I blog to question the accepted order of things

It is surprising how many years later they are taken up and acted upon, with varying differences of course

I am not a wizard of any sorts! If I see something that can be improved, I have an opinion and I write that on my blog, for anyone to take it up, and hopefully fine tune, amend and run with it, that is act upon, by implementing.

This blog therefore contains over a thousand entries written over 10 years with the sole purpose of getting people to think, and of course even debunk my rationale, but at least it presents a point of view that may need to be taken up, sooner rather than later.

The single driving goal of this blog has been and is, to improve the quality of life of the people who live in Sri Lanka, and my own ideas, based on my many years of experience in different fields of employment, in different continents, and gained from reading, interacting and with people from all walks of life.

Many of these ideas come to me in the morning, after waking up from a dream at about 3am and I try to type it before I forget it, as often, ideas come to me and leave my brain within minutes, and if I don’t jot it down or type, it just goes away never to return.

To give an example, many years ago, about 3 years before the 1990 Ambulance Service was brought in to Sri Lanka, I had physically seen about 300 ambulances on Galle Face Green lined up, so that a huge Tamasha could be televised with publicity, for the then President Rajapakse to hand over the keys to drivers, or hospital administrators of the hospitals which were going to receive them, and that night I woke up after a nightmare, seeing all these Ambulances caked in rust and of NO USE.

I woke up in a sweat and I typed my suggestion of them being used immediately to save lives, going the site of accidents, to perform ER and remove the injured to the nearest hospital that has accident and emergency services.

At that time Sri Lanka had 2,500 Ambulances dotted all over the Country, how many of which were road worthy or manned, I did not know, however their main purpose was to ferry patients in various stages of illness from one hospital to another. AMBULANCES were never used to go to accident scenes, something I had always associated with Ambulances, having lived in the West for 33 years. I had seen many instances of them attending emergency situations, to say nothing of the many hospital dramas like ER, that filled the TV screens in those countries during prime time.

The RUST nightmare was explained because having lived by the sea I know a car left uncovered for 12 hours will start corroding. So when it comes to public property open to the elements for the TAMASHA, the sycophants around the President did not care that the Ambulances were corroding every second they were standing on the Green by the Sea, and so doing that just to satisfy the vanity of one, was not a price worth paying for numerous deaths subsequently, due to this foolish act. (A nit-picker would say how do you know anyone died?)

I would genuinely like to know how many of those Ambulances I saw about 6 years ago, are currently roadworthy, to prove or disprove my contention! However it is without hesitation, that I will say that 48 hours in Galle Face may have resulted in deaths of patients due to the non-availability of those ambulance, resulting from RUST.

That is the kind of lateral thinking I engage in and try to inform my readership. We had sufficient stock of Ambulances then to offer a Nationwide Emergency Service, for accident patients, which by now could have saved thousands of lives. We are only now rolling out this service throughout the Country and had the Indians not intervened and been generous in their support of this, none of our home grown leaders would have taken the initiative in the interests of the people. They are now fawning over the airwaves taking credit!

That ambulance article is in this blog, just one thought of many, and when people find fault with facts and say I am too free with the facts, disproved or unproven, or not scientifically correct, I agree that is correct.

However these are ideas of thinkers! They need to be studied by those who are good in researching and implementing after evaluation. I am a free thinker, who gets a few Eureka moments in a day and I share it with the world, without trying to do that which I am not skilled at, namely, to work it to the end for profit!

So for those who nit-pick on every word, I write, to spread IDEAS that may improve the quality of life. That is why I blog. The implementation and cost benefit analysis should be left to the specialists. There is NO FONT of such ideas presently for Sri Lanka, out there in the cloud, and I am merely filling a void. If there are other sources, prey tell me, not think tanks though!

It is a thankless task, most are common sense, and often I refer to a link on the Net for illustration, or to tie it to reality, however the act of blogging here is purely altruistic, with no personal gain expected. I meet many people who have read some article of mine, and am surprised when they tell me, as I had forgotten I had even written on that issue. However, that gives me great satisfaction, if just a few can make use, for the greater good.