Adobe cities and Atomic bombs: New Mexico - Texas Trip ‘25
Santa Fe and ABQ Old Town have a unique vibe, filled with adobe-like houses. This architectural style originated with the native tribes and was improved upon...
Posts by Category
Travel
Chicago - Raised & Burnt
Raised on Jackscrews, Reversed the River, Crime Capital, Nolan’s Gotham
Cable cars of San Francisco
Unlike trams, cable cars do not have any motors inside them. A cable keeps moving under the streets, and the cars catch onto it, to move with it around the c...
Hoover Dam(n)
TLDR: They spent decades gathering public support, 10 years in political lobbying, and just 2 years to build the largest dam in the world in the middle of th...
Grand Canyon - Longer than Sri Lanka
Monument Valley - Where Forrest Gump stops running
Road Trip along the Mother Road of America
2500 km in 6 days on a Convertible Mustang through 5 states
East Coast Onebagging in Winter
I visited Las Vegas (0.5) Baltimore (1), DC (2), Philadelphia (2), Boston (3) and NYC (8). I planned to spend 3 days in Buffalo/Toronto, but my flights got c...
Las Vegas - The City of Sins
Egypt, Venice, Rome & Paris, all within 3 hours. Nothing is holy here: fake mummies decorate grand casinos and a nightclub built like a Buddhist cave tem...
Bengaluru - Tech Museum, Eat Street, Iskcon Kovil [India 2022]
“The Silicon Valley of India” is neither Delhi, Bombay, nor Kolkata, but this South Indian capital of Karnataka. The city is full of skyscrapers, malls and h...
Mysore Palace: Wealth beyond your wildest dreams [India 2022]
The second most visited spot in India is home to the Wadiyar dynasty, who have been ruling the Kingdom of Mysore for 551 years, through 27 kings. “Heaven in ...
Mysore & Food [India 2022]
Mysore is easily one of the best cities to visit in India. It is compact in size, laid back in vibe, rich in history, and unique in culture. The same dynasty...
Kochi - Queen of the Arabian Sea [India 2022]
In 1341, a massive flood of the river Periyar destroyed Kerala, reshaping its coastline in the process. This formed the natural harbour of Kochi almost overn...
Kathakali - A dance of emotion and colour [India 2022]
Katha (story) kali (play) is an iconic traditional dance of Kerala. Void of dialogues, the story is conveyed through expressions, mudras (gestures), and musi...
Kerala Food [India 2022]
I once called India the ‘foodie’s paradise’. Then Kerala is its unrivalled capital. I could try only a fraction of Kerala’s wonderful food culture within thr...
Alappuzha (Kerala) - Venice of the East [India 2022]
Dubbed “God’s Own Country”, Kerala truly is amazing beyond expectations. Serene backwaters with boat rides, unmatched cuisine, and a genuine culture of men w...
Kanyakumari - Where India Ends [India 2022]
It’s the tip of India, where three seas meet. Did you know it’s south-er than Anuradhapura, almost parallel to Dambulla?
Mandapam Camp: My Grandpa, Refugees & Tea Workers [India 2022]
In 1917, the British set up a quarantine center at the edge of India. Indians, who were being brought to Sri Lanka to work in tea estates, were stopped there...
The Ghost Town of Dhanushkodi [India 2022]
In the 1950s, from Colombo Fort Railway Station, you could take a train ticket to Dhanushkodi (India). The train would take you to Thalai Mannar, then out to...
India
It is not a country, but a continent. There is no other place on earth as rich in diversity. Every state, often every city within a state has a unique cultur...
Police Story - Aba and the Punjab Police
TLDR: A doctor “tested” me for COVID-19, I fought with policemen, they took me on a bike and got stopped by traffic police for a traffic violation. I escaped...
Driving in India
I might be the first guy to use indicators in India. Most motorbikes and autos don’t even have side mirrors! They remove it, some bikes even turn them inward...
Monkey Thieves
Both my glasses were broken by monkeys last week.
Agra [India 2020]
Tourists visit Agra, primarily for the Taj Mahal, arguably the most beautiful mausoleum in the world and a fine example of Mughal architecture and landscapin...
Northeast India [2019]
1 week, 2 people, 5 states, 7 flights, 8 languages, 1000 km (by road) Went for a week-long workshop on SOC design, took an extra week to travel across North...
Best Summer 2017
(7,000 km of motorbike, boat, train, bus, ferry, jeep, rosa, bicycle… in sixty days)
Vietnam: Sex Education & Awareness
Support-Educate-Prepare (SEP) was a six-week-long project in summer 2016, focused on raising awareness against sexual harassment and human trafficking among ...
Tamil Nadu [India 2015]
Known for ancient temples with impeccable Dravidian architecture, Tamil Nadu is twice bigger in the area and has thrice the population of Sri Lanka. We visit...
Other
A Drug Story in Jaffna
A Drug Story - Happened to a family friend in Jaffna few days ago. Source: mom
How GPT works: 15-minute intuition
Karpathy was an OpenAI co-founder and the Tesla autopilot vision team lead. Between Tesla and OpenAI, he released this gem of a guide.
My speech at Chinthana & Sunimali’s wedding
Before I begin, here is an advertisement you cannot skip. I’ve decided to do these wedding speeches as a business. The first two, including this, are free. I...
Buddha was shot dead - An impactful poem
I read this as a kid in Grade 6 or so, and its impact has stuck with me. The following is a short explanation for anyone who might get triggered by “killing ...
Bhanuka and Lashini’s Wedding - My speech
I don’t know how some people find their soulmates within a few months of joining the university. It took me a year to find the examination division.
Sri Lanka & Lazarus Heist
In 2016, Lazarus Group, a North Korean cybercrime group robbed 1 billion from the account of Bangladesh’s Central Bank in the Federal Bank of New York and tr...
Linear Algebra in our Education: A Rant
Grade 8: Here is a matrix, just a few numbers in a box. You can add, subtract boxes. And you can multiply two boxes in this very complicated weird way. But w...
Meta-hypocrisy: War Crimes, Sunil Ratnayaka and George Floyd
TLDR: We need to compare apples to apples, Sri Lankan people to US people and SL govt to US govt. I have a unique (not really) stance on war crimes. Read on ...
The Jam Fruit Tree - Book Review
One of the best novels I’ve read in English!
Mahabharata - Book Review
Finished reading Mahabharata (Rajaji edition)
Easter Attacks - Documentary
Terror in Paradise: A must-watch for all Sri Lankans.
Myth of the Chocolate Skin
Fun fact, foreigners: Europeans and Chinese have a difficult time wrapping their heads around the concept of our skin colours. They assume that the entire “d...
Story of the “Joy Plant” and Heroin
“Take the best orgasm you ever had, multiply it by a thousand and you’re still nowhere near it.”
Solar Eclipse FAQ & Fun Facts
Why is it harmful to look at it with naked eyes?
To see in Rajarata - Maps
My boarding aunty (Neela Desilva) made me two booklets (PDF links are given), on the great cities of Anuradhapura and Polonnaruwa. She has gathered maps, new...
Rohana Wijeweera - An Unbiased Story of JVP (1971-1989)
When watching ‘Ginnen Upan Seethala’, I felt it was quite one sided. I wanted to know both sides of history and their justifications. Recently I met someone ...
The End of Eternity (Asimov): Book Review
The best time travel story of all time, from the grand master of hard sci-fi.
The Pillars of the Earth: Book Review
Pillars is arguably the best fiction I have ever read and a book that I keep recommending to my fellow bookworms. Set in a historic background, it is almost ...
Ponniyin Selvan: Book Review (English)
Emperor Rajaraja (985-1014 AD) was one of the most notable kings of India. Cholas are considered the villains in Mahawamsa, rightfully so, since they have in...
The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy: Book Review
This is a 700 page novel. And on the 30th page, the galactic hyper-way council destroys the earth to build an intergalactic highway.
Sapiens: Book Review
We are the product of our history. Like them or not, religions, empires, ideologies and money have shaped our history to make us what we are today. Despite e...
Solving Schrödinger’s Equation in 1,2,3-D with MATLAB
In my junior year, I picked an elective on Quantum Mechanics: Electronic Devices. The project that was worth 50% was to solve the time-independent Schrodinge...
Aba’s 2018
Asked out a girl for the first time and got respectfully rejected. Started the year in a tent sandwiched between a graveyard and the most beautiful beac...
Smart Lock: Assembly Programming, Product Realization, Marketing
The objective of this project is to gain experience in designing and launching a brand new product into a market. Our product is the ‘Smart Door Lock’, a saf...
Aba’s 2017
★ Walked into Cinnamon Lakeside Hotel with sweaty T-shirt + bottom + muddy slippers at midnight and then into Pettah police station at 2 am on the same day ★...
DonateLK: Web Based Donation Platform
DonateLK was developed as a semester project for the module: ‘Modular Software Development’. It is a web-based marketplace that is designed to support consum...
Feel Lanka - Tourism Development
Focused on tourism development in unexplored parts of Sri Lanka, it was a six-week project with a team of foreign and local volunteers collaborating with lea...
Gollum - Ring Finding Robot: [GPS, obstacle avoiding, wall following, color detection, parallel alignment]
Through this project we built Gollum, an outdoor mobile robot to perform GPS following, obstacle avoiding, wall following, color detection, parallel alignmen...
Adam’s Peak: Why the Rib?
Jo - ‘Hmm?’ Me - ‘Well, god created Eve from Adam’s rib right?’ Jo - ‘Yes?’ Me - ‘Why the rib, in particular? What’s special about it?’
A Road from Elephant Pass - Book Review
An LTTE (Tamil) girl turns herself into the camp at Elephant pass, minutes before LTTE starts their Operation Ceaseless Waves -3 (ஓயாத அலைகள் 3) in March 200...
Switch Off - Energy Awareness & Wiring Rural Houses
My Experience
Aba’s 2016
*Fighting in Goda Uda Vietnam teaching to wear condoms being someone’s crush eating crocodile “husband” of an am...
When the World Burns Around You
This is a speech I wrote in 2016, about my mom, for the module: Communication Skills.
A Tale of Three Cities
This was a speech I prepared for a course in undergrad, where we were supposed to reflect on our personal journeys.
Dobbybot: A Battlebot under $32
For a battlebot competition, we decided to build a bot for under 30$. Clad in stainless steel plates for armour and a flipper arm powered by 12 kg-cm servo m...
Islandwide Mora Exams
This year, the 7th annual islandwide model examinations for GCE A/L is being conducted in 20 districts entirely by the students of E15, E16 batches, under th...
மாட்டிறைச்சியும் இந்துமதமும்
விவேகானந்தர் அமெரிக்காவில் தங்கியிருந்த போது மாட்டிறைச்சி தின்றார். இராமாயணத்தில், கொழுத்த கன்றை அடித்து உணவாக்கி இராமனுக்குப் பரத்வாஜ முனிவர் படையலாக்க...
Nightfall (Asimov Novelette) : Review
What if people experience darkness and witness the heavenly sight of the starry night only once in a millennium?
இனங்களும் இனவாதமும்
This is my essay from 2016 (first year at university) that won second place at the all-level essay competition. I’d like to thank Mr. Baskar, with whom I dis...
Do Horses Bite?
This is the story of one of my weirdest experiences: being bitten by a horse (yup, seriously!), and its consequences.
Aba’s 2015
★ Lost 16 kg by riding 2500 km, exploring entire Jaffna peninsula in bicycle.
Merry Christmas with Arthur C Clarke: Book Review
Amazed once again by the rich imagination of Arthur C Clarke as an idea-driven sci-fi writer. Just read the second paragraph below (only if you are in a hurr...
AutoCAD 3D: 3 Story House
After high school, I took a short course in draughtsmanship. This is what I built for my final project
Poster Series: Chemistry Reactions (High School)
I created these charts to prepare for my GCE A/L Examinations. When I graduated from school, I redesigned them in Powerpoint and printed them into charts.
Thondamanaru Lagoon: Baseline Analysis
In 2014, I volunteered to help my mom’s team of professors and research assistants on a project to analyze biological and socio-economic parameters of a lago...
Alexandria: Integrated Library System
This is one of my first large scale projects. I learnt C#, SQL…etc to do it after middle school. I didn’t know OOP back then, so I ended up doing it in a pai...
கன்னிமாடம் - Book Review
கடல்புறாவின் முதற் சில பக்கங்களிலேயே சாண்டில்யனின் நீண்ண்ண்ட வர்ணனைகளைப் பார்த்துப் பயந்து ஓடிவிட்ட நான், ‘கன்னிமாட’த்தை படிக்க எடுத்ததற்கும் முழுமையாக வாசித...
Projects
CSIRO: End-to-End Machine Learning Pipeline
In May 2018, I was chosen for a 6 month paid internship program at DATA61 CSIRO (The national science agency of Australia), in Brisbane, Australia. I was sup...
Custom Processor (Verilog), ISA, Compiler & Simulator (Python)
The first architecture I designed
Teaching
Kavigai Foundation (Non-profit)
Kavigai Foundation was co-founded in August 2017 by three of my friends and myself with the goals of full financial & functional transparency and being a...
Basic Robotics Workshops for Students of Over 20 schools
As with all developing countries, students of Sri Lanka are not exposed to the latest technologies. Students are usually exposed to programming (mostly on pa...
Thoughts
California: Mythical Island and 17th-Century Fake News
Around the same time Columbus landed, some guy published a random fictitious novel about a mythical island where only black women live (Amazon-style), the on...