News Item in Colombo Gazette, 4 February 2020
Concerns were raised today over the failure by the Government to sing the National Anthem in Tamil at the main Independence Day event at Independence Square. The National Anthem was sung only in Sinhalese, which was a shift from the policy of the former Government which decided to sing the anthem in Sinhalese and Tamil in order to promote reconciliation among the communities.
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News Item Colombo Page, 1 February 2020: “Mercy flight to Wuhan: SriLankan Airlines expresses gratitude to its courageous crew members and staff”
Feb 01, Colombo: Sri Lankan Airlines expresses its profound gratitude to its patriotic and loyal staff members who volunteered to operate Flight UL1423, the airline’s mission of mercy that brought back our students from Wuhan, China, on Saturday 1st February 2020.
News Item in Colombo Gazette, 1 February 2020 …. https://colombogazette.com/2020/02/01/flight-with-sri-lankan-students-from-wuhan-lands-at-mattala-airport/
The flight with Sri Lankan students repatriated from Wuhan landed at the Mattala Airport this morning and the students were transported to the Diyatalawa Army camp in a special bus, under tight security.
Following the direction of President Gotabaya Rajapaksa, the Ministry of Foreign Relations in coordination with the Embassy of Sri Lanka in Beijing, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of China and the Chinese Embassy in Sri Lanka, facilitated the return of the 33 Sri Lankan students and their family members to Sri Lanka from Wuhan.
Julia Smith: “Michael Jackson and the Anthropology of Dance,” …… https://www2.naz.edu/dept/sociology-anthropology/faculty-and-staff/yamuna-sangarasivam/
Yamuna on right with a student
Although she was a huge fan of the King of Pop, she never imagined that she would meet him, let alone dance a duet with him in one of his music videos! She heard of Jackson’s call for ethnic and modern dancers and auditioned — along with more than 3,000 others — because the amazing opportunity blended her passions for the anthropology of music and the anthropology of dance with her expertise in Odissi dance (classical dance tradition of Orissa, India).
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Rajeewa Jayaweera, in Sunday Island, 2 February 2020, where the title runs – “A bygone era diplomat of perspicacity. A third-year remembrance of my father”
‘If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with Kings—nor lose the common touch’ – Rudyard Kipling
My father, Stanley Robert Jayaweera (SJ), passed away on February 4, 2017, four months short of his 90th birthday. Over the last couple of years, I have penned several articles of his work, besides one in May 2017, of the different phases in our father-son relationship. This article would be the last. As memories begin to fade, they too need to be reposed.
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H. L. Seneviratne reviewing Your Obedient Servant: The Fate of the Bureaucrat in Sri Lanka by Suren Sumithraarachchi, Sarasavi Publishers 2019 …. Courtesy of Colombo Telegraph = https://www.colombotelegraph.com/index.php/book-review-politics-the-bureaucracy/
This book deals with the higher bureaucracy in Sri Lanka, and its focus is bureaucratic behavior. It is about local bureaucrats, not those of British origin — bureaucrats who historically inhabited the bureaucratic terrain with decreasing density as colonial rule waned. It considers loyalty to a set of rules, rather than to a person, the marker of ideal bureaucratic behavior, one that the vocabulary of sociology calls “rational-legal”.
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Wilfrid Jayasuriya, in Daily Mirror Epaper, 18 January 2020, where the title is “English as the medium of modern education”
We are glad that President Gotabaya Rajapaksa hit the nail on the head about the meaning of education. Not a promising opening sentence? I do not wish to get into a harangue on education but just want to say there is an alternative to the education modus operandi which we practise by and large for more than a century. That alternative is the United States’ system as opposed to the British colonial model which was the foundation of our lay education for the last two centuries. Suffice to say that in my own family history, my maternal grandfather was a postmaster who worked in the English medium and my paternal grandfather was a school teacher who practised in Sinhala and English media. My father passed the Senior School Certificate in both English and Sinhala media and my mother passed the Junior School Certificate in English medium. I have both certificate documents and they are signed by the Vice Chancellor of Cambridge University because education in Ceylon had been allocated to Cambridge University!
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COL01:SPORT-CRICKET AUSTRALIA:KANDY,SRILANKA,10SEP99 – Australian fielders Jason Gillespie (left) and captain Steve Waugh collide in attempting to take a catch from the bat of Sri Lankan Mahela Jayawardena on the second day of the first cricket test at the Asgiriya stadium in central Kandy September 10. Jayawardena survived with his score on 34 but the two fielders were taken to hospital with Gillespie rushed on a stretcher with a broken leg and Waugh with an injured nose. The Jayawardena swept a ball from Colin Miller and Gillespie came in from long-leg while Waugh rushed down from short fine-leg to take the catch. Sri Lanka went in for lunch at 181 for 5. al/Photo by Anuruddha Lokuhapuarachchi REUTERS
Nandasiri Jasentuliyana Today ….. and THEN when he led the Southern Province Schools Team against the Australian Schoolboy Team in 1958
The First Australian Schools team to visit Ceylon seen in 1958 with the Combined Schools Team that played in Galle with Nandi Jasentulyana (aka JLN De Silva then)as Skipper (seated in centre) …..
Standing l to r: NM Pinnaduwa, Percy Amendra, Nalin Pieris, Sriman Jayawickrama, Hyndley Perera, Hemasirie fernando, Stanley Amendra, H. Hamilton, Lalith Fernando.
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thuppahi
