'Darling say you'l love me when I'm old', Song.

"Two lovers ..." - Lovely song, follow the words:. Please click on of the weblinks below.

 1. https://youtu.be/8BGYuH9Vxc4

2. Version with lyrics, to sing along and practice your singing -

https://youtu.be/BBRX0JenSYQ

Qye Sera, Sera, by Doris Day.

 One of our all-time favourite songs from the 1950s.

Email from Nana :-

Thank you Philip for sharing the video clip by Doris Day & a copy of the group photo of our last batch get together in 2018.

I hope you & Ramya are keeping well & remain alert & happy.

I also wish our batch mates who are with us will also share any updates - good or bad so that we can still keep in contact.

We cannot stop getting old & we may be unfortunate to lose some of our mental & physical faculties.

That is nature and feeling sad does not stop the natural process

Cheer up & share your kind thoughts & good wishes.

Christmas is round the corner & I wish all our batch mates who are still around, a merry Christmas and a happy New Year 2024.

Please share these thoughts amongst your batchmates if you can.

Nana

C.S. Nanayakkara 

The Jews of Sri Lanka

Please click on the web-link below -

 Jews Of Sri Lanka: An Untold Story (historyofceylontea.com)

The poison dart frog

Please click on the weblink below 

https://youtu.be/2FeyATwdI4M?si=Rsd8V5ECSV2gG1Yk

PGV

Paddy come back to Ireland.

Lovely composition of lyrics and music. Irish mother recalling her son, to their home country.

Please click on the web-link below

https://youtu.be/bP5n0yflDZo

Warming up the breakfast.

     Youngsters living in a house with stairs leading to the upper floors have a jolly time, sitting astride the banisters of the stairway, and sliding down. The crotch area and anatomically speaking the perineum, can get quite hot due to the friction, at the end of the slide down.

    The mornings can be quite cold in the UK. Quite often the breakfast is served by 'warming up' the leftovers from the previous night's dinner. This ritual is referred to as 'warming up the breakfast'.

    This really remarkable incident was related by Dr. Jansz, our lecturer in Physiology.

    A newly married couple arrived at a two-storeyed guest house, to start their honeymoon. They were the only occupants and they had to do their own cooking. They were exhausted and decided to forego the dinner and breakfast. Both decided, to only have 'love for dinner and have only love for breakfast'.

    After having love for a late dinner, both fell fast asleep. When the rays of the morning sun lit the bedroom, the husband found that his newly married bride was not in the bed nor in the attached bathroom. He quietly slipped out of the room and to his astonishment saw his wife, seated astride the banister and sliding down on it. She was unaware of her husband watching her and when she reached the bottom of the stairs she climbed back and repeated the procedure. The worried husband blurted out saying 'Darling, what are you doing?' The wife was prompt in her reply ' "Darling, can't you see. I am warming up your breakfast".

Address in the UK Parliament re the Gaza hostilities.

Address in the UK Parliament;-

 Please click on the picture below

Ceylon, 100 years ago

Please click on the web-link below:-

 (24) Ceylon 100s Years Ago: Old Sri Lanka #srilanka 🇱🇰📷🕰️ - YouTube

The Rodyas of Srilanka.

Please click on the weblink below:-

The Rodiyas

Spending the peoples money

 Advice from an African politician :-

'Chasing happiness'

 Please click on the weblink below:-

As a psychiatrist, I’ve seen how chasing happiness leads to misery | Psyche Ideas

'Darling, will you love me when I am old'

Lovely song 

https://youtu.be/8BGYuH9Vxc4

Padmini versus Vaijayanthimala in contest

Contest in Bharatha-Naattiyam between the legendary Padmini and Vaijayantimala.

Please click on the web-link below :- 

https://youtu.be/x2QZeL69DiI

PGV

Aliens and human reproduction, story by Jansz.

+Story related by the ever hilarious ‘Jansz’

A delegation of humanoid like aliens, landed in France. They got quite friendly with the locals. They did a study of various technologies that the earthlings had mastered, with the guidance of the local inhabitants who were only too glad to show them round. Then they did a cultural study of the customs of the area and the genteel approach to living. Finally, the earthlings were asked how they managed the procreation of the species. The locals who thought that this was off color, requested the aliens to show them how, the aliens did this. The aliens took them to a machine, pressed a few buttons, and out popped a tiny alien, within minutes. Now the locals had to fulfil their promise. They took them to the marital bed-room of a couple and discretely showed them the entire sex act, starting with the small talk, which took a rather long time and ending in a frenzy. At the end of the performance, the aliens said, ‘This is an amazing performance. Where is the new earthling?’ The locals laughed out loud and said ‘You know, you have to wait nine months, by earth time, to see a young earthling’.

            The aliens were flabbergasted and said, ‘If you have to wait nine months for the result, why was there an indecent haste, in the last part of the act?’+

The impotent husband

             This story was narrated by a colleague who was a physician with a good private practice. One day a middle aged couple who appeared very wealthy, came to consult him. The wife who was bedecked in sparkling jewelry and wearing a very expensive saree, was the first to speak before a dumb-founded husband. She complained bitterly that the husband could not perform in bed as in earlier days, as he did not have a good erection. The husband who was sporting thick gold rings on his fingers and wearing an expensive watch was dressed in nationals and appeared to be a businessman. He seemed unaffected by the wife's out-burst of complaints. My physician friend was thinking of diabetes etc as the cause of the impotence. To be on the safe side, he asked the wife to wait outside, while he did a thorough examination of her husband. As soon as the door closed behind the wife the husband blurted out, ‘Doctor, there is nothing wrong with me. I have a mistress and I do a good job with her. In fact I do it far in excess, so that when I get home, I am not physically fit to do it on my wife.’ That sorted out one problem of diagnosis for my physician friend. The subsequent encounter of the physician with the wife, to explain the husband,s problem, is another story.     

Swarnamalee Chaithiya - Lovely

Please click on the weblink below :-

 https://youtu.be/A6j96jtRR-g?list=RDGMEMCMFH2exzjBeE_zAHHJOdxg

Stories by Dr.Dewadithya, Eye Surgeon.

 Dr. Deva-Aditiya – Consultant Eye Surgeon During our student days we had to do two weeks of ’eye appointment’ at the eye hospital. Dr. Deva-Aditya was one of the eye surgeons and some of us were allocated to him to do the ‘eye appointment”. Dr. Deva-Aditya was close to retirement and was a raconteur of note. These are two of his tales. 

1. A policeman had come to an Eye Surgeon with a condition which necessitated removal of the affected eye-ball. A mistake had occurred in the operating theatre and the wrong eye-ball was removed. The surgeon had felt remorse to say the least. He had offered to pay a ‘handsome’ compensation to the patient. The patient had accepted this amount without signing any documents on the pretext of not embarrassing the surgeon. Once the full payment had been made, he had filed a court case and won another substantial amount as damages, legally, for this grave mistake. The message which Dr. Deva-Aditya gave us was ‘never trust a policeman’.

 2. Just opposite the Kynsey Road entrance to the General Hospital Colombo, is a clock tower commemorating the memory of Dr. Koch, who was a past principal of the then Medical College. He belonged to a long-gone era and is not to be confused with our beloved Professor Koch of Physiology. This clock tower was called Koch’s clock tower from early days. Next to the clock tower, according to Dr. Deva-Aditiya there was in those days a common room for the Medical students. In this common room, hung a huge portrait of the departed Dr. Koch, looking down on the activities of the medical students playing cards, carrom and billiards, with an enigmatic smile. One day, said Dr. Deva-Aditya, the powers that be decided to white-wash the walls of the common room. All the photographs, hanging on the walls were taken down. The last photograph to be taken down with reverence was the huge photograph of Dr. Koch. There was a large audience to witness and help in bringing down this photograph. When the photograph was taken down, lo and behold, a large collection of used condoms fell to the floor in a heap, under the place where the photograph was hanging. It became apparent that generations of medical students, had not only been playing billiards in the common room. The condoms after use had found an immediate safe and undetectable receptacle, behind the photograph of the enigmatic smile of Dr. Koch.

Forging a signature

    " There was always a problem before the final examination, of submitting the ‘record books’ of students. These record books issued on entry to the Medical Faculty to each student, carried the The Clinical Professors 11 am 52 The Resurrection signatures of people under whom the requisite appointments were done. These had to be completed and submitted to the Dean’s office with the application form for the final MBBS examination. Unfortunately collecting signatures at the last moment was a very tricky thing. The particular consultant may have retired, died, or simply refused to sign up that particular student for low attendance or unsatisfactory work. As in any group, there was a fringe who would take any risk, including forging a signature, which they considered a harmless pastime. 

    One of the scenes I remember is a ‘forger’ seated comfortably on a table with a blank sheet of paper and pen with the correct color of ink and shape of nib, for those were the days we used ink pots and ’G’ nibs on nib-holders, for official work. There was a chap with a blotting paper standing by, to blot out the excess ink on the signature. The forger had a specimen signature of the particular consultant in front of him and started to imitate it on the blank paper, repetitively. As the imitation approached perfection, he would shout “now” and the record book would be put in front of him, to place the signature there at the appropriate place. The blotting paper was applied and now the record book was ready for submission. I do not recall any one having got caught and many of these miscreants are now pillars of society, in the medical Profession."

(Extract from "Remembered Vignettes")

University sportsman from our batch

 

Mercy killing, Sardinia, historical.

Agabbadòra Hammer (worldhistoryandevents.blogspot.com)

Please click on the weblink  below :- 

 https://worldhistoryandevents.blogspot.com/2023/11/agabbadora-hammer.html?m=1.

I came across a similar story authored by Jack London, long ago.It relates how an old and infirm, old man, is left to die in the frozen north, by his Eskimo tribe. He would have been a severe handicap in the annual migrations of his clan. He is left with some provisions in a constructed shelter. His son lingers a few moments to take a final farewell from his father, to join the clan in their migrations. As he leaves, he sees the wolves waiting in the distance.

Philip G V

ReplyReply allForward

Prof. A.C.E. Koch - Physiology

"Professor Koch’s early lectures were frequently peppered with the name of 'Claude Bernard'. Even this simple name was taken down incorrectly in our notes by some and at a subsequent fortnightly quiz, it was written as 'Lord Bernard Claude' by a colleague.  This error was commented on by Professor Koch in a subsequent lecture. In the hematology lectures he drilled into us the need to 'cross match' the blood samples and to 'double check' the results to avoid mistakes with incompatible blood transfusions. One of the students described this scenario as - 'to cross and double-cross'- the blood, before transfusing it to a patient.

Professor Koch had his collection of jokes which he repeated during the lectures. Needless to say, we found them as incomprehensible as his lectures and we were unable to grasp their meaning. Professor Koch would pause after relating each joke and say 'AHEM', to indicate to the class that he had cracked a joke. Then the whole class would erupt into simulated laughter and scraping of feet. Some would even provide a realistic imitation of 'rolling in laughter', much to the amusement of their colleagues.

            The white coat and horn-rimmed glasses of Professor Koch are still a vivid memory. He was kind to us at the exams and never pushed us too hard. He had done his post graduate work on high altitude physiology and 'oxygen debt' which was his favorite topic. Deep sea diving and the appearance of 'bends' during rapid ascent was another of his favorite topics.

            Tissa Kappagoda recalled his memories of Professor Koch’s lectures in this way.  “Professor Koch's lectures were exactly as you described them.   Their significance dawned on me 10 years later when I started doing research in Leeds and I spent the best part of thirty years chasing Claude Bernard and his internal environment!  Things went the full circle for me a few years back, when I was invited by the Physiologists in Colombo to deliver his memorial lecture.  Professor Basnayake was in the audience and he came up to me before the lecture and asked me if I remembered him!  How could one forget these people?”

Our batch-mates, Ooyirlankumaran and Asoka Dissanayake were among the last batch of lecturers recruited by Professor Koch just a few months before he retired.  Asoka remembers him as a portly figure always dressed in a white twill suit as was the custom then. “His name was pronounced as "cock" but I was told much later by my friend Carlo Fonseka that the “ch” should have been softer as in “couch”.  I believe he drove a grey Austin 50 car. He had trained in the Respiratory Physiology Laboratory at Oxford possibly with A.P. Douglas of “Douglas bag” fame. He used to boast that Roger Bannister (the first person to run the mile under 4 minutes and later, a famous neurologist) was a medical student at Oxford at the time and was tested on the treadmill there. Professor Koch used to take the Reproductive Physiology lectures and used to pun on the term "Castrated Cock".  Being forewarned by our seniors we were
expected to bring the roof down, by stamping on the wooden floor of the
Physiology Lecture Theatre at this bon mot.  Sadly, he was dead of a liver disease within a year after his retirement.”

(Extract from 'Remembered Vignettes")

'One day', A song for unity.

Please click on the weblink words below:-

'One day'

 

 

Yellow flowers fallen on the Kynsey road.

 

    I recall coming to work one bright morning after it had rained all night.  We were then in the 2^nd MB. I used to travel from Wellawatte by bus to the ‘As-vaattu-handiya’ by bus. We used to enter the hospital from Ward Place at the entrance to the old Eye hospital and walked through the corridors of the General hospital, making our exit at the Kynsey Road entrance near the Koch’s Clock Tower. We were marked as 'Block students' by the bones we carried. They were usually long bones or the base of the skull.

            There was a tall tree on the opposite side of Koch’s clock tower, near the main hospital entrance gate. It provided shelter on hot sunny days, to the visitors waiting for the gates to open at 12 Noon. This huge tree used to bloom annually, with lovely yellow flowers. On this particular day the yellow blooms, had fallen en masse with the drizzle in the night and lay carpeting the road. In those days for most of the hospital minor staff, clerks, the majority of medical students and at least one senior lecturer, commuted to work by bicycle. The traffic on Kynsey Road began to build up and the first bicycle skidded on this carpet of flowers made mushy by the drizzle, around 7 a.m. The bicycle traffic increased by the minute as did the number of people skidding and falling off their bicycles. Some helpful souls tried to stop the cyclists before they reached the dangerous slippery patch, by clapping and gesticulating to them from the roadside. These efforts though meant kindly, only added to the confusion.  Very soon a large crowd gathered to witness the mayhem. Eventually the police arrived and blocked off the road to traffic from either side. The indignant bicyclists were forced to dismount and roll their machines along the pavement. When order was restored finally on that memorable day in 1961, there was little to show other than bent handle-bars, a few torn dresses and some bruised egos. That tree has long been felled.

            The students who had bicycles   parked them in the shed near the Medical Students Union Common Room. It was rumoured that after the final results were announced, quite a few newly minted doctors abandoned their bicycles in the shed, as they felt that it was infra dig for an MBBS to ride a push cycle.  Often these bicycles were appropriated by 'Marker' of MSU Common Room fame, who later sold them. Now one could count the number of medical students, riding to the faculty on bicycles, on one’s fingers. A large number of present day medical students own cars. The authorities at the faculty have covered the drain that ran along the Norris Canal Road by the Physiology Block with concrete slabs and have created a road-side car park, for the medical students.  A few brave souls still ride motor powered two-wheelers, but this is a high-risk proposition, because of the mayhem, that is Colombo traffic.

By rule of thumb.

  There is an English 'idiom' - "By rule of thumb". This was presumably sanctioned by the English Church. It allowed a husband to chastise his wife, with a stick with a thickness, no bigger than that of the husband's thumb.

Comment by Geri,

Hi Philip. I think it is ascribed to ‘English Law’ but not particularly linked to a Church.

FROM GOOGLE 

1. The idiom conjures an image of someone being squashed under a gigantic thumb, as a bug may be squashed. The idiom to be under someone's thumb first appeared in the early eighteenth century, though why the thumb is the anatomy that is used in this phrase is unknown.

2.Rule of thumb

Meaning

A means of estimation made according to a rough and ready practical rule, not based on science or exact measurement.

Origin

This has been said to derive from the belief that English law allowed a man to beat his wife with a stick so long as it is was no thicker than his thumb. In 1782 Judge Sir Francis Buller is reported as having made this legal ruling. That same year James Gillray published a satirical cartoon attacking Buller and caricaturing him as 'Judge Thumb'.

Films seen during our medical student days, 1960 to 1965.

 

Entertainment was limited to the radio (for music) and films.  Television had not reached Ceylon then and the ‘Internet’ was not even a figment of anyone’s imagination.  Cinema formed our major source of entertainment during our medical student days. I would like to recall some of the most memorable English films released at the time.

1.      General  

a.      The Grass is Greener – A beautifully filmed story, of a lost romance and its aftermath.

b.      Holiday in Paris – This was billed as a parody of the antics of an heir to the British Crown.

c.       The Ten Commandments – Cecille B de Mille’s story of Moses and the exodus of the Israelites from bondage in Egypt of the Pharoahs. It took a lot of money to produce and was filmed in 70mm to be projected on a very big screen with audio of 32 channels if I recall correctly.

d.      Ben Hur – was in the same mould as the Ten Commandments but not as successful.

2.      Comedy  

a.      Laurel and Hardy – The ‘fat and lean men’ of American comedy, had a series of slap-stick jokes.

b.      Norman Wisdom – Much more serious comedy than the Americans. We would not miss a single Norman Wisdom show in town.

c.     Paris Holiday – Starring Bob Hope and Fernandel –. This was one of the best color films of that period. Bob Hope was the top American comedian and Fernandel was his French counterpart. This story revolved around tracing a manuscript of a play that had been lost in France. It was superb with a lot of laughs.

d.      School for Scoundrels - an English comedy on ‘one-upmanship’ containing typical subtle British humour.

e.       The ‘Carry On’ series which included such classics as Carry on Doctor and Carry on Nurse  were big draws in the cinemas.

3.      Horror   

a.      Alfred Hitchcock – A series of films directed by Hitchcock drew a dedicated crowd. It was said that Hitchcock himself appeared in a scene in each of the films he produced. It was a challenge to us to spot him in each new release by him.  

b.      The Curse of the Demon. A story of a demon let loose in an English countryside, with many thrills.

4.      Musicals  

a.      South Pacific – A lovely musical about the American forces in the Pacific, during the Second World War starring Rossano Brazzi and Mitzi Gaynor.

b.      The Sound of Music - A lovely musical starring Julie Andrews and Christopher Plummer. We used to sing quite a few of these songs at our parties. During my stay in the UK in 1982, I was told by a nurse working in Aylesbury, that confessing to being an admirer of this musical in conversation, immediately consigned one to the lower classes of English society. The reverse was the case with ‘My fair Lady’. Such little acts draw social lines in the UK.

c.       My Fair Lady – A musical based on George.Bernard.Shaw’s play ‘Pygmallion’. Again it had a lot of songs which we sang in parties.

d. The King and I - The story of an English teacher’s experience in the Thai Royal household. (One of our innocent friends at Bloemfontein loudly read the advertisement for the picture as, ‘The King and One’ and brought the house down!).

A pronouncement of the King of Siam (Yul Brynner), in the film,

" A girl is like a blossom, with honey for just one man,

And the man must be like the honeybee and gather all he can,

To fly from blossom to blossom, the honeybee must be free,

But the blossom must not ever fly, from bee to bee to bee".

Such were the sentiments expressed from Hollywood in the late 1950s.

5.      War films  

a.      The Longest Day – Darrell Zanuck’s story of the landing in Normandy during Second World War.

b.      A Bridge Too Far – The story of the failed attempt to seize a strategic bridge in Europe, during the Second World War.

c.       Colditz – The story of a German Prisoner of War camp in Germany.

d.      Tora, Tora, Tora – The story of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.

e.       The Bridge Over the River Kwai. – David Lean’s film, about the construction of a bridge by British prisoners of war.

6.      Westerns   

a.      High Noon and Shane – classics of their genre.

b.      The Magnificent Seven with Yul Brynner .    

7.      Movies with titillating sex scenes  

a.      The Light Across the Street which starred Brigitte Bardot - The story of the young wife of a French bowser driver. The husband meets with an accident and suffers head injury and is advised off sex. It gave the director Roger Vadim a lot of latitude to build a story around Brigitte Bardot’s role.

b.      And God Created Woman – Also directed by Roger Vadim and starred Brigitte Bardot had a few suggestive scenes but was not much of a film.

Most of these films were in black and white. There were no zoom lenses those days on cameras and you can see the effect on the films, when we see the replays now. Violence and explicit sex scenes were very few. The current Hollywood films have too much violence. I watch French films which are really superb on TV5, on my satellite TV now. Sex is always an underlying theme in the French films, but it is handled with refinement and finesse unlike in present day Hollywood films. I also watch Korean Tele-Dramas, which have no violence and are really wonderful, on Ari-rang Satellite TV. They have an unending array of themes, which are an eye opener to other film producers.

Happy Diwali

 

Shankari Chandran, 'Chai time at Cinnamon Gardens'

 Our batch-mate Nadanachandiran, Neuro-Surgeon in Australia, has a very accomplished daughter 'Shankari Chandran', who has won an Australian Book award  ( Miles Franklin Literary award) for her book "Chai time at Cinnamon gardens". It is super read & I recommend it to you all.

ISBN -  10 9 8 7 6 5 4

 

Pleasent surprise for Mom.

 Please click on the web-link below :-

https://youtube.com/shorts/FmweBcpyNXQ?si=fWVa4-59XimzmCFs

The motorized two-wheel owners of our batch of 1960 medical entrants.

'Several of our batch mates owned, rather expensive motor bicycles even in the 60’s.. Derryk De Silva used to ride a NSU motor bike. It was a well-known German brand and was relatively noise free. It had a built-in self-starter, a rarity those days.  Derryk used to take the bends at speed, leaning into the curve rather than turning the handle.  This was in the style of the true riding   connoisseur. I think that he was trying to imitate Zacky Deen, the motor cycle ace of Ceylon, of those days.

Rama Karthigesu owned a beautiful BMW motor bike. It had horizontal, opposed cylinders.   I think it also had a shaft drive. 'Karthi' used to take off in a jiffy, starting the bike with the built-in self starter.  Selladurai owned what I recall was a Triumph Tiger 100, with twin vertical cylinders and overhead camshaft but no self starter.  Sella’s riding gear consisted of dark glasses and black gloves and reminded one of 'Zorro'. It was a lovely bike.  

A few students owned scooters which were a novelty those days.  Vijitha Nikapota used to ride a Lambretta which was a rather sedate vehicle. In the early days, he used to give a lift to Anula to and from the faculty.  The sight of Anula who was always neatly dressed in a Kandyan saree, perched on the back of the Lambretta, never failed to gain the traditional attention of the medical   students, living in Bloemfontein Hostel.    Perrin and Geri Jayasekara, who behaved more like cousins than brothers, also had a Lambretta scooter. Perrin would be riding the scooter blissfully unaware that Geri seated behind, was waving at girls passing by and making merry. Gamini Jayasinghe, Ganeshanayagam, Sabanayagam and a handful of others   also owned scooters and were much in demand when we had to attend classes in distant places such as Angoda and Ragama.

            Yamaha, Suzuki and Kawasaki brands were not heard of then and helmets were never worn. The main brands of motor bicycles were BSA (Birmingham Small Arms), Triumph, Norton, Royal Enfield, Indian, Velocette - a machine as quiet as a Rolls-Royce, having a water-cooled engine, a shaft drive and a long metal arm which had to be pulled to start the engine, Moto-Guzzi, Gilera, and the mighty Harley-Davidson. Petrol was Rs 2.50cts a gallon and very often students short of money, would fill up 50 cents worth of the petrol oil mixture. The cost of a new scooter was around Rs.3000'.

Extract from the book 'Remembered Vignettes'.

'Kumbaya' sung by 'The seekers', in the early 1960s

A song very popular in our medical college days.

'Kumbaya'

Sporting career of Buddy Reid

Batch-mates, please congratulate Buddy in the comments section.

Carrying our flag overseas.

Please click on the weblink below :-

https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/#inbox?projector=1

Extract from ''Remembered Vignettes'

 

'Bible Rock', as seen from the road to Kandy, near Kadugannawa.
Photo by Dr. Philip G Veerasingam

Preface

            Life in Sri Lanka in the late 1950's was a very different experience to what it is today – looking back, it is hardly recognizable as the same country. The hustle and bustle of life for students was not evident. To cite just one glaring example, tuition outside the classroom for school children was not the norm in those days, even for those studying for the Higher School Certificate (HSC) examinations, the equivalent of the advanced level examinations of today. Some extra classes were held on Saturdays by enthusiastic teachers, who would have been offended if payment had been offered. People were not mercenary to the degree one sees now. Very few students continued their studies after completing the Senior School Certificate Examinations (SSC). Most had found employment by this time. Children often played a game where, they counted the number of letters of the alphabet in a name and predicted what the child would grow up to be, in adult life. The rhyme went as ‘DOCTOR< PROCTOR< COOLEY< CLERK’ repeated. Thus, PHILIP would be - P: doctor, H: proctor, I: coolie, L: clerk, I: doctor, and P: proctor. Thus, the child named PHILIP would be a proctor in adult life. It was as simple as that. There were no disciplines like hotel management, catering, computing, business management and a host of others as at present.

            Marrying for love was the exception, rather than the rule. Much more mundane things like race, cast, dowry and religion carried more weight, with looks thrown in as an added bonus. Happily, looking back, quite a number of these marriages thrived into old age. Break-ups of marriages were the exception. One of my batch mates had continuous problems with his doctor wife, with whom he had fallen in love and married. One day, his sympathetic father-in-law, took him aside and advised him in all seriousness, to take a mistress and keep the marriage going. Such was the sacrosanct nature of marriage.

            We had very few material possessions. A radio and a car fulfilled life's ambitions for most of us. Televisions, fans, washing machines, microwaves and floor polishers were not heard of. The clothes were washed by a 'dhobi' who arrived at the home, at regular weekly intervals. We went to the barber for a haircut and the tailor stitched our clothes. It was as simple as that. There were no supermarkets to speak of and the large department stores were operated by British business houses and they sold items which were beyond the reach of most ordinary Ceylonese.  The common leisure pursuits were, watching films or a play, the latter being reserved for those more sophisticated than the average student.  When money was tight (which was usually the case), one had to settle for a sunset or dinner outdoors on a moonlit night. Trips to distant places, with song and dance and guitar or accordion accompaniments, were special treats.

            Studies were not taken too seriously. Though we always lived with the prospect of an examination, we usually began working in earnest three months before the day of the examination was due to start. There was little competition among the majority to secure leadership positions. A pass at an examination was enough and very often, a lost love caused more heartache, than a failed examination.

Fifty years on, looking back life seemed very rosy, in the nineteen fifties and sixties. Out of that experience, the following tales emerge. They are based mostly on fact and any element of fiction which may have crept in is simply the consequence of re-telling the tale. They reflect the happy times and (almost) care-free days. They bring to mind the rollicking laughter and fun of medical student days, when schoolboys just out of their teens, began the tasks of simultaneously growing into adults and training to become doctors. These tales are told with amusement and laughter with the sole purpose, of warming the hearts of my batch mates who entered the Faculty of Medicine, Colombo in the year 1960.   I am indebted to my batch-mates who sent me contributions to this book and their names are listed in the acknowledgements, as far as possible. I regret any missed acknowledgements

            The photograph on the cover taken by me, shows "Bible Rock" seen from Kadugannawa, Sri-Lanka. The name ‘Bible Rock’ was to see the similarity of an open book, a bible, lying on a table. The Dutch thought that it resembled a coffin and named it as ‘Coffin rock’. It depicts for me, the 'resurrection' of wonderful tales from the 'book learning' experience at the Medical Faculty of the early part of 1960.

 

 

Philip G Veerasingam

Referances

1. https://magnificentsrilanka.com/guide-to-hike-bible-rock-in-sri-lanka/

Statistics of human life on earth

 

The population of Earth is around 7.8 Billion.

For most people, it is a significant figure. However, if you condensed 7.8 billion into 100 persons, and then into various percentage statistics, the resulting analysis is relatively much easier to comprehend. 

 

Out of 100 :

11 are in Europe.

5 are in North America

9 are in South America

15 are in Africa.

60 are in Asia.

 

49 live in the countryside

51 live in cities

 

75 have mobile phones.

25 do not

 

30 have internet access.

70 do not have the availability to go online.

 

83 can read.

17 are illiterate.

 

33 are Christians.

22 are Muslims.

14 are Hindus.

7 are Buddhists.

12 are other religions.

12 have no religious beliefs.

 

26 live less than 14 years  Wow!

66 died between 15 - 64 years of age.

8 are over 65 years old.

 

If you have your own home,

Eat full meals & drink clean water,

Have a mobile phone,

Can surf the internet, and

have gone to college,

You are in the minuscule privileged lot.

(in the less than 7% category)

 

Amongst 100 persons in the world, only eight live or exceed the age of 65!

 

If you are over 65 years old, be content & grateful. Cherish life. Grasp the moment.

If you did not leave this world before the age of 64, like the 92 persons who have gone before you, you are already blessed amongst humankind.

Take good care of your health. Cherish every remaining moment.

AND NOW: 

Pay attention to all you thinkers! This is an area that is staring me in the face daily.

If you think you are suffering memory loss, read on.

 

Anosognosia, very interesting:

 

In the following analysis, the French Professor Bruno Dubois, Director of the Institute of Memory and Alzheimer's Disease (IMMA) at La Pitié-Salpêtrière - Paris Hospital addresses the subject in a rather reassuring way:

 

"If anyone is aware of their memory problems, they do not have Alzheimer's."

 

1. forget the names of families.

2. do not remember where I put some things.

 

It often happens in people 60 years and older that they complain that they lack memory.

"The information is always in the brain, it is the "processor" that is lacking."

 

This is "Anosognosia" or temporary forgetfulness.

 

Half of people 60 and older have some symptoms that are due to age rather than disease. The most common cases are:

- forgetting the name of a person,

- going to a room in the house and not remembering why we were going there,

- a blank memory for a movie title or actor, an actress,

- a waste of time searching where we left our glasses or keys.

 

After 60 years most people have such a difficulty, which indicates that it is not a disease but rather a characteristic due to the passage of years.

 

Many people are concerned about these oversights hence the importance of the following statements:

 

1."Those who are conscious of being forgetful have no serious problem of memory."

2. "Those who suffer from a memory illness or Alzheimer's, are not aware of what is happening."

 

Professor Bruno Dubois, Director of IMMA, reassures the majority of people concerned about their oversights:

 

"The more we complain about memory loss, the less likely we are to suffer from memory sickness."

 

We are truly blessed, So, share this with your over 55 friends, it can reassure them.

 

In any case, if you are over 65 and complaining about a few aches and pains, think again .......

 

....... 92% of people didn't even get that opportunity.😉

Remembered Vignettes, forward by Dr. Tissa Kappaggoda.

 Extract from the book 'Remembered Vignettes

Photo taken in 200

Photo taken in 1960

FOREWORD

"The dawn of the sixties was a period of great hope and expectation for all of us, who entered the Medical Faculty in Colombo.  The middle of the decade saw the culmination of five years of academic activity, which took the form of a licence to practice medicine.  (My parents thought that it was more in the nature of a licence to commit medicine.).  The decade which began with such promise ended with a definite sense of foreboding.  The last years of the sixties saw an unparalleled exodus of physicians from the country seeking, if not greener pastures, at least a little tranquility to develop a career.  A few like this writer departed the shores at the first opportunity that presented itself, while others of a more optimistic frame of mind stayed, until the roof began to show definite signs of falling in.  The resilient ones who are the real heroes depicted in the pages that follow, stayed the course and completed careers of exemplary service to the country and its people.  Regardless of where one belonged in this spectrum, that decade was a period of great joy, now made even more appealing by the tendency of age, to blunt the hard edges of reality.  

The constant need to perform at a level just beyond one’s comfortable reach, the uncertainties associated with getting a “repeat” in the anatomy block or, the ignominy of being “fired” from a clinical appointment due to some minor infraction, gave us “fifteen minutes of fame” periodically.  Infractions, if there were any, were always due to either divine improvidence or sheer perversity on the part of one’s teachers.  There were no other possible explanations.  Always, one was assured of either a sympathetic ear in the canteen, or a tale about an even greater calamity that had befallen a colleague.  Such simple acts of generosity often turned a tragedy, to something approaching humor. 

Not surprisingly, the atmosphere was often charged with a supreme sense of the absurd, which made the events of the day fun and from this distance in time, even funny.  To those of us who worked abroad, our entire professional life has been punctuated by news from home, describing the devastation created by war, insurrection, political ineptitude and simple corruption which over the last four decades has been elevated to an art form.  Unfortunately, the latter is still a work in progress. At first, it was the newspapers and then the radio that brought news of such calamities but in recent times, the Internet seems to perform this task with even greater speed, possibly at the expense of accuracy and balance.  But journalistic “advances” brings no peace of mind.  Those who continued to work in the country had to deal with the realities on the ground and that was a task which required an almost superhuman level of dedication to the Hippocratic Oath.  Many of them did so by falling back on that sense of the absurd, which was such an important aspect of our lives as students. 

Philip has to be congratulated on undertaking the task of compiling these stories and anecdotes that give an insight into a collective experience, which went beyond the mundane business of attending lectures participating in ward classes and a variety of other academic pursuits.  I am sure he would join me in thanking those who contributed items to this collection.  In their own way these events provided us with an alternative learning experience, which gave us the strength to follow our own stars and destinies".    

Tissa Kappagoda

Sacramento

California

Looking after trees, Prof.Kapila Yakandawala.

 

Recalling the early 1960s in Colombo, SL.

 

The Savoy cinema.

The then brand new air-conditioned Liberty Cinema

Kerosene cart doing door to door sales..

Alerics for their famous Milk-shakes and Ice-cream.
Rendezvous for young lovers.