A few people reminded me about posting the new holidays for this year, but I never got around to it.

Luckily Kavinda has put it together here.

If like me you frequently send money back to Sri Lanka, it's important to know how to play the game.

You can save yourself some dollars or rupees by knowing if things are going up or down, here's where x-rates.com comes to help.

Pick the two currencies from where your sending and receiving and hey presto you have a graph.

I for one will be waiting a couple more days before my next transfer.

Oh and I nearly forgot, the guys at Ceylinco Fast Cash give a really good service when sending money home. My last transfer went through like a breeze, in less than one hour, I deposited some money in Sydney and my brother withdrew from Colombo. Both of us were SMS'd every step of the way by their automated system.

Plus if you use there service about 6 times they provide a number of free benefits including a "doctor on call and other medical services for your loved ones in Sri Lanka".

Chandana is bitching about Dialog's so called Live Updates on 777.

I've found Sky's 'Cricket Live Scores' to be pretty reliable on my really lousy phone and I only spend a few cents each time I get an update.

If you find the url too long to type:

1. Go to google.com/m 
2. Search for 'cricket'
3. Sky is second on the list (BBC is #1 maybe they are better)

Remember to add 'Cricket Live Scores' to your bookmark and you wouldn't need to search each time.

This says it all.

Beating India was sweet revenge. In the '99 World Cup, Dravid and Ganguly went on a run spree to eliminate us from the tournament.

I'm glad that we returned the favor!

Time to tune in the newest addition to the local tv stations, Channel One MTV.

Do you have all 13 channels tuned in?

1. Rupavahini
2. Rupavahini Eye
3. ITN
4. Sirasa TV
5. Shakthi TV
6. Channel One MTV
7. TNL
8. Swarnavahini
9. Derana
10. TV Lanka
11. MAX TV
12. Dynavision (ART TV)
13. ETV

http://tvradiosrilanka.blogspot.com keeps track of what's happening in the electronic media.

Frequencies to all the channels can be found at AsiaWaves.

Indi and Raditha have their say on the current politics.

Indi's is a hilarious read.

Oh, btw if you want to know what douchebag means.

With my impending visit to the MVP Global Summit 2007 in Seattle it was time to renew my passport which expired last year.

Dinesh pointed me to the well laid out Department of Immigration and Emigration site from where I was able to download the application form.

Since my passport was the old M series it was valid for only 5 years, I believe the new N series ones are valid for ten years. You can extend the validity of your passport for another five years, currently the renewal rate is Rs 100/- per year.

I had to visit the department twice. First to hand over the form and the payment and then they asked me to come two hours later to collect it. Three hours later when I went it was still not there, but I was able to get it after another 1/2 hour of waiting.

Even with all the computerization and what not, our ingenious public officials find clever ways to devise schemes to take bribes and expedite the renewal process for "bribe givers" while inconveniencing the guys who do it the right way.

Just after I parked the car at the nice car park opposite the department the ticket collector himself comes up and offers to get my passport renewed in 20 minutes. I turned him down.

The whole things shows up in an ugly way when you go to collect your passport. There are just two guys handing out the passports to the 150+ people who are waiting at any given time to collect it, and the passports trickle down in batches of about 15 every 10 minutes.

There are a another 15 plus officials (bribe takers) wearing the department tag who hang around waiting for their 'guys' (bribe giver) passport. They do this without an iota of shame in front of all 150+ people who are waiting to collect their passport.

The guys who get theirs legally have to sign the application to say that they collected it, but no such thing for the bribe givers.

Anyway given that we have one minister for anything that one can fart at, this sure is going to improve quite a lot.

I meant the bribery taking and giving.

This is wicked cool. Dialog has started pilot testing WiMAX with data speeds of 10MBPS. They areas being tested right now are Hambantota, Matara, Galle, Kurunagala, Anuradhapura and Polonnaruwa.

If the rates are reasonable this is going to be a landmark event for Sri Lanka when launched. [Source: LBO]

An okay start, they at least have some information on taking loans and stuff, the highlight being the forms are available for printing. The site though is doggone slow just to serve out plain static html.

http://www.epf.lk/

My thoughts on the keynote that was presented at Tech.Ed Sri Lanka.

To start off with the keynote was way too long and went on for what felt like four hours. I expected the presenters to excite the large gathering of developers about the new innovations that will be comnig in the .NET platform. Instead the damn PeopleReady message was stuffed down our throats. Repeatedly.

What do I care about some marketing initiative bs from Microsoft? Is this the sign of things to come with SteveB taking over the reins? I sure hope not.

The demos by Matty on the other hand were a treat to watch.