Morgalogue

A few weeks ago, in an attempt to do something native and as a way of combating the kind of pot-belly prolonged curry abuse will give you, I joined ‘an aquatic club’. I’m not talking about a bunch of health fantasists with shaved chests meeting up to discuss the best swimming cap here – we’re talking old photographs on the walls, flunkys, wicker chairs, billiards, a bar, and arguing across tables full of food and glasses, the kind of men who thankfully haven’t squeezed into their speedos in years. Yes, it’s true folks … I am living the colonial life. And ironically, it’s about the most native thing one can do in Colombo.  (more…)

I’ve adjusted. I noticed it the other day when I was walking down the road. I actually saw the road for one, not just angry fumes and machinery. I saw trees, I saw a few familiar faces, a tuk-tuk beeped behind me and I moved instinctively, without stopping or turning. A cow crossed my path and I wasn’t surprised. I wait at my bus-stop and take in the morning sky - towers of cloud rising from the city as the sun scorches Colombo dry. A month ago I just saw dirt and chaos.

I’ve decided I like this bit the best. Sure, the big ‘ka-blaaam’ culture shock bit is exhilerating. Innate impressions are formed. Smell suddenly becomes as vivid a sense as hearing. Hearing becomes useless as you understand nothing, so volume, rythmn and any new, exotic sounds are all that register. Taste becomes a security mechanism. Unfathomable strangeness is cautiously analysed and yet the resulting internal response might be something nuts like ”oh my god, I’m eating a sheep’s ball … didn’t I read about that somewhere?”. (more…)

I feel a rant brewing …. It’s 6am, I’ve been awake since 4.30am. This is not an unusual scenario though I wish desperately that it was.

6am in Sri Lanka is the equivalent of our 8.30am. People are up and about and going to work, dogs are barking, cars and buses are beeping happily at eachother, exotic birds screech, fervent religious chanting is tannoyed across the neighbourhood, drumming wafts back in response and the old man across the courtyard at exactly 6.10, spends 15 minutes hacking up phlegm. Despite the fact that people generally start work at 8.30/9am, by 6am the entire country is in full swing. Utter Bastards. (more…)

Trip two was a ride with the village boys up to one of our micro-hydro sites in the rain forest, high in tea country. My colleague Dasanayke and our driver Premasiri only speak a few words of English between them, which is about the current extent of my Sinhalese, so departing at 4.30am, chat was a bit thin on the ground. By 9am we’d reached the foothill town of Ratnapura, which sounds like the recipe for the curry we ate for breakfast in a grotty wee café. Cleanliness here is a notch above India people tell me. But it’s not easy; in the heat and general grime, if you leave a crumb for more than a minute it becomes an ant-hill. Their solution is to wrap your grubby plate in cling-film and eat off that. 

There is a meeting of representatives of from every micro-hydro village in the region scheduled for 10am in a conference room above a noisy bus-station. We meet the round little chairman and then, after a cryptic exchange, my colleagues rush off to a meeting in the next town and I’m left there. All will apparently be explained later  (more…)

Well readers, I left you last time with the cheery little tale of an old man being decapitated by a rather slow, but obviously very heavy, train. You’ll be pleased to know things are looking up.

Work have dispatched me off on trips to little villages on just about every corner of the island. I’ve got to know the inside of our little ‘loaf of bread’ mini-van with its fairground suspension better than my gaff. I have discovered that Sri Lankans spend approximately 97% of their lives travelling - wedged together, hurtling through the jungle in the rain, on the wrong side of the road, wherever there’s room, to the sound of some fantastic spangley-asian-rhumba music. The first trip was up north to Anuradhapura, the ancient capital and then on to some remote villages on the LTTE (Les Tigres Tamil) border. My colleague Bandula, a big loveable guy with the temperament of Baloo the bear, had taken his wife and two little girls along for the ride, so I figured was safe. (more…)

Ahem … hello.

I feel like a bit of a twat joining the world of ’self-publishing’. I’ve only recently begun to get any sense out of my diary so I sincerely hope not to bore anyone to tears with my low-grade rambling, or loose any of the few friends I’m lucky enough to have.

Anyway, I’m not forcing you to read it, am I ? Go on … piss off !