Nearly an year ago this pup came and stood on our door step as if asking us to adapt her. We were really tempted but in the end decided not to. Though we have adapted strays in the past, now with three kids to look after it isn’t really practical. In fact the two cats that we have are strays, rather the mother cat was a stray, she had kittens inside our house and died shortly after. The kittens never went away and even moved with us when we moved house.

Though we decided not to adapt the puppy, we decided to feed her and some of the neighbors did the same. One of them even took her to the vet for the vaccinations. One time it was she by a trishaw but managed to escape unscathed and soon after even the trishaw driver started to feeding her as well.

All this though is in the past, the dog hasn’t shown up for more than a month, let us hope that it’s because someone has adapted her.

At first glance this might look like a box for a wristwatch or perfume but look closer. It says epoxy adhesive.

My little daughter Aminthika standing next to the giant chessboard at Club Palm Garden. Earlier the board was setup incorrectly by the hotel staff. I had seen a few people playing on it without even noticing that the setup was all wrong. I corrected the setup and made the first few moves of the Sicilian Defence Najdorf variation on it. Not that any of the staff or guests would recognize it but heck, I got a kick out of it.

“The chessboard is composed of an 8×8 grid of 64 equal squares alternately light (the `white` squares) and dark (the `black` squares). The chessboard is placed between the players in such a way that the near corner square to the right of the player is white.”

That’s from the Fide Rule book. You can’t expect these hotel animators to know what FIDE is let alone the FIDE rules more commonly known as the rules of chess. So they have set the board up incorrecty. But how often have we seen incorrectly setup boards in magazines (not related to chess) and advertisements? I remember seeing a full page ad in the newspapers by a bank sometime ago with the board setup exactly like above. The adjoining property, the Riverina is also a hotel that belongs to the same group. I have been there once many years ago (15 years to be exact) but I still remember that they have a large chess board as well and that too was incorrectly setup

Seen at a wedding in Kandy. I wasn’t the photographer – just another guest.