Hof, in Öræfi, is a cluster of farms in the municipality of Sveitarfélagið Hornafjörður in southeast Iceland, close to Vatnajökull glacier, and twenty two kilometres south of Skaftafell in Vatnajökull National Park. It is located on the Route 1 southwest of Höfn, in the narrow strip between the sea coast and the glacier.
Wikipedia = https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hof,_Iceland
PICs from https://www.bing.com/search?q=Hof%2C+Iceland&setlang=en-AU&mkt=en-AU&FORM=EMSDS0
Filed under heritage, landscape wondrous
Meera Srinivasan, in The Hindu, 30 April 2018, where the title reads “Sri Lankan filmmaker Lester James Peiris provided a realistic portrayal of rural Sinhalese”
Renowned Sri Lankan film maker and a national icon Lester James Peiris, credited with revolutionalising Sinhala cinema in the 1950s with a strong local flavour and indigenous style, passed away in Colombo on Sunday. He was 99.
A contemporary of Satyajit Ray, Peiris is regarded the “father of Sinhala cinema”. He won critical acclaim in the island and outside for his work that spanned five decades. His debut Rekava (Line of Destiny), made in 1956, is considered pathbreaking for its realistic portrayal of the ethos of the rural Sinhalese, in a newly-independent Ceylon. Continue reading
Hugh Karunanayake, courtesy of The CEYLANKAN
My previous piece on the “Early Years of Motoring in Ceylon” ( The Ceylankan # 60 Nov 2012) evoked a level of interest which has since prodded me on to reflect on motoring in more recent times. The decade of the 1950s – mid twentieth century Ceylon, could verily be described as the “golden age” of motoring. The early 1950s especially were years when the country enjoyed the “Korean boom”; export commodities mainly rubber were fetching record prices, income tax relatively low, all leading to consumption going on at a gallop. There were no national investment projects of note to capture the surplus that was generated, and most of the money that flowed in, went towards conspicuous consumption largely in the purchase of luxury goods such as automobiles.
Shirley Somanader
1. Methodist Central College, Batticaloa is specifically mentioned as an English School from August 1814 as a separate institution apart from any Vernacular school.
Rev William Ault arrived in Batticaloa on the 12th of August 1814. * He died on April 01st 1815. He laboured in Batticaloa for just seven months. * But in the first of his two letters to his mother after arriving, he writes that he has established an English school, I quote from his letter, “On my arrival here I found in this place a Tamil school containing about thirty boys. That school is now under my superintendence. We have established another, which now contains thirty, besides the English school, which I teach myself.
.as it is today
Shihan de Silva Jayasuriya, in The Island, 2 May 2014
The extraordinary love of the Portuguese for music is epitomised at El Ksar el Kabir in Morocco, 1578, where 10,000 guitars lay on the battlefield, near the dead Portuguese soldiers. The Portuguese took guns and guitars to battlefields! Is it surprising that the Portuguese presence is vibrant through Sri Lankan popular music – Baila?
Filed under art & allure bewitching, colonisation schemes, commoditification, cultural transmission, ethnicity, governance, heritage, historical interpretation, island economy, landscape wondrous, life stories, literary achievements, performance, politIcal discourse, Portuguese in Indian Ocean, self-reflexivity, Sinhala-Tamil Relations, sri lankan society, Tamil migration, the imaginary and the real, travelogue, unusual people, world events & processes
Neelima Vallangi, 18 March 2018, “http://www.bbc.com/travel/story/20180308-a-ghost-island-in-the-middle-of-the-indian-ocean … where the original title is “A Ghost Island in the Middle of the Indian Ocean”
Situated in the Bay of Bengal, India’s Andaman and Nicobar Islands are an isolated group of 572 tropical islands, of which only 38 are currently inhabited. Nautically located closer to South East Asia than India, they are known for stunning beaches, thriving marine life, rich coral reefs and largely undisturbed primary forests. But beyond the idyllic views lie a dark past. (Credit: Neelima Vallangi)
Eerie remains of a colonial settlement
Major General John Holmes: EXPERT MILITARY REPORT, 28 March 2015
Filed under gordon weiss, governance, historical interpretation, human rights, Indian Ocean politics, law of armed conflict, legal issues, life stories, LTTE, military strategy, news fabrication, Paranagama Report, photography, politIcal discourse, power politics, prabhakaran, propaganda, Rajapaksa regime, security, Sinhala-Tamil Relations, slanted reportage, sri lankan society, suicide bombing, Tamil civilians, tamil refugees, Tamil Tiger fighters, the imaginary and the real, trauma, truth as casualty of war, UN reports, unusual people, war reportage, world events & processes
Michael Roberts
When the LTTE persuaded and/or forced their civilian population in Thamilīlam to retreat ahead of their defensive retreat in 2008, the grand strategy was to build up picture of “a humanitarian catastrophe” that would draw the Western nations and the HR lobbies in West and the island into the fray as active participant voices who would save the LTTE from total defeat – as I have argued from way back [i]
A Scene from Pokkanai in the Last redoubt , 9th March 2009 — Pic from TamilNet 
SL Army Special Forces
Schematic Map– from ICG
Filed under american imperialism, authoritarian regimes, British imperialism, conspiracies, governance, historical interpretation, Indian Ocean politics, law of armed conflict, life stories, LTTE, military strategy, nationalism, NGOs, self-reflexivity, Sinhala-Tamil Relations, sri lankan society, suicide bombing, Tamil civilians, Tamil Tiger fighters, trauma, truth as casualty of war, UN reports, war reportage, women in ethnic conflcits, working class conditions, world events & processes, zealotry
Filed under landscape wondrous, life stories, wild life
Roshan Quintus
I was invited to participate in a YZA Field trip to Sinharaja in 2014 as I was working on a wildlife protection related campaign. YZA office bearers and senior members conducted this field trip. Professional veteran naturalists and environmentalists Messrs Jagath Gunawardane, Uditha Hettige, Isuru De Zoysa, Pubudu Weerarathne, and Parami Vidyarathne were among the resource persons.
A NOTE by Michael Roberts: VISIT http://yourshot.nationalgeographic.com/profile/284224/ for toher dimensions of Roshan’s ‘work’.
thuppahi
