds as highly important and have lost sight of other more important things like love, happiness, compassion, honesty in the process. Yes, the person starving by the road without a meal or a roof over his head may disagree with me, or the person who needs to buy expensive medicine for their wife or daughter and don’t have the funds … or so many others in specific situations. And I can’t say they are wrong. I can only speak for myself and in my life, I’ve always had enough for my needs but the trick always is to be happy with what you’ve got because then you’ll still be look up at the sky for those lofty ideals. Or to paraphrase Mr. Micawber from Dickens’ "David Copperfield" (who put it so much better than I could), – "Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen nineteen six, result happiness. Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure twenty pounds ought and six, result misery" 🙂

Of idleness and indolence

Things have been extremely slow of late. I have not been coding, not updating my main site, The Developer’s Corner, that I’ve been regularly updating for over two years. Basically, I’ve simply been content to be idle, watch movies, speculate on stuff and play with software. This has given me the opportunity to learn a few new things and to explore a few areas that I had not explored before but I find myself asking, "what about the people who are so eagerly awaiting the next release of my software?". I have a responsibility to them too. Yes, it is free software but just because the software is free does not mean that I have no responsibility to my users. It is a dilemma.

That is just one dilemma out of many that seem to confront me suddenly and I seem to be content to think about these matters and yet come to no decision. The others? What am I going to do? Where do I go – stay in Sri Lanka or move to another country? And most of all, what is the purpose to our existence? These are just a few of the questions going through my mind suddenly. For some strange reason, it seems to me that we are at a critical point in history – a cusp if you will. I don’t want to make any decisions right now, I just want to live life day by day, as it comes, since to me it seems that future events will dictate my course. It seems a little indulgent at times and also laggardly to think somethingelse can control my life instead of simply taking charge of my own life and going on with it, no matter what. But my sense of historical forces seems so strong right at the moment (maybe I’ve been reading too much Gordon R. Dickson and his "Childe Cycle" is beginning to affect me …) that I just want to see how things play out before I make a decision. But how long can you stay inert and indecisive anyway?

Another reason for my inactivity (at least as far as moving out of Sri Lanka or staying on here is concerned) is the same old one – my parents. I’ve had this debate right here about talking about other people on this journal and so will not go into details but my parents have their own reasons for wanting me here – some of it emotional and some of it cultural. They unfortunately are very true-to-norm results of their culture unlike me and so their perceptions, feelings and actions are ruled by their culture. While I can understand their actions, I still can’t say that their beliefs and their perceptions are their own and leave – they are my parents and I am their firstborn … believe it or not, that (being firstborn) carries a certain responsibility with it when you are over here :p

One more thing that seems to be brought home to me again and again is what Terry Pratchett would call the gods-playing-dice-with-us-as-pieces syndrome :p I find that there are certain actions of mine which almost always results in a counter-action by fate, gods, happenstance … whatever you may call it. It seems almost inevitable and seems to have the kind of precision which makes me believe more and more that there is a pattern to it. (Yes, my insanity begins to show through as I expose more and more of my mind <g>) There is a collection of stories (I think by Frank Herbert .. not sure off-hand) called "Case and the Dreamer" – one of the stories in it is about this woman who loses her one true love to death and embarks on this quest to regain him by cloning him and making sure that his life follows a certain path while she remains the same age by going into suspended animation – one day, she will awaken and come back into his life but till then his life will be steered in just such a way as to make their first meeting one where they would fall in love … or something like that. That is an intriguing thought and coupled with this whole being-blocked-at-certain-points thing, I can’t but wonder maybe if my life is controlled in such a way too? OK, I will stop now before the men in white jackets come for me :p

Of verse and worse …

A conversation I had with a friend about Byron led to a whole journey through a full spectrum of poetry today 🙂 The talk about Byron made me want to re-read Alfred Noyes’ "The Highwayman" – how did I jump from Byron to Noyes you ask? It all has to do with the peculiar way I associate things :p Lord Byron led me to another lord – Alfred, Lord Tennyson and from there to to Alfred Noyes was but a hop, skip and a jump. I’ve always been haunted by "The Highwayman" (no pun intended … really :p) and re-reading the poem just made me feel melancholy since I find the imagery in the poem to be very tragic and moody. So I wanted to read some more poetry to get "The Highwayman" out of my mind.

I started out with William Cowper’s "John Gilpin" which made me smile – I’ve enjoyed "John Gilpin" since my school days but have not read the poem since then either <g> I then read a bit of Sir Walter Scott by way of "Flodden" and then went on to Lord Byron’s "The Prisoner of Chillon" which while having some beautiful lines – "A frantic feeling, when we know, that what we love shall ne’er be so", "For I had buried one and all who loved me in a human shape; And the whole world would henceforth be, A wider prison unto me:" – made me sad again. So I moved on to tarry a bit with Keats’ "The Eve of St. Agnes" before moving on to Robert Browning’s "Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came".

Now this is a poem which has a lot of significance to me because I know of at least two series of books which are based on the poem – one is Stephen King’s "The Dark Tower" series whereas the other is Gordon R. Dickson’s "Childe Cycle". I love the imagery in that poem but it has been a while since I’ve read it – in fact, I’m not sure if I’ve read it fully before. I’m currently reading the "Childe Cycle" and am on the last book and am reluctant to finish it since the cycle remains incomplete due to Gordon R. Dickson’s death. In fact, that other cycle, "The Dark Tower" is yet incomplete as well but I digress … I did learn something new since my anthology of poetry had a note to see Edgar’s song in "King Lear" at the beginning of "Childe Roland .." and so I went in search of my copy of the complete works of Shakespeare. I hunted through "King Lear" and found these lines "Child Rowland to the dark tower came, His word was still Fie, foh and fum, I smell the blood of a British man". Now, I have no idea if this is the only reference to Childe Roland in Shakespeare (I’ll have to do a more detailed online search tomorrow …) but I was fascinated since I’d never known of the reference before and also because of the whole "fie, foh, fum" bit which I’d always heard as part of Jack and the Beanstalk <g> I didn’t know that it had been used by Shakespeare too – now I’ll have to look into the roots of that too :p

By this time, I was tired of weighty matters poetic and wanted something light and so turned to my omnibus edition of Edward Lear. I always find Lear to be amusing and fascinating and a few minutes spent with the "Pobble who has no Toes" and "The Quangle Wangle’s Hat" made me feel much better. I was reminded of Lewis Carrol’s "Old Father William" by a Limerick of Leare’s (funny the associations you make ..) it goes something like this:

There was an Old Man of Port Grigor,
Whose actions were noted for vigour;
He stood on his head,
Till his waistcoat turned red,
That eclectic Old Man of Port Grigor.

I would have liked to have completed my poetic journeys with some stuff by Lewis Carrol – maybe "The Hunting of the Snark" or "Jabberwocky" – since I enjoy Lewis Carrol almost as much as I enjoy Lear and my appreciation of the former is as old as my appreciation of the latter but I couldn’t find my edition of the complete works of Lewis Carrol either – wonder what’s happening to all my books? (Speaking of which, I just discovered that I have a 1935 reprint of the first edition of Dickens’ "David Copperfield" – some of my books are more than twice my age :p) I think my appreciation of "Jabberwocky" – Twas brillig and the slithy toves did gyre and gimbal in the wabe … sorry if I misspelt anything but I’m quoting from memory and some of that is just made up anyway .. I mean by Carrol, not me :p – comes from a science fiction story which is built completely around the poem and the fact that the words might not be nonsense – I forget who wrote it but it might have been C. M. Kornbluth or Lewis Padgett (which was actually a pen-name for Henry Kuttner) … It seems to be kind of their style but I might be totally off here. I’ll have to look that up too.

All this poetry makes me want to write some "real" poetry. All I find myself doing these days is what I call doggerel – quick jobs done in the course of half an hour to one hour based on a central idea. It rhymes but I don’t feel it is quality work – more like a hack job. I can’t explain it fully but I guess the best way to do so is to give a sample … if I can find one …

I have lost my peace of mind
And instead, worry on all sides do I find.
I have lost the will to love
And in return think of a mailed-first, an iron glove!

My country has lost its peace, serenity and harmony,
Where once was calm, there now is only strife and agony.
Gone are the days of races living in peace, side by side
But instead, armies against each other stride!

Mothers their sons to a bloody war have lost,
Like blooming flowers to a cruel frost,
In their loss they’ve only found,
That in their loss all mothers are together bound!

I called the above "Lost and Found" and what I’ve posted here is incomplete since what I have on this machine is the incomplete version. I wrote that for the peace page I edit (and usually write too since there is a dearth of contributors :p) for work. I’ll post the full version (if I remember <g>) tomorrow when I get to work …

Of humanity and such …

I’m still reading Gordon R. Dickson’s "Childe" cycle. The fifth book in the series "The Final Encyclopedia" has been the biggest yet. At a whopping 700 pages and a font size tinier than normal, it probably equals all the other four books that went before it since all of them were around 200+ pages :p However, this books does take the time to explore the character and to talk about humanity and its future at length perhaps because it was written at a different time – a time at which novels weren’t bound by page limitations which set them at around 200-300 pages .. Or maybe it was just because Gordon R. Dickson was a known writer by then. Whatever the case maybe, while some might find this book to be extremely long winded at times, I found it to be thought provoking.

The book postulates that humanity is a giant multi-celled organism made up of all the individual people that make up humanity. That humanity as an organism has a consciousness of its own and that this mega-creatures actions are defined by the combination of actions of all individuals. I am not sure that I do subscribe to this idea or to some of the others Dickson has in the book about the evolution of the race. But then again, I probably am not the kind of person who sees things philosophically – at least, not at that high a level of philosophies. I’d rather deal with things at a personal level or at least at a tangible level.

Something did come out of the book that made me think of something though – evolve my own philosophy if you want to call it that :p However, it was not the book itself but an analysis written about the book and it’s characters which made me come up with my idea. The analysis pointed out that the main character – Hal Mayne, who incidentally is male – acquires traits like compassion, intuition and empathy which are traditionally the domain of females and that Hal’s companions, who happen to be female, take up traditionally male roles … or something to that effect. This made me think about Dickson’s idea of "splinter cultures" differently. In Dickson’s story, the "splinter cultures" are basically people who embody one specific facet of full-spectrum man from Earth – the philosopher, the man of faith or the warrior. These people have left Earth to travel to different worlds where they built a life for themselves with like minded others.

To me it seems as if we have splinter cultures here on Earth itself – that of men and women. I’ve always maintained that men and women are just two halves that make up a whole but if you look at it another way, they are each missing a half to make them complete. This half as far as men goes is the ability to empathize, to be able to see something from another’s point of view, to have compassion. I can only speak for men since that’s the point of view I’m familiar with, I can’t say this is what women lack since I’d be going based on hearsay, stereotypes and other input which might not be objective – plus, any ladies reading this might get totally ticked off at me :p But I digress …

To me it seems that humanity can be improved upon if the two halves of humanity were able to acquire some of the positive traits of each other. This would lead to a more compassionate, more caring race that could perhaps at last leave behind all the bickering, all the schisms, all the other ills of humanity and work towards a world united as one race. That is my dream …

The future she is a rolling road …

I’ve been continuing to read Gordon R. Dickson’s Childe cycle – or the Dorsai books as they are probably more commonly known. I kind of got stuck on "Soldier, Ask Not" since that was about a character that I didn’t really like – he had great power, the power to affect the affairs and actions of other people around him, but chose to use that power for selfish and harmful ends. This kind of behaviour is antithetical to my way of thinking since I believe in responsible action when you are entrusted/gifted with great power (yes, I know, that probably is a pipe dream because most of us do tend to think of ourselves first … but one can hope ..) Anyway, as I said, I didn’t like the protagonist in "Soldier, Ask Not" – Tam Olyn – much. But in the end he turned out to be one of my favorites and a person about whom I wanted to learn more because he realized the error of his ways and begins working for the good of humanity. It is not cliched as I make it sound here incidentally :p The way it unfolds in the story is interesting and believable.

I finished "Soldier, Ask Not" on Friday evening and began reading "Tactics of Mistake" – the next book in the series – the same day. I read till late and then continued to read through yesterday and finished the book last night :p This was again about the evolution of mankind – about a future where humanity has spread to the stars and has started to splinter – to break up into units made up of like minded people – the warriors, the philosophers, the men of faith and the technocrats. Each of these splinters has one facet of the human persona over-developed .. like a person who has lost a limb having their other limb growing stronger to compensate – only thing is, they haven’t lost any of their other facets of humanity … just that one facet has grown stronger. Normal man, back on Earth, continues to be multi-faceted … the rootstock.

There are many things that Dickson mentions in the books that makes me wonder if he really believed in what he was talking about or had had an inkling of what was to come. I believe in some of what he said about the evolution of humanity – though not in the splinter cultures. I don’t think we should fragment – fragmentation only brings about conflict as it already has on this world of ours. It is actually time for humanity to merge together and to realize that we are one race – not individual nationalities, races or groups. However, I do believe that we are in a constant process of evolution – not just as a race but also as individuals. Each one of us evolves – emotionally, mentally but perhaps not so much physically … but then again, even the physical evolution is there – just not regarded as evolution by most. When we move to a colder climate and "adjust" to the cold, isn’t that evolution? When we adapt to some disability – such as losing a limb – isn’t that evolution? I think it is – at an individual level rather than at a racial level.

There are so many things that the Childe cycle makes me aware of and makes me think about. When I first read the books, I hadn’t considered most of the things that the book talks about – now I’m acutely aware of these things since some of them have become part of my own philosophy about life. I have to wonder – did I evolve this philosophy myself or did my first reading affect my way of thinking subconsciously and instigate this evolution within me? That itself is an interesting thought – at least for me :p

Enter the twilight zone …

I know I haven’t written much lately but it’s not because I had nothing to write (in fact, I had tons of stuff going through my mind which would have made good fodder for this blog :p) but because I was too busy to write. SM actually takes a bit more out of me in the way of writing since it is about ideas and thoughts and dreams and philosophies – unlike DC (The Developer’s Corner) where I just talk about development stuff. Here I have to try and be coherent instead of meandering all over the place as I have a habit of doing :p Anyway, enough of the apologies and on to the stuff I wanted to talk about … well, at least some of it :p

I finished reading Gordon R. Dickson’s "Necromancer" a couple of days ago and all I could say was "wow!!" because that book really spoke to me! I could totally identify with the protagonist and the way he thought and looked at the world and I really didn’t think that there were other people who thought that way (and here I am talking about the author – he must at least have seen the world partially like his protagonist to have written that way … at least that’s what I thought). I thought I coined the term "empath" because I believe that while a true telepath would be an impossibility (well, at least a sane one – all the vicious thoughts and secrets that they’d be bombarded with daily would make them go insane is what I think), I think that "empaths" are real and do exist. An empath (in case you are wondering <g>) according to my definition is basically somebody who can feel the emotions of another without actually knowing their thoughts and secrets. But I discovered that Dickson had used the term to describe his protagonist years ago! Plus, his protagonist says that nothing surprises him much because he can see it coming and the same is true of me – the latest example was that I saw the twist in the story coming in "Necromancer" way before it actually arrived – only thing was, that I was never sure that the plot would resolve the way I thought it would and yet, it did in the end!

Now I find myself wondering if I am simply remembering some of this because I’d read the other books in the series (the Dorsai series in case somebody is interested ..) or if I am just hitting the outskirts of the Twilight Zone :p So I decided to go back and re-read the whole series from the beginning since I’d read half the series ages ago (over ten to fifteen years ago if memory serves right) and have not even read the final half of the series yet. I started with the first book – "Dorsai!" – and was again hit with that weird feeling of … I don’t know .. can’t say deja vu since I have read the book before and so deja vu would be appropriate but then again, it’s not since I don’t remember most of this since I wasn’t thinking along those lines when I first read the book. This time the story is about an intuit – a person who intuitively knows the all possible future outcomes and so can take action so that a certain outcome will be possible. While I had never even thought of the concept of an intuit, I do agree again with some of the protagonist’s views. For instance, at the beginning he is described thus: "What seemed so plain, and simple and straightforward to himself, had always struck others as veiled, torturous and involved. Always he had been like a stranger passing through a town, the ways of whose people were different, and who looked on him with a lack of understanding amounting to suspicion. Their language failed on the doorstep of his motives and could not enter the lonely mansion of his mind. They said "enemy" and "friend"; they said "strong" and "weak" – "them" and "us". They set up a thousand arbitrary classifications and distinctions which he could not comprehend, convinced as he was that all people were only people – and there was very little to choose between them. Only, you dealt with them as individuals, one by one, and always remembered them as individuals, one by one; and always remembering to be patient." That is exactly how I feel about people!

I could probably go on and on with this and make this entry really long and boring but I’ll probably stop here for the moment. But I want to take this up again with another subject that has been on my mind related to people – but this time, to the real world and the situation in the world today … maybe tomorrow 🙂

These are some of my favourite things …

I’m still recovering from my bout of illness but then again, as those who know me are aware, this happens to me about once a year – it’s a cyclical thing :p It happens pretty regularly and has a known time frame for me to get well – I’m on my way to recovery except perhaps for a relapse – and that’s been known to happen too. There’s no joy in life when there are no surprises :p That actually brings up something that a protagonist in the latest book I’m reading – "Necromancer" by Gordon R. Dickson – says, or rather, is said about him. In describing his character, it is said that he can analyze isolates in anything and so he is rarely ever surprised because he knows that something is a logical result of the preceding moment or moments. I sometimes feel like that ….

But to get back on track, since I haven’t been feeling too well and was all alone at home for part of the weekend (my parents again went to the Kurunegala house but came back early because they were worried about me – which was sweet of them but I sometimes think that they worry way too much about me :p), I spent my time doing the stuff that I love to do. I’ve been reading – both "Necromancer" and a trade paperback collection of X-Men stories called "The Asgardian Wars". I finished watching the DVD collection of "Kindred: the Embraced" and also have been doing some PC gaming after a long time. Now the gaming is all Edward’s fault since he’s the one who got me hooked :p

Edward told me about "Dungeon Siege" and that it was a great game. I went and looked at the website and it looked pretty interesting and so I decided to give it a try. I got the game and installed it at work on Friday (it was a holiday and nobody was there) to see if it was interesting and I think I played for close to an hour – I brought the save game home with me and then installed on my machine at home and I started playing it Saturday evening and just couldn’t stop :p I played part of Saturday evening (had to stop when the mosquitos came out in force :p) and then started again on Sunday morning and kept on playing till about lunch time. I think I’ve put in close to six hours by now and while it *is* getting a bit repetitive (I mean the battles and the dungeon crawling) it still is very interesting. The strange thing however is that I don’t mind the repetitive battles and the incessant dungeon crawling on console games but don’t so much like it on PC – maybe it has to do with the fact that it is a bigger screen and a different controller? I don’t know … but I’ll probably play "Dungeon Siege" for a good while yet …

For I am a jealous people …

I finished Lester Del Rey’s collection of short novels a couple of days ago but I didn’t get a chance to write about his story that I was talking about in my previous entry yesterday because I got caught up in too many other things :p So I thought I might as well talk about it today since I still feel strongly about that story. As I surmised, the story indeed was about God siding with the aliens but it God takes a more active role than I had envisioned at the beginning of the story – God appears to the alien priests as he did to Moses and tells them directly that they have been chosen to inherit the universe and that they must wipe humankind off the face of the Earth. Setting aside the whole argument as to whether the story is blasphemous or not (since I have the feeling that some might consider it to be so), what interested me was the question as to what I would do if I was put in the place of Del Rey’s protagonist, the priest.

The story ends with the priest holding a mass where he tells everybody "God has decided to side against us, I can only say that he’s chosen a worth adversary" or words to that effect. The point of the whole story is that Man is the only creature that would fight against his own maker. I keep on thinking what I would do if I was in that position. Granted, in the story the aliens are made out to be totally inhuman beings who torture animals and people for fun and then eat them for food and even eat their own kind. So the humans seem noble to rise up against them but that just means Del Rey stacked the decks a bit.

I believe in a merciful God – a God who can understand the failings of humanity. While I’d be the first to understand if God were to decide to wipe out humanity because of our greed, stupidity, prejudice and the worst qualities in humanity that we seem to show more and more these days, I don’t accept it that God would choose a race that is essentially even worse than humanity to be our successors. So if God were to decide that humanity was just not worth salvation, I’d probably understand looking at the world of today but then again, I also believe that humanity has the potential to be so much more than we are because sometimes we show such courage, honesty, compassion, feeling and humanity that it makes me realize all over again what we as humans are capable of ….

Books and such …

I’m reading a collection of five short novels (they used to be called novella or novelettes depending on length those days but now there are only long novels and really long series :p) by Lester Del Rey and I keep on having this weird feeling that I have read them before 🙂 Be that as it may, I know that the latest story that I’m reading is going to end up making me think a lot. It’s called "For I am a Jealous People!" and starts off by introducing and earth which is being invaded by aliens and the main character is a preacher who is trying to hang on to his faith in God in these trying times. Earth seems to be at the losing end as the story starts and most of Earth’s setbacks in the war seem to be due to strange accidents such as a meteorite striking the stockpile of all of Earth’s missiles on the moon and burying it under a pile of debris, a tornado taking out the defence garrison in a city when the aliens land etc.

I have a strange feeling that the story is going to turn out to be about how God actually intends the aliens to take over the world (hence the "freak accidents" that help the aliens) but then again, maybe I *have* read the story before … I don’t know. I just know that it is going to bring up an interesting philosophical debate within myself as to whether we can ever really know God’s purpose and also as to whether we can understand what happens to us in the context of God’s great plan for all of us. Yes, I know that treads dangerously close to religious evangelism – and I don’t want to do that :p – I believe in God and there are certain things in life and in what I read which makes me think about it but that doesn’t mean that I should go around telling others to believe in God – to me religion is a personal thing between myself and God. But I do like to talk about the dilemmas and conundrums my faith brings up 🙂

I’d like to discuss how I see religion (not *my* religion or *your* religion but simply religion) and God one of these days but I just don’t feel like putting forth the effort just now. I’m still not feeling totally fit and this illness (if it runs true to course) will probably last for a week or two yet. The good thing is that this week is going to be full of holidays here in Sri Lanka. Today is a holiday because it is a Tamil festival and then Friday is going to be a holiday since it’s the full moon and we have every full moon off since it’s a Buddhist holy day. So I’ll have to work only one more day and that’s tomorrow and that’s fine by me 🙂