May/090
Sri Lanka Holiday (May/June 2009) Day 1 - 3
The first thing that hits you when you arrive in Sri Lanka is the warm air, followed by a questioner asking if I had any of the long list of symptoms of Swine Flu then followed by one or two body heat scanners and a short immigration process.
Looks like I’ve picked the rainy season to visit the sunniest island in the Indian ocean. It rained for almost 2 days now. But I missed rain like this, thunderstorms that lasts hours.
It was nice to finally eat food cooked by my mom after about one and a half years.
Lunch - Kiri Kos (Jack fruit), Rice, Dhal, Sri Lankan Chicken Curry and a salad.
Dinner – Biththara Apper (Egg hoppers) and pork.
Hoppers a very popular item of food in Sri Lanka; they are thin and crispy pancakes which are made from rice flour. The bowl like shape is due to the deep bowl like frying pan where they are fried for few seconds. Egg hoppers have an egg at the centre hence the name.
Mar/090
Top 10 Games
Project Gotham Racing 4
I give this the no 1 spot mainly because of the amount of time I spend playing it. The Graphics are great. The sound track is OK. Few songs I like to hear while racing –> Disturbed – Stricken and The Crystal Method - Keep Hope Alive along with a song I generally like Kaiser Chiefs - Ruby.
Gears of War
The best graphics I’ve seen in a game. I can’t believe at the time of writing this I still haven’t gone out and got the sequel to this game. This game was mostly fun when playing with other both against other players and when collaborating with them in finishing the story. I’ve finished the game from beginning to end a few times on my own, with my girlfriend and with my brother. This game was most fun when me and my girlfriend played against my flatmate and his friend on a Xbox system link. This game has a good story line, almost as if its an interactive movie. I could easily watch someone else play the story mode. The characters’ behaviour and speech is very believable given the context of the game. Online game play on Xbox live gives this game the edge over Halo 3. Only thing it lacks is good accompanying soundtrack.
Halo 3
By far the best single player first person shooter ever made. (At least from what I’ve tried). While Gears of War is great when playing with people, Halo 3 is one of the best game to play alone. The story is beautiful, the music is absolutely fantastic making the Halo Experience worth every penny. I give this game a lot of points because of the Halo universe (well thought out) and the sound track is probably the best found for any video game.
Descent 2
Very old game, probably available a free download now. This is the first game I played online. By online I mean a modem link when I dialled a friend’s computer using my modem to connect to his pc running this game as a host. The attached video doesn’t make it look very good, its like watching a old cartoon from when you were young. It is one of the first games to ever use six degrees of freedom. (Wikipedia Link)
Mar/090
Top 10 Musicians
1. Michael Jackson
John Williams
This guys has produced almost every memorable movie soundtrack there is. The attached video has few of these, but not all. Seems to have missed out Jurassic Park, Harry Potter (the old ones), Superman, Minority Report, Jane Eyre, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Home Alone 2: Lost in New York, Schindler’s List and Saving Private Ryan amongst many many others.
Mar/090
My Top 10 Movies of all time
This is my top 10 movie list for all time.
Schindler’s List
Oskar Schindler (Nazi) uses Jews to start a factory in Poland during the war. He witnesses the horrors endured by the Jews, and starts to save them.
La vita é bella – Life is beautiful
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0118799/
Jewish dad (Guido) married to an Italian princess tries protects his son son in a Nazi death camp. Italian movie in my top 10? It was that good!!
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Shawshank Redemption
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0111161/ Best feel-good movie of all time?