The Grave Digger's Son.

Out of all the people who may have walked into my office room on that busy Monday the last person I expected to see was him.

He was the grave digger from the cemetery.

His discomfort showed this was unfamiliar territory from his usual lush green workspace.

He hesitated to talk to me and refused a seat even though I offered him one.

“I need an advertisement” were the first words that escaped his lips.

What kind of advertisement would this man want?

Is he trying to sell a land? Maybe he wants to look for a house by placing an ad in the classified sections.

These were the thoughts that were going through my mind.

But then I realized this request had a desperate undertone.

Slowly but surely the story came out.

The cemetery is in the heart of the city.

According to the City regulations, his son is automatically accepted to what is considered the best and most popular school in the country. Royal College of Colombo.

A college that has given birth to prime ministers, top academics, and billionaires.

Many parents go to extreme lengths to get their sons into this school.

From using the influence of powerful politicians to offering large amounts of money as bribes disguised in the form of donations.

Whilst everyone would believe this young boy is extremely lucky to study here, in a way it’s kind of a curse.

A large majority of his classmates would be from families of extremely wealthy businessmen, top government officials and politicians, or those belonging to the high society of Sri Lanka.

As a child from a less privileged background, the gap between his desk and that of the other students was miles apart.

In most schools, donations are sought for various school projects.

There was no difference in this class as well.

The class teacher was forcing each child to get at least one souvenir advertisement for such a project.

Enormous pressure is exerted on the children by the teachers as they too are competing with one another. Those who do not comply are shamed in front of the entire class. In the end, the pressure exerted on the children finally lands on the shoulders of the parents.

For some parents getting an advertisement was an easy task. But not for a humble grave digger.

The guilt of his inability to protect the image of his child was crushing him.

He gets a small monthly stipend from me to maintain the grave.

“Sir can you give me an advertisement and you can deduct it from the money you give me” he asked me in a desperate voice.

A full page would be one year's worth of income he would have to forego.

But he was proud and did not want to beg.

As a father, I understood his pain and frustration.

I too had faced similar requests from the school my daughters attend which was a stone's throw away from where his son studies.

I knew the teachers could be mercenary in their mission to extract every last possible penny from their students.

Fortunately, I was sufficiently blessed financially to be able to handle these requests.

So yes we gave him an advertisement.

No, the cost was not deducted from the money paid to him.

It was a different man who walked out of my office.

A proud father with his held eye knowing that he can be a hero in his son’s eyes.

The Fake Death of Poonam Pandey - Did they go too far.

 What a shame! Another young life taken away by cancer. This was what went through my mind when I saw the news about the death of Poonam Pandey on Daily Mirror. In fact, I was a bit confused, because the Daily Mirror had said Poonam was an actor in the headline itself. But the article had a picture of what seemed like a female. “Well, these are modern times, where one cannot say if a person is a he, a she, or an it” was my response, and shrugged off any future thoughts about this situation away.

But then my Twitter feed began to fill with various posts about how all this was a scam. An online campaign done by a digital agency to create awareness of “Cervical Cancer”.

Wow! That was my first response.

It was not a wow of admiration though.

Faking a person's death is generally associated with Insurance Fraud or Major Criminals and Gangsters who want to disappear from the face of the earth.

But now it is used for communication purposes.

Suddenly a quote from the book Shanthram came to mind. “Sometimes it is necessary to do the wrong thing for the right reasons. The important thing is to be sure that our reasons are right, and that we admit the wrong — that we do not lie to ourselves, and convince ourselves that what we do is right.”

Yes, most definitely people have now heard about cervical cancer which can be easily cured.

But this truth has been based on a lie.

We have played with people’s emotions. We have also diluted the trust people place on sources they gather information from online.

There is a thin line between a good campaign and an absolute disaster. To me sadly this is a disaster.

Suck You Evernote

Relationships are extremely important to me. I consider them the building blocks of success, and take pride in the relationships have built over the years.

Sadly this is something that those who own Bending Spoons a European app manufacturer with Ryan Reynolds as an investor, have no idea about.

This all started when they (Bending Spoons) bought an app called Evernote.

Now I have been an Evernote user since 2016.

It has served me well.

At certain times in my life, I have been a paid user for a couple of years.

Then all of a sudden these guys increased their annual plan by nearly double to 140 dollars a year.

This made me reconsider my options.

I realized the main reason why I was paying for Evernote was because it gave me the privilege of using it on three different devices instead of two.

I also realized that I do not use it very much on the third device. It was mainly on my laptop and my phone.

So I downgraded from the paid plan to the free tier.

And that was when the trouble started.

Suddenly I realised that I was facing a stranglehold on what I could do on the app. And as time went by the stranglehold became tighter and tighter.

Right now you cannot open more than one notebook per month and have more than fifty notes.

This price increase reminds me of Martin Shkreli who raised the price of a tablet of a vital Aids medicine from 13 Dollars to 750. After purchasing the license to manufacture it.

Bending Spoons, also known as BS — I cannot help but notice that BS is more popularly known as the acronym for Bull Shit — was trying to profit maximize on one side.

While loading EN with features that might have increased the operating cost as well as made the app more clunky. This also meant that the software had to be upgraded constantly. Virtually every other day. Trust me, that’s extremely frustrating.

I still believe they could have offered a more economical model for people such as me who use Evernote for just note-taking, restricting some of the bells and whistles.

Anyway by this time I was extremely frustrated. And decided to switch.

So right now I am typing this on Apple Notes. Which is excellent and comes FOC with my devices.

Additionally, apple just launched a journaling app that is highly intuitive which I am testing out at the moment. Not sure I might use it long-term. And of course, there is One Note which gives me the freedom of handwriting as well as typing.

Yes, I have 8 years' worth of notes in Evernote which I shall migrate slowly but surely.

But I wish this relationship could have ended better.

“But its price and very limited free version make it hard to recommend to anyone who isn’t already using it. As such, Evernote is no longer an Editors’ Choice winner. Most people should look to OneNote instead because it works just as well and is considerably more affordable.” — PC Mag November 29th, 2023