Category Archives: Australian culture

Matilda’s Defeat & Nostradamus in Adelaide

 

SOME IMMEDIATE RESPONSES

“Amazing that Irene also had a premonition that the Matildas would lose 3-1” …..   Ralph Shlomowitz caressing his partner

“Poor Roberts he was asking for it. Shall I organize some Pretzels 🥨 🥨🥨🥨🥨🥨🥨🥨🥨for the Spectators ?” …. Herbert Perera from Deep in Germany

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Surviving the Aging: Transforming Oneself

An Email Circular from Lorenz Pereira in Melbourne, 13 August 2023 …. with highlights imposed by The Editor, Thuppahi

The surprise has arrived! The Director of the George Washington University School of Medicine maintains that the brain of an elderly person is much more practical than is commonly believed. At this age, the interaction of the left and right hemispheres of the brain becomes harmonious, which expands our creative possibilities. That is why among people over the age of 60 you can find many personalities who have just started their creative activities.

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Kissing Frolics at Peradeniya University: Now …. & Then

News item:- Daily News, 20th March 2023:  “No Bar to kiss at Peradeniya” .…  Suranga Dilhan, Gampola Corr.

“Peradeniya University is a place filled with love and there is no prohibition for kissing at the university premises,” Peradeniya University Vice Chancellor Prof. M. D. Lamawansa and Deputy Vice Chancellor Prof. Terrance Mudiyith said.

 

 

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Straddling Disciplines & Crossing Boundaries  

Michael Roberts

In presenting an article published in Comparative Studies in Society & History in Thuppahi,[1] I have introduced quite a few readers to the issue of the boundaries that have prevailed between the disciplines of History on the one hand and Anthropology and/or Sociology on the other. In its day the CSSH was a high-quality journal which straddled these boundaries and exercised a regime that demanded great skill from those seeking to cross its threshold and gain acceptance for an article within its pages. Kitsiri Malalgoda was one of those who had satisfied its Editors with his essay “Millennialism in relation to Buddhism” which appeared in CSSH, volume 12 in 1970.

Kapferer’s Study of Exorcism Rites in Sri Lanka … & paceman Hogg seeking to remove batsmen

 

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Introducing an Essay on an Ethnic Confrontation at a Cricket Match in 1981

Michael Roberts

This ‘encounter’ took place in 1981 and involved a Burgher Sri Lankan barracker earning the combined ‘resistance’ of an Aussie cricketer and Sinhala bystander (Sinha). As an observer of this set of exchanges, I moved beyond a clarification of the historical understandings embedded in Sinha’s success in ‘defeating’ the aggressive Burgher to address the relationship and differences between ‘typical’ anthropological studies and ‘typical’ historical work.

The essay was published in Comparative Studies in Society and History in 1985. The pdf version has been converted into Word File by my Aloysian schoolmate KK De Silva, a cricketer and soccer goalkeeper in his school-heyday. Because it is a pdf, I have not been able to assemble the Footnotes as “End Notes.” Continue reading

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A “Fernandopulle” from Sri Lanka brightens Aussie Headlines

Frontpage Headline in THE AUSTRALIAN, 17 July 2023 = “Students take housing shortage to next level”

“Internaional students Isi Larraguibel, Rowen Fernandopulle, Jaden Amba and Rois Maullers in Brisbane on Sunday”

 

…. visit … https://www.theaustralian.com.au/subscribe/news/1/?sourceCode=TAWEB_WRE …. AND TRY TO  negotiate their money-seeking hoops if you wish to read the whole article

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The Bairstow Run-Out: Skandakumar’s Polite Challenge to Umpire Taufelef

Somachandra Skandakumar, in The Sunday Island, 9 July 2023, where the title is ” A Letter to Simon Taufel” …. [also see Editor’s Note]

Dear Mr. Taufel, As you were an Umpire who was held in the highest esteem throughout your tenure, I read your comments on the Bairstow dismissal with interest. Since it was an incident that raised comments from two Prime Ministers and turned the sacred Long Room at Lord’s temporarily into an angry English football stadium, I thought of writing to you.

Taufel on the left

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“Lake Beauty”: A Murder Mystery in the Aussie Outback

A Novel entitled “Lake Beauty” by Rob George …. with hihlighting mpose d by The Editor, Thuppahi

... where Sam and Annie conspire against authority to bring about justice for a murdered woman. 

 

 

 

 

 

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A Conservative Voice against Today’s Aboriginal ‘Voice’ ”

 Dr David Barton, in THE QUADRANT,  December 2022, with this title “Australia’s Aboriginal Industry: Always Was, Always Will Be About Power”

 

In 1983, as a naïve youth worker and concerned by what I had been reading since the early 1970s about what was happening with Aborigines in Alice Springs, I moved there to see what I could do to help. All told, I spent six years in Central Australia, leaving both depressed and convinced that the situation could never be fixed.

Unfortunately, much of what passes for Aboriginal ‘culture’ today is an invention of the last 50 years.

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Papua New Guinea drawn into Aussie-US War Plans against China

Paul Gregoire in Sydney with “Sydney Lawyers” at masthead and this title =  “AUKUS power are militárising Papua New Guinea in Preparation for War with China,” 16 May 2023, … ………………………. https://www.sydneycriminallawyers.com.au/blog/aukus-powers-are-militarising-papua-new-guinea-in-preparation-for-war-with-china

Journalist John Pilger’s 2017 documentary The Coming War With China warned that the US had established a “perfect noose” of 400-odd military bases surrounding China, while former Australian PM Paul Keating recently asserted that the AUKUS deal makes us part of this “containment policy”.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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