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

A new invasive species threatens Yala!

A new alien species is invading Yala and threatening to ruin the park. They behave like animals but move about in four-wheel drive vehicles with names such as Land Rover Mahindra and Toyota.
“Why are you bringing this party down this track?”
That was the question posed to our tracker as we were doing our evening round in our own vehicle.
The underlying tone of this accusation was “What right do you have to bring these guys who are traveling inside Yala in their own vehicle without hiring a Safari Jeep from one of us?”
It's as if we were encroachers into their territory.
These jeep drivers believe that they are the authority when it comes to the park. Way above the pecking order than the employees of the Wild Life Department.
In fact, they are a law unto themselves.
They drive around at high speeds.
They block the roads.
They do not follow the simple etiquette of moving your vehicle after five minutes of a sighting. Giving another person an opportunity to see the animal as well.
All this was something I have experienced for quite some time. Without making a fuss.
What got my ire and motivated me to pen this article was when I saw them blocking the path of animals.
Elephants to be precise.
It was a herd of elephants with a baby wanting to cross the road and go back into the jungle after drinking water from the tank.
When one of these Safari Jeeps drove in and purposely blocked the very path they were going to cross.
Then more jeeps came and quite literally piled up one on top of the other.
Giving the herd no room to move at all.
This disturbed the elephants. So much so that two elephants stood guard blocking the vehicles till the others crossed.
One jeep even tried to push against the elephant and was head-butted as a result.
Which serves him right.
But this driver was putting his passengers' lives in danger as well. The vehicle could have easily toppled over. Or a passenger attacked. Since they were tourists it would have created a negative image about visiting the park. Which would ultimately affect not only the park but the Jeep Drivers as well, financially.
This situation has come about due to two facts.
One being not enough trackers to accompany every vehicle.
The second being the enormous political power that the Jeep drivers wield. The Wildlife Department officials are powerless in the face of it.
I do not trust the government to step in and correct this situation. After all it's the two-legged mammals that vote not the four-legged variety.
My hope is an organisation such as WNPS will come forward to provide training for these drivers along with an endorsement system that has to be renewed yearly. Those drivers who qualify can display a sticker similar to a license on their vehicles assuring the passengers of a civilised experience within the park.
Finally, people will be able to choose safety and decency towards animals over danger and cheap thrills.

The Peak End Rule and Private Hospitals

People remember past events through intense positive or negative experiences (the Peak) and the final moment of an experience (the end).

If the final moment is negative then his memory of that experience would be negative.

This is the Peak End Rule developed by Daniel Kahneman the only psychologist to win a Nobel Prize for economics.

Now let me share my experience about discharging a close colleague from a reputed private hospital post-surgery.

Frustrating, Horrible, and Nightmarish would be some of the words which come to mind.

The doctor discharges the patient at 5.30

It takes more than 2.5 hours for the bill to get ready. The main reason being that the consultant has not given his fees.

He is in surgery. He will give his fees only after he knows what the total hospital charges are. 

Once this is done the insurance takes another two-three hours to process the payment.

In the meantime the nursing station has quite literally forgotten about the patient who is still suffering from post-surgical pain. 

It's understandable. Technically the patient is discharged.

We had to go and ask to remove the Cannula. 

The night medicines were given only after we asked for it.

The patient had asked for a banana to eat to take the medicine.

Asked one nurse there was no response. Called the F&B Section, and they say to call the nursing station. Tells the nursing station once more. The Banana comes after nearly 1.5 hours. Sadly everyone scolds the waiters though it is not their fault.

The final nail in the coffin was that the accounts department told me to come to the first floor to settle the bill. But did not have the foresight to tell me that I need to take a different lift. As the usual lift takes you to a car park. You are left scratching your head wondering where to go.

Once everything is done and finalized. The patient left the hospital only at 10 p.m

4.5 hours after the discharge.

No one really wants to be stuck in a hospital for 4.5 hours. 

It seems that no hospital is looking at this from a client experience point of view. I have heard similar complaints from patients across most private hospitals in Sri Lanka.

The biggest problem is the lack of communication and the passing down of information.

No one bothers to keep the patient appraised of the situation. So they are in their room, wondering what is happening. Anxiety levels rising as each moment passes.

If you look at it, all that is required is a simple step to make the discharge process less frustrating.

Having a Guest Relations Officer (GRO) take over the patient from the moment of discharge. Keeping the patient informed and making sure she/he is cared for. Along with an accounts department that would bring the bill to the client's room along with a wireless credit card machine.

But no one has thought of it.

Thereby ensuring most of their clients leave with negative memories of an unpleasant experience even though they are healed of life-threatening disease.

Warning: We Humans can be easily manipulated.

They say seeing is believing.

I guess for hundreds and thousands of years this was true.

But our eyes can be easily tricked.

Hence the reason why magicians have been making money since time immemorial.

But in today's modern world of ai, deep fake and being able to splice together a video on your handphone, this is no longer true.

This is what I saw happening when a video started going viral about the Dalai Lama asking a boy to eat his tongue.

I saw the outrage turning into a giant inferno.

I held back from commenting on it. Mainly because I did not want to add fuel to a burning issue. And something kept holding me back.

A deep gut feeling saying all that you see may not be true.

I know for a fact that it is a custom in Tibet to greet someone by putting their tongue out at them. Also if you go to Europe, virtually everyone kisses on the lips.

Fortunately for me, I came across this video which outlines the context of this entire situation whilst showing the complete unedited footage.

The fact that the boy's mom is also present, sitting on the stage, just a couple of feet away from Dalai Lama, and her expressions right throughout also helped me to understand that this would not have been a threatening situation for the child.

It was only then I realised how easily we can be manipulated. Even I am guilty of jumping into conclusions hastily. Without realising that there are three sides to a story. The actual truth, what one person says and what the other person says.

Because we have been conditioned through many thousands of years that seeing is believing.

Its all about Perspective

 

They say the grass is always greener on the other side.

Recently I experienced a situation that brought out the truth of that statement in the most amazing manner.

The story begins many decades ago.

I was not a very rich kid. Which meant that I did not have that much money to spend on the school canteen.

The food in that school canteen seemed as attractive as gold to me.

Seriously.

The rolls and the patties and the egg buns were something that I could see but could not touch. It was unattainable in my eyes.

I used to envy the boys that had money and used to eat constantly from the canteen.

Sometimes they would share a morsel with me. 

I would feel extremely sorry for myself.

And feel ashamed of the sandwiches which I brought from home that my poor mom made every morning.

Two slices of bread. With Jam or pol sambol or seeni sambol and boiled egg.

It was spicy. It was homemade. It was fresh.

And most importantly made with love.

Attributes that I was blind to.

Till I met some classmates many years later.

They were the kids who used to eat from the canteen all the time.

We were chatting and reminiscing about our school days. 

When one of them said. “You know we were so envious of the food you used to bring from home. Whilst we had to eat from the canteen”.

“Your food looked so good”.

I resented the fact that I had to bring my food from home.

They resented the fact they could not bring food from home.

The grass is definitely greener on the other side.