Nisadas

We recently did some landscaping work, where my Mother-in-Law’s motto “every Baas will break something in the process of making something” was confirmed. Her call for constant supervision of the “experts” – something my own father constantly demands- was also vindicated when the water bills came in.

Turns out the guy who “jazzed up” the water outlet in the garden managed to do so by doing some shoddy work with the pipes, resulting in a massive underground leak. The result was that we ran through three months’ worth of water in two weeks. Thankfully, the Water Board has a team that will come and check the pipes for leaks, for a reasonable fee.

It’s when we were wondering what to do later on that it occurred to me that the market for Skilled labour – Carpenters, Masons, Electricians and Plumbers – in Sri Lanka is something of a gray area (at least, as I know of it). I mean, where do you find one?

For example, I have always associated Carpenters with Moratuwa (not withstanding the fact that I spent most of my childhood there) so whenever we need the services of one, my aunt calls up one of her pals there to find out. An electrician? It’s the same guy who’s been doing the stuff for the house over the past few years, and that too a recommendation from a relation.

But what is the guarantee that the person you select knows what he’s doing? It’s the reviews of people you know that matter. When we were looking for a plumber (the usual fellow being unreachable), my Father in Law consulted the guy at the Kade at the top of the road. Next thing you know, a guy turns up in the evening saying that he’ll have a look. It being a little dark at the time, I took him around and told him about the prospective leaks. Then he tells me that he’s actually an electrician, but he does a little plumbing too. Given the recent nightmares, I promptly showed him out.

So where do you go to find someone with skilled labour? And where do you get training in such skills? In some parts of the country I guess it’s more of a learned skill that gets handed down from generation to generation. Which would suffer if the mentor didn’t turn out to be a very good one.

In some countries you could use craigslist or the equivalent. I haven’t used a telephone directory in ages, so I don’t really know if any of them advertise. Where do you find your carpenter/mason/plumber?

Sunshine over the jungle by Walter Saporiti

Not too long after my post on LED lighting, it seems that Sri Lanka has commissioned its first solar power plant in the week ending 13 August 2011.

The state media has publicized the commissioning of the 500kw plant, as has LankaBusinessOnline.

While the economics may still be debatable, it’s good to see that Sri Lanka is moving in the direction of independence from oil-based power generation.

At a presentation during the recent CIMA Leadership Conference, the Minister for Power & Energy talked about other things in the pipeline – including Net Metering.

I first read about Net Metering in Thomas Friedman’s Hot, Flat and Crowded. In the book, Friedman discussed an energy-net, much like the Internet.

In this scenario, homes can have their own solar panels and generate electricity to be fed to the national grid. As a result, ho me consumers can enjoy a reduction in their usage at the end of the month, which would be the net of their actual usage and units fed to the grid. A great way to reduce electricity bills, methinks.

Friedman also discussed “Petropolitics” (or the power that comes from being an oil-producing nation) and how turning to alternative power sources was also a means of creating national power.

In this background, it’s heartening to note that Sri Lanka is making some progress. Even more so, since we have the advantage of being smaller and having a monopoly situation with electrification – which could allow us to adopt the key strategies towards a greener nation faster than other countries.

The Youtube video embedded below is a news clip (in Sinhalese) of the ceremony marking the commissioning of the plant. Unfortunately, the images show a cloudy day in Hambantota, where the plant is situated. Given how much sunlight they are supposed to get in Hambantota, that’s quite ironic.

Nevertheless, I hope this works out well and that we are able to see more alternative energy generation in action in Sri Lanka.

I was very happy to read in the Sunday Times that there’s a proposal to bring in LED street lighting to Sri Lanka. The company concerned with the project, Carbon Futures is also planning on using local production facilities in partnership with local company RONA Electricals (Pvt) Ltd. The initial investment that they make is not a gift or donation – the company plans on making use of the carbon credits that it will generate to recover the costs. But that’s still great news. At least it will make it possible to reduce the costs of lighting our streets. With development taking place, we will have even more roads to light up, not to mention homes, factories and offices. With better LED lighting, there should be at least some cost benefits to people.

Given that we use oil to generate almost half of our total electricity supply as of 2008 (IEA statistics) any methods of reducing eneregy consumption should be made use of.

Given the low energy consumption of LEDs, one other point that came to mind is that these could be married to a Solar solution. Although established Sri Lankan company SolarTherm also provides a similar solution, it seems to be more of a standalone product, whereas solar panels on street lights could be connected to the national grid. The result would be generation of power during the day (although a small amount, given current power generation capabilities of solar panels) which is fed to the national grid, followed by minimal usage during the night when the lights are in operation. The electricity bill is calculated on the net of the power supplied by the grid and the power used by the lights, so the state should save some money. Apparently, MAS Thurulie uses a similar “netting” method as well, among its many other energy saving methods.

If the news of Solar Power Stations in 2011 turns out to be true, then it would seem that we are already moving towards some sort of renewable energy use. But then again, I’m not sure how long lived the solar powered street lighting initiated in 2006 turned out to be.

It’s also interesting to note that Sri Lanka is better positioned than America to make use of the “Energy Internet” described by Thomas Friedman in “Hot, Flat and Crowded”. Having just one electricity grid, we would be better able to have individuals or companies able to generate their own electricity (using non-fossil fuel methods) feed the grid. Imagine all those houses just exposed to the hot Sri Lankan sun – what if each of them had a Solar panel, feeding the grid during the day, while also reducing everyone’s electricity bill?

The Daily Mirror (yes, that website that stole my crappy photo and continued to use it without any attribution some time ago) has gone ahead and published an article about the resignation of the Sri Lankan cricket team’s Bus Driver. Many thanks to Mr. Senanayake for his continued highlighting of such moments of hilarity.

Type this into Google, since you are not going to find it on their site any more:

cache:http://www.dailymirror.lk/news/10809-sl-cricket-team-bus-driver-resigns.html

EPIC FAIL.

The original article is at http://www.espncricinfo.com/page2/content/story/509832.html which ends with the quote:

This article is dedicated to the memory of Trevor Chesterfield. A lover of cricket and satire, it’s the kind of thing he would have enjoyed.

Well, so much for their breaking news.

But what is heartbreaking is that this same story in its entirety appears on Lankapuvath, which is supposedly by the “National News Agency of Sri Lanka”.

Journalism was last seen walking on a rail track, weeping into a sodden handkerchief. Incidents like this are possibly the best reason for continued repression (alleged) of media freedom in Sri Lanka.

O tempora! O mores!

In the beginning there was no spam. Or well, maybe there was, but no one wrote about it.

And then people who wanted to sell stuff decided that the best way to sell it was to let everyone know. So there began bulk mailing and literally junk mail.

With communications moving on to the internet, the junk mail developed into junk email. The general cluelessness of many email users, coupled with clever scams (e.g. “Win a free iphone, mail this to ten friends with WinAFreeIfone@gmail.com in the cc field”) led to many people receiving loads of junk email. Thankfully, filters can be put in place to stop that.

With attention turning to mobile devices, we started getting text messages from people. From New year greetings from the top, to updates on the latest Metered Three Wheeler service in town.

And now, we have the phone call spammer. Cold calling at its coldest. You get a call on your phone, which you answer since the number is not a known one. “Hello…” you start, only to find out that instead of a human being on the other end, you’ve got a little recording telling you stuff you didn’t know you were going to hear. So far its been about Star Points and Leasing, but I guess anything else is possible.

In an age of limited attention spans and crowded media outlets, is this really the way forward for companies – telecoms, advertisers and agencies? I hope not. After all, who’s going to decide how many ads per phone per day?

I’m not very impressed. My phone is for people – real people – to contact me. Not some automaton trying to sell me something. And besides, how do I know whether an incoming call is genuine or automated? I’m going to be annoyed by every new phone number that turns up on the CLI…

While reading for my postgraduate qualification I came across Yahoo’s value statement as part of the coursework. Interestingly, they also include a separate page for what they don’t value.

One of the terms I came across in all of this, is the “Monday Morning Quarterback”. As always, Google helps us find out what that means:

Monday morning quarterback

a person who, after the event, offers advice or criticism concerning decisions made by others; one who second-guesses

Source: http://www.yourdictionary.com/monday-morning-quarterback

After Saturday, wonder how many you will encounter over the next couple of weeks?

silhouettes for tagging people, from http://reface.me/

So first it began with people tagging their friends on Avurudu (New year) greetings, then school/college/office/party function adverts. Then it turned out that there’s a whole subset of pictures which you can get tagged in on Facebook. Depending on what your friends think you are, you will find yourself tagged on a generic photo.

This is kinda cute, but can be downright annoying if ever you try to log in to Facebook from a different country. Should you choose to verify your identity by correctly identifying friends in photos, then heaven help you if the ones that turn up are assorted greeting cards and tag-friendly ones. I guess this has implications for anyone who wants to recover their account – forget your secret question? Then hope the friends whose photos turn up are unlikely to be tagged in generic photographs on FB.

It’s just as annoying as getting friend requests from people who have flowers/kittens/manga as profile pics. I for one am going to spend some time untagging myself from a lot of photos…

Morris Minor, by James & Vilija

I was among many others who celebrated the possibility of a better car when the taxes were brought down. Sadly, I am now among a handful of people who’ve sold their cars for the same price they bought them (despite a couple of years’ use) and are now pondering what to buy.

With all due respect to the Indian car makers, a Maruti is not in my list of possibles. Like many other Sri Lankans in the mid-sized car category, I would prefer a Japanese car – even reconditioned – over a Maruti. Then again, the purported four month waiting list for Maruti – which is supposedly going for less than a million rupees  – means there’s plenty of demand for that as well.

I certainly can’t afford the more expensive options. There are brand new cars above the 3.5Mn mark, with the KIA Sportage running in the 4Mn range, but coming with a 4 year warranty (!)

So, that puts me in the middle – the 1Mn-3Mn crowd. The crowd that finds itself in a fix. Check out any of the local classifieds, or the oldest online car sale – Autolanka - and you will find that cars over 10 years old are still expected to sell for their original purchase value. Some for even more. I know people who’ve sold their cars for more than what they bought them for and judging by the prices being quoted online and in the Hit Ad, they’re not the only ones.

Cars with more than 100,000km on the odometer are going for prices that are much higher than I think they should. The people importing direct from Japan keep varying margins – anything between 300k-900k. I know a car that was advertised for USD 7,600 in Japan (on a site), which was quoted for LKR3.1Mn (USD30,000) – a margin of over LKR 900k(!) after taxes. I almost bought it, but couldn’t reconcile myself to paying so much over what it was worth.

I mean, how much is one of these cars actually worth? Take them to a valuer and you’ll find the Seller’s expected price on the final valuation. But that’s just crazy. Take a look at any of the japanese exporter sites – Tradecarview, Goo-Net Exchange (a terrible name, if ever read in Sinhala), RamaDbk (has local connections) – and cars that don’t qualify for import to Sri Lanka (more than 3 and a half years old) are so much cheaper. A 2004 Allion costs around USD 8k in Japan – even if you had to pay double as duty that’s USD24k, but the rates quoted in the papers for the same thing tend to be around USD 34k (minimum).

So it works out that if you’ve got access to less than 3Mn, then you’ve got to buy an old car, for the same price (or sometimes more) than what the owner paid for it. If you’re in the 2-3Mn range and actually have cash, then you can try importing a car yourself. If like me, you’re looking to make use of a car loan then you’re in trouble. A direct import has to land in the country for you to take out the loan, so you’re at the mercy of the importers and their crazy margins. Or else, if you’ve got around LKR 1.5Mn in cash, you could possibly get the vehicle imported and take out a loan to cover the difference. Again, not that kind of money available to yours truly.

So all in all, the middle class car buyer is stuck. The budget buyer benefits, while the same applies for the luxury category – for the price of a Honda Civic not so long ago, you could get an Audi

Demand has increased and I guess people must be paying these amounts, or else prices should be dropping. Add to that the news that Sri Lankan buyers drive up prices in Japanese car Auctions and a volatile exchange rate and heaven only knows where this will lead.

My only hope is that the mad rush for importing cars causes a shift in the market, where supply exceeds demand and the prices drop. Until then, I’ll be running on Tuks and the generosity of friends and family.

So today a friend and I were waiting for a friend to pick us up, when we were approached by two young ladies from a foreign country. They wanted to know how to get some place in a bus, possibly because the three wheeler guys charge too much. Reminded me of reading somewhere that during the Amazing Race in Sri Lanka, the three wheelers had charged exhorbitant rates all while on camera.

With the most popular page (uh… of course, that’s relative term, since my blog isn’t very popular) on my blog being the story of the three wheeler and the meter, I thought I might as well share the contact details of some Metered Three Wheeler taxis you may find in Sri Lanka. Indi’s got a more readable take on the Meter Tuks, which reminded me that this was still in my drafts…

These three wheelers charge a Rs. 50 call-up fee (which also includes one kilometer of travel) and Rs. 30 per kilometer thereafter, charged per every 100 meters. There is a 15% surcharge between 10pm and 5am. While waiting – whether in traffic, or parked – costs another Rs. 1.50 per minute.

I’ve also found that using a metered taxi, or at least their fare calculation is a great way of deciding the ideal fare when taking a non-metered taxi. Of course, since the non-metered taxi doesn’t get the benefit of someone calling and directing to the next fare, they’d expect a small premium as well. So for instance if I’ve paid 150 bucks to get some place in a meter taxi, I’m armed with the ideal negotiating tool – “but I went for only 150 in a meter taxi. I’ll give you 200″ (they generally ask for some more, but agree since it’s a reasonable rate). Works for me.

Link Lanka (0772 770277) apparently produces a 100% locally produced taxi meter for three wheelers. I got a flyer from them via email detailing the following Taxi services, which have proved to be a cheap way of getting about.

• Budget Taxi (also known as 3Wheel Lanka – whom I wrote about earlier) – 0772 299299 or 0712500800
• Romaka Taxi – 0112 836000, 0777 773898, 0713 836000, 0727 836000
• Fair Taxi – 0772 588588, 0777 750777
• Sanway Taxi – 0772 297003, 0777 535343, 0772 386356
• Necessary Taxi – 0773 480680
• Apple Taxi – 0775 559594 or 0775 559584

I’ve only travelled with taxis from the first three services mentioned above, so can’t really recommend the others. I’d suggest calling at least half an hour in advance to make sure you have a taxi. Understandably, peak hours will prove difficult for taxi hunting.

The process involves calling the Taxi people and asking for a taxi. Once they get down your number, the driver will call you direct. You will then need to tell them where exactly to come to, which may not be feasible for a tourist. And like Indi says, most of these guys don’t know the roads, so you need to have a good idea of where you’re going. But they’ve generally been very reasonable and polite people. Especially the former Tour Guide who drives for Romaka Taxi. I forget his name, but that one ride was full of anecdotes and advertising for Romaka.

You can also flag them down off the road, but that’s rare since they’re almost always heading to pick up a hire.

With the establishment of the Gas conversion workshop/outlet (?) in Narahenpita (next to CIMA library), there may cleaner (and possibly cheaper) metered three wheelers on the road soon.

I’ve always been a big fan of choral music. Not being able to carry a tune in a bucket, I always admired how people could create such powerful art with their voices. Then again, being somewhat a philistine, perhaps I’m just miscategorising some of my favourite music.

Mainly, my favourites have been the likes of Lebo M and Enya, with Celtic Woman and Il Divo coming up with some pretty impressive performances, which I can share with you thanks to the wonders of that thing called YouTube.

But more interesting are the accapella titles that I came across on Youtube (Papareboy, it is total coincidence that you have discovered many of these yourself). There’s a whole lot of people, of whom I only mention a few in Daiyel, Nayamarie, Sam Tsui and Corey Vidal who combine their singing abilities (and beatboxing capacity) with the digital editing facilities of modern day computers to create some amazing music themselves.

Lebo M has Disney popularizing his songs (contributing to the Lion King would’ve certainly helped him), while Celtic Woman, Enya and Il Divo clearly benefit from the more traditional music promotions. I mean, I don’t think a lot of people can afford to set up a concert at a Roman Coliseum. But thanks to the personal publishing facility available with personal computers today and content delivery channels like YouTube, other people can showcase their talents and create their own fan following.

I’m surprised that our very own Revelations and Soul Sounds don’t have too many performances of their own online. Actually, the Revelations do have some good quality uploads, but the ones of Soul Sounds IMHO don’t do justice to those ladies.

Whereas uploads from Bodyrock or HotForWords seem to have no trouble gathering viewers, it would seem that their job might be just a little bit easier.

There’s always the chance for people to make money off viral videos on Youtube but it all depends on how many subscribers you get. Given the creativity of our fellow Lankans, I’m hoping to see more of it coming out.

Lebo M – One by One

Celtic Woman – May it be

Il Divo – Amazing Grace

Il Divo – Amazing Grace / RUS from ILDIVORUS on Vimeo.

The Revelations – Brown Eyed Girl

Daiyel – Yesterday (Boyz II Men version cover)

Nayamarie – Lady Gaga Medley:

Sam Tsui – Micheal Jackson Medley

Corey Vidal – an irreverant but relevant tribute to the great John Williams