Ceylon Police and Baila.

Olinton Mervyn Bastiansz aka Wally Bastiansz is the god father of Sinhala Baila, who brought Kaffrigna to the fore. Baptised as "'Ogustus Martheneus Bastiansz'", named after his grand father Wilhelmus Martheneus, his close family and friends called him 'Olie' or 'Olinton'. Once he embarked on his musical career whilst serving in the Traffic Division of the Ceylon Police, he presented himself with the stage name 'Wally Bastiansz'.

As a serving police officer, Wally played in the police band during the 1940s. It is said that he had been granted special permission to attend musical events by then prime minister Sir John Kotelawala. He was instrumental in providing road traffic presentations conducted by the traffic police at all major cities across the country.

Wally also played Banjo, Violin and the Spanish Guitar. His music style was later followed by many other successful Baila singers such as Anton Jones, M. S. Fernando, Desmond De Silva, Saman De Silva. 

His other popular songs include, Mathakai Amme, Nurse Nona, Hai Hooi Babi Archchi,Le Kiri Karala and Ratak Watinawa. It is a hidden fact that Nurse Nona was about his own sister Felicia Florence Jayasekera (née Bastianz, died 1996) who was a nurse in the 1940s.

Wally bade last farewell to his fans and the music world by leaving a lasting legacy on Chorus Baila, on the 16th January 1985.

The song is about his favourite instrument Viola. In the song Wally describes how little babies are consoled in their cradles to the sweet sound of the viola. He further goes on to say that he has no use of the sound of the flute at his death bed, except for the sweet sound of the Viola, and invites Viola to meet in heaven.
Wally's songs are about simple things in everyday life. Irene Josephine is a testimony to that.

Irene Josephine is a timeless classic by Wally that is echoed in all music circuits today in Sri Lanka even after 50+ years. Music was directed by Aelian Soysa and the violin solo introduction by M.K. Rocksamy.

Source: Google & Wikipedia

Brings back good old memories of the 60s when we were teenagers. You can listen to old favourites on Youtube.

http://youtu.be/7ioWILuytV4

Here is a collection of baila from Youtube

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eWYL6SO2JAo

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l5L1uum1cAs

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LsFcjArYo4M&list=RDMVfO1UT9ccE&index=2

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AO4YNKBa2Ic

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XL48-jDB2mc&index=4&list=RDMVfO1UT9ccE

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4UQsyot7C5I&list=RD4UQsyot7C5I#t=22

British greeting cards.

Getting old has never been so funny! Gloriously mischievous and oh-so-British: The best of the unique humour of Cath Tate, creator of our funniest greetings cards

Wonderfully witty and mischievous, these are just some of the thousands of greeting cards created by British artist Cath Tate in a 30-year career.

Read the full story:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-2695158/Getting-old-never-funny.html

17 July 2014

The faces of Cononialism.

email from JKS Weerasekera.

Cut Alzheimer's risk by walking

It only takes 20 minutes, 3 times a week, say Cambridge scientists

Scientists found a third of all cases of Alzheimer's are down to lifestyle factors such as smoking and high blood pressure, but lack of exercise had the biggest impact.

Read the full story:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2690880/Cut-Alzheimer-s-risk-walking-It-takes-20-minutes-3-times-week-say-Cambridge-scientists.html

14 July 2014

Polonnaruwa Hospital, Sri Lanka.

Polonnaruwa has developed and so has the orthopaedic sector

The following is the fresh report  by me made in 2013. 
The picture shows orthopaedic surgeons, nurses and all staff in the brand
new conference hall of Polonnaruwa Hosptial


The Sri Lanka Orthopaedic Assossiation on the 18th of May 2013 conducted a
workshop 
 at the newly built two storeyed hospital building within  a   large  100 ft
x 100 ft auditorium.

Our workshop was  intentioned to upgrade  orth. work. 

 150 nurses attended  showing  sustained interest in the lectures and
plaster casting hands-on work over 6 hours!


In  recent years a permanently stationed  orthopaedic surgeon functions with
five assistant doctors. 
 In comparison, in 1984 as I came to the mighty General Hospital Colombo I
had just one  House Officer. 

The  surgeon has enough and more operating time and theatre facilities using
the Image Intensifier for guided surgery. 
Soon they will  have one more  orth. Surgeon ( yet  training in Colombo.)

Showing  similar expansion elsewhere in the country, Sri Lanka now has over
40 govt.orth. Surgeons  across  all areas in the country-up from a bleak 10
only 15 years ago.

The health budget is raised this year to Rs 120 billion, possibly at 3% of
the GNP- I am guessing. It was 2% or less in the previous years.

Health Minister Maithripala Sirisena himself is an efficient low profile
organizer who has  received rare official recognition abroad.
  According to locals even his opponents are well disposed towards him.

Looking back 10 years, Polonnaruwa  is a far cry from what it was on my
visit then to the hospital. With many  war injured around there soon after
that  Ceasefire.   

As an aside on other Polonnaruwa developments, the all island winner Miss
Sri Lanka was from Polonnaruwa and I was there fitting artificial limbs the
day she was felicitated at an all night musical show.

The main roads are superb with a busy bus service to all parts of the
country even in the nights.

A vexed issue is the occurrence of far too many with chronic renal disease
(CKD) , affecting mostly farmers over 40 yrs. Mostly males. 
The  physician who has been working there  4 years  said that this incidence
and pattern of renal disease did not prevail in Chilaw where he worked for 3
years, nor Kandy.

The cause is of CKD is obscure yet, bio-concentration of pesticides in plant
produce being a possible cause among many. 
Misuse of agrochemicals may come high up as a factor. 

Mercury and Cadmium are less likely   than highlighted in the daily media. 
Drinka many a  pinta water can do good, do no harm and also reduce  problems
like renal ones.

Of course, travelling comfortably in a tourist bus, we visited the new ECHO
Park wild life sanctuary hair on end seeing  30 roaming elephants,
And the Minneriya Park with  so many birds this time of year,
 
Finally we  happily plopped  at  a rocky jungle  waterfall for a last  bath
followed by string hopper lunch,  3 Km off the beaten  track.
A good time! 
Susiri W

Doctors committing suicide.

Interesting article for your reading... 

Best

Dujeepa

When doctors commit suicide, it’s often hushed up. Washington Post article 

An obstetrician is found dead in his bathtub; gunshot wound to the head. An anesthesiologist dies of an overdose in a hospital closet. A family doctor is hit by a train. An internist at a medical conference jumps from his hotel balcony to his death. All true stories.

What are patients to do?

When they call for appointments, patients are told they can’t see their doctor. Ever. The standard line: “We are sorry, but your doctor died suddenly.”

In most towns, news spreads fast no matter how veiled the euphemisms.

About 400 doctors commit suicide each year, according to studies, though researchers have suggested that is probably an underestimation. Given that a typical doctor has about 2,300 patients, under

hi

s or her care, that means more than a million Americans will lose a physician to suicide this year.

So what’s the proper response if your doctor died by suicide? Would you deliver flowers to the clinic? Send a card to surviving family? What’s the proper etiquette for dealing with this issue?

Physician suicide is rarely mentioned — even at the memorial service. We cry and go home, and the suicides continue.

I’ve been a doctor for 20 years. At 46, I’ve never lost a patient to suicide. But I’ve lost friends, colleagues, lovers — all male physicians. Four hundred physicians per year are lost to suicide, according to a Medscape report,which pointed out that “perhaps in part because of their greater knowledge of and better access to lethal means, physicians have a far higher suicide completion rate than the general public.”

What can we do? To start, let’s break the taboos that have kept this topic hidden.

Physician suicide is a triple taboo. Americans fear death. And suicide. Your doctor’s committing suicide? Even worse. The people trained to help us are dying by their own hands. Unfortunately, nobody is accurately tracking data or really analyzing why doctors may be depressed enough to kill themselves.

I’m a family physician born into a family of physicians. I was practically raised in a morgue, peeking in on autopsies alongside Dad, a hospital pathologist. I don’t fear death, and I’m comfortable discussing the issue of suicide. In fact, I spent six weeks as a suicidal physician myself. Like many doctors, at one point I felt trapped in an assembly-line clinic, forced to rush through 45 patients a day, which led to my own despair and suicidal thoughts. Then I opened my own clinic, designed by my patients. I’ve never been happier.

Despite my own trouble, I was clueless about the issue of physician suicides until one beautiful fall day in Eugene, Ore., when a local pediatrician shot himself in the head. He was our town’s third physician suicide in just under a year and a half. At his memorial, people kept asking why. Then it hit me: Two men I dated in med school are dead. Both died by “accidental overdose.” Doctors don’t accidentally overdose. We dose drugs for a living.

Why are so many healers harming themselves?

During a recent conference, I asked a roomful of physicians two questions: “How many doctors have lost a colleague to suicide?” All hands shot up. “How many have considered suicide?” Except for one woman, all hands remained up, including mine. We take an oath to preserve life at all costs while sometimes secretly plotting our own deaths. Why?

In a TEDx talk I gave to help break the silence on physician suicide, I pointed out why so many doctors and medical students are burning out: We see far too much pain; to ask for help is considered a weakness; to visit a psychiatrist can be professional suicide, meaning that we risk loss of license and hospital privileges, not to mention wariness from patients if our emotional distress becomes known.

Internist Daniela Drake recently addressed this topic in her article-gone-viral “How being a doctor became the most miserable profession.” She identified underfunded government mandates, bullying by employers and the endless insurance hoops we have to jump through as a few of the reasons. “Simply put, being a [primary-care] doctor has become a miserable and humiliating undertaking,” she wrote. “It’s hard for anyone outside the profession to understand just how rotten the job has become.”

In a rebuttal article, “Sorry, being a doctor is still a great gig,” pediatrician Aaron Carroll disputed the misery claim: Doctors are well respected, well remunerated, he writes, and they complain far more than they should. He predicts people will soon ignore doctors’ “cries of wolf.” But to cry wolf is to complain about something when nothing is wrong. Yet studies have found that doctors suffer from depression, post-traumatic stress disorder and thehighest suicide rate of any profession.

So what should we do?

Etiquette rule No. 1: Never ignore doctors’ cries for help.

Bob Dohery, a senior vice president of the American College of Physicians,downplayed physician misery in a blog post on the ACP Web site this spring. His suggestion was classic: When doctors complain, quickly shift conversations from misery to money: their astronomical salaries. But when a doctor is distressed, how is an income graph by specialty helpful?

I run an informal physician suicide hotline. Never once have I reminded doctors of their salary potential while they’re crying. Think doctors are crybabies? Read some of their stories before dismissing doctors as well-paid whiners.

Physician suicide etiquette rule No. 2: Avoid blaming and shaming.

After losing so many colleagues in my town, I sought professional advice from Candice Barr, the chief executive of our county’s medical society. Here is her take:

“The usual response is to create a committee, research the issue, gather best practices, decide to have a conference, wordsmith the title of the conference, spend a lot of money on a site, food, honorariums, fly in experts, and have ‘a conference.’ When nobody registers for the conference, beg, cajole and even mandate that they attend. Some people attend and hear statistics about how pervasive the ‘problem’ is and how physicians need to have more balance in their lives and take better care of themselves. Everybody calls it good, goes home, and the suicides continue. Or, the people who say they care about physicians do something else.”

So what works?

Our Lane County Medical Society established a physician wellness programwith free 24/7 access to psychologists skilled in physician mental health. Since April 2012, physicians have been able to access services without fear of breach of privacy, loss of privileges or notification of licensing and credentialing bureaus. With 131 physician calls and no suicides in nearly two years, Barr says, the “program is working.” Even doctors from outside the town are coming for support.

It’s important to “do something meaningful, anything, keep people talking about it,” Barr says. “The worst thing to do is nothing and go on to the next patient.”

What’s most important is for depressed doctors and those thinking about suicide to know they are not alone. Doctors need permission to cry, to open up, to be emotional. There is a way out of the pain. And it’s not death.

Which brings me to physician suicide etiquette rule No. 3: Compassion and empathy work wonders. More than once, a doctor has disclosed that a kind gesture by a patient has made life worth living again. So give your doctor a card, a flower, a hug. The life you save may one day save you.

Wible is an author and board-certified family physician in Eugene, Ore.

Jayamangala Gatha being sung at a wedding in Avissawellla, Sri Lanka.

Please click on the web-link below:-

http://youtu.be/Qbf5XOk4rS4