Mud Ghecko

Just to prove I have something of a personal life too, I went over to Sumathys yesterday for her “BOOK SWAP EVENING” and had a lovely time meeting a whole host of new contacts in the “NGO Field” (mind you the fun part is meeting people you already knew who already know people you know , slightly FACEBOOKY if you know what I mean ) Not only was the food great but I found some fantastic books too including STUPID WHITE MEN (Michael Moore) which as the critics say is right up my street , written as it is in PLAIN ENGLISH (ohhh so hard to find) which Im on to now. ... The concept of BOOK SWAP EVENING is so simple I wonder why I never thought of it before– your kind host/ess arranges the ambiance and snacks and you bring any books you have which you are tired of and everyone else in the circle brings whatever they have, you throw it all in a pool and take what ever you like . It really works. Drop me a line if youd like to be invited next !

If there’s one recurrent trait I notice about Sri Lankans, its our Gross National Propensity to lie. I figure this tradition started about two thousand five hundred years ago when a rascally Indian exile said “I love you bebes, and I Swear I always will” to a local wench with his fingers crossed behind his back; since then we have simply fine tuned fibbing into a National art…financial standing, number of Exes, boob size, age, you name it , we seem to compulsively alter it and present anything but the truth. Even really mundane day to day facts get twisted with the calm aplomb of dedicated professionalism. Concepts like “ I only had one glass” or “Im just passing Borella (and how many times I have heard that in the Kosgoda bus!)not to mention the mother of all small corporate fibs “Im at a meeting , can I call you back?” from guys on the way to a bit of afternoon diversion… Passive lying (which is when you have to listen to ground splitting inaccuracies being vocalized in front of y...

Consider Gautama. Two and a half centuries ago in a land called India, a great land of traditionalist thinkers, there were alas people who then as now treated their women as chattels, as merely beasts of burden, to be bartered , trafficked , used and disposed of as convenient, …there were powerful people who wanted this to go on. But consider Gautama who was a Radical, a Extremist Pacifist if you must, a fearless and staunch feminist, daring enough to give us equal rights , to recognize our humanity and potential and ensure women the respect and honor they do admittedly deserve. No other religious leader has quite elevated the childish and capricious, reputedly confused female human to such a position of esteem and honor in society. Some have given women equal rights but Gautama placed them higher. Some considered them too immature to know their own minds, deemed them an inconvenient distraction to men, for which they were restricted, penalize and disadvantaged. Gautama elevated the m...

here, for the benefit of all good Colombites are two things I learned yesterday 1. It IS possible to collide with a crow . I used to think that the kamaikazi dives they make into the middle of traffic were precision timed foreys of daring skill, but it turns out they are just greedy dimwits like the rest of us and if they see some food speck on the road they go for it with wretched single minded concentration , and that not on the traffic. I dont know if this has happened to other people but I tangled with a CROW near the General Hospital mortuary and the only reason its lived to fly another day is that I was doing a modest 40 kmph and riding near the drains as usual. Im lucky to be alive too, because, for someone who loves all things furry and feathery it was quite distracting to be mixed up in lots of shiney black feathers and small bits of tripe it had picked up from the road... 2. Sri Lankas Police uniform makes then WELL NIGH INVISIBLE at night and they think they have the right t...

Im sorry about this , be careful if you are the sensitive type, but ,pass it on. Perhaps we can make a difference , or perhaps this world is too far gone.Perhaps there are better worlds elsewhere. Makes you start to think. http://www.peta.org/feat/ChineseFurFarms/index.asp

There are lots of things we hate about this country, but at the same time I love Sri Lanka for many valid reasons like my friends of all ethnicities, the lovely sunlight and color and the wonderful food; Beautiful though it undoubtedly, is there are lots of things wrong with Sri Lanka like people killing each other at the drop of a hat and other people not seeming to mind this at all. So over time Ive had this increasingly uncomfortable feeling that something is wrong and this is not how people in the rest of the world live. Finally last week I found the proof I was looking for- yes its true, Ive always suspected this but never had it in print and here it is; Foreign Policy Magazines ranking of Sri Lanka as among the top 32 “RED ALERT” locations of possible failed State : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_Failed_States_Index You read me right - Sri Lanka is officially up there among the crap countries list, last among equals like Niger, Iraq and North Korea, and steadil...