Basketball 2012

The Basketball Saisa season has just started. It will be my fourth time trying for the overseas travelling team, i'm hoping to make captain this year.

My goal from last year to increase my offensive skills; dribbling, shooting, and drop steps, was fairly successful. This year my average points per game is far higher, i'm a lot more confident with the ball, and short corner accuracy on a good day is about 70%. I can also jump much higher than before though which is a huge help.

My two main goals this year is to work collaboratively with others and develop my skills in my passing game and cuts. Give and go plays in particular can be very effective if your team is in sync, its a quality which only comes as you play together for a while and this year the majority of players have been on the team for at least 1 or 2 years. There are very few new players.

Mixed Martial Arts Update

I continued the MMA lessons right up until the winter break after which i had to pause to study from mock exams. I trained with them 6 hours a week spread over three days missing only a few practices showing perseverance and commitment to the activity. The training sessions at times were mentally challenging more than any sport i've taken part in before. It increase my awareness of my own strengths and areas for growth".

I learned about the incredible amount of respect for competitors in mma. I learned i have pretty stable center of gravity, and a knack for wrestling, and i learned how far i still have to go. I was one of the best competitors in the beginer skill group but the gap between my own knowledge, discipline, and skills and those of some of the people who have trained for years was immense. This is one area where in every aspect there is room for growth and still will be if i continue with the activity for the next ten years. The volume of techniques is enormous.

However i did develop new skills and learned a lot from the lessons. We covered all the basics of grappling, striking, and submissions. Every lesson would begin with a lesson on new strategies and techniques followed by sparring matches which were enormously fun.

Habitat For Humanity: Candygram

We decided to persevere with our commitment to helping the blind family i mentioned earlier and planned and initiated another fund raiser to help purchase furniture, plumbing, and other essential domestic products.

We ordered from the United States hundreds of candy-canes and a huge amount of cookie dough. We baked approximately 300 cookies then organized them into small bags of two. For the next week we sold them every day at break and lunch at a stall outside the canteen. I also grabbed a box full of Christmas goodies and went mobile around the school with Ahmad selling cookies and candy canes.

We raised a lot of money in the end and are waiting on a list from the habitat foundation of the items the blind family needs and there cost so we can effectively donate the money.

Although we a showing commitment to our goal of supporting the blind family there is an ethical implication. So much of our time and resources are being spent on one family there is a serious opportunity cost. While there is no question they are in serious need i have to wonder if it is fair for an overseas service to support just one family? Because we are we have lost the opportunity to donate to much more far reaching causes, like buying shoes for a huge number of school children. Some might argue we have chosen the good of the few (who are in the most need of help) over the good of the many. Its a issues we are still debating in habitat.

Guitar Concert - Founders Day Assembly

For the past year I've continued practicing at least 3 hours a week and have slowly increased the library of songs I can play to include

Feel Good Inc. - Gorillaz
The Prayer - Kid Cudi
Animal I Have Become, Never To Late, and The Good Life - 3 Days Grace
Pain - Seether
Fallen Leaves - Billy Talent
Lonely Day, Mr. Jack, and Holy Mountain - System of a Down
Black Betty - Ram Jam

And a few others. For the founders day assembly i was invited to play acoustic guitar with the student band. We performed Hero by Nickelback in front of the school and some parents right after the lighting of the lamp and the Kandian Dancers.


I glad i showed perseverance and stuck with the guitar, its been just over a year and i've really enjoyed playing, it's become on the ways i relax regularly.

One of the things I've learned from this is unlike acting or making speeches one of my weaknesses I've gained awareness of is i get really nervous when playing the guitar in-front of an audience and am prone to make a lot more mistakes than when playing by myself. It's a skill i'd like to learn though and so one of my goals for the year is to overcome my stage-fright.

To this end i'm planning to perform a guitar cover of Chop Suey by System of a Down with Bharat and Skylor for the next music makers festival in a few months.

Habitat For Humanity: Blind Family

A few months ago I was introduced to a family being evicted from their house. The father has a heart condition preventing him from working and the mother and two daughters have a rare genetic disorder causing them all, to slowly go blind. Both parents unable to work and make payments, their Land Lord began the process of evicting them.

Lanka Habitat decided to take action and construct them a new one. Unfortunately they are bound to give out low interest loans only, the organization is more of a self help program than a charity, and so they couldn't fund construction directly. Instead they searched for corporate and civilian sponsorship with the help of a local church to fund construction as they went.

Three times I've gone to that build site, the first time we dug the foundation, the second mixed concrete for the flooring, and the third climbed on top of the house to tile the roof.

The last day i enjoyed particularly. I've always loved heights and climbing, furthermore roof tiling is a new challenge i've never undertaken before. I also found it interesting learning how the tiles are designed to interconnect in a watertight seal, the design is pretty brilliant, and it doesn't surprise me 90% of the houses i see make use of this exact same tiles.

To finish the entire roof in one day working collaboratively with others was particularly important. Instead of climbing up and down with tiles we started a supply chain where a man on the ground would throw tiles to a second person on the roof, who would form pass the tiles to a third man to form orderly stacks at regular intervals for a fifth and sixth person to slot together.

It took a while to perfect the system but by the end we ran like a well oiled machine and by showing perseverance we managed to tile the entire roof two hours early giving us time to work briefly on the flooring some more.

Habitat For Humanity: Movie Night

For our first charity events of the year i helped plan and initiate primary school movie might. We projected Kung Fu Panda 2 on a huge screen using the auditorium projector. The fund raiser was in aid of a charity project supported by the larger habitat organization. They are raising money to buy young students shoes - as in a lot of schools located in the more rural areas of Sri Lanka, particularly those affected by the tsunami - they don't have any. As an interesting twist to the standard fund raiser we told the primary children to bring an old pair of shoes as an entrance ticket.

The day before everyone in the service helped set up and we worked collaboratively dividing up all the jobs. I helped carry high jump mats from the auditorium and set up the auditorium in advance while others went out and bought drinks and popcorn for the night. The next day while the children gathered in the canteen we divided the tables into sections then had half the service waiting tables in one section while the other half poured juice and prepared bags of popcorn to go out.

Working with so many children at one time was unexpectedly challenging, a new challenge I hadn't attempted before. They were incredibly hyper! We were lucky the primary school teachers offered to stay afterwards and help us keep control of the situation. Watching them though i picked up on the methods they used: a distinctive double clap to attract all the children's attention, single file lines to keep them from wandering off, and having the group repeat instructions to make sure everyone heard and understood. They helped me develop new skills working with large group of really young children and by the end of the day i felt much more confident and able to deal with similar situations.

The movie night was a huge success in reference to our original goals, we collected 2 huge sacks full of shoes and a few weeks later drove to the main Lanka Habitat office to deliver them for distribution to the local school children. Many children in rural areas don't have access to basic goods such as a healthy varied diet, school supplies, and shoes. Working to help these areas of extreme poverty is an issue of global importance

Goals for the Year: Habitat for Humanity (Service)