Outbound Training

An Outbound Training session was organized for our batch by our PPD Miss and was done at the Naval and Maritime Academy in Trincomalee. Our 2nd Year Batch and our junior Batch had spent two days in there and I unfortunately missed to go to this. If I would have gone there, I would have experienced the following amazing things.

DAY 1

My Batch mates have reached the camp around 10 a.m and after welcoming them, they were offered a delicious Lunch. They were divided into Alpha, Bravo, Delta and Charlie which are group names. Then they were given leadership based group activities at the Beach.



First one was to go through a small rectangle made with ropes. But is they touch the rope then they are considered to have died and any one holding you at that time also dies. In those activities they had to have someone as a leader to guide the team to be effective. 

The next activity was to roll a small ball through set of pipes without dropping it to the ground. They also could not touch the next person's pipe before he/she(the person) got the ball. It seems as it was not as easy as it sounds. 

As the next activity, they had to fill water to a cylinder having holes everywhere and the catch was that they could only use body parts to cover the cylinder. Even filling it with water had to be done using hands and mouth. 

The next activity was to carry out some wooden logs which were given not using hands but using our tummies! Next task was to throw a volleyball over the net so that one person was there on the other side to catch it and four people had to throw the ball to him using a rug. 

The last activity was a tug of war. Everyone seems to have had so much fun during this activity.

After all the activities and freshening up in our hostels, we had a talent show and a campfire at the night. It was truly a beautiful night and we sang, danced and enjoyed a lot!

DAY 2

On the next day morning after having a delicious breakfast, they were taken to the forest for a compass march and taught on how to use a compass to find your way if you get lost in the forest. After quite a long walk in the forest, they finally came to the beach.

Next they went to see the Maritime and Naval Museum where some ruins and leftovers from the war was seen. All my Friends also got the opportunity to witness some of the Technologies that the Navy were using. 

Table Ethics Session

This session was about Table Ethics and was done at the Sri lanka Institute of Tourism and Hotel Management. Unfortunately I couldn't attend this session, but if I had attended, I would have learnt the following things.

As I asked my friends to share their experience, I learnt these things which I share below. The first half of the session was a presentation in which they were taught how to dress for occasions properly, how to behave, hand shake and table manners.

The next half of the session has been the practical things of what was taught in the first half. Learning by kinesthetics was implemented. My badge mates had learned a lot and enjoyed in this session. Very good Food was provided itsims and the day seemed to have gone very well. Below are some images of the fantastic session.

Latest Software Engineering Trends

This session was about the latest Software Engineering Trends in the industry currently and which are most likely to be a Trend for the upcoming years. It was conducted by the hSenid mobile company. I could not attend it unfortunately, but if I had attended it, I would have learnt a lot of some of which are below.

Artificial Intelligence is a key Area dominating right now. Lots of huge companies have started to move towards AI and is impacting the world on a great scale already. If you want to know the use of AI, let's say you know to drive. Two of your friends also know to drive. When you drive more and more, you get more wiser by the experiences you face daily right? So, let's say you gain a good experience on Road while driving. What is the likelihood of your friend who hasn't faced such a situation on road, using your experience to handle it better? (Let's say a person jumps in front of the vehicle suddenly and you hit the person slightly although no serious damages, your friend faces a similar situation now. Can he avoid it by learning from your experience?) The likelihood of you using your friends' experience in this case is very low. But using AI, there are self driving cars now. Let's say there are 100,000 cars in the network which self drive. So, using the experience of one car, the remaining 99,999 cars learn it and when it faces a similar situation, it uses previous experience for the betterment. This gives a huge edge for us in using this Technology. But there is a potential downside as well which only a few percentage of people are consciously aware of. If you have ever seen the movie, "I Robot" where the Robots start a revolution to dominate and defeat the human race, that thing is not something to neglect as of now. Elon Musk, the saviour of the World right now working hard towards sustainable future goals on all of his companies like spacex, solar city and Tesla is also conducting a research institute with the Goal of "Safe Artificial Intelligence" which simply means how we can use this technology in a safe manner without any effects as mentioned previously. All in all, this is a key Area for years to come.

IOT is the Internet of Things which is a network of embedded devices with electronics, sensors, actuators, software, etc. This is helping massively increase functionality of the things that we already have. The possibilities seem endless as of now.

Virtual Reality is another amazing Area which is already making an excellent change in the World. Nowadays even Doctors use this technology to do Treatment sessions where the patients with mental issues get healed by virtually being in an environment which could heal their mental problem.

Augmented Reality too is a connected Technology with VR. (Virtual Reality) This is said to be the next Trillion Dollar Industry for the upcoming years by Jay Samit, serial entrepreneur and Author of Best Selling Book Disrupt Yourself.

Art of Living - PPD

So, generally Life has been a mess for most people. It is simply because they have not taken the effort to take it to the right way or else they simply haven't got a chance to know that the direction of Life can be changed at your own will. So, here's your opportunity. You can either use it or loose it. The opportunity cost of loosing it might be a lot and I don't want you to think of what you lost after another 10 or 20 years. EVERY DAY MATTERS.

Who is Dr.Kolonne?

                               
Student of Ananda College Colombo.
Completed his Undergraduate Degree in University of Colombo
Completed Masters Degree in the University of Sri Jayawardanapura
Completed PHD in the International University of America
Started career in 1979 as an Instructor in Engineering Mathematics at the University of Peradeniya.
Consultant of NSB and National Enterprise Bank.
Worked at Kothalawala Defense University.
Worked at IBM corporation
Appointed as deputy director of the Directorate of Internal Intelligence.
Involved with the Defense Ministry

He gave a lot of motivation and inspiration for us which helped us a lot to gain confidence in life and hopefully in future as well.

It seems we can get a great life by simply improving relationships with people around us. It starts by speaking the right words. You know, you can make a person feel so good and also feel so bad just with words. At times we don't tend to hurt on purpose, but it happens. If we can take control over here, it would make a remarkable change in our Life.

Success is not just defined by money, it is simply happiness and the key to get there is by focusing on some basic stuff. It is very important to stay positive. When you draw attention to positive things you generally tend to attract a  lot of good things into your Life. For example, when you go to a restaurant, just say you were given a terrible food. Your responses can be of two types.

1. "Can you throw away this junk food and get me something else?"
2. "Can I get some good food? This does not seem good."

In the first case, you're just being negative and focusing on the bad side of it. The bad food can also be termed as "not good" as in the second case where you're focusing on getting good food. Obviously you know which response would get you the good food from the Hotel Server quickly.

One practice that you can follow is to be thankful for whatever you have. Just try making a list of things that you're thankful for, start your day from it and also go through it before you sleep. By doing this, we can break our typical habit of "focusing on what we do not have". When we be thankful for what we have, our eyes open up to the opportunities around us which we were not able to see so far. As a result, we tend to get more things or good in Life and it increases on and on and on. So, I'm on my path to lead a positive life and reach the happiness part which I would call as success. Now, it's your turn to decide what you want to do....

"Whether you think you can or not, in either cases you are correct"

Let me know in the comments below if you have any questions and you can also shoot me an email if you want to. Stay tuned to receive future updates as well.