Thuppahi's Blog

Michael Roberts 

Vernon Regis was my senior team-mate in the cricket and soccer teams of St Aloysius in Galle for a couple of years. A left-hand batsmen with a sound technique and a medium-pace bowler, Vernon was an asset to any cricketing team. We lost touch in the decades that followed; but the subsequent accounts of his life’s work  — with one detailed tale by Ivan Kevitiyagala in the Daily Mirror reprinted in TPS (see https://thuppahis.com/2019/03/02/jesuit-priest-extraordinary-fr-vernon-regis-s-j/…) providing readers with useful details.

The presentation here today is more pictorial than affirmative in ink. Pictures do convey meaning.  They demonstrate that Vernon has pursued a meaningful life in Canada and Sri Lanka.  He can now rest in peace.

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An Essay from Lt Jonathan Wills at https://www.defence.gov.au/news-events/news/2024-08-23/golden-opportunity-sri-lanka ... sent to TPS by Joe Paiva

A deployment to Sri Lanka was like an episode of Who Do You Think You Are? for public affairs officer Lieutenant Jonathan Wills, as he uncovered surprising details of his family history during Indo-Pacific Endeavour (IPE).

tHE WILLS BLOKE 234 Lieutenant Jonathan Wills visits Henricus Avenue, Colombo, which is named after his grandfather.

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Prof. T. Sanathanan is scheduled to present a TALK entitled “The Building of a ‘New’ Identity: Mandapams of Jaffna Temples” as part of the The Monthly Lecture Series No: 163 of the National Trust .… on Thursday 29^th August 2024 at 6.00 pm [at the Auditorium of the College of Surgeons of Sri Lanka, No. 6, Independence Avenue, Colombo 7 ….. This talk will be placed/presented online: …………………. https://youtube.com/live/JrXlC-GzWCU?feature=share

SYNOPSIS: Although the existing popular discourses on Hindu temple architecture in Sri Lanka assiduously link temple style with those South Indian or Dravidian, the Jaffna examples from the colonial era exemplify a rupture. In the last thirty years villu mandapams or curvature ceiling halls became the desired popular form. The emergence of this local style coincides with the sweeping changes in the social fabric ignited by civil war, the displacements, the formation of a Sri Lankan Tamil diaspora, the Sanskritization of temple rituals, and the availability of new building materials and technologies. The villu madapams produced through fragmentation, collage, copy and fusion of different style and elements, questions the popular belief associating the Dravidian style with Tamil Identity in architecture. This lecture maps the cultural history and visual idiom of contemporary popular temple architecture with special reference to villu mandapams, and portrays Jaffna temple architecture as an eclectic mix integrating colonial, vernacular and South Indian architectural elements, architectural imaginations and memories from popular theatre and cinema. The lecture makes a case that  this extravagant architecture is an attempt to make the ordinary, common, low cost , impermanent architecture of occasional use, to produce a permanent visual grandeur and festivity.

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Scott Ritter, being a news item at https://www.rt.com/news/602809-scott-ritter-rt-contribution-russophobia/

As th e US government works overtime to stigmatize any journalism possessing connectivity with Russia, the world slides dangerously down a path defined by a Russophobic US-driven agenda that leads toward the inevitability of conflict, and the probability of nuclear war.

When the FBI executed a search warrant on my residence on August 7, they were singularly focused on my professional relationship (I am a self-employed journalist) with the Russian government, and in particular, RT, the widely recognized brand name of Russia Today, a media company founded by the autonomous non-profit organization TV-Novosti in April 2005.

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The Murali End is a Sri Lankan cricket podcast and newsletter run by Mark Machado, Dominic Machado, Estelle Vasudevan and Nick Brookes. Since 2023, The Murali End team have been providing reaction and analysis to all the latest happenings in Sri Lankan cricket – as well as looking back on moments that have shaped the game.

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Admiral Ravi Wijegunaratne  … writing on 21^st April 2024 in 

Today  is Sunday 21st April 2024.  Five years ago 21st April 2019 was Easter Sunday 2019.  SLCG Ship Suraksha, an 100 meter long Offshore Patrol Vessel (OPV), was getting ready for a 14-days Patrol. Her tanks were topped up with fuel, all victuals (required for 10 officers and 100 men crew for 14 days) loaded. Both cold and cool rooms were full with fresh fish/meat and vegetables. Ship was ready to sail at 12 noon on 21st April 2019.

“Suraksha” commissioned on !8 November 2018…. https://www.news.lk/news/world/item/23130-slcgs-suraksha-left-to-dosti-xiv Continue reading →

On the 19^thAugust 2024 Monday, my Thuppahi aka TPS website had 1587 VIEWS from 1264 Visitors. This is/was an unusual number ….. a very high figure. Of these, 943 Views were directed at the item headed “Tilly’s Beach Hotel at Mount burnt out in 1983.”

The number of visitors is high; but the fact that this item drew the largest number of HITs for the day is not new. The Tilly’s Item has been topping my hit/list chart for quite a few days recently. This is a new phenomenon because the item was placed in TPS way-way back.

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… and Jeremy De Lima of Melbourne will be handling its circulation. You can read all about the journal through the links noted below.

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Sophia Corfield’s Partial Bibliography

At some point around 2010/11 I hired Sophia Corfield, one of the married postgrad students whom I had supervised earlier at Adelaide University, to compile my CV. One dimension of this task was the focus on  “Unrefereed Popular Essays” in magazines and newspapers — thus fare cast for the general public.  

In responding to”a recent request from Ratheesh in India, I came upon a Bibliography collected in 2012. One segment of this listing is presented here because it is a record that may interest cricket fanatics and assiduous biographers. It will also enable me to join the late lamented Pissu Percy in the Land of the Eccentric.

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