Blogs from Sri Lanka, Asia - page 167

THE TRIP THERE The less said, the better. Besides the currently-accepted practice of being considered a terrorist every time you fly somewhere, and giving up any rights to personal privacy, the actual flights were L-O-N-G and painful in those tiny seats. After all, Sri Lanka is on the other side of the world from my home in San Jose, California. It is impossible to travel further away! Of course, the pleasure of being in Sri Lanka is worth the pain of getting there, but that's hard to remember when you're trying to sleep upright. However, it is worth noting that Singapore Airlines is a superb business venture. I would recommend them to anyone who is traveling: excellent service, excellent food (with printed menus of the choices), and the video-entertainment system called Krisworld (recent movies, TV shows, ... read more

It was a dark and stormy night. The day before had been windy - trees down, power outages everywhere. The plane gained speed. San Francisco is behind us as we race west toward Sri Lanka and three weeks of classes and adventures. Seven of us to study biology and sociology of this island country. Just being in a new country is an education. What is different? What is the same? To start with the people; they work, they have families and friends. The first people you meet are in uniforms - airline staff, immigration, and security. Outside you meet the cabbies, the bus drivers and luggage-handlers. Then there is the air. At first it is av-gas then trucks and badly tuned cars. Finally the smells of the countryside arrive. For me in Sri Lanka it is ... read more

We combined my birthday with a New Years Eve Party. We decided that rather than subjecting our guests to our “not-yet-refined” Sri Lankan cooking skills, we’d have a good old fashion Kiwi BBQ on our roof. Easy and simple, yet effective. This also meant less standing over a hot stove in a very hot climate, and as it was my birthday as well it suited me. So Murray started looking for a BBQ. Our options seemed to be a small rectangular thing about 1 meter off the ground and big enough for maybe 20 sausages, and a round thing similar in height that could probably fit 8 sausages, both particularly unstable. So Murray decided to build one. This turned out to be rather interesting, consisting of many shopping outings, with various bits of things congregating by ... read more

What follows is simply a copy and paste job of all the stuff I (or at times Alex) managed to write while in Sri Lanka last Christmas. Sri Lanka Part 1 This is the first chance that I have had to get online since we got here. We are 4 days in to what is so far an amazing trip. Glorious news. We were on an Emirates flight when December 25th kicked in. This meant that the stewardesses took off their already silly hats (they look like they have toilet paper hanging out of them) and replaced them with even more ridiculous rudolf antler hats and wandered around taking pictures of families and saying things like 'Merry Christmas.' The pilot at one point claimed to have seen Santa fly by. This was obviously brilliant. We spent ... read more

Boxing Day for me normally means eating left-overs from Christmas (especially ham), relaxing at the batch, looking over and over at the presents, spending time with family, soaking up the NZ sun, enjoying being on holiday, etc, etc. Last year, Murray and I were at Eden Park watching the New Zealand Black Caps play the Sri Lankan Cricket team. After the game had finished news broke of the Tsunami that had hit part of Asia, including Sri Lanka. The Sri Lankan cricket team aborted the series, and the daily news showed pictures of the devastation the wave had left. In the days that followed the news reported about missing persons and a creeping death toll, and then stories started flooding in about how people survived the elements. It was an emotional time for the world, as ... read more