Winds and the Mountains - Hunnasgiriya

I had another whooping holiday and a photo shoot at Hunnasgiriya last week end. It was my second visit this year to that area and I’am totally loving it. It’s the wind season on the hill country and the rain which drops from time to time is chased away promptly. The clouds move faster than jets and it’s an awesome site to see. We used to stand on a lake bank and face and challenge the wind to stand straight. ( Well now u can imagine how powerful the winds can be out there)

It’s amazing how the trees cope up with the wind that strong as that much and it completely sounds like in horror movies. Amidst the heavy winds in the day and the heavy fog in the evening and rains in the nights me and my buddies managed to trek around 10-15 km on nature trails. Twice to the mini worlds and once to the Forest department camping site area and another steep trail down the mountains along the jungle.

We visited a village which is at the bottom of the mountain ranges named Kandegama but failed to visit Meemure. The beauty of that are stunned me once again and its heaven for a photographer. A 360 degree panoramic view of the mountains blew me away but unfortunately couldn’t do a panorama shot due to the heavy wind. We didn’t see much of wild life except for some rare horned lizard and some butterflies and bugs. Since I was using my new canon and I’am still not equipped with a good macro lens I was not much interested in macro shots. But gathered some awesome landscape and life style images out there.

We lodged at the forest department’s Deanston research center and it’s a hot spot which in the middle of most of the visit worth places around the area. Well my next get away is already planned at its gonna be at the same area but different location. I still have few more trails to cover and places to shoot. So next 8th to 10th I’ll be at the Hunnasgiriya forest departments camping site 1.8 km away from the Hunnas—Meemure road in the isolation of the thick forest.

Competition time

I entered for the first photography contest yesterday. Wild life photographer 2006 organized by Wild life association combined with NTB. I gave 10 of my best photographs according to the categories requested and all of them were printed for the fist time. Well the prints sure do looks awesome than on the pc monitor and it’s the magical touch of the traditional methods.

Some new projects coming up in the office and seems like I have some role to play from my division. I manage to continue my workouts and hobbies among all these and some times the day starts and ends in a jiffy. Coming to office at 7 am and leaving at 7 pm is not actually some thing that can be done every day with the same interest and joy. But I never blame my work for it. It all depends on how I balance things and never letting one side to get heavy is the key to success.

Experimenting with light

It’s another boring week gone by without “TV”. Well any way since there was less entertainment at home I finished reading some magazines which was pending on my table for some time and managed to clear up around 700 photos I took on the last deep down south tour. That was the first set of pics I took from my Canon eos350d which is my first SLR. The results were awesome and I’am totally happy with it.

Apart from that I did some experimental black and white portrait conversions and some table top photography using a table lamp and some tiny objects like a model car and a gold chain. They too came out good and hoping to purchase some good table top photography kit and studio light system too in the near future. Then me the man can experiment more with portraits and get in to some fine art photography. Well all my dreams do come true so why not this hak hak.

No new movies to watch too in town so loafing around is not much possible these days. Might drop in to MC today to check out some magazines and DVD’s.

3rd eye

Long working hours, sitting for a long time at once place, looking at the monitor for too long, sms chats have made me a freak this week. I some times wonder what I will do if these displays are not invented.

TV, camera, pc, mobile phone and many other things display some thing on some screen and we are so addicted to that. It’s as if our eyes can’t see any thing any more if these are not there. Is this is extreme of pleasing our senses or is it just the beginning? There is only one truth about life and existence and that true is for the technology too. It “Change”. From moment to moment it’s reborn. With the growth of intelligence and the curious human what we see is becoming a mirage day by day. We are getting used to ignore what we see naturally and be more and more dependent on what we see on an artificial screen or a display. We try harder and harder to re see what we saw by taking snaps and capturing them on video. In near future we may record our own view and dreams in order to see them later and to re live what we thought was better times. When will we learn to live and let go ?

Reson to get angry!!

Forget Fanaa, forget DVD’s I’am pissed now. These 3 wheel drivers drives me crazy (well they drive like crazy that's some thing else). With the recent fuel price hikes these buggers are really enjoying. When the fuel goes up in 5 bucks the 3wheel charge goes up by 10 or 20 bucks. As if the machine needs another two or three extra liters to run after the fuel price went up. My foot!!

So finally I decided to invest on a bike. Well I’am not at all a vehicle person. I don’t have license and I never owned a transport in my life other than a mountain bicycle. Since I don’t have license My only savior is the mopad. Ya ya I know it can’t speed and its small and all. Who cares!! I only have to travel 3 km to office so why should I need a 450cc beast.

Oh by the way my TV is on repair at LG for some heat problem. So it's almost like a house without a wife as oldies says. (Well I don’t actually need a wife but I need a TV) This is my TV if your wondering why I’am so upset. On top of that the CBNsat buggers has got screwed too so even the TV comes back I'll be left with DVD's only.

Fanaa night

Went to watch “Fanaa” yesterday night. The movie was good and the place was almost house full. It was after ages I went for a night movie since I’am very much used to stay at home after 5 and sit back and relax with my plasma and the theater system. Came home late and after some text chats with my girly went to sleep around 2am. And up at 7and back in office.

It’s a gloomy, lazy Sunday so I’am sleep walking. Nothing comes to my mind which interests me other than checking out some new software’s I bought to test DVD cloning. Seems some is pretty good. I got some copy protected dvd9 stuff so I wanted to keep a backup of it and was running like a dog to see how I can do it. Nero didn’t support it so went software hunting at MC yesterday. Thanks to the piracy every where I got a heap of stuff for few bucks.

These days are quite hectic. One of my colleague and a friend has passed away 2 days back and that’s the main reason. To attend to that work and office work all together gave me little time to sleep so I guess I’m kind of getting tired. I was at that place last night also till about 1am and the funeral is today so hoping to drop by in the afternoon.

Sleep is some thing which I’am very prompt of and I need it at least 7 hours. The duration of required sleep change from person to person and for me it’s that much. But I wake up fresh and machine runs good if its 8 hours continuous. So I try maximum to get 8 hours sleep every day. When some one is use to sleep for some hour period like that and if he looses sleep that cumulate as a sleep debt in the memory. This sleep debt should be fulfilled at least once a week for the system to recover. I may sound crazy but its scientifically proven. So If I sleep 6 hours for 3 days a week I sleep 3 hours extra on a week end maybe in the morning or day time and I really know that it helps. Since I dot my work out and stuff on schedule that is a must for me.

Living day to day

Life has gone through minor and major changes for the last few years for all the living beings on this planet. Not to mention the evolution of technology and the high speed information super high way has made life’s easier as we all may see it. My life two has changed for good from bad. Maybe I would have ended up in worse but with my karma and my luck I stand here today as a free sole typing this blog looking back at what I have done and trying to learn some thing from it.

Admitting that the life is short and I also will be perished one day as all born has made me rethink my life and change routes 2 years back. I listened to my inner voice and saw that what happen around has very little to do with me and what's happening in side in me is my creator and the destroyer. With lot of help from Buddhism and self research I gain a fresh view of life and living.

Now I live in peace with all knowing that all the same and respect knowing that every body should be respected. Tears, sadness and the worse the death teach me lessons while smiles, laughs and joy keep me going. May be it.