Excercise and Quality Time (=

During the summer I have been taking daily walks in the morning often with my mother. As well as good exercise for both of us, it has become a mother-daughter bonding time away from the cares of the housework and my four year old brother. My grandmother is diabetic and overweight and she came for a week to my house and somehow never left. Her health problems have scared me and my mum into eating healthy and getting some sort of regular exercise. I have also been doing Pilates for 45 minutes twice or thrice a week. It is difficult but I’ve noticed I’ve become more flexible. 

Versus Cancer

It’s the end of the summer and now I fully realize the gravity of Ms. William’s words as she gave me approval for the charity concert and told me “You getting yourself into a lot of work.” Getting permission and drafting the proposal to be put forward to Mr. Coles and Ms. Williams was itself quite a task. Next I had to draft invitation letters to be sent to the local schools requesting their participation, get them approved by Mr. Coles and mailing them. It didn’t end there as I had to chase after certain people from the schools principals, friends, interact presidents and so on.

Organizing auditions was a real learning process as I didn’t realize how many people are involved and how many peoples’ co-operation is required to make something work. In this case I had to get Mr. Coles and Ms. Williams approval and then notify Mr. Chithra (head of security) and work out a convenient time with Mr. Kolitha (head of maintenance) and Mr. Rana (auditorium manager). There was a lot of emailing and I learnt that the proper procedure has to be followed and you can get peoples’ cooperation by being open, flexible and just being nice. We had auditions in the OSC auditorium on the 10^th of June and the 24^th of July. The second audition started off with a lesson that everything that can go wrong will go wrong. I had a presentiment that day and unfortunately I couldn’t get to school early like I planned. When I got to school I found that Mr. Rana had completely forgotten about the auditions, the security didn’t know what was going on and they had started maintenance work in the auditorium so the place was a mess! But the guards were cooperative and I managed to scare the workers into finding me at least 2 mics and 2 industrial fans (:

Getting sponsorships was a relatively easy task as Ms. Dilhara from the administrative office handled sending the letters. But at the moment we have Mobitel as our premium sponsor and The Sunday Times as our print media sponsor and I am a bit worried as we need more money. The sound equipment will cost around Rs. 60,000 and the printing cost will be around Rs. 20,000. That’s a total cost of around Rs. 80,000 and we only have Rs. 30,000. 

We are human beings not savages.

After the Colombo Model United Nations conference ended I suggested starting a debating activity to Ms. Wolfe with Mr. O’Kane as the teacher sponsor. I became the student leader of the activity. Unfortunately I couldn’t do much since activities were disrupted by changes in the time table, exams and holidays. However we did debate a local issue which turned out to be quite a heated debate.

In May the local media was in an uproar over the case of a mother throwing her baby in the Kelaniya river. The mother was convicted of murder and sentenced to prison. The mother’s action does sound horrendous until you look into the details of the hardships they had to endure. This 3 year old boy was the youngest of 5 siblings. The father, a heavily indebted alcoholic, had left the family and only returned infrequently to steal the little money the mother managed to scrape by selling lottery tickets. While he was with her he was in the habit of drinking heavily and coming home to beat her up brutally. The mother is also a tsunami victim. Unable to feed the children, she had repeatedly tried to hand over the child to the government probation office, the police, and orphanages and even tried leaving him at the Kelaniya temple in the hope that someone would care for him. This incident happened one day after a failed attempt at leaving him at the temple. When crossing the bridge she threw him into the river on impulse. He was rescued by a trishaw driver and was in the ICU for a few days before he passed away.

The local media was very biased towards the child and hardly anyone empathized with the mother. I supported her because I have a little brother of 4 and I know how the child crying can get on your nerves at time and I amplified this and was able to imagine what it would be like for a clinically depressed woman in an abusive relationship living in bad living conditions with 5 children solely dependant on her.

There was a clear divide among the group. I was really annoyed with the opposition members who actually believed she should be tried for murder! My point was that she should be put through a rehabilitation process and given back the other 4 children. And what enraged me even more was the hypocrisy of the Sri Lankan government. After this incident the probation office, which had refused the child, took custody of the other FOUR children. In Sri Lanka an average of 2 children are killed per week simply because their parents cannot provide them with food for survival. With such a glaring problem the government should be addressing the wider issue of poverty rather than trying to throw an already clinically depressed woman into jail!

Stretch!

Last Monday I joined the after school dancing activity, partly because I was forced to and partly because I need the hours. This traditional Sri Lankan dancing activity is conducted by Mr. Malith and Mr. Hashan who are professional dancers. There were a lot of stretching exercises involved and some demanded co'ordination and balance. I am not the most co-ordinated, graceful person and I had a lot of fun laughing at myself. My legs hurt so much after the strenuous stretching exercises! 

The next day I joined the after school yoga activity which is also conducted by Mr. Malith. Again this demanded a lot of balance and concentration which I hope to achieve over time. I'm hoping the combined effects of the dancing and yoga will help me to firm up my muscles and be in a reasonably good shape. 

Up =)

• We had the primary movie afternoon today in the PMPR at 3.00 pm to 4.30 pm. 
• 30 kids showed up and we collected a total of Rs. 10,200. 
• The movie we showed was 'Up' a really fascinating movie about an old man and a house with balloons attached to it that flies by Pixar.

I asked the canteen to make the drinks for us and I gave them a cordial bottle this morning. I was depending on them to have empty mega bottle but unfortunately they had just got rid of the yesterday! So I salvaged two mega bottles from the recycling room which I gave to Rukshan to wash and fill with the drink. I spoke to Rukshan and he gave us 30 packets of popcorn for Rs. 25 each.

We have noticed that the clothes lines at the hospital are not enough and the mothers tend to hang their washing out on bushes and railings. Most of these clothes end up on the ground raising hygienic concerns. I spoke to Mr. Kolitha and got 4 wooden poles and nylon rope along with a mason's spade, a crowbar and some cement reasy to take to the hospital last evening. But unfortunately we couldn't set the lines up without permission from the director, Dr. (Mrs.) Yoganathan. I sent her a letter asking permission today and I hope she gets back to us soon. In the letter I also asked to meet her next Thursday if possible.

The Crucible

'The Crucible' by Aurthur Miller was a production by the Visual Art and English Department of OSC directed by Ms. Abeywardena. It is a play about the hysteria whipped up by the witch hunts in Salem, Massachusetts. The play is set in a Puritan society where social norms almost constrict the people. Abigail, a young girl enraged when her clandestine affair with her employer, John Proctor, is terminated by him starts a witch hunt. Her ulterior motive is to accuse Elizabeth, Proctor's wife, and have her hung as revenge for dismissing her from her position as a maid in the Proctor household. The witch hunt is soon blown out of proportion and the whole village descends into hysteria. The play also functions as a political allegory for the hysteria created by McCarthyism in the late 1940's.

I was cast for the role of Tituba. Tituba is a black slave from the Caribbean. Though she is a minor character, she plays a key role in the play in that she knows witch craft such as conjuring spirits and communicating with the devil and introduces it to the girls.Even with my advantage as a drama student, this was an extremely challenging role for me, especially in terms of the characterization of a black slave. In addition, we choreographed a movement piece for the opening of the play. I am not the most flexible, graceful person on earth and adopting the raw physicality of Tituba was a challenge. But I managed to play Tituba quite sucessfully and I was extremely pleased with the extent to which I grew as a performer by widening my skills.

Cancer is a word, not a sentence

We organized a secondary movie afternoon today to raise funds for the Cancer Hospital. It was in the auditorium at 3.00 pm. Entrance was Rs. 250/- and brownies were sold at Rs. 50/-.

We raised approximately Rs. 5000/-.

Approximately 5 people showed up, apart from the Cancer Hospital people. I am extremely disappointed by OSC's lack of enthusiasm for ANYTHING.

To publicize the even I created a Facebook event and had the poster included in the newsletter and the daily bulletin. We put up posters around school and told a lot of people about the movie afternoon. Today during both breaks I went around telling people to come support us. Some people were nice enough to donate money even though they could not make it.

Our next project will be a joint charity concert with the Interact Club of Royal College. We are planning to have it in early September in the OSC auditorium. We also plan to have performances by local bands and performances by the students of OSC and other invited schools.


We also plan to get awareness t-shirts done and hopefully put it on sale at ODEL. A slogan I found on the internet which I think is very powerful is - Cancer is a word, not a sentence.