Mud Ghecko

...except that * I weighed David Blacker's book and it weighs exactly 600gms and * its official : I will be joining the Red Cross . This means I wont be blogging for a few years. Sorry, guys.I will really miss life at the Centre. The spirit is willing, but cash is the issue...

Ten things I wouldn’t be caught dead doing: Having been a steadfast fan of ghost stories and horror films for the last 30 years, I have decided to face the fact of my inevitable mortality and subsequent passage onwards with some creativity on my part which I hope will continue to confuse and intrigue people long after I am dead and (at least nearly) gone. Once a geek always a geek though and technology is going to play a large part in my afterlife too, you can be sure. For example here’s a list of ten things I just won’t be caught doing, in the afterlife, because Ill be doing it my way: I will not walk through doors; just to be sure I’m not invading anyone’s privacy , Ill knock cheerfully first and identify myself before blasting my way in with a borrowed machine gun: beat that for cool. I will not hover, wave or materialise shakily because I think that’s a sign of an insecure ego (or worse, low cellular signals). Instead I will appear solidly accompanied by the sound of Windows star...

... and other feline tales. Cats plague me. They greet me with vibrating purry meows when I get home, track me excitedly around the house when Im looking for my sandals, spray my motorcycle jacket cheerfully with nauseous civet musks and drop suddenly out of the ceiling onto my dining table when I’m entertaining important guests…. I look around and wonder to myself how I ever got so surrounded by this many smelly mewling mangy excuses for former Egyptian Gods.-the answer is I love my kids and they love playing with string and kittens. I also love kittens, I admit, and from garbage dumps and temple corners they all seem to be asking me to take them home. The problem is these kittens I bring in mutate within six months and for the next decade I’m hounded (no other word for it) by large, obnoxious feline predators calmly decimating the crockery and waving insouciant, in – your –face balls, or “cutlets” ,as the kids call them... My cats embarrass me and stink up my house but keep me wa...

On the Back : NO SEKS NO BOOS NO ENTERTANES and on the front : IM A POORBOY.

Unbloggable content usually implies me . — Darth Teddy to Kahuna, attempting to amass rights to all questionable content . http://circus1.blogspot.com/search/label/Unquotable%20Quotes enjoy. these guys are a scream...where have they blogged all my life? who are they ? what kind of software must they be writing?(shudder!) I need to go through the archives, durnig the weekend I guess, so Im recording the link here, but hey- it doesnt mean all my readers can abandon me forever....ok?

MY FIRST LESSON and other embarrassing moments Leading Colombo driving schools do offer ladies motorcycle lessons and this means you have to get on a bike with a strange dude and after some time he sits behind you. From my 2004 diary,then: 3rd jan 10.00 am I’m sitting in the neatly painted but nevertheless shabby third world office of a Colombo driving school.. As a rule I notice, the Driving Instructors are grey haired, casually dressed fiftygenarians, who give the aura of being totally drunk and gregarious but hopefully are neither The one I saw first was no exception-and shot me a very stern and dignified glance , more of a glare really, before yanking shut his fly with the determined , pointed air of someone ready to get down to serious business. … However, to my heartfelt relief he strode past me and then it was that my designated instructor came out searching for me. It so happened ( oh the relief -) that he was neat (had all his clothes buttoned on), clean (no ear hair or carbu...

The Moped Diaries. part 2 No license- no helmet - no underskirt… This is not a technical article - technical advice you can get from just about any guy you know who rides a bike, or from the friendly salesmen at joints selling them. What follows are the kinds of tips you won’t hear from the guys: stuff like how to choose road friendly feminine underwear and what parts of your riding trainer it is better not to grab on those early test runs. Also please understand, first and foremost you need to know how to balance on a foot-cycle as its called, it’s a pre requisite without which you make life a living nightmare for the poor soul who has to teach you, since he will be worrying about how many tumbles he has to take with you and gravel rash on ones elbows hurts to the point of being crippling, trust me. Helmets are a good idea whether the government requires then or not, since we only have one grey hard disk and damaging that could have embarrassing permanent repercussions. I was given t...

The Motorcycle ok,ok,- *MOPED*.. Diaries part 1 Two years ago, around this time of the year, I bought myself a shiny new Chinese moped from a very user friendly joint in Kohuwela. There was, I recall, a significant amount of family opposition to the idea of me riding a “motorcycle”. Notably most of the negative attitude was feminine. My best friend, a lovely, most lady like creature I have known since grade 7 in Lindsay BMV, wrote me a 234 Kilobyte email from New York, expressing in detail, her delicate horror at the idea. My long suffering mother called me IDD from Nairobi, to vocalise a pleading monologue on the subject and from something like 13,000 miles away and without a web-cam, I could clearly picture her wringing those lovely hands all over the place and getting red nosed with emotion.(Failing to change my resolve, she lapsed into prayers to the entire Hindu pantheon, which is generally something she has had to do for many years now, since it’s the only way she can resign he...

Good times, Bad Times and other Weird Local Beliefs Made Simple. well, I'm back: I survived the recent holiday and the astounding sense of boredom and anticipation that Nationally relevant times like this carry with them, and did not actually get hit by the chikun virus ,perhaps because, like in Jurassic Park, I already harbor viruses which are ten times nastier and crunch up the chikuny ones on sight...old Picky, my unfaithful canine friend paid me that bi annual visit he does because he wants to escape from cracker noises by hiding under my bed...and I steadfastly continue to maintain the grinchy theory that compulsory breaks are a pointless waste of time involving loss of focus, something I’m always trying to hang on to. IN the meantime I got to thinking about so called " auspicious times " .Aren’t we a society totally happy with leaving things to a nakath welawa ? Isn’t that why we love being absolutely depraved until around New Years eve and then following it up with...

Art by Chandrika Gadiewasam 1989 this is a water color copy of an absolutely stupendous one by my favourite wildlife art hero , Robert Bateman. http://www.robertbateman.ca/ However , at 19 I was rrrather happy that I could even produce a copy which somewhat resembles such a master piece. ... then I got married at 20 and never had the time to paint after that.

do take a minute to visit this link - one of my favourite mottos are here- http://www.llerrah.com/lettherebepeaceonearth.htm remember , you are NOT alone , this good earth loves you - treat it right and you will never regret it. photo © Dananjaya Edirisinghe,2006

This morning the bus in front of me, calmly and quietly ran over one if its intended passengers in one of those quiet desperate early morning scuffles , in front of the Maradana halt. I saw a crowd, saw the looks on their faces and as we moved off I saw a half view of someone lying on the ground with his legs broken and his lunch packet scattered around. That was the saddest part, the lunch packet, some caring mother or wife must have woken early to prepare, the fact that we live in such a rat race that it becomes a part of daily life that you get quietly maimed on your way to work. The fact that in spite of having to dodge prados and jaguars and mercedeses all over the streets of Colombo , we are so poor that we need to pack people in till they fall off and die. The fact that this is preventable. It also brings me to the question – what do you do in such a situation ? the already mangled victim is at the mercy of the well meaning efforts of a bunch of o level educated clerks and carp...

Can you imagine an odd job johhny who can fix anything around the house,wires, plumbing, masonry yada yada , who gives quotations that do not require you to be resuscitated, and does not ask for more than his initial estimate no matter what unexpected frights he faces in the job? No? neither can I ..but I seem to have picked one up. The kind of man I ve always wanted to meet, (although he has a face that could launch a thousand mortars ) -he even has a celphone –how did I get him you wonder? Well I was in desperate crisis and hung around the nearby hardware kadey whining that my toilets were refluxing and I needed a piyippa bars and there he was.....ah, Al just lucky I guess. * fingers crossed , next week I may tell you that he ran off with our satelite dish, so stay tuned...I never trust guys who talk too much. Come to think of it I dont trust guys who are quiet either. and so on.

no its Ally in Kalutara - busy posing and fooling about in the beach when she had set herself the task of reading Chowrya Rajina to find out what all the fuss was about. .. anyone want to buy my copy ? Im broke and my Superiors at The Kendraya wont fund the copy I bought in the interest of personal capacity building ...(wanted to find out what HRH's secrets were ,of course) Ill personally autograph it , if it makes any difference ? pwease?and Ill pass on the Vijitha Yapa discount they gave me, a whole whopping 38 /- I mean it has some interesting photos...better than this here one... :-) Second Hand copy of Chowrya Rajina Available for Sale ... the BOOK ,I mean- the BOOK is for Sale.

I was recently going through this frazzled second hand women’s magazine Id bought from a pavement in Bamba, when I found this half page colour advert about a healthy though expensive new vitamin preparation containing some Chinese root or another which is supposed among other things to cure importance. Now that’s the actual spelling they had used, along with a photo of rather obscene looking tuber and a really happy looking couple... I did not have time nor inclination to read thought the whole half page but later on, after a lot of careful thought on the subject I figured it’s a very good idea and long overdue. Have you noticed what a crippling affliction importance can be in some people? You see it in the way they sit, taking up as much room as they possibly can (ankle crossed on knee to make a little space for pricey Lamborgini Notebook which everyone should notice -), the way they talk (much deep clearing of throats and palpable care with their choice of exact wordings) the cultur...

the dreaded chocoriano© fever … ...and other serious worries we should be, well, worrying about… Last week I got a text message from a bloke in office saying to please tell the admin officer that he had got chocoriano fever and wasn’t going to be able to make it …. I spent some time pondering seriously as to what this gruesomely named malady could be, and visions of Mars Bars gone wrong, Cocoa beans taking long overdue revenge on humankind etc clouded my imagination until I figured that the T9 text on his mobile phone had probably spelt chikungunya out like this and he had probably been too delirious to correct the text ( and mind you T9 is one of those other horrors of the modern world I wont even bother to go into here…)chiken what?you ask, hello - don’t we have enough on our plates? Life in this day and age is full of worries. The average Colombo housewife like me has so many diverse concerns at any one point in time to worry about - leave aside the obvious ones like possible bomb ...

...there was another bomb in Kollupitiya... Im ok. But I was about 5 minutes near it, and the smell was nasty. I usually get off and walk that way to office. Id phoned in this morning to say Id be a little late. Well ,ok quite late considering Im normally at office by 7 am.I had to check on my bike and do some extreme banking and it was 10.40 by the time I reached this junction. today I had been tempted to get down in Maradana and get a flyer for the Bajaj CT 100 ( drool ) after which I got in the NEXT bus and thus was about ten minutes later than I would have been. Life is funny,eh. I wow to hencefourth give in to sudden temptations more often.