Morgalogue

Hope you all have a great Christmas and if you’re too pissed to say hello before … a good New Year. I’ll not deny that I’m jealous. That precious moment you step into a busy, warm boozer, remove a soggy jacket and over the raucous noise are presented with an xmas pint from a beaming mate is what makes all the xmas stress worthwhile. Thankfully I’ve avoided all concept of xmas and haven’t taken my jacket out the rucksack … a poor trade-off none the less.

Looks like Lidka and I are going to go on a trip up north to see the Dambulla caves and an enormous brick that fell from space into the jungle called Sigriya rock. We’re going to my workmate’s ‘Alms giving’ ceremony tonight - It’s kind of a funeral wake for all your ancestors - dinner for 200 followed by a talk from a Buddhist monk and then chanting from 11pm till 7am. Like a sober night in Glastonbury … sure it’ll be funny for the first hour ! Expect a full report soon.

Take care all,

Morg x.

One of the most enjoyable points of my working day is opening my laptop in the morning and reading through some of the hundreds of raving, obscure junkmails sent to the Energy Forum account, from perverse Spamtrepreneurs from all over the world.

I’ve been pretty lucky over the years – with a fatal sounding e-mail address like nagromksi, it’s normally my mails that get quarantined rather than the other way round. So, maybe you’ve seen all these before but I haven’t so thought I’d give you my Spam Hall of Fame thus far. (more…)

When you’re leaving a comment, there is now a little check box asking you if you would like to recieve an e-mail when your comment is replied to. You can also easily unsubscribe yourself if the conversation degerates into total pish, and your secret identity is hidden from all but me, the all-powerful administrator.

I need some feedback as to whether it works (or whether anyone is in the least bit interested), so give it a go.

Hambantota and Kalmounai are small towns that, a bit like Lockerbie or Dunblane, become defined by tragedy. Despite there being nothing much to see, before or after ‘History’ left its mark, you can’t view them in their rightful ordinariness again. After all the tsunami dead and missing were added up, first hand reports compiled and carnage quantified, these 2 unlucky spots came out head and shoulders above everywhere else on the island. It’s a label I’m sure they’d rather forget, but when everything from the school to the graveyard has a placard erected, marketing the generosity of a different country or aid organisation, it doesn’t seem likely for some time yet. (more…)

We had to get going. We had a 5 hour drive East to get to Amapara and the military imposed curfew began in 6. We’d spend the night there and make the trip to Kalmounai in the morning. Unlike the LTTE border I’d visited in the North, this one was pretty live. Very shortly it looks like Sri Lanka will admit to the international community what everyone here has known for months – civil war is back on. The Tigers have declared and end to negotiation, termed the ceasefire agreement ‘defunct’ and tried to blow up the Defence Secretary (the President’s brother). It seems like a fairly clear message to me. (more…)

Well, it’s official. The Poles are invading Sri Lanka too. A one-woman wave of imigration is headed this way on the 13th of December - my lucky day. By complete co-incidence Lidka has found herself a swanky job at the UN in Colombo doing geogphical data mapping. Conveniently enough, that’s where I live, so we will be living together for a month before spending Feb travelling South India. My surrogate family are going to let her stay because I’m ‘like a son’ to them (haven’t I done well !?). Otherwise, it’s a highly unorthodox move - my workmates have been seeing their fiances for 4 years and haven’t yet spent the night with them. Can’t be worse than a ’Wrath o’ God’, B&B up north. Can it ?

I have never been so well behaved in my life.

If you’ve heard about todays bomb blast in Colombo, don’t worry, I’m fine. It happened about 15 minutes ago yet I’m sure by now every Sri Lankan knows about it. The target seems to have been the Defence Minister . My workmates are all crowded round the TV drinking tea, eating biscuits and tutting …. A lone cameraman is wondering around the site being continually waved off by harrassed looking soldiers. It’s a weird, unedited, live feed. A car is still on fire and the soldiers rush off to move adjecent vehicles before they explode. The shaky camera sneaks off to explore, finding the remains of the suicide bombers moped and a gruesome, twisted body flung on to the roof of a car. It’s unbloodied but for the lack of a head. You can see the cameraman trying out a few compositions before moving on. Nobody seems particulary rattled by this sort of image … it seems that everyone in this country has seen a severed head or worse. I’ve seen two now. Yech …