Thuppahi's Blog

Asiff Hussein, at this digital site, …. A WALK DOWN THE MEMORY LANE OF COLOMBO IN PICTURES ….

A motley recollection of fond memories of that generation born in the carefree decades of the 1950s, 1960s & 1970s and survived in one piece through the 1980s when things were pretty much the same but had slowly begun to change….

Early morn saw folks take their tea with PERAKUM or COW & GATE condensed milk while kids had their milk with Marie or Nice biscuits from MALIBAN. Children back then got their fill of breakfasts with MD JAMS with fancy names like Golden Melon spread on bread. The sweet-toothed relished ZELLERS nut milk chocolates or went for a cool milkshake at Alerics PICADILLY CAFÉ on Galle Road, Wellawatte or a refreshing Faluda at BOMBAY SWEET HOUSE on Turret Road, Colpetty.

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Earlson Forbes’s EPITAPH ..……….[see  https://thuppahis.com/2020/04/19/mr-wjf-labrooy-a-historian-teacher-from-the-top-drawer/%5D …. succinctly pinpointing a “lesson for meaningful life” that he received from his Peradeniya guru, Mr JFK Labrooy, prompts me to present a set of personal recollections that display the encouragement and support that I and my family received from Justin Labrooy and his wife Erica.

When I entered Peradeniya University in 1957 in pursuit of an Arts-Degree and chose History as one subject [and eventually followed a Honours course in that field] I found myself in a first-year tutorial group under Mr Labrooy that included Ananda Wickremeratne, Russel Forbes, Trevor Roosmale-Cocq and Jayantha Dhanapala. On reflection I conjecture that this selection was no accident. It was Mr Labrooy’s foster-parent manipulation.

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INVITATION 

This Sunday, 25 January 2026, we warmly invite you to join a special and timely discussion on Artificial Intelligence (AI)—a topic already shaping our lives and influencing our future in many ways.

We are delighted to welcome Dr Yasantha, a Sri Lankan–American AI expert, physicist, computer scientist, researcher, professor, and data scientist. He will share his insights and, more importantly, answer your questions in Sinhala or English during a relaxed, friendly Zoom discussion.

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Dr Nihal D Amerasekera, in The Island, 18  January 2026

Dodwell Keyt

The first oil painting by Sybil Weereratne was a vase with flowers. She recalls it without emphasis, as though the moment needs no special framing. The painting still hangs on the wall of her lounge room today, not as a declaration of beginnings, but as a quiet witness to them.

We are seated in the back room of her Australian home, a space that serves as both studio and sanctuary. Canvases line the walls. Light filters through a curtained window and settles across a vibrant painting shaped by memory, colours drawn from years of travel through Sri Lanka and India. The scene feels remembered rather than observed, assembled slowly, layer by layer.

 Sybil and her husband Neville Weereratne

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Anonymous Author in Digital Source featured in The Island

[A few weeks back] Charith Asalanka faced the media for the first time since being stripped of Sri Lanka’s T20 captaincy and there was no bitterness in his tone. Instead, he sounded like a man choosing to play with a straight bat, pragmatic, reflective and determined not to let emotions drag him into more trouble after a bruising few weeks.

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Item in  THE ISLAND newspaper, Thursday  22 January 2026

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Expanding Participation in Tapping the Dutch East India Company Archives: Call for participation: user questionnaire

The GLOBALISE project is developing a digital platform to make Dutch colonial-era records—specifically Dutch East India Company archives—more accessible to communities around the world. These records include material connected to South Asia, including Sri Lanka. Based in Amsterdam, the project works with around five million digitised pages and uses AI-based techniques to make 17th- and 18th-century handwritten documents searchable through keywords, a feature already available in the current beta version. Additional tools to support searching and interpretation are still under development.

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Netherlands: Today’s GLOBALISE Project ….“GLOBALISE and Sri Lanka–related archival materials”

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Michael Roberts

I got to know Kushil Gunasekera in the early 2000s because of his services to SL Cricket Board and a side-benefit was information on the wide range of welfare benefits provided by the FOUNDATION OF GOODNESS …. shorten-form FOG. This welfare work was/is not limited to its immediate environs -though obviously, the greatest reach is local.

The philanthropic commitments of FOG have been recognized publicly by such well-known cricketing personalities as Kumar Sangakkara, Ian Botham, Muttiah Muralitharan and Mahela Jayawardene. What better ENDORSEMENT can an NGO get!!

So — dip into your pockets ladies and gents and consider donations towards its activities.

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