Man-Hair-Bands

You know how metro-sexual topics wiz around Kottu like Bumble Bees on crack? We had those deep posts about man-bags, then those touchy discussions on toilet paper etiquette, and who knows what else i may have missed.

Well, this post is about hairbands for men.

My hair is generally unruly though its straight. I wish it fell done straight like it does for these japanese kids, but all it does is cover my eyes and sit a top my head like a mop. That’s the reason why i keep it close cropped most of the time (that and the fact that i like to see my forehead). My hair is so stubborn that it takes enormous quantities of gel to tame it, and in the end I look like a wannabe Italian mobster. But I have really wanted to let my hair down (to steal a phrase) and this seems to be the perfect opportunity with nothing important coming up in the next few months where I have to look polished. But there still remains the problem of taming my not-to-long-but-still-shaggy hair for the time being.

It was then that the Lady Janusis suggested something that went against the grain of my testosterone infused feelings. She told me to wear a hairband. It’s also called an Alice Band here, which did nothing to allay my fears. Traditionally in Sri Lanka, its your mothers and your sisters and aunts that wear hairbands. Your dads and uncles stick to sideburns and moustaches. But she insisted that I try it out, and at one of our friends places we nicked a fairly masculine (as far as is possible) looking hairband and I tried it out.

Ooh! it felt so good to have my hair out of my eyes. The band pushed all my hair to the back of my head making me look much neater, and making things far more comfortable for me. I am still not quite sure about it, but I have been wearing it for 3 days. Some girls told me it looks cute (hopefully in a manly way), some giggled at me behind my back, and my female cousin called me gay. I did some googling and found that quite a lot of men wear hairbands now since its so useful. Beckham does it of course, and so does Abhishek Bachchan.

I suppose in the interest of fashion and comfort the hairband for men is in. As long as the hairband is neutral looking and functional I could probably carry it off. It will probably take some getting used to, especially with some giggling going on behind my back, but I think i will stick it through for a while. Unless a bunch of women break out laughing in a public place, but that will be whole new blog post.

Post Peace Day

When wished a happy “International Day of Peace”, did it make you giggle insanely, snort, or reach for a cricket bat?

Its hard to summon any enthusiasm for a day of peace with aerial bombings and priests getting shot, with INGOs leaving the North and then having their offices looted, and with a 150,000 IDPs stuck between the LTTE and the Government forces. But summon some I did, and drove to the program conducted by NPC at the Sri Lanka Foundation Institute hoping that they might have discovered some magical way out of this predicament.

The proceedings were to be blessed by priests from the major religions, but the Buddhist Monks had not arrived yet, so they started off with the Christian Father, then had a Hindu Priest grace the occasion, followed by a sermonette from a Muslim Priest. It was at that time that the Monks showed up and the majority of the people stood up effectively interrupting the Muslim chap. So much for religious equality.

The key note address by Dr. Saravanamuttu was enlightening. Media censorship is so strong that we almost never know what really is happening in the Vanni (except for the daily “Air Force bombs key LTTE position”) unless someone personally visits the area and gets the news out. I am not going to turn this post into a report of the event, but perhaps the key ideas of the gathering was that we as a people must take things into our own hands, petition the President to open a corridor where humanitarian aid can be sent to the IDPs in the Vanni, and a no war zone be created where people can be safe from the antagonists in this conflict.

We, as a people, taking matters into out own hands. That has a nice ring to it doesn’t it. We, as a People. Look around you right now. How would you gauge the attitude of the ‘people’ right now. How many are truly fed up with the situation in the country. I am not talking about rising fuel prices or inflation, but rather about the war being fought right at this present moment. How many people will say “stop” and stand up to this tyrannical regime? Can we emulate the Burmese Monks? Can we follow the Nepali people’s revolution and bring the city to a standstill till the Government listens to us?

Perhaps not.

To mobilize there has to be, simplistically, a ‘need’ and a ‘want’. The ‘need’ is there, with the war in the North and people dying every day, and discrimination a regular occurrence. But the ‘want’ seems to be lacking. The people who actively want an end to this conflict is in the minority, while the majority goes about their daily lives. There are several general excuses people have for their lack of action:

1. The Government is fighting terrorists

2. The war will end soon

3. Its only the Tamils that are discriminated against

4. Sri Lanka should only be for the Buddhists

These reasons are terribly simple and I am sure a much more exhaustive, analytical list can be written but when dealing with a communal mind, its the simple ideas that drive.

For change to take place it is necessary that people understand that these reasons don’t justify a war. For one, not only is the Government fighting terrorists, they are also fighting the Tamil people. Their acts of discrimination and violence simply create a breeding ground for hate. No one is going to watch their family members imprisoned, killed and abused and not hate the Government that did that to them. If one terrorist group were to be put down in this manner, another will rise. There can be no reconciliation when force is being used.

This war will not end quickly. There is so much censorship going on that the true facts are hardly ever known. It is simply a political gambit to keep the populace from putting too much pressure on the Government. As long as there is something they can look forward to, the public holds on. But there is a limit to how long they will wait as well. In another 6 months people will start wondering just how soon this war can end. And even then the repercussions of the military spending will be felt years down the road.

What is difficult to understand is that how a society that is supposed to be based on principles of moderation and tolerant can be so blood thirsty. For every person simply lukewarm about the war, you have a hard line nationalist who wants to kill anything that he doesn’t like. Suppose the Tamils are chased away, I wonder who they will turn to next. The Christians, possibly? And then maybe the Muslims?

I believe people’s eyes have to be forced open before they realize that its their fellow country men that are killing and being killed. They have to realize that there will be scars from this war that might never heal. We may not be actively involved in the conflict, but as surely as we stand on the side lines and watch, we are as responsible for our inaction. The more people that die, the more of our own humanity we lose.

It is time to say ‘enough’. It is time to do something.

Google’s New Browser – Chrome

It was such a rush waking up this morning and finding Google’s web browser, Chrome, finally available for testing. We all know that Google is the all time favourite search engine, and as a company their presence is largely web based with their applications and products and services being mostly online, so it’s an obvious leap of logic that Google would want a web browser of its own to access the internet. The only surprise is how long it took to get here. Sadly, their own release comes on the heels of Firefox 3, which we all have been waiting for, and now love. Google had a deal with FF whereby the browser uses Google as its default search engine, as well as incorporating a search bar, while Google makes substantial payments to Mozilla. Firefox holds 19% of the market share for browsers while IE has 73%, and now Chrome comes in direct competition with its own ally. Only time will tell whether FF will hold its own, get incorporated into Google, or slowly die down. It all depends on how Chrome treats its users.

My browser needs are relatively simple. The browser should be ‘clean’, fast, visually attractive, sturdy, customizable and sleek. See, quite simple. The browser is a means, and not an end by itself, unlike that behemoth IE which takes forever to load up and then feel like a truck you are driving down the information highway watching all those cars zoom by. Google approached its design for Chrome differently, which I hope will widen our horizons for web browsing:

 Since we spend so much time online, we began seriously thinking about what kind of browser could exist if you started from scratch and built on the best elements out there. We realized that the web had evolved from mainly simple text pages to rich, interactive applications and that we needed to completely rethink the browser. What we really needed was not just a browser, but also a modern platform for web pages and applications, and that’s what we set out to build.

 

Under Chrome’s hood, you have the latest Javascript engine (V8) just waiting to speed you down that highway, and Google Gears to pimp that browser. Being able to run in stealth (privacy) mode makes you feel like you are riding the batmobile for browsers. All that we need now is a good user experience to match its features. Chrome is still in Beta, but the next week will prove to me whether it will live up to expectations, or just be another Google tool we don’t need.

 After installing the browser, the design surprised me a bit. The browser really was stripped down. Really. There are no fancy graphics, no flashing lights, nothing that is visually exciting. The usual Google colour scheme is present, with its varying shades of blue, though I can’t quite understand why its called chrome since there are no metallic shades anywhere. It really is a bare bones browser. There isn’t even the usual File/Edit/View menu! But it loads very, very fast.

 

 

The compartmentalized browsing is a wonderful concept though. It’s really like using several browsers at once, and the tabs are dynamic. You can drag them around all over the place, and into new windows. The browser seems sturdy too. In FF when one tab crashes, the whole browser goes down. But Chrome claims that if one tab does down, the rest keep going.

 

At present, the irritating part is that you can’t configure a new tab to open without showing thumbnails of your history. Perhaps in later versions, that option will be given.

The browser displays the pages well though, I maybe imagining things, but pages actually look better on Chrome. For those of us who live on the web and value speed and functionality above other frills Chrome, just like Google Home Classic, might turn out to be our default tool. Only the weeks ahead will show us just how good it works, but for now, Happy Chroming!

 

P.S.

I crashed a website running on Chrome (a quicktime plugin crashed it really) and while in other browsers the entire thing would close, on Chrome the area where the plugin was located turned black, but the browser didnt close. How wonderful!