...moving on..

The time before she came into my life, it seems like a blur....how I used to be, what I used to do with my time..I can't seem to recall anything. It seems like your life had no meaning; no purpose before she walked in.. but this might all be an illusion.

an illusion created from the fact that you miss her...

I have always been a loner. Not the standard definition of a loner, but a loner nevertheless.
Wherever I stayed, may it be school, work or college even, I tend to get close to certain specific  set of people. And these people will consider me as one of their closest friends and I will do them justice by doing the same, but only when I am around them.
As soon as I go back home, I tend to curl up in to my own little world and forget about these wonderful people who treats me like family. So I had never txted to see how they are doing, I had never called them and checked up on them. No contact or networking, till I meet them in person again.

I think this stems from the way I was brought up. My mother, the wonderful woman she is, made sure that we always lived close to the school we attended. She was protective of us as she brought us up by herself. Most of my time was spent at home with my mom and my sister. This was the full extent of my social life.  

Another factor about growing up in a household with no father figure and a limited social circle was the fact that I became very awkward in the dealing with other men and be very comfortable in the interactions with women.

And when I meant comfortable, I meant that I considered them to be my friends. It still surprises me that up till the moment I met her at work, I had never looked at a girl or thought about a girl in terms of dating them. Ohh yes, I had my crushes. But still I never acted upon them. Why? confidence, lack of life experience to timing. Could be many reasons.

And then, it May 2013, I met her.

Its funny how it all happened. Me being myself, never noticed the fact that she was interested in me. Me being the self-centered as I am asked her for help to ask her friend out.
And while we txting back and forth, I started to notice her. Her sense of humor, her way of looking at life, the struggles she had been through and her craziness. And I tell you, before I knew what was going on, I had fallen in love.

She is a wonderful person who loved me like you always wanted a person to love you. That kind of love I didnt deserve. But yet she did.
My life changed. I started to really live my life. I wasn't going through the motions anymore, I was living my life, with this amazing person.
Thousands of memories, millions of moments and sadly, buckets of tears.

To this date, I don't blame her for the break up or I am not mad at her for ending the relationship.

It was simply the matter of the fact that she fell in love with a little boy. I have yet to grow up. The flaws in my personality, my lack of life experience made it impossible for the relationship to continue.

I am still in love with her. 

And I hope that deep down, she is too. And initially, I literally tried to guilt her to take me back.  But now.. I think its good that we didnt start the relationship once again.

It failed for a reason, and before I put her or anyone else through the same thing, there are thing that needs fixing.

Starting from bigger problems like my ego, my attitude to little things like the way I speak. There are improvements to be made.
And 2015 is gonna be the year that changes me. Correction, the year that I change myself. For the better.

So Thank you Berry. Thank you for 14 months of care and love. Thank you for putting up with all the drama. I know that the chance of you reading this is almost nil. But Thank you for being the amazing person you were and are.

I think its high time I moved on. I have been trying to but all the good memories were clouding the bad ones. And I was imagining our relationship to be a fairy-tale of sorts. It was not. I remember all the moments I made you cry and break down. And I think I reflect on those and start working on the issues that I have.

Its time I started moving on....

Back after a while.......!!!!!

sighhhh......

Its been a whileeeeeeee since I wrote down anything... never got the time.  Work, classes, sleep or just a good movie...something always got in the way.

But enough is enough....:)

I really don't want leave the series of posts about my trip to hikka and galle untouched, but trying recall my exact feelings now....total lost cause....!! :p

So starting out fresh....new leaf....new life to this is excuse of a blog...starting out something different....

Hint: Colombo, Food, Me, Camera ( on my phone), blog.

:P

the story continued.......(Part two)

After the we had enough of turtles (that's about 2 hours of "ooooo"s and "ahhhhhh" plus about a thousand photos..)....it was time to head to Hikkaduwa and eventually to Galle...

Hikkaduwa....our next stop.... is famous for its beach, surfing, corals and of course for its night life....

Even though I have not seen people surf...the beach and the corals and the FISH...Oh my god the fish......:O
The usual routine for any domestic tourist at Hikkaduwa is pretty simple....a 20 minute ride on a renovated fishing boat which has a glass bottom....(that right...only thing separating the people and the sea is two sheets of glass....:p)....then, a few hours of jumping around in the beach and then off to wherever they are headed.

the many renovated fishing boats which zig-zag around...

a school of bright colored fish which surrounded the boat.....

the "glass" bottom

However...we decided to break free from the norm and do something new...something way off from our comfort zones.....


SCUBA DIVING......thats right...we decided to get a closer look at the corals....
And let me tell you...it was an experience...the fish..all those colorful fish...the corals...the cool water..and the atmosphere underwater. It felt like we were visitors from another planet. The masks, the fins, the tube like apparatus which suddenly gave us the ability seemly breath underwater- a total sensory overload.....

the visitor from another planet

I floated around for hours...diving, swimming around the corals, chasing colorful fish and just floating.... the marine life has become so used to human presence that the fish just run in to you. On two occasions, a rather curious blue colored fish, the size of my palm i'd say, came in to inspect my mask... :)

The best part was the "cream-cracker" frenzy....i am not really sure if we are disturbing the environment by feeding the fish crackers, but when they smell even a bit of cracker in the water...they just surround you....so if you decide to go...take a box of crackers with you....that the sweet sweet icing on the top of this experience.....


After a few hours and about two whole boxes of crackers later, we decided it was time to head off to our ultimate destination...Galle....

Mental note for me was that i had to try my hand at diving (deep sea diving  -which needs about three days of training to master) at the first chance i get....Sooo Hikka...await my return....:)

the sweet...sweet... taste of freedom....

there is something mysterious about travelling......

         maybe is because we travel to places which are outside our usual environment or comfort zone....
         maybe its the people we meet...unique people with stories to tell and amaze..
         maybe its the journey....the time we spend on the road...the singing, the food, the people we travel with....

                                          or maybe its all of this put together.....

Quite recently, maybe 2 or 3 weeks ago, some of friends from work and I went on a outing to Galle.

Galle is about 119 kilometers away from Colombo. It quite a unique city with a lot 16th Century dutch architecture thrown in...

Coming back to the story.., There were about 30 or so people (in one huge bus capable of seating around 60 people comfortably..) with me....and the best bits of the trip was not actually in our final destination, but on a few places we stooped on the way...

first...after leaving Colombo at around 7.30am...( 1 hour later than the planned time..) and 1 1/2 hours on the road with light traffic, i got up asked the driver to turn right on to a very narrow road leading in the direction of the beach. The people on board were all confused, but i asked them to savor the suspense... and then, just 2 or 3 mins of driving brought us to a big sign board which read: "Kosgoda Turtle Hatchery"..

Yup...a turtle hatchery...and surprisingly, most of the people had never been here....so it was my time to shine. I took tickets to everyone there ( for locals its just 25 rupees per head). And then we met up with the guide they had provided for us. And let me tell you, its an experience....the hatchery does quite a job according to our guide. According to him, the female turtles leaves the eggs after burring the eggs she laid in the beach.  and most of the time either because of fishing boats docked in the shore or because of natural predators, only 1 or 2 survive to grow old ( and very very old at that).




so what the hatchery does is that it pays fisherman if they bring in eggs of turtles they find on the beach. This may sound like a bad idea. But its a idea which works. When the eggs are brought in, the eggs are taken care of from hatching to releasing to long-term care. The hatchery releases the baby turtles when they reach an age of 3 days....this pattern is only different when an albino turtle is concerned. As the turtle is purely white in color, therefore makes easy bait to sharks....

An albino turtle. They are long-term residents of the hatchery as in the wild they become easy targets... 

(Part 1 complete..).

The Animal Prison of Sri Lanka

Well frankly, after I went to the National Zoo of Singapore a few years ago, I was under the assumption or the the illusion that in any zoo around the world, even though its wrong to cage animals, the animals are given enough space to live/move around and the enclosures mimic each animals natural habitat. And then I went to National Zoo of Sri Lanka, my illusion was shattered.

Concrete and steel....that was da zoo made of. the cages, i wont say enclosures, were so small compared to the animal that dey were practically just lying dere...
the hippopotamus cage had like an inch deep of water, the lions were in dog cages. its was literally a prison.
i swear i'll never go to that god forsaken place. someone has to do something about that place...i already sent a letter of complaint, but seriously if someone doesn't do something, those animals are gonna just die there.

The interesting life of who???

well....let me just start off by saying that I'm from South Asia...so basically I was one cursed from birth with, not one off those names that goes on forever and ever, but a name that is rather difficult for people in countries other than mine to pronounce...so that is why, when I was working at a part-time job with a Czech boss, he came up with D. Simple...easy...and well..anyone who has studied the English alphabet can pronounce....and yes i know...I'm not the first person to come up with this very unoriginal nickname but we cant all have unique nicknames can we...so Shut up and learn to share...

So that brings us to why i thought of writing a blog....the thing is I always believed that my life was boring. I live near my school, so for the last 10 years or so, life has been just Home-School-Back Home-and again School (there is also some basketball practices thrown into that mix)...but what I found out was that when I was telling how I spend a lazy Sunday morning to a friend, he/she finds it rather interesting...so then it me...is my life really subtly interesting???
Sadly, the answer is no. In fact my life is rather monotonous. but people still find my stories/memories interesting...so u can be the judge of this phenomena now.....