{"id":5192,"date":"2020-04-28T15:55:57","date_gmt":"2020-04-28T19:55:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cointelegraph.com\/magazine\/?p=5192"},"modified":"2020-04-28T15:57:08","modified_gmt":"2020-04-28T19:57:08","slug":"lockdown-sri-lanka-myetherwallet-founder","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cointelegraph.com\/magazine\/2020\/04\/28\/lockdown-sri-lanka-myetherwallet-founder","title":{"rendered":"Escape from LA: Why Lockdown in Sri Lanka Works for MyEtherWallet Founder"},"content":{"rendered":"
A<\/span>ny rational assessment of the 1996 Kurt Russell thriller Escape From L.A.<\/em> will conclude that the movie is truly awful. How ridiculous is a plot in which an authoritarian dubs himself President For Life and builds a giant wall to keep undesirables out of the United States, before injecting the hero with a potent strain of a ‘flu-like virus?<\/p>\n While the movie may not be quite as prophetic as Contagion<\/em>, it’s an amusingly mindless diversion from the stultifying lockdown lives many of us are living in the age of the novel coronavirus. Especially if we’ve already binge-watched the other King with terrible hair on Netflix.<\/p>\n Kosala Hemachandra escaped from Los Angeles in December, albeit unwittingly.<\/span><\/p>\n These days the 28-year-old co-founder of MyEtherWallet climbs thirty flights of stairs each day. Or to be precise, he climbs the same flight of stairs, thirty times. It’s about the only physical exercise he can get at his mother\u2019s house in the Sri Lankan capital of Colombo, which has been under a diligently-enforced 24 hour a day curfew.<\/span><\/p>\n “I do some push-ups and sit ups and then I go up and down the stairs as a workout,” he says, explaining he does three sets of ten ascents and descents each. \u201cIt’s really hard. The first time I did it I almost fainted,” he laughs. “My plan is, hopefully, I’m going up thirty floors.\u201d<\/span> “I don’t think humans are made to be self-isolating for this long,\u201d he says. \u201cI didn’t meet a new person face-to face for over a month. The only human being I’m interacting with is my mom.”<\/span><\/p>\n Fortunately he\u2019s been able to distract himself overseeing MEW’s operations \u2014 which amount to millions of dollars in transactions every day \u2014 from a laptop tethered to his phone\u2019s intermittent internet connection. Our video call is so bad that we\u2019re forced to abandon it after twenty minutes, reduced to voice-only calling. Like animals.<\/span><\/p>\n This was not, of course, the plan when he flew to Sri Lanka for a three-week visit in late December. But when news of the deaths and lockdowns the novel coronavirus was causing in Wuhuan began to emerge in January, he decided to delay his trip home. It didn\u2019t seem like a good time to travel. When the situation didn\u2019t improve he pushed it back even further.<\/span><\/p>\n “The more and more I waited the worse and worse it got, until eventually now I’m in a situation where it\u2019s like \u2026 I don’t know when I can go back.”\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n The curfew was imposed in mid-March, and the sudden suspension of international flights stranded 17,000 tourists. If you thought lockdown in the U.S., Australia or the UK was bad, it’s a literal walk in the park compared with Sri Lanka’s “complete shutdown\u201d.<\/span><\/p>\n “No one can leave the house,\u201d he says. \u201cYou get arrested if you leave. The airports are closed. There’s no postal service. I have some hardware wallets (to test) but I cannot get them here because there’s no postal service.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n Sri Lanka\u2019s measures are strict for good reason: there are only 500 intensive care beds in the country of 22 million people. Italy, with a death toll of over 25,000 people, has six times more ICU beds per capita. The Sri Lankan hospital system would be overwhelmed with just 3,000 patients in a month. <\/span> \u201cI think they\u2019re handling it pretty well,\u201d says Hemachandra. \u201cBased on all the information I’m getting I would say Sri Lanka so far seems to be safer than the U.S.”<\/span><\/p>\n But the imposition of a curfew with just a few days\u2019 notice was stressful: \u201cNobody knew how long this was going to be, and after the whole country was in lockdown we didn’t know how to get anything \u2014 not even groceries or medicine for my mom.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n Kalyani, 60, is a diabetic and he says “there was no way to get her prescription”.<\/span><\/p>\n Fortunately, the government relented early on for one very brief six hour window, and Hemachandra was able to stock up on food and medicine. Now there are delivery services for essentials.<\/span><\/p>\n Because he\u2019s been so busy with MEW, Hemachandra says he\u2019s been less affected by life in lockdown than his mother, who he describes as an extroverted school principal. \u201cIt was extremely difficult for her. I’m working at nighttime, I talk to people, it’s busy for me. I can code. I can do everything in front of a computer.” But, he adds, at least she can take comfort in knowing he\u2019s safe with her at home.<\/span><\/p>\n “Multiple times she kept saying she’s super glad that I’m here because if I was in the U.S. she would probably have a heart attack because of everything happening,\u201d he says.<\/span><\/p>\n On the other side of the world, Los Angeles was also moving towards social distancing. MEW is headquartered in downtown L.A., one of the relatively few projects in crypto to have a physical office where the 14 member team members work each day. Hemachandra explains that with so much money at stake, he wants to know and trust his staff in the real world. <\/span> “It\u2019s my duty to keep the morale going and make sure they’re ready to get their task,” he says. “We try to get on the phone and it doesn’t have to do with work at all. We just talk about everything that’s happening and then joke around … just to get some social interaction happening. “<\/span><\/p>\n His mom pops her head in sometimes just to be funny.\u00a0 “Whenever I have a call I’ll tell her \u2018Hey Mom I have a call at this time\u2019,\u201d he explains. \u201cWhen I’m working on stuff she’ll come into my room and just talk to me just to annoy me, but she’s totally doing it as a joke.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n
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\n<\/span>Hemachandra has resigned himself to being confined to the house\u2019s four rooms for the foreseeable future. The postage stamp-sized yard is the only place it\u2019s likely he\u2019ll see the sun for months.<\/span><\/p>\nThe \u201cthree-week\u201d trip home<\/span><\/h4>\n
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\n<\/span>So far it seems to be working: there have only been around 600 confirmed cases and seven deaths. As an island they have a real shot at eliminating the virus completely.<\/span><\/p>\nBad medicine, hard to get<\/span><\/h4>\n
Meanwhile, back in Los Angeles …<\/span><\/h4>\n
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\n<\/span>\u201cSometimes people do actually send their private keys because they don’t know what it is,\u201d he says. “If you just hire a random person from a random country you’d never met (online) and they work freelance, it’s going to be tough. What happens if that person just runs away with someone’s funds?”<\/span>
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\n<\/span>One benefit of working side-by-side is they\u2019ve built up a real sense of camaraderie. Stuck in his bedroom a world away, he realizes how much he misses them. \u201cI want to go to the office. I want to see my team, I want to see my friends. That’s my second family,\u201d he says.<\/span>
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\n<\/span>Hemachandra said he was \u201cworried\u201d about shifting the entire operation online. But everyone was already set up for remote work via Telegram and the transition went fairly smoothly. <\/span>
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\n<\/span>\u201cI was already doing these weekly calls, so we already kind of had a structure in place,” he says. \u201cMy fear that I cannot manage this remotely went away, and right now I’m fully confident.”<\/span>
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\n<\/span>Due to the time zone difference, Hemanchandra now works through until around 4 a.m local time and gets up around noon.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nEther wallet generator (for now)<\/span><\/h4>\n