Sometimes living my life feels like being the only passenger on some relentless train. Sitting in Heathrow waiting for my flight to Yerevan, I wondered what it would be like to be left behind at the train's next stop. I suspected the preoccupied man sitting next to me was Armen Der Kiureghian. With the support of UC Berkeley, Armen founded the American University of Armenia in response to the 1988 earthquake. The original mission of the university was to train graduate students to become earthquake engineers. I had heard that he would be on the same flight. Indeed, five hours later, [View Full Entry]

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Monday was our last night in Mahakande Bungalow. The saddest goodbye we had to say was to our cook, Siri, who added significantly to each of our waist lines. The second saddest goodbye was to Stompie, aka Bodhi, aka Pumpkin Doodle. Stompie is the mangy kitten that ran up to us in Polonarua the week before. The girls let out a collective "Awww," scooped him up in their collective arms, and the next thing I knew he was on the bus with us. There was much arguing over who would get to take him home to America. I finally insisted that [View Full Entry]

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Another leap forward in my evolution as a tour guide: when people ask what time breakfast will be served or what time the bus will come, I no longer instinctively look over my shoulder. +++++ Two years ago my daughter, Laura, and I met in London for a late Christmas celebration. While there I contacted Udaya Medagamma, a professor of ancient Indian languages visiting the University of London from Peradeniya University. I mentioned my plan to bring a group of students to Peradeniya to study culture and biology and he jumped at the chance to participate. On Tuesday he showed up [View Full Entry]

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I am doing better at playing tour guide than I expected. My eight students-- I'll call them students even though half of them are professors and I'm not really teaching them anything-- are curious, easy going, and have appropriately low expectations of me. I thought they might retreat into protective cocoons when they got their first look at a Third World country, but instead they seem eager to experience the dusty, smelly, chaotic glory of Sri Lanka. Any fears they might have had would have been laid to rest the morning after we arrived at Mahakande Bungalow, our home in Sri [View Full Entry]

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The first morning of 2006 and I can barely tolerate the noise of my fingers banging on the keyboard. Today's task is to find my daughter and get us both to SFO in time to meet the rest of our intrepid little group. These are many of the same people who were scheduled to go to Sri Lanka last year when the tsunami cancelled the trip at the last moment. This year bird flu and war threatened to cancel the trip. I guess with 18 hours left until takeoff I could still get a call from the Dean saying that [View Full Entry]

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In some places the waves were mysteriously selective. Two houses stand while the one between is gone. In other places entire neighborhoods have been erased. A wall stands here, a kitchen sink over there; a spiral staircase leads nowhere. And where have the former occupants gone? In Sri Lanka alone 40,000 stories ended terribly that day. In many cases even the people who might have been left behind to remember those stories were washed away too. Total erasure. The survivors occupy tents and temporary huts provided by Red Cross, Habitat for Humanity, UNICEF, and others. What would it have be [View Full Entry]

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I finished my lectures in Kandy, including my public lecture, which had to be rescheduled because no one showed up the first time. The only people who showed up the second time were students who were forced to come. Once upon a time something like that would have bothered me, but now I just shrug it off. To compensate, the director of the Institute arranged a little party for me at the faculty club, where we could avoid the alcohol ban imposed on Kandy during the week of the Perahera. Third World faculty clubs are my kind of scene: chalky, disillusioned [View Full Entry]

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The night after my last entry I slept under a tattered web of fevered dreams. A hot coal burned in my stomach and I shook convulsively. Fortunately, I have been accepted as the fifth member of the Udugamma family, weird uncle Jon from California. I stay with them when I'm in Kandy. Ananda, the father, received his MD from UC Davis. He now has me on a course of antibiotics. My fever is gone but I haven't eaten anything except bananas for days. I made a noble effort to conduct my lectures, but with frequent bathroom breaks. +++++ Following my advice [View Full Entry]

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Colombo-Kandy Railroad Haiku Rattling through jungles Heads bouncing like souvenir dolls Lost in sad thoughts +++++ I can feel the proximity of the jungle in Kandy. Monkeys scramble across my roof, the bird calls that wake me in the morning sound like auditions for a Tarzan movie, and there are columns of ants streaming across every wall. Even if Buddhists were allowed to use ant traps (and they aren't,) this isn't a problem you solve, it's a problem you learn to live with. In my last entry I asked Asia to swallow me whole. This turned out to be a lesson [View Full Entry]

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The only surprise waiting for me in Colombo when I arrived was how routine it all seemed. Rukman's father, Mahinda, and his sister, Kanchana, were waiting for me as I cleared customs. On the way to their house Kanchana accidentally drove through an army checkpoint. I saw the sentry un-sling his rifle and point it at us. The thought of a bullet whistling through the passenger compartment gave me a weird thrill. Kanchana slammed on the breaks. She explained to the soldiers that she was a big attorney and there would be trouble if they detained us. They let us go. [View Full Entry]

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