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?”. I find this is particularly true when something, assumed to be vegetable, starts to taste animal. For lunch yesterday I ate something that could have been a knee ligamnet or a memeber of the onion family, though its layers concertina’d from its stalks like burst accordian rather than concentrically. It was the fish aftertaste that finally threw me into a spasm. Last week I’d ordered the fish and an hour later developed purple splodges all over my face and upper body. The accountant panicked and called our driver back from an errand to run me to hospital. I made them wait for an hour as it wasn’t getting any worse. They sat morbidly at the end of my desk till it went away, leaving a thumping headache. Finally, touch. Well, touch would be the one thing I’d get rid off … it’s mainly sweat. A coating of yours, osmotically mingling with everyone elses’ in the petri-culture grime of the city. It’s an exponential problem from the minute the shirt sticks. 

Me and Rob used to refer to this kind of experience as “the head of the train” - a term stolen from ‘Zen and the art of …’ and largely applied to snowboarding (Now I come to think of it Rob, it’s about time you penned the weighty philosophical guide - ”Zen and the art of snowboard maintenance”). You’re taking alot of new stuff in and your personal and societal filters are no defence. It’s all new. You learn alot about how you learn in these times and you’re always knackered.

So then comes the good bit. Looking back at those working assumptions and tittering at your own naivety. I met a fantastic old guy on a train when I was in Siberia. We had a few beers and then he went all serious when I asked him where he was headed. After a 10 minute game of charades and much pointing to his head, I truly believed he had brain cancer or was aware that he needed professional help and was handing himself in. We solemnly toasted his health and he burst out in hysterical laughter, as was his nature/condition. I ended up spending a week with him and his family and was fortunate enough to get to the bottom of the story - some Russian proverb about old age straightening out the wrinkles in your brain - how I spent the night drinking with a terminally ill schitzophrenic, I’ll never know. He thought it was hilarious of course. I am suggestible, this much I have gathered. I will stay away from hypnotists on this trip.

Anyway … digression. I’m sure the posts will get shorter as time goes on. The content will always be this pish I’m afraid.

Aye, my point … ahem, is that I’m starting to blend in a bit. That’s what I like. It feels a bit like going undercover. I was crushed into the aisle of a roaring, cranky old bus on the way here tonight. It’s just a little thing but being able to buy my ticket in Sinhala and even answer an off the cuff question from another passenger makes me feel undeservedly cool and generally a bit chuffed with myself. Less people seem to stare at me these days, you just seem to give off an aura - I am not a complete fool. And as a result I get to know what it feels like to be an ordinary Sri Lankan, standing on a noisey bus. And that reader, is what it’s all about. That’s why I’ve studied this painful language of little squiggly-snakes. That will be my CV.