St Petersburg to Moscow Train Journey 8

St Petersburg to Moscow Train 7

St Petersburg to Moscow Train 6

St Petersburg to Moscow Train Journey 5

උපුටා ගැනීමේදී කරුණාකර යොමුව ඇතුලත් කරන්න.

Story about a tyre swing

We have a small, green open space in front of our house. In a place like London, any open space is very valuable. This open space, run by the Enfield Council, has four small roads going round it, making it a square. Our houses are surrounding this little square. It has two grass mounds on both sides and a few trees, including a cherry tree. During lock-down, all the surrounding parks are closed, so I've noticed a few more people coming to this square instead. They take pictures of themselves, some with kids, presumably to post on social media. Some dance in front of the camera, maybe to post videos on Tik-tok. 

Some families come and put their little ones onto the tyre swing we have hanging on one of the trees. They enjoy it, taking photos and videos of themselves in the sun. Some teenagers hang around swinging the tyre and taking pictures as well.

Around a decade and half ago, someone stole the tyre, or perhaps some council jobsworth removed it. 

When I was 8 or 9 years old, I lived in a small village called Lunugala in Sri-Lanka. A friend and I sometimes used to push a tyre along a road called White Sand road. It went down steeply to a small stream and then back up the hill side again.  We enjoyed this activity immensely repeating it day by day. 

I told this story to my neighbour Brian. He was a retired traffic sergeant from the British transport police. He was always a die-hard Tory and I was, and still am, a half-hearted Labour supporter. A lot of friendly arguments ensued - he with his cigar and glass of whiskey, I with my glass of vodka. Whatever the heated discussion was, we always remained as friendly as can be. He was a good neighbour and a good friend to me, and in return I would offer whichever help I could give to him. We used to share German cakes my wife Ines baked as well as the occasional curry with him, and he once fixed our boiler.

Anyway, back to the tyre. After hearing my story, Brian suggested we hang another tyre on the branch. So he fixed the tyre to the tree, and many kids (including mine) swung along happily. 

Brian passed away a few years back, and we have new neighbours now. Someone stole the tyre again. Knowing Brian and I were the ones who hung up this tyre, another neighbour called Robert managed to replace the swing with his own tyre.

Robert also passed away couple of years back.

Their kind gestures are still out there, making big and little people happy just the same. Sometimes teenagers spend their time swinging happily from it and fooling around. People walking along the small pathway nearby also visit sometimes.

And sometimes, that's all that matters. Small insignificant gestures.

Ajith 

St Petersburg (Leningrad) to Moscow Train journey - 4

St Petersburg (Leningrad) to Moscow Train journey -3

St Petersburg (Leningrad) to Moscow Train journey - 2

St Petersburg (Leningrad) to Moscow Train journey - 1

Speed of this train is 250 kilometers per hour

Turtle Love Making

උපුටා ගැනීමේදී කරුණාකර යොමුව ඇතුලත් කරන්න.

Turtles

උපුටා ගැනීමේදී කරුණාකර යොමුව ඇතුලත් කරන්න.

Steam train lake district

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LUxhbQXJJ-E

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LUxhbQXJJ-E

For Italy

When I was studying in the Soviet Union during the '80s, foreign music (apart from English) was generally very popular. Among the European genre, many of us liked the Italian and Spanish songs; they were often played in discos and bars around Moscow. Record disks produced in the USSR were available to buy. Famous Italian singers included Adriano Celentano, Ricci, Poveri, and Toto Cutugno (a personal favourite).

We visited Italy in 2015; the people were very friendly and we have always loved Italian food. We ate many different pasta dishes, and enjoyed large thin pizzas in local Venetian restaurants. We tried foods like bottarga, lasagna, ribollita, carbonara, etc, and all were delicious. When the kids didn't know what they wanted to eat, pizza or spaghetti always worked.

In Italy, it is not only the food that makes it remarkable. Their rich history combined with the charming cities of Verona, Venice and Pisa; the famous Vatican; the story of Pinocchio and the beautiful ladies with long black hair is what will always bind us to Italy.

Right now, Italy is going through a difficult period alongside the rest of Europe. However, we can see that the number of deaths from Covid-19 are reducing and the curve of its graph is starting to bend downwards. I sincerely hope Italy has now passed its peak, and that this beautiful country will soon get back on its feet.

For me, Toto Cutugno's song "L'italiano" epitomises the Italian spirit.

Viva Italia 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TYtdYslLY9I

The Italian

Let me sing

with a guitar in my hand

Let me sing

I am Italian.

 

Good Morning Italy with your spaghetti

and your partisan for President

with my hand on the radio

and a canary on the window

 

Good Morning Italy with your artists

with your many American posters

with your songs of love

with kind hearts

with more women still less nuns (more women not becoming nuns?)

 

Good Morning Italy

Good Morning Mother Mary

with eyes full of sadness

Good Morning God

I know you know I am here.

 

Let me sing

with a guitar in hand

Let me sing

a song, slowly, slowly

Let me sing

because I am proud

I am an Italian

A genuine/real Italian.

 

Good Morning Italy who doesn't scare

with peppermint flavored toothpaste

with a pinstripe blue suit

with slow moving Sundays on TV

Good Morning Italy with extra-strong espresso coffee

the new sock from the drawer

with the clean flag (flag that switched sides/flag that was clean)

a 600 (type of car I can't think of)

 

Good Morning Italy

Good Morning Mother Mary

with eyes full of sadness

Good Morning God

I know you know I'm here.

 

Let me sing

with a guitar in my hand

Let me sing

a song, slowly, slowly

Let me sing

because I am proud

I am Italian

A genuine/real Italian.

https://lyricstranslate.com/en/l%E2%80%99italiano-italian.html-0

To the Unknown

In our little garden 

Cherry flowers 

blooming again,

small little white flowerlings

nature does not stop

nurturing the life around,

on any other day 

would fill my heart with joy

but today, on Good Friday

Six thousand and many hundreds 

of unknown souls 

left the land of living

without loved ones beside them

life and death

is all we have  

in a fleeting moment

called living

All I can do is

to dedicate the April flowers

of a small cherry tree

to the departed unknown You

--Ajith

Why Lock-down should work - Virus Bottleneck

In a situation like the Deuterium Bottleneck, if the availability of deuterium is too low then the necessary nuclear fusion does not happen. (See link below for BigBang Nucleosynthesis). This can be used as a comparison to the spread of a virus. (One can also use  as an example -The Plasmodium bottleneck: malaria parasite losses in the mosquito vector -Wiki)

Let's assume you live in a village with 1000 people. Take the average value of R0* as 2.2 (calculated from various WHO-sanctioned studies) and the number of infected people on Day 1 as just 1. Let's also assume that everyday 2.2 people will be infected for certain.If we calculate the total number of infected people on Day 2, it would amount to 1 + 2.2 = 3.2. This would result in the number of people infected per day increasing to 1005 by Day 09. Therefore, by this time, all 1000 people in your village are already infected. But incubation period is 2-14 and not everyone will show the symptoms.

Below graph will show if the original value multiply by 2, 4,8,32 etc and (lower blue) and if we add the previous days figure (orange)

Now, let's take a lower value of R0 = 1.5. Using this value, we can work out that all 1000 people will be infected by Day 18. 

If we apply the worldwide death rate (5.5%) to the village of 1000 people, 55 of them will have died from the virus. Its incubation period is 2-14 days. If we were to lock down the whole village on Day 5 and prevent any contact between people, the virus would reach its bottleneck. After initial infection, it will not be able to infect anyone again. Therefore, if we test everyone else and advise healthy people to stay away, the total number of deaths could shockingly be reduced to only 1 or 2.

However, these figures could vary for many reasons. For example, some people may hide their infected status or just not volunteer to be tested (as seen in some cases in Sri Lanka). In that case, the virus will keep spreading, but will be significantly mitigated by the lock-down.

However, virus will stop spreading once when movement of people restricted and when the most serious cases would not recover. Those who will recover will have the immunity from the Covid-19.

We can apply this model to a city with 100000 people. With complete lock-down only 1-2 people will die for every 1000.  You will have 100-200 deaths and if it is one million you will have 1000-2000 deaths.  But to get that result we assume a city should be totally lock down for at least 2 cycles of incubation period (28 days) banning all movement.

Countries adopting this type of model successfully are China, South Korea and Germany. In Sri Lanka's case there are lot of patients still unaccounted for which hinder the effect of lock-down.

*basic reproduction number (see link below)

Formula used - ((1-R0ⁿ)/(1-R0)) , n is the day 

(Special help - Shakyra Dharma)

BBN - Reactions Explained

https://sph.umich.edu/pursuit/2020posts/how-scientists-quantify-outbreaks.html

Recurrent bottlenecks in the malaria life cycle obscure signals of positive selection