The Art of Living

Today for PPD we had a visiting lecturer, Dr. Ajith Colonne. He is such a talented and intelligent man from Mathematical background. His ideas and theories are really amazing and at the end of the day I'm actually glad that I attended today's lecture.

He started the lecture first by asking "What is the purpose of your life?" which made the whole class dumb stuck 😅. He gave 3 points to the above question.

1. Happiness
2. Success
3. Enjoyment

Then he moved on to his next question, "What do you need to live a happy lfe?". He mentioned 3 points.

1. You should be able to appreciate nature
2. You should be able to think philosophically
3. You should have a good companionship
4. You should have good health

Happiness

The happiest people in the Earth are not those who have no problem, but those who learn to live with things that are less than perfect

Success

There are three inner strengths one shall possess and develop, in order to accomplish difficult tasks and achieve success in life

1. Perseverance
2. Determination
3. Endurance

Enjoyment

Next he talked about Positive thinking and Self-confidence.

Both of them are highly important to lead a successful life. 

Positive thinking would make you focus on good things, happy thoughts, and successful outcomes.

Before doing anything in your life, you have to believe in yourself. They say self confidence is the foundation to all great success and achievement. 

However, positive thinking and self confidence alone are not sufficient to move ahead. Still, things can go wrong. You may need strategic thinking, knowledge, support from others as well.

His next topic was about Vision.

"What's your vision?" 

Everyone has their own vision in their life. But just having a vision is not enough. You have to go towards that vision and achieve it.

Through out his lecture he gave many advises on how to become successful, sharing his own life experiences. 

Financial success is just one percent of your total success. Even though you are financially successful, it doesn't matter at the end if you are not happy inside. The very best example is the death of Chester Bennington, the famous singer in the musical band, Linkin Park.

He said his dream is to win the Nobel prize. I wish him from the very bottom of my heart that he would be able to make his dream a reality, because people like him are rare and especially in a country like Sri Lanka. It's quite sad that Sri Lankans don't value the importance of such intellectual people. 

My Dream Trip

If I had an unlimited budget and one month vacation where would I go?
Well that was a hard thing to decide at first, because I want to travel all around the world! I want to eat new types of food, experience different cultures and their traditions, to see the beauty of places that I have never gone and to meet new people.

I will start from the closest place, that's India. There are couple of beautiful places that I have always wanted to visit in India.

The very first thing is Taj Mahal

Taj Mahal was made by King Shah Jahan to house the tomb of his wife Mumtaz Mahal. It is a place that reflects so much of love. It is an ivory- white marble mausoleum on the south bank of the Yamuna river in the Indian city of Agra. I would like to spend some alone time near the river Yamuna as well.


Next stopping point is the Red Fort in Delhi.

It was the main residence of the emperors of the Mughal dynasty for nearly 200 years. It is located in the centre of Delhi and house a number of museums.


If I have enough time I would go to visit the India gate as well.Spending  around four days in India, then I would move to China. My plan is to cover some most important parts of China within four days.

Huairou would be my first place to go, becuase I want to see the Great wall of China.

It's a series of fortifications made of stone, brick, tamped earth, wod and other materials, built along an east-to-west line across the historical northern borders of China to protect the country from invasions and attacks.


Next stop would be at the Forbidden city at Beijing.

It was the Chinese imperial palace for about 500 years, now houses the Palace museum. It has served as the home of emperors and their households as well as the ceremonial and political center of Chinese government. UNESCO has declared it as one of the world heritage site and said to be the largest collection of preserved ancient wooden structures in the world.

Moving little bit of South from Beijing, there I'd be able to visit the Temple of Heaven.

It's an imperial

complex of religious buildings, visited by the emperors of the Ming and Qing dynasties for annual ceremonies of prayer to heaven for good harvest.

One of another world's heritage site is the Terracotta Army located in Shaanxi.

It's a collection of terracotta sculptures depicting the armies of the first emperr of China. It's a form of funeral art buried with the emperor whose purpose was to protect him in his afterlife. The figures vary in height according to their roles, with the tallest being the generals. The figures include the warriors, chariots and horses.

It's time to get back on my world tour, even though I'd like to spend more time in China. My next destination is Russia.

My first stopping point would be at the Cathedral of Vasily the Blessed commonly known as Saint Basil's Cathedral. It's a church in the Red Square in Moscow. The building is shaped as a flame of a bonfire rising int the sky, and it's perceived as the earthly symbol of the Heavenly city. 

Next, I'd like to visit the Hermitage museum.

It's a museum of art and culture located in Saint Petersburg. It's the oldest and the largest museum in the world and contains the biggest collection of paintings in the world. 

All and all Russia is a one beautiful big country which would need months to fully cover all the beautiful places. But since my time is limited, it's high time to say goodbye, and moving to the biggest part of my trip, Europe!

I'd go to Poland first. 

With all the tiring few days I had in India and China, I want to have some leisurely time in the beautiful city, Prague.

My next point would be on Romania. From my childhood, Dracula is a one scary fictional character that I have got to know. I have watched so many movies, even cartoons veiled around the blood drinking man who can't walk in the sun have superstitious powers. It'd be one of my dreams come true, if I get a chance to visit his palace, the Dracula's castle. So my first stopping point in Romania would be Transylvania. The castle is also known as the Bran castle. The fortress is situated on the border between Transylvania and Wallachia. The castle is now a museum dedicated to displaying art and furniture collected by Queen Maria. After spending another day in Romania, I'd move too Greece. Having read so many Greek and Roman mythologies veiled around gods and goddesses it'd be a great deal for me to actually go there and see all the temples, buildings, paintings and statues made for them.Parthenon would be my first stop. It's a temple dedicated to the goddess Athena whom the people of Athens considered their patron.Next stop would be at the Temple of Zeus, also known as the Olympieon or Columns of the Olympian Zeus, located at the center of Athens. It was dedicated to Olympian Zeus, the head of the Olympian gods.Before leaving Greece, I'd visit the Acropolis museum which displays the findings of the archaeological site of the Acropolis of Athens.Next target would be Italy.Colosseum is an oval amphitheater in the center of the city of  Rome built of concrete and sand. It's the largest amphitheater ever built. It was used for gladiator contests and public spectacles such as mock sea battles, animal hunts, executions, re-enactments of famous battles and dramas based on classical mythology.I'd also spare some time to visit the Vatican museums which are Christian and art museums located within the city boundaries of the Vatican city displaying works from the immense collection built up by the Popes throughout the centuries including some of the most renowned classical sculptures and most important masterpieces of Renaissance art in the word.St. Peter's Basilica in Vatican city is the largest church in the world. Catholic tradition holds that the Basilica is the burial site of Saint Peter, the first Pope. Saint Peter's tomb is supposedly directly below the high altar of the Basilica. It's famous as a place of pilgrimage and for it's liturgical functions.Among many other places I'd like to visit in Italy, I'd somehow spare my time to go to the Florence Cathedral, Pantheon and Milan Cathedral.Another must visit place is the Grand canal in Venice, which forms one of the major water traffic corridors in the city. It'd be a shame to say if you didn't visit the Leaning tower of Pisa after going to Italy!

My next destination point would be France. Eiffel tower and the Louvre museum are must visit places. 

Next destination point would be Switzerland, where I'd like to get have some leisure time eating bulk of Swiss chocolates till I put on at least 2 kilos 😉

The next big destination point, United Kingdoms.

The Big Ben, the London Eye, Stonehenge and the Buckingham are must go places. 

Having spent around twenty days in Europe, it's almost time to go back home. Even though I'd want to travel to United States, there's no time. So I'd leave that for another unlimited budgeted one month holidays 😉

Beauty Beyond the Words

University of Kelaniya is one of the top five state universities in Sri Lanka placed at 2767^th in the World rankings.

It is committed to provide high quality education and to conduct high impact research which will contribute signifiacantly to the enhancement of existing knowledge in various fields of Humanities, Medicine, Science, Social Sciences, Commerce & Management, Computing & Technology and to the development of the country.

For most of undergraduates here University of Kelaniya is not just another university, it has become our second home...

It's one of the most beautiful universities in Sri Lanka.

But it's true beauty comes from those anmazing memories we have created here, 

the friends friends we have made in this place,

the lessons we have learnt and things we have gained to our life from this place,

sleepless nights we have spent here organizing events and functions,

the movements we led to win the students' rights,

the actions we took to stand up for what we believed is the right thing,

the musical shows, cultural shows and even fashion shows we have gone to see and enjoyed with friends here,

the celebrations we have done here,

batch trips we have gone...

When all these amazing memories add up together, it creates a beauty that goes beyond the words.

The culture in a state university is quite different. We have our own unique sub-culture. We use a set of unique words in this subculture. For an example, study sessions organized by students are called"Kuppi", if there's a funeral happened, we say "Kapak wela", etc. 

There are so many facilities provided by the university for students to engage in extracurricular activities.

Student clubs such as AIESEC, Rotaract, LEO, Gavel etc. are there to help students to develop their soft skills, leadership skills and more importantly to have fun and spend some extra time apart from your academics which is quite a stress relief. 😊

Universty life is one of the best few years in your life where you will learn a lot of things about the society. University of Kelaniya has taught me not just academics, but so many things about people, society and I have gained so much and learnt so much from this beautiful and wonderful place. University of Kelaniya has become my second mother.

It is my home away from home...

Expert Game & Pen and Thread game

Today, I couldn't attend to the lectures because I was sick. So I went home and missed one amazing day at PPD 😔

But I heard so many interesting stories from my colleagues. Let me tell you what I have heard from them.

Expert Game

Initially they have done this game called "Expert Game". The class was grouped into 5 teams with 6
members each. Three members were selected from each team and they were asked to talk about their expert areas. Later they were asked to combine all the three ideas together and present a business idea. Some teams have managed to express a business idea very easily while for other teams it has become little bit harder.

One team has joined Mathematics, Vehicles and Design to start a Robot car business, which I have to admit is a pretty cool idea! 😊

From that game, they have learnt

• To use their creativity to make a new product.
• Working together as a team to ultimately achieve a one common objective
• Each one has their own different expertise, but we can make a great product at the end if we manage to use each one's skills and abilities.

Pen & Thread game

Here, they were divided again into 3 groups, 9 members each. They were given a 30cm long thread, a pen and a paper.

Then they were asked to write the word "Viper" using the thread and the pen, but they were not allowed to touch the pen!

One team has tied the thread to the pen at two points, top and bottom. In each point, there were four threads to four directions. Four members were asked to hold the threads in order to keep the pen vertically, and somehow they have managed to write down the word successfully. 😃

From this game, they have learnt

• How to work as a team
• Listen to everyone's ideas and choose the best one out of them
• Obey the team leader's orders
• Respect to each one's ideas

That was the end of another amazing day at PPD, and I missed all the fun they had, but your health is more important! Sometimes in life, you have to choose what's best for you, even though it can be pretty hard to choose. 

The Missing Piece

Sometimes missing pieces do more than just complete the puzzle...
They would do more than just filling an empty space...
They may teach you one of the most valuable lessons in your life...

I'm gonna tell you about an interesting activity we did today at the PPD lecture. It's called "Barter Puzzle".
We were grouped into four teams and given a picture, which we were asked to cut into 76 small pieces!
Then each group was given a bag filled with 76 pieces of a different picture from another group, and asked to complete the puzzle.

But there was a catch! We didn't have all the pieces of our picture with us. Few pieces were there with other groups and we had few pieces of them.

Anyways, so we started to complete the jigsaw puzzle. At the beginning it was totally a mess!
Then one by one we started to figure out the pieces. First it was a watermelon, then came a pineapple, and oh! there were some papayas too 😉

But let me tell you, it wasn't as easy as it sounds. At the beginning they were just meaningless pieces with some weird shapes...
But then one set of team members figured out there's a watermelon and started working on that. Then another set of people started working on pineapples.
Little by little we started to add a meaning to those once a meaningless set of pieces.

But there were missing parts that we had to get from other groups. That was the real challenge!
It didn't take much time for me to realize that bargaining with people is harder than I have initially imagined.
Some people were really fair. They agreed to give one piece of our puzzle in exchange to one piece of theirs.
But not everyone was fair. Some wanted us to give two pieces in exchange of just one! Some were asking us to get their pieces from some other groups, and then only they would give us our piece.

Anyways, with lots of bargaining we managed to get some of our pieces back, and we also managed to get few more pieces that belonged to other teams as well.

It happened like this...
In one of the teams, they had two pieces of ours but I had only one piece of them. I knew they would never give me those two pieces in exchange to one of theirs, no matter how nicely I ask.
So I torn the piece I had with myself into two and then at first I gave them just one piece and got one of ours in return. If I gave them two pieces at the same time, I was afraid they would find out that I have torn one piece into two. After some time, I went to them for the second time and produced the other piece and got one more piece of ours.

So, would you call me a Cheater?

Well, I'm not gonna justify my actions. But dear reader, in this world, not everything is roses and sunshine. People wouldn't always play fairly and nor would they let you take one step ahead of them. It's a competitive and quite a selfish world. So there may come situations where you have to use your brains and be tactful.

Let me quote you a line from the movie Suicide Squad.

"Their morals, their code, it's a bad joke. Dropped at the first sign of trouble.
They are only as good as the world allows them to be.
When the chips are down, these civilized people, they'll eat each other"

                                                                     ~ Joker

             














There was another such incident. This also happened when I went to bargain with another group. They had three pieces of us and I had three of them. When I asked for our pieces they just pointed out the pieces and asked to take them. They were so focused in making their own puzzle and no one paid any attention to me. So I took the three pieces and left only one of their piece keeping the rest of the two with myself.

So, would you call me a Cheater again?

Dear reader, when you get an opportunity thrown at yourself, get the maximum use of it, because such opportunities are rare and you won't get them everyday. And know this well, that you are not responsible for the carelessness of other people. So don't feel bad about yourself if you ever took advantage of their carelessness.
So play your cards right.

"Life is not always a matter of holding good cards, but sometimes, playing  a poor hand well"                       

                                                          ~ Jack London

At the end of the day, we managed to almost complete our puzzle, but there was just ONE piece missing! Anyways, we became the winning team at the end of the game, and all my team members were happy 😊

In my journey of finding the missing pieces, I learnt a lot. But with all these lessons, the last missing piece was in my mind quite a lot even when the lecture was over. I had two pieces of the team that had our last missing piece. I was ready to hand them over the two pieces in exchange of our last piece, but they refused.

Maybe I could have tried a bit harder,
maybe I could have used a different strategy,
maybe I could have helped them to find all their missing pieces and to complete their puzzle.
But would that have been enough for them?
Would I have got my last missing piece back then?

Intro to PPD

PPD which stands for Personal Progress Development, is a newly emerged field introduced to help university undergraduates to develop themselves for the better good and to help them adjusting to the corporate world.

It helps you to develop yourself  physically, mentally, socially, emotionally and spiritually as well. Personal progress development is typically the piece to the puzzle we do not give enough attention to when it comes to our overall well-being. Your personality, the inner workings of who you are, play a major role in creating a happy and successful life style.

"Personal Development is the conscious choice to improve one's life to become a better person and to grow as an individual"

                                                                    - http://graphologist.org

• To demonstrate understanding of  aspects of good leadership.
• To demonstrate understanding of the importance of team work in organizations and need to align/manage interests and efforts of diverse groups to meet organizational objectives
• To demonstrate improved levels of communication, leadership and team capabilities.
• to demonstrate improves levels of professional attributes essential for success in the global business environment.

Why do we really need PPD???

Before that, let's watch a video about what people say about Personal Progress Development!

PPD enables you to make the most of the hours given to you. Committing to personal development leads you to develop and maximize all of your potentials, experience as many things as possible on this beautiful planet and leave a visible legacy for generations to come. When you start improving yourself, you actually wake up and go from only existing to actually living your life.








This can be done using several set of activities, methods, programs, tools, techniques and assessment systems that support personal development. There are so many indoor and outdoor activities which can be used to improve your team building skills, leadership skills, communication skills and social interacting skills. There are speaking activities you can do to get rid of your stage fright.

There are so many benefits one can get through PPD.

You'd be able to improve your personality.

It'd help to develop your leadership skills, team building skills, communication & presentation skills, and lot more.

You'd learn how to set your personal goals and how to achieve them.

You'd learn about personal grooming & etiquette.

It'd enhance your sensitivity to physical environment

Fighting for the good life always starts with changing and improving yourself. With finding ways of how you can do things better, how you can do things differently and get better results. It begins with you challenging your beliefs and convictions, exchanging your bad habits with good ones, and developing personality traits like self- confidence, self-discipline and resilience.

So let's do PPD and make ourselves better!