So can I take my dog or not?

Sometimes we just love to put in as many words together as possible don't we? - even if it makes the message completely incomprehensible.

Couldn't they have just said "No dogs allowed."?

Beautifying Colombo

There is a massive effort put on cleaning up and beautifying Colombo city and it’s suburbs. I think it is great. Certain areas have transformed and looks pretty slick now. People have also taken to it like ducks to water and have come out in droves to enjoy newly built parks, waterfronts and walkways. We see more people engaging in morning and evening walks and generally having a good time.

This is all great. But there is room for improvement. Firstly, I cringe at wasted effort and money I see being put into the area near parliament roundabout/waters edge. For some reason the landscape designer involved can’t seem to make up his/her mind – the area is being built/cleared up/rebuilt at least five times in the last 12 months. I hope this is an isolated case. Anyway, they really should plan properly before they bring in the builders.

Lack of maintenance?

Secondly, maintenance. I worry about this. I really do. Already I have seen broken down structures, signboards and marking that are left un-replaced. Neatly manicured lawns and grass fields left unattended growing weeds and going bald in patches. I wish the authorities would consider maintenance not just as an afterthought but right at the time of initial planning.

However, full points to the authorities for trying and succeeding to a great extent in making Colombo more livable. I hope this trend will continue and will become sustainable too.

Crates or Sacks?

If you are living in Sri Lanka, you would definitely be aware of the major commotion related to the change in laws for transporting vegetables. Most seem to think the intention behind enforcing such a law is good, but the process of planning and implementing is poor.

On one side, the farming community (including the middle-man, or should I say middle-person?) are trying to save every cent to maximize profit. On the other side we seem to have a minister who is not willing to compromise having being frustrated by delays in enforcing the law and also smarting from a slightly bruised ego.

I quite like the article below (if you ignore the political brownie points it seems to be trying to score). Looks like this Harsha dude knows what he is talking about (at least in this instance).

http://www.lbo.lk/fullstory.php?nid=1755694470

So what is your take on this? A country like India seems to be wasting as much as 40% of veggies during transportation and storage. I believe it is much less here in Sri Lanka. Nevertheless, will crates save a considerable amount of wastage as indicated by the minister? Or is he just trying to get rid of some plastic items probably offloaded to us by our big brother China? Do the farmers have solid reasons to oppose such a law? Or are they just resisting change just for the sake of it?

Let's have your say friends....

Colombo Election

I can almost hear all the Sri Lankans out there sighing with disgust at the mention of the word “election”. But why don’t we like them? Is it because they are more frequent in Sri Lanka than the chances of garbage collecting man turning up? Or perhaps there are more candidates than the number of bees in a bee-hive? Or even maybe because none of the candidates come up with a proper election manifesto? Not to forget the likelihood of selected candidate swapping sides soon after the result,… I am sure you get my point here.

But to me, this election is slightly different. At least I see it in a different perspective - mainly because I got some insights into some of the candidates. It made it a wee bit interesting.

• For one thing, most candidates seem to be online these days. They promote their campaigns on facebook, twitter and through their own websites and blogs. Perhaps the election laws prohibiting the usual “election poster” has resulted in this exodus to the internet.
• Banning the election poster is one thing, but enforcing it is another. Although the posters are being taken down by police, more new ones get pasted at the same places by the next morning. I reckon what you need is the ability to financially penalize or even disqualify a candidate instead of merely tearing down their poster.
• Then there are these crafty ways to get around the advertising ban. Y’see, apparently the ban is on advertising “Vote for this number”. So some candidates advertise websites that include their number and the “cross” (sign for voting). There are also candidates who organize events (like musical shows) on the day that match their number (ie. someone with number 20 would organize a musical show on the 20th of the month). And advertise in bold letter the organizer’s name (which happens to be the candidate) and the date of the event (which is their number). Too bad if your number is greater than 31.
• Just got to know about a certain candidate who had come out with a poster indicating that he was rubbing shoulders with the president at a certain prestigious international event. But the truth of the matter seems to be that he was neither with the president nor at this event – it was a hoax with a bit of photoshop involved.
• Out of all the people, the “mudalali” at my local grocery shop is also a candidate this time. It takes him a considerable amount of time to figure out the change when I purchase anything from that shop. So he is not the brightest I have met. But then again, level of intellect or qualifications doesn’t seem to be a prerequisite for this job.

Few days back the postman delivered my voting documents together with a large sheet of paper. The paper listed out all the candidates. There were 11 groups and 26 candidates in every group. Making it 286 candidates in total. Last time I checked, population of Colombo city was less than 650,000. That is one candidate for every 2,200. To put it in perspective, my school (which had 5,000 students) would have produced 2 election candidates.

All this may be interesting but doesn’t encourage me to get off the sofa and go to the polling booth. After all there will be two interesting world cup (rugby) matches on the 8th.

Southern Highway – would you dare?

Now that the opening up of southern highway is just around the corner, a few of us at work have been contemplating when it would be “safe” to get on it. The estimates varied. Here is a summary.

At least after the first 6 months : Reason being that the moment it opens up, there will be a flood of morons who would try to taste what it would be like to legally drive at 100kmph – assuming that it would be very different to doing the same illegally as they have done since getting behind a vehicle for the first time. The only silver lining here is that it will probably eliminate some of these brain-cell-challenged-maniacs – probably a few offspring of some ministers together with their expensive duty-free rides. I just hope they won’t take a few innocent folks with them when they go.

In the first 6 months and then from 18 months onwards : Essentially stay away from the road 12 months after the first 6 months. The argument here is that during the first 6 months, sanity will prevail and people will hopefully take it slow – what this being a new thing and all. After that they will slowly gain confidence and try to push the limits. “If 100kmph is legal, what’s the fun in driving at that?”. This will last for about 12 months until authorities wake up and start putting cops behind trees with speed guns, sniper guns and bribe collecting tins.

Never, infact take the Galle road : Two reasons for this. First is that our drivers don’t use their indicate lights for a toss and the break-lights don’t work on most vehicles that were made two years or earlier – and as my friend rightfully pointed out, at 100kmph both those mistakes can often be fatal. The second reason being that most morons out there would have started using the new highway. Galle road will become relatively moron-free.

Personally, I will adopt a wait-and-see policy on this.

Conspiracy Theory

If you are the sort who tends to look for a conspiracy in everything, then you’d love to live in Sri Lanka these days. One recent incident in particular jumps up like a cat in heat. The ICC word cup!

Team Selection : Sana and Vaas were included in the preliminary squad. Now my 10 year old girl could have told you how stupid that was – and she does not even follow cricket! Why have them included? Well I reckon they wanted everyone to start taking about cricket – y’know, any publicity is good publicity right?

Venues : They created a whole new ground in Hamba just for the world cup instead of spending 0.0001 of that money on getting floodlights fitted in to SSC. There are two theories here. One is that MR wanted to show off – reminds me of Asterix and Cleopatra story where Cleopatra bets good ol’ Julius that she can build a great palace in 3 months… or something like that. Secondly, some big-wig(s) would have thought “What a great opportunity to get some decent commission?”. I don’t even want to discuss “Pallekele”.

Tickets Fiasco : I tried to find out how I can secure some tickets since early January. I was given a different date to call every time I called the cricket board. After three unsuccessful attempts I gave up. My previous unsavory encounter with the cricket board didn’t help me to summon up my courage to try one more time. I later heard that out of the 30,000 capacity at Premedasa stadium, only 8,000 tickets are available for sale to the general public. WTF? My theory is that MR, Ministers and Cricket Board Officials must have friends, relatives and debtors who collectively make up the rest of the 22,000.

Banned Items : I agree that one should not bring knives and even glass bottles to a cricket ground, but what about the humble Beer and Papare? Who on their right mind would spend one full day outdoor in blistering heat and 90% humidity without cold beer available like running water? And Papare? When did Sri Lanka ever play a single cricket match without the unmistakable Papare music in the background? I remember carrying a banner which in bold letters announced “Warne is a Wimp!” when we played against Aussies at the Premadasa in 1996 – how can you deprive a teenager that privilege? The theory? They wanted to create an outrage so huge that subsequently when they lift the ban, the fellow who lifted the ban can become a household name instantly. That works out well especially when there is yet another election around the corner.

Jeez, my head is spinning just by thinking about other possibilities. Time to have a cold beer and enjoy the re-runs of Lions crushing hapless Canada. Oh how I wish I had a Papare CD. Cheers!

Sri Lankan specials!

This sign-board was seen by the side of the road on the way to Trincomalee. It translates to "Freshwater fish (from the lakes) with warm rice". Mouth-watering stuff.

Bumper-stickers

Have you seen any good bumper-stickers lately? Here are a few that caught my eye.




This was inspired by a post by Cerno and the subsequent comment thread.

Information overload

I was driving home from work after a particularly hectic Monday when my mind started wondering; not very healthy especially when you are supposed to concentrate on your driving when all around you there is this complete chaos that is known as Colombo Traffic. Incidentally, driving to and back from work seems to be the only time I get to relax and set my mind free these day. You'll know what I am talking about if you too had a 16 month toddler darting around the house and trying to eat out of the garbage can the moment you take your eyes off her.

Anyway,...

My mind was wondering... What's on Telly tonight? When will I ever get hold of HG2G? What happened to that Japanese Restaurant near Koswatte Junction? Which political party is Ranil in now? When will be the next T20 match that Sri Lanka plays in?...

While mulling over all those unanswered questions, I just happened to notice the sheer number of billboards that are on either side of the road. My God, it seems like just about every property had put up signs that seem to scream out for attention. Suddenly I found myself playing the spot-the-building-without-a-signboard game. And I was losing hopelessly. Can just about anyone put up a billboard? Don't they need approval from the local council or something? Something is seriously wrong somewhere. My relaxing drive home was not so relaxing anymore. I needed a break.

Just about then I realized my wallet had a mere 150 rupees of cash left in it. Few years back it would have bought me a good 2 litres of quality ice cream, but these days I'd be lucky to get a few "wadais" in exchange for that cash. So I decided to stop at the ATM that was 200 meters further up the road. Usually I hate to stop before I get to my destination, but this time I was glad to take a break from the unsolicited information overload I was getting from all those screaming billboards.
Ah, there is the ATM - and no queue either. I got down from the car and went straight into the enclosure. I took one look at the stickers pasted on the face of the ATM and exhaled with a long sigh.

For the life of me, I cannot understand why anyone would want to paste two stickers, virtually identical information on both, next to each other. Can you?

What's hot and what's not!

I’ll be the first to admit that I am not into fashion. For instance, among other garments, I have 3 light blue shirts and three black trousers in my wardrobe - often cause for confusion in situations I ask my wife “can you iron my light-blue shirt for tomorrow dear?”. I am someone who likes to stick with what I know and rarely experiment or try out the “in-thing”. But I believe that even I know a fashion-disaster when I see one. Now you may or may not agree with me, but I would like to put it out there and see what others think. So here is a list of what I think are fashion “no-nos” just like what Hulk-Hogan is to WWF.

Men
Brown shoes or belt with black or blue dress pants
White shoes with dark pants (unless you are umpiring a day-night cricket match)
White socks with dark pants (unless your name happens to be Michael Jackson – even then it is not fashionable anymore)
T-shirt with dress pants
Ear-studs
White pants or white dress shoes (unless you are a pimp)
Wireless mobile headsets worn in public – especially when not on a call (So far I haven’t seen women indulging in this)
Loosened neckties (I see this often at after-office gatherings - why not remove it altogether?)

Women
Too much makeup
Ridiculously high heels
Tiger/leopard skin look-alike designs on garments
Straitened hair (still passable but might no longer be by the time I push the “post” button)

Uni-sex
Shades worn on the forehead
Shades worn indoors (unless you have a medical condition)

I am certain I have missed out some. So have a go at it….

Elephants, Trishaws and the Tropics

What I love about this part of the world is that you witness something different every time you step on to the road. It is never boring. Of course you have some people who always complain about the traffic situation, indiscipline on the road and such. I too occasionally have been guilty of doing it. But those come as part and parcel of living in this part of the world.

Take yesterday morning for instance; I was driving to work as usual when I happened to see a huge elephant - a magnificent tusker at that - calmly strolling down the main road. A couple of keepers (AKA mahouts) were walking along with the huge mammal. Trishaw drivers were weaving around them like it was just another 'private bus' cruising slowly looking to pickup that extra passenger. I noticed a few school children pointing at the animal and talking to each other in a rather excited manner. And of course a couple of stray dogs barking at the top of their voices protesting this gross violation of their territory.

I pulled to the side briefly and captured the moment on my phone cam. The entourage passed me by on the other side of the road within the next few seconds. I put my car in gear and headed back into a light traffic. In the background something was being discussed about the IPL on my favorite morning show over the car radio.

Yes, a typical Monday morning on Colombo roads.

Entrepreneurship... Or is it?

Much has been written about this over the years in Sri Lanka. So called ‘International’ schools that are popping up faster than you could say 'sahodaraya' at a JVP rally. Are there any standards? Can any Tom, Dick or Perera open up a tuition class and call it an International school? Surely not? You would think so wouldn’t you?

Well, the truth is they can. And that is exactly what they do. We Sri Lankans are experts in copying. If they guy next door opens a little grocery store, it is guaranteed that another moron will do the same a few houses down the street very soon.

Last Wednesday morning I was driving along the narrow back lane off Kotta road (in Borella) – I think it was called Gothami Road. By the time I travelled from the Kotta road turn-off to the P.Sara stadium (maybe a maximum of 300 meters in distance), I came across 4 fishmongers (y’know the guys who sell fish from a box on the back of their bicycles?) – do they ever have enough sales to go around? I wonder…

Why is this so?

When I was young...

Back in the day, I used to say to myself 'Here we go again' whenever my father started a sentence with 'When I was young...'. Having said that, I'm going to do just that.

In my younger days, fireworks were really fun. And above all, dependable. When we pulled out a sky-rocket from its bundle, we knew it was going to threaten low-flying aircrafts. They had strong tails and took off as straight as an arrow high into the night sky. And anything that was supposed to go 'Bang', did. The sound would have caused the neighbors to call the ol' bomb squad if we were to light one up during off-season. The 'Chakra' burnt and rotated in all it's glory for at least two minutes.

I am quite disappointed with the sorry state of the fireworks on sale these days. Every time I light one up, I feel like a participant who is just about the spin the wheel-of-fortune. It is quite common to find sky-rockets that won't fly or out of the ones that do, they wouldn't explode with a thunderous bang that would give your grandma a heart attack. The 'Charkras' and 'Nilas' often won't last longer than it would take you to say "what next".

But it still pleases me to see the sparkles in my kids eyes every time I light fireworks. I just hope they will somehow become better as time passes by.

Do you Chrome?

I have been hooked on this latest browser by Google. As usual they have come up with a catchy name – Chrome. I’ve see so many wonderful things written about it on the internet. They have covered it’s latest features so comprehensively and I don’t intend to describe them here.

But the nice thing about it is that once in a while I discover another not-quite-obvious nevertheless useful functionality. It is like finding pieces of cashew in your wattalappam – makes the experience that much richer.

For example, You can press Control-F and bring up a search box to search for contents on the current webpage you are on – ok, so no big deal; but then as you type your search text on that search box, the browser dynamically highlights matching words on the current webpage – good, but give me more you say? Now look at your scroll bar on the right hand side of your browser… see those orange colour small horizontal lines? They show you matches on the other areas of the webpage you cannot currently see on your browser – neat eh?

I’ll give you another. Have you noticed a small animation (a spinning circle) next to the text “New Tab” when you type in a URL and press ‘Enter’? Well, that gives you an indication that the page is being displayed… if you look at it closely, you will find that initially it will start spinning on an anti-clockwise direction, and the moment it finds the website and starts to download contents, it starts spinning on a clockwise direction. Talk about attention to detail!

I hardly use any other browser now. Cheers Google!

Censorship gone mad.

National TV channels - wonderful entities, aren’t they? For some time now they have been censoring out certain scenes. Nudity, I can understand – but cigarette smoking and liquor consumption? Isn’t that going a wee bit too far? Just the other day they were showing an old black-and-white movie starring Paul Newman (I forget the title of the movie). Can’t even remember how I ended up deciding to watch it. Come to think of it, I do seem to have a very short memory these days. At least I remembered that I have been having memory lapses – thank God for that.

Moving along...

Let’s face it – those days smoking cigarettes was in fashion. They smoked like chimneys and drank like fish. The fellow in charge of censorship on that TV channel that day had had a field-day! After the first 20 minutes I just couldn’t take it anymore – out of the first 20 minutes I would have seen maybe about 5 minutes of the movie… the screen was “squared-out” the rest of the time. Of course I tried that watch-thru-the-t-shirt trick, but alas! No joy!

I just hope the same rule will not find its way to the PayTV channels – our last resort.

Divine intervention required - Parking available.

I was able to snap this on Castle Street, Colombo recently. Funny eh?

It got me thinking. As Joan Osborne puts it, what if God was one of us? Some might cry out “blasphemy!” even at the thought of God being compared to mere mortals. I mean no disrespect by this. But think about it; what if????

For one thing, I’d certainly like to know what he (by he, I mean he or she) drives. Would God drive a fancy fast car, a classic limousine-type, a common man’s Japanese car or maybe an environment-friendly hybrid? I’d bet on a hybrid... y’know him inventing the world an all... I’m sure he’d like to keep it clean.

Whatever it is, he will have no problem finding a parking space … at least on Castle Street.

Google SPAM?

I heard so much about "Google Ads" thought I'd check it out. I registered myself using my Gmail account (being the obvious thing to do since they are both in the Google arena) a few days ago. I was informed that I would get a confirmation email within several days.

Several days came and went but no response... I thought maybe my humble blog just wasn't worthy of receiving the honor of hosting Google Ads and was quite seriously worried about losing out on millions of dollars of potential income through them. Quite accidentally I noticed there was an interesting email on my default Gmail SPAM folder.

Surely Gmail cannot be so pedantic as to prevent it's own Google Ads email (well, they are in the same Google family after all) from reaching my inbox?

Sorry Machan

They say every individual is different and cannot (or should not) be stereotyped. But I disagree and think as Sri Lankans, we clearly show certain “qualities” that give us that unique signature style. Now… I’m not taking about these new age, culturally merged, fast-food bellied, coffee shop loving, lets-do-lunch type Lankans. They have a totally separate set of habits – which I don’t intend to go into on this article. I’m talking about the original, full-blooded Sri Lankan you find at the Sunday Pola^*1 or on a typical “Private Bus”^*2.

We smile at everything; when we are happy, when we make a mistake, when we are stressed out, even when we are constipated (that comes from my friend who admitted that smiling helps very much… go figure!). Heck, we see some lunatic driving straight at you the wrong way on a one-way street. He will stop right in front of your vehicle and give you the best smile he can muster - somewhere in that smile are an apology and a request for you to make way for him. Of course being a Sri Lankan you would know that.

We overuse words like sorry, aunty (or uncle)^*3, sir, and machan^*4. Very frequently using them more than once in the same sentence. For example, it is not uncommon for us to say “Machan, sorry machan”.

We have an opinion on just about everything. From running the country to the selection of the national cricket team, we believe we can do better than whoever is in control.

The concept of doing something on time is mostly limited to a few auspicious events during traditional New Year’s celebrations. Being late for something is no big deal for us. It is common for someone to not turn up for an appointment and not even apologize for it when they finally do meet. The strange thing is that the other party will be fine with this –they won’t even expect an explanation.

Sri Lankans are touchy-feely type of people. When friends meet they tend to hold each other’s hands throughout the entire conversation (especially if you bump into a friend of the same sex on the road). Most non-Sri Lankans will put a homosexual connotation to this behavior – but we know better.

Just try paying the bill after you’ve just had a meal in a nice restaurant with several of your Sri Lankan friends. Every single person at the table will want to pay that bill, regardless of who is hosting the meal or the amount of the bill. They won’t even hear of sharing! In such instances, I just give up – after all, it is nice to go back home with some money still left in my wallet for a change.

I’m sure the list goes on and on. Some of these habits can certainly be annoying,.. but then again that is who we are. Remember, we could do a lot worse.


^*1 - Pola is a traditional Sunday roadside market where prices are negotiable and bargains are plentiful.
^*2 - Buses in Sri Lanka are clearly categorized into Government (or Public) owned and Private owned. These privately owned buses (known as "Private Buses") are everywhere and easily outnumbers Government owned buses by at least a ratio of 3 to 1.
^*3 - Sri Lankans use the word Aunty and Uncle to address or refer to almost anyone who is older than themselves in appearance. This includes total strangers they happen to meet on the road.
^*4 - Machan is a very versatile word. Although the true meaning of it is "brother-in-law" most Sri Lankan males use this word as an Australian would use the word "mate"; to convey camaraderie. Occasionally females also use the word to convey the same meaning.

Doggone!

This blog has gone to the dogs – quite literally! I managed to snap this one on my camera-phone while idling in traffic this morning. Anybody care to comment on this photograph? A creative caption perhaps?