In a Bloggers’ paradise

In the five and a half years that I have been typing out my mantras on this page, and bringing techno news from around the corners of the world, I have failed to see and take note of the countless voices of Sri Lankans from my generation that echo with the most brilliant themes on the Internet, beaming with wit and humour that is nothing short of inspiring. So this week's Techno Page is dedicated to all the marvellous Sri Lankan bloggers out there who are blogging away their delightful thoughts, because it's never too late to make up !

It all started with a simple reader comment to technopage@gmail.com by 'Rain' (http://womenrain.blogspot.com/) and I was suddenly dragged into the four corners of the blogosphere. Days later, a Google search on, South Asian Games 2006, took me to 'Cynically Yours' (http://sachini-perera.blogspot.com/) and the dominos started to crumble. One after another I was feasting on the thoughts and musings of a bunch of amazingly creative Sri Lankans, that if we met, I am sure we would have made a great bunch of friends – but then of course, some of them are!

For the more serious minded and those interested in IT, law, conflict resolution and diplomacy, 'ICT for Peacebuilding' (http://ict4peace.wordpress.com/) will be a delight for you as it was for me. One piece of information that stuck out from this blog was the fact that the President of Iran, who is often portrayed in the western media as a crazy despot with a fetish for nuclear weapons, had started his own blog (http://www.ahmadinejad.ir/). Evidently he is a passionate blogger too!

'The war' is clearly a common thread that intertwines most of our blogs, and the way it was captured and discussed in 'indi.ca' (http://www.indi.ca/) and 'Azrael's Words' (http://azraelswords.blogspot.com/) was very powerful. 'Aachcharya' (http://guruchetra.blogspot.com/) has a rather different and no less intriguing perspective of the war as well as other social issues through the eyes of a student from Jaffna studying law in Colombo. But this is just the beginning; there are campaigns against corruption (http://ard-acp.com/blog/), sports diaries (http://srilankasports.blogspot.com/) and the works of cuisine connoisseurs like Pradeep Jeganathan (http://www.pradeepjeganathan.blogspot.com/) that delights the eyes and strangles even the 'good-bacteria' in the stomach with temptation! The inquisitive mind could find a 'Little Piece Of Humanity' (http://humanity.wordpress.com/) or Domains Of Daftness (http://jokerman.wordpress.com/) and encounter treats equally creative with probing ideas in them.

All in all, it is not practical or meaningful to list all the great blogs that I could browse in a week on these pages, but Kottu (http://www.kottu.org/) and Moju (http://moju.lk/) – are somewhat truly being true to their namesakes in being 'satisfying even when nothing else is'. They offer gateways into a host of interesting Sri Lankan blogs, together with Latapata (http://latapata.com/) which eludes any definition I have for the kind of website it is!

One of the true delights of my intercourse (hold that thought!) with the blogosphere was the discovery of 'Broken News' (http://brokennews.wordpress.com/) which is sure to keep you in stitches for hours. However, despite my best efforts, you will be better off by far, paying regular visits to Ayeshea's Blog (http://diethesisdie.blogspot.com/) about her dissertation "which focuses on blog discourse communities – in Sri Lanka in particular" for a more scientific and deeper insight into the goings on in the blogosphere over Sri Lanka. I came back from my escapade into this world of 'individual's media empires' with the raging thought in my head that "this is a good time to be alive" and with more than a hint of pride in my generation of Sri Lankans.