The Meeting of Two Blog Posts

In one of my first posts, I introduced Ellen Sojka, who at the time I met her was volunteering with an organization called Emerge Global. You might recall I explained that Emerge Global supports young women who become pregnant as the result of rape, helping them earn a living through a jewelry-making cottage-industry, as well as educating them and teaching them to care for their children. Then a few weeks ago I met Sharmini who manages the Books for Asia program for the Asia Foundation–their goal being to match libraries and other learning institutions in need of books with the books donated to them by American publishers. I knew Ellen’s organization had a teaching/learning component since one of their key goals is to teach the girls English and other marketable skills, thus making them more employable, and I thought maybe Ellen would like to get some books from the Asia Foundation program. So I tracked her down, put her in touch with Sharmini, and last Monday I went to the Books for Asia office and helped two very enthusiastic women pick out books. Ellen was thrilled to be getting them, and Sharmini is so enthusiastic about any organization that helps the needy in Sri Lanka, especially when it’s done with the goal of self-sufficiency, so it was really a great match.

Ellen has found funding for her job since I first met her; she is now committed to being in Sri Lanka for the next 18 months, working to keep this fledgling program up and running as the Country Director, along with the organization’s State-side counter-part in Boston. It’s a big job for a woman who just graduated from college last year, but when I talk to Ellen about the goals of the organization and how the girls it serves are transformed, I have no doubt about her dedication to this mission or her ability to make a difference in the lives of the people she’s working with.

I Heart Singapore!

I wanted to get out of the hustle of Colombo, so yesterday I came to Singapore. Singapore is a City/State, an independent republic and former British colony, which seceded from Malaysia in 1963. I love it here. It’s Tropical-Urban-Asia-Lite. Let’s do a little comparison to Colombo – Singapore: population: 4.8 million; Colombo: 5.6 million. Singapore: pristine and orderly; Colombo: filthy and chaotic. Singapore: everything runs on time; Colombo: don’t hold your breath. Singapore: no one hassles you; Colombo: just try walking down the street without someone getting in your personal space. Singapore: safe no matter where, no matter what time; Colombo: not. I wanted a break and I wanted to see a little more of Asia than just Sri Lanka, Singapore fit the bill.

I’m only here for two days so my agenda is fairly limited. I got in yesterday at about 3pm and immediately caught the shuttle from my hotel to Orchard Road. Orchard Road is the shopping-Mecca of Singapore (and Singapore is the shopping-Mecca of Asia; some people consider Dubai to be the shopping-Mecca of Asia, but we all know how I feel about Dubai. This is making me wonder if there’s good shopping in Mecca). I expected a long road of storefronts from Gucci to what I hoped would be shops more in my price-range. What I found was a long road of shopping malls – not shop after shop, but mall after mall, one after another, both sides of the street. I know that probably sounds like hell to a lot of people, and contrary to popular belief, I do NOT love to shop, but I was in the mood, it was part of the reason I came here, and it was, if not exactly “fun,” successful. No major damage was done to the bank account; while things here aren’t as cheap as in Colombo, they’re still pretty cheap (at least in the kinds of stores I went into), and a lot more stylish. All I did yesterday was shop, eat, and walk. I only bought three things but I covered a lot of ground and watched a lot of people. At the end of the day, instead of taking a taxi or the MRT (metro) back to my hotel from the center of town, I walked back which took about an hour. It’s warm here but not sweltering and I wanted to get a feel for the place by walking; that was Day 1.

Today I started the day by eating some gyozas on a stick. There is absolutely no reason to put gyozas (I have a feeling the plural of “gyoza” is “gyoza,” but I’m going with“gyozas” anyway) on a stick, but I was emailing a friend last night who suggested I eat some food on a stick today, and there they were. This was back on Orchard Road, to which I returned in order to stop by the tourist office to find out about tours of the city. I’m not usually a “city-tour” kind of traveler, but I wanted to get a feel for Singapore outside the shopping district so I bought a ticket for one of those hop-on, hop-off tourist buses that are in so many places (this one was actually run by the same company that does Ride the Duck Tours; god help me). The double-decker, open-top bus travels in a circle and you can, you know… hop on or hop off at any designated stop and catch the next one that comes around when you’re ready to move on. I didn’t really want to walk around any of the places it stopped, so I just rode the entire circle to see a bit more of the city and got off nearly back where I started; this took about an hour. In a way, Singapore reminds me a bit of Dubai (although Dubai is about eight times its size), but without the soullessness and with far more green space.

Actually, the only similarity to Dubai is the prevalance of modern architecture, although I think Singapore’s is much nicer, and remnants of Singapore's colonial history remain which is also nice. After finally hopping off the tour bus, I did a bit more shopping (since I was back on Orchard Road) and then took another tourist bus to the Night Safari. This was my other big reason for coming to Singapore. So many people had told me how cool the Singapore Night Safari is and I wanted to check it out. If I understand correctly, it’s a tour that runs next to the zoo, or it might actually be part of the zoo, I couldn’t quite tell. You ride a tram around a loop that passes by about 30 animal habitats, and this being Singapore, all the animals seem to be standing right at the edge of their habitats for optimal viewing – they appear fluffed and waiting, teeth brushed, smiling for the cameras, and all but waving their paws at the tram as you go by. Lions, tigers, sloth (I just found out that the plural of “sloth” is “sloth”), a rhino, flamingos, elephants, giraffes, giant anteaters, capybara (the world’s largest rodent; not sure about the plural form but you definitely wouldn't want even one scavenging through your trash), and many others. Most of these animals are more active at night, hence the beauty of the Night Safari; so instead of trying to get a glimpse of a napping tiger in the far reaches of a den at the zoo, the habitats are designed (and the evening meal set out) in such a way that the animals end up strolling around right in front of the tram-way (okay, the lions and tigers were napping tonight, but they were really easy to spot; one of the lions was lying on his side with one leg in the air). And to address the obvious problem of animal-spotting at night, the habitats are lit so they are illuminated enough to see the animals, but the light is in no way glaring; it was however, too dim to get any decent photos – flash photography being strictly forbidden.

After the safari, I didn’t want to wait around for the tourist bus to head back to town (the zoo/safari being on the outskirts) so I took the city bus straight from the animal park to the nearest MRT station (and this being Singapore, one of the nice helpers at the park told me exactly where I’d find the bus stop, what number bus to get on, and the name of the MRT station it would go to). The bus arrived five minutes after I got to the bus stop and about half an hour later I was at the MRT. A few words about the Singapore Metropolitan Rapid Transit: it’s the cleanest metro I’ve ever seen but that should go without saying since Singapore is the cleanest city in which I’ve even been. I think littering and graffiti might be capital offenses here. You could perform surgery on the MRT station floors. And here’s a brilliant thing: all other metro stations I’ve ever been in are covered with used metro tickets; people world-wide seem to have no hesitation about dropping their spent tickets on the ground as soon as they are no longer needed. Aside from the threat of death (I think) which keeps people from doing that here (okay, I’m actually thinking hard about it right now and realizing that I’ve not seen one piece of litter, no cigarette butts, no paper, no garbage of any sort on the ground since I’ve been here), the Singapore MRT has enacted this simple anti-littering/pro-recycling scheme: when you buy a single-ride ticket as opposed to a re-loadable metro card which you would keep, you automatically pay a 1 SGD deposit on the ticket. All you have to do to get that dollar back is feed your used metro ticket back into the ticket machine before exiting the station. Brilliant.

I just remembered where I was going with all that… so after I left the Night Safari, I took the bus to the MRT and the MRT to Clarke Quay, which is the Pike Street/Fisherman’s Warf/touristy area on the Singapore River in the middle of town. My goal was to eat some pepper and salt crab which I’d been told was the city’s signature dish. Turns out pepper and salt crab is ordered by the kilo and a kilo of crab seemed a little piggy for dinner, so I got pepper and salt prawns instead – they were great and the people-watching at Clarke Quay was fun, and after dinner and a long day, I came back to my hotel room to type this up.

Tomorrow I’ll have enough time for lunch here before heading to the airport to go back to [filthy, chaotic] Colombo. Not sure where I’ll spend the afternoon yet, possibly at the Raffles Hotel where the Singapore Sling was invented; the drink actually sounds both completely disgusting and kind of good to me, but drinking alone in the middle of the day might be a slippery slope. It might just be more food on a stick and a little more shopping.

Singapore Sling
1 1/2 ounce gin
1/2 ounce Cherry Heering brandy
1/4 ounce Cointreau
1/4 ounce Benedictine
4 ounces pineapple juice
1/2 ounce lime juice
1/3 ounce grenadine
dash bitters

Singapore Post-Script [Saturday]
I had trouble falling asleep last night, so at 5 am when I was still awake, I popped a sleeping pill and finally drifted off. I ended up getting up around noon, so instead of going into town for lunch and coming back to the hotel to get the airport shuttle, I decided to take the MRT straight to the airport and kill the couple hours I had before my flight shopping and eating there. I knew from flying in that there was practically a mall at the airport (I suspect there’s a mall at the cemetery), so I knew I’d be fine. I got there (another flawless trip on the MRT for less than a quarter of the price of the shuttle) and wandered around until I saw a drugstore and a Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf. Nisreen had asked me to pick up something for her from a drugstore (the selection of goods in Colombo being limited) and I hadn’t done it the night before so I was glad to see one at the airport, and I really wanted a nice coffee drink, so I was in luck. I had about 25 SGDs left and I wanted to spend it all before I left so I bought Nisreen two of what she wanted and picked up some other items in order to spend the rest of my cash. What I didn’t do was check the price of an Ice-Blended Mocha before I did my shopping, and when I got to the Coffee Bean, I was exactly a dollar short. Crap. I didn’t want to take out more money from an ATM (the whole point being to get rid of money) and I really wanted my drink. So I went back to the drugstore and asked the girl behind the counter if I could return one of my items and get some cash back. She hesitated and called the manager over. They were both very polite, but it seemed apparent that a return would be a problem, but finally the manager said okay and asked for my receipt. Which I couldn’t find. Not in my pocket, not in my wallet, not in the bag with the goods. The manager very nicely said she could not do a return without the receipt. I’m usually a pretty easy-going person and I know the shop-people don't make the rules, but I was on the verge of tears. Seriously, I wanted that mocha (have you had one? They’re all chocolaty and icy with a small jolt of coffee…). The girls seemed puzzled by what the big deal was and I don’t think they quite understood what I was trying to achieve. Finally I explained that I just wanted to buy some coffee but I didn’t have enough cash so couldn’t the manager please just return one of the items that I had just bought? Please? “How much do you need?” she asked. “Just a dollar” I said, “Oh, okay” she said and looked at the other girl; they smiled at each other finally understanding what was going on: crazy-lady needed a dollar to go buy some coffee. The manager smiled at me and then opened the cash register and gave me a dollar. “Oh… no…” I said, “don’t you want to take this item back and give me a refund?” I asked. “No no,” she said, “can’t do without the receipt, you take this dollar and if it’s not enough, you come back.” Big smile. “I… are you sure?” “Yes, yes, you take it!” “Thank you!” Now I really did feel like crying, but I thanked them again and went to get my coffee. As I was standing in line at the Coffee Bean I couldn’t get over how easy it was for that girl to help me once she understood what I needed. It seemed weird that she couldn’t just do the return, but I suppose it would be easier for her to reconcile the register being a dollar short than to do a return without a paper-trail, or maybe she was going to put the dollar back out of her own wallet, I have no idea. But once she understood my dilemma, her kindness was effortless. I ordered my mocha, added two pieces of cheesecake to my order, paid with my credit card, and went back to the shop. The two girls did a double-take when I walked in. “Okay? Did you get it?” they asked. “I paid with my credit card” I said, and handed them each a little bakery box and the dollar back, “but it was so nice of you to try and help me.” “Oh no!... Thank you!… Not necessary!” they laughed and looked at each other, raising their eyebrows and looking embarrassed, as though I’d given them gold ingots instead of dessert. “Thank you” I said, “that was so kind, what you did for me, I appreciated it so much.” And over my shoulder as I walked out, “you made my day.”

Sometimes when a place has been good to you, you have to pay it back. With cheesecake. Even if it means going home with a few extra bucks in local currency.

In the interest of full disclosure…

Sri Lanka is a great place, don't get me wrong. But it's not all beaches and good times.

I made a conscious decision not to write about the civil war
that’s been going on in Sri Lanka since 1983 (although the ethnic conflict has “unofficially” raged for much longer). The decision was an easy one to make, I simply don’t know that much about it and didn’t want to editorialize about such a complex issue when, unlike so many of the ex-patriot friends I have here who are working in the human rights arena or doing development work, learning more about the war and dealing with its effects have nothing to do with my reason for being here. Yesterday however, the chief editor of a local newspaper who was know for criticizing the government in general and its policies on the war specifically, was gunned down in broad daylight not too far from where I live.

From the BBC News Website:

Mr. Lasantha Wickramatunga, 52, had been highly critical of government policy and the war with the Tamil Tiger rebels. He received numerous death threats through his career and was detained on several occasions because of the controversial nature of his stories.

In his last editorial he accused the president of pursuing the war to stay in power.

"Winning the war? Then there must be elections around the corner. It is no secret that the war has become [the president of Sri Lanka] Mahinda Rajapaksa's recipe for electoral success," he wrote.

According to the newspaper report I read, the hit took place while Mr. Wickramatunga was driving to work yesterday. Four men on motorcycles surrounded his car forcing him to stop. One gunman got off his bike and broke the passenger-side window with a steel bar but did not fire; another broke the driver’s side window and shot him point blank in the head; a third man got off his bike and fired through the windshield; the fourth circled the front of the car preventing escape; all four rode off after the shooting and none have been apprehended. Passer-bys rushed Mr. Wickramatunga to the hospital where he died of his injuries.

Since I feel the need to report this as something of note that has happened while I’m here, I feel I should also give a brief history of the “conflict” in Sri Lanka. The following is based on a very small amount of research.

Tamil people are an ethnic minority in Sri Lanka making up about 18% of the population. They are native to Tamil Nadu, a state in Southern India. Tamils in Sri Lanka are broadly divided into two groups. Sri Lankan Tamils (or Ceylon Tamils) and Indian Tamils. The latter group are descendants of Tamil people who were brought from India to work on the country’s tea plantations in the 19th century and, for the most part, are not party to the conflict. The Ceylon Tamils however have come to inhabit particularly the north and eastern parts of the island via waves of migrations and invasions over a couple of millennia.

In 1956, S.W.R.D. Bandaranaike was elected the fourth Prime Minister of Sri Lanka. One of the first things he did after coming to power was to make Sinhala the official language of the country and downgraded the official status of English and the Tamil language. Anti-Tamil policies such as this led to the eventual formation of several militant Tamil groups in the early seventies. One of these, the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), emerged as the dominant group and has waged a violent cessation campaign against the government with the goal of forming a separate Tamil state on the north peninsula of the island. The LTTE is widely considered to be a terrorist organization and wages its campaign largely by assassinations, suicide bombings, ethnic cleansing, and recruitment of child-soldiers; the government responds to these acts by bombing civilian-populated Tamil areas.

Many Tamils are fully entrenched in lives outside the north and east parts of the island and have no desire to change this status. These people have worked and lived in Colombo for generations, they have become fully integrated without losing their cultural heritage, and have no need or desire for a separate Tamil state. However this group, concentrated in and around the capital Colombo, faced the brunt of the anti-tamil riots of 1983, and as a result many of them have since migrated out of Sri Lanka.

The beginning of the civil war in 1983 is attributed to an incident in which the LTTE killed 15 Sri Lanka army soldiers in the North; some Sinhalese civilians angered by news of the ambush formed mobs and started killing, raping, and assaulting Tamils, while looting and burning their properties in retribution for what happened. Sinhalese civilians were equipped with voter registration lists, burning and attacking only Tamil residences and business, while army and government officials stood by. The government declared an emergency curfew in Colombo the next day; however, the police were unwilling, or unable to enforce the curfew. The army was then called in to help the police. However the violence continued the next day, and began to spread all across the country, engulfing areas with sizeable Tamil populations; Tamil people were dragged from cars and beaten or hacked to death with knives and axes.

The pattern of assassinations and the killing of soldiers/officials on both sides followed by bombings from both sides, with intermittent peace-talks and negotiations has continued since 1983.

The sunsets here are indeed beautiful, the beaches pristine, and the food fantastic. There are fabulous night-clubs, hotels, parties, and restaurants, and sometimes it’s easy to forget that there’s a war going on even though Colombo is also a city with a huge army presence. I am routinely stopped for identification by soldiers holding machine guns almost every night that I go out; this is a part of life my Tamil friends (who can be identified as such by their last names) find much more nerve-wracking than I do. This is a city where everyone is searched for explosives every time they go into the mall or into a major office building. It is a city where government and police corruption is obvious and rampant, and it is a place where the chief editor of the Sunday Leader, Lasantha Wickrematunge, criticized government opposition parties for staying "mute" in the face of obvious corruption, suggesting journalists were having to do their job for them, and paid for it with his life.

Christmas and New Year's Eve

My parents came to visit for Christmas and are still here. This is the first time all four of us have been in Sri Lanka at the same time since I was five. It has been interesting to watch my parents react to this place. They’ve visited over the last ten years or so but from the time we moved permanently to the States, there was about a 30 year gap before they ever returned, and while it’s clear that this is all familiar to them as “the homeland,” it’s also clear that this is not the same place they left. The traffic, congestion, and pace have increased dramatically, attitudes are different, and of course there’s this pesky war going on.

Christmas came and the parents and my brother went to my mom’s old Methodist Church in the morning while I slept in. Here's another this country is really pretty damn small–story: my mom told me that the lady who was sitting behind her in church had a really nice voice and she had enjoyed listening to her sing during the service, so when it was over, my mom turned around to tell her so. The lady thanked her and wished her a Merry Christmas, and then as my mom turned to go she said “aren’t you Mignon?” which happens to be my mother’s name, so a little startled, she said “yes” and the lady said “I’m… ” and said her name; she turned out to be the sister of one of my mom’s old school friend’s (who had happened to have dropped by for tea the day before); my mom didn’t recognize her, having seen her last about forty-five years ago, but the lady remembered my mom. This kind of thing happens ALL THE TIME here.

Lunch at Deepika's
We went to my cousin Deepika’s for lunch that afternoon, a very nice and low-key affair which included Simon and Neluka, whom my brother and I also know, their two girls, my aunt, and my cousin’s husband and their little girl; the kids spent the afternoon chasing my cousin’s yellow lab all around the garden. Deepi had ordered the entire meal from a hotel and it was quite good, a mix of Sri Lankan curries and a turkey. We spent a leisurely afternoon at her house and then headed home to rest up for our own guests who were coming for dinner. They arrived in the evening: my mom’s cousin Bryan, her other cousin Rando, Rando’s twin daughters who are eighteen and whose names I can never remember which hardly matters since I can’t tell them apart, Melanie from Nilan’s office and her husband Tenzing, my mom’s old school friend Rani and her other old school friend also named Rani (and the sister of the singing lady from church). Velu had made a turkey, mashed potatoes, gravy, stuffing, ham, fish, peas and carrots, and a few other dishes. The funny thing is, it’s the first time anyone in my family has served a traditional western Christmas dinner (although I guess it was more like Thanksgiving… some people have turkey again at Christmas – right?); we usually have rice and curry in California.

The next day we left for the beach. We took off from the house at about 1pm and made our way down the very busy Galle Road. Along the way, Cyril, my dad (a bit of a nutter) began, as is his habit, to read aloud the signs along the roadway. “Pizza Hut” he said, followed by “Litter World.. that’s strange… maybe it’s for cat litter…” he said (I have no explanation for the thought process that might have led him to that). “You can’t see the ‘G’ in front of that?” my mom asked. “Oh, ‘Glitter World’” he said. “Are you planning on reading all the street signs between here and the hotel?” I asked (it was about a three hour drive). “Manomi,” he replied, “I am an old man, it is my prerogative to annoy the young people.” A little while later my mom said, “there’s my grandfather’s house!” as we caught a brief glimpse of the De Alwis family home, a colonial estate and the only residential house left on the fully commercial Galle Road (the part that runs through Colombo anyway). My mom said she used to play there as a child, and that there were coffee trees in the back garden and all the cousins used to collect the coffee beans when they went over to play. I asked her if they were actually roasted and ground into coffee; she paused and said, “we gave the beans to the servants, eventually there’d be coffee.” One of my mom's cousins inherited the house and plans on moving into it from Ottowa where she lives now.

“Malay Curry Hut” Cyril said.

Eventually we got around to the bottom of the island to the Heritance Hotel in Ahungalla. It’s a nice place, a bit like the place in Negombo where I went with my cousin Shalini (Deepika’s sister; she went to Thailand for Christmas), although I think that place is actually a little nicer. Riyaz and Nisreen and their boys also joined us there as did Melanie and Tenzing, and while we shared a few meals, mostly everyone did their own thing at their own pace and just relaxed.

On the 27th we drove another hour around the south side of the island to our friends Cheryl and Jehan’s place. I’ve known them since I was around ten I think -- they used to live in San Francisco. Cheryl and Jehan have this awesome weekend place on the beach, and we spent the afternoon hanging out there and had yet another stupendous lunch with them. Then back to the hotel and back home on the 29th.

The sunset at Cheryl and Jehan's started out like this...

...and ended like this.

New Years Eve had us, Riyaz and Nisreen and Melanie and Tenzing at the Bay Leaf restaurant for dinner. December 31st is traditionally a big party-night in Colombo but we happened to have picked quite the dullest spot in town. There were lots of people dining there but for some reason there was absolutely nothing festive in the air. I didn’t actually mind, we had a nice table outside, had some drinks and didn’t get around to ordering dinner until almost 11pm, so we were still eating when the clock struck twelve. We clinked each other’s glasses, said “happy new year” to one another and went back to our dinners and conversations. I was home by 2 and on email being the first to wish a few friends at home Happy 2009.

Books For Asia

On Saturday I went to the Asia Foundation’s Christmas Party where I met Sharmini Nagendran who runs the Foundation’s Books for Asia program in the Colombo office. Books for Asia is one of the Foundation’s oldest programs (since 1954) and it provides new texts and other educational resources to schools and libraries around the country. At the Christmas party, Sharmini invited me to come to her office and see the books, so I did that today. The books are gorgeous. They are top of the line text books (over-run stock) published for the U.S. educational market and they are vibrant and appealing, the pages are crisp and clean, the graphics are beautifully done, they have that new book smell. The two main publishers who donate to the program are Houghton-Mifflin and Harcourt Press, and these are the most current texts available. The Asia Foundation gets them for free and distributes over 75,000 books to mostly rural and village schools. Sharmini was clearly very excited about the program and her enthusiasm was infectious; I immediately thought of Ellen from Emerge Global, whom I mentioned in an earlier post, as someone whose organization might need some books. Emerge Global provides housing and education and earning opportunities to young women who have become mothers as a result of sexual abuse and been forced to leave their homes. One of the goals of the program is to educate the young women in English so I thought these American texts might be useful to them. I just sent Ellen an email to let her know the books were available and to let me know if she thought Emerge Global could use some.

After I had lunch with Sharmini, I went to the British Council library and then to meet Lakshman at the coffee shop in Majestic City. Lakshman is a movie buff and we often end up discussing films. He told me about Der Untergang (or Downfall) which is a historical account of the last ten days of Hitler’s life in an underground bunker, in which among other things that go on down there, the wife of Joseph Goebbels kills her six children by first forcing them to take a sleeping drug and then clamping their teeth closed on cyanide capsules before Goebbels kills her and then himself. I assured Lakshman I would absolutely not be seeing this particular movie. I then I told him about Hamlet 2 which is about the funniest damn thing I’ve seen in a long time. Riyaz joined us eventually and then Riyaz and I went to the head shop across the street so he could buy a Zippo lighter for a friend’s birthday present. The shop was tiny and had a little smoking parlor in the back where some very stoned-looking dudes were hanging out. The proprietor appeared to be sporting the worst toupee I’ve ever seen [yes, I realize that’s apropos of nothing]. A guy named Ranjith whom I’d met on a previous trip to Colombo was in the back and seemed pleased to see me, but not so much that he was able to get up out of his chair and come over to say hello. Oddly enough, the proprietor was more than happy to let me snap a few pix.

Back to the Beach

Friday was another Poya (full moon) holiday, so my cousin Shalini, my aunt, uncle, and I went to The Beach Hotel in Negombo for the night. Negombo is north of Colombo, same direction as the no-dolphins place, but much closer to town – only a 90 minute drive (the other place took over 3 hours to get to). We left late in the morning and got there in time for lunch. After lunch, the relatives all went for a lie-down in their beautiful rooms. I think the quality of a hotel room can be judged by its bathroom; the room Shalini and I were sharing had a giant oval tub with a built-in vinyl pillow and the shower had sandstone tiles and was about the size of a walk-in closet, but I digress. I didn’t feel like napping so I put my swimsuit on and went to read the New Yorker on one of the lounge chairs which were laid out in a small grove of coconut trees. Or I should say I tried to read; the issue I had was from mid-November so there was a lot of interesting post-election analysis, but I also had my iPod with me and the music, the breeze, and the view of the blue, blue Indian Ocean* right in front of me proved to be mighty distractions.

*Short geography lesson-interlude: It has been brought to my attention that the body of water to the west of Sri Lanka is more technically the Arabian Sea, not the Indian Ocean. Upon further research, I learned that the Arabian Sea is a region of the Indian Ocean so you can decide for yourself which is more correct. Due east of Sri Lanka is the Bay of Bengal, also part of the Indian Ocean; only to the south are the open waters of the Indian Ocean itself.

I don't know how long I was out on my lounge chair but when I headed back up to the room, Shalini and my uncle were heading down for a walk on the beach so I dumped my stuff and went back out with them. There is a place for local-access to the beach near the hotel so there were a lot of non-tourists out although it was far from crowded. It was nice to see people from the small town out enjoying the beautiful beach and their own beautiful country. People seemed happy to be out on such a nice evening – children were playing in the sand, kids were playing in the surf (the water was super-warm), a few teenaged couples were sitting on the sand in the shade of fishing boats with their arms around each other, talking quietly and looking vaguely uncomfortable to be seen together, but making the most of the best and cheapest date-venue anyone could hope for.

When we got back to the hotel, Shalini and I went for a swim in the pool or rather, she went for a swim, I did half a lap then floated around on my back and wondered how I’d gotten so lucky. Then dinner, a DVD in our room, bed, breakfast, and back to Colombo the next morning.

Saturday night I went out to dinner with Anthea, a colleague of Nilan’s who is also the Asia Foundation director in Kuala Lumpur, and Melanie, Nilan’s new deputy director in Colombo who has just transferred from the Foundation’s office in Kabul. Anthea is Sri Lankan-Canadian, grew up in Toronto but has lived in various places in Southeast Asia over the last ten years; Melanie is an American from Vermont who lived in Kabul for the last five years, but who has also spent most of her career doing NGO work in Asia. It turns out that she was working for the Asia Foundation in Nepal in 1996 when I happened to be in Kathmandu and was a guest at her boss’s house for dinner. She wasn’t at that dinner-party, but she had been to other dinner parties at that house – an almost “small-world” connection to add to my list, along with 1) running into my half-sister whom I’d only met once before, seven years prior to the incident of running into her randomly in a hostel in London (this happened over ten years ago); 2) meeting people in Anchorage where I was spending a few months in 1989 who knew my brother in Berkeley; 3) my brother working with someone in Bangladesh who was the sister of someone I worked with at that same time at the Intiman Theatre in Seattle… the world is a small place. Anyway, I got to tell Anthea and Melanie my story of being a guest at that terribly fancy dinner party at Melanie’s former boss’s house in Kathmandu (Nilan had told me to call the director of the Asia Foundation’s office in Nepal when I got to Kathmandu, I did and he invited me to dinner). Before that evening was over, the degree of sickness I experienced after excusing myself to one of the guest bathrooms was like no other I’ve had before or since; I told my hosts I was ill and they suggested I crash in one of the guest rooms for about an hour while the other guests arrived; eventually I pulled myself together and tried to go down to dinner but ended up nearly passing out at the dining table. I managed to get myself back to the guest room where I remember literally falling onto the bed and staying there until the party was over. The next morning I was due to get on a helicopter bound for the Himalaya, which I did, but that’s a whole different story (and in case you’re wondering, it was food poisoning not a dreaded parasite, so I was fine in about a week). That story is a real crowd-pleaser. I told it to the other two ladies while we were dining (maybe not the best timing… I cleaned the story up quite a bit for the blog) at an Italian restaurant where we had a terrific wood-fired pizza, some decent house red, pasta, and salad. We then moved to the Colombo Swimming Club (not as posh as it sounds; it’s been under renovations forever and has the aura of a bombed-out hotel) where we were joined by Nilan and Riyaz and Nisreen and a giant pitcher of margaritas. Melanie told us about her life over the past five years in Afghanistan, where she couldn’t walk on the street without a male escort but where she was also present at a forum with the Afghan president and 500 women from the various provinces, many of whom felt free to stand up and interrupt the president with questions and concerns during his presentation on women’s issues. Nilan told a story he’d heard, which Melanie confirmed as being true, about a certain Afghan warlord’s crime against another governing minister… which now that I think of it, is too brutal to recount here. She also described what a missile flying over your house sounds like (long, loud whistling noise before impact).

This week is going to be all about the Galle Literary Festival for me. It’s half coming together, half imploding. I’ve been corresponding with writers all over the world trying to nail down their travel needs and this week I will start booking their flights – I hope; I think Nisreen might still be finalizing the sponsorship deals with the airlines. Some of the most prestigious writers who are coming have been the most friendly and easy to work with, other younger folks new on the scene have come across as a little full of themselves. Eventually I think all the issues will get worked out and it will be a very cool event.

Adamaly Place

Not much happened last week so last Sunday I went out for a few minutes and snapped a few pictures around the neighborhood. Nilan’s house is on a street called Adamaly Place. It’s a quiet, residential lane with a mosque at the end which unfortunately blocks the view of the Indian Ocean just beyond. This mosque is thankfully a very quiet one. Nilan coincidently lived next to a mosque in Jakarta, and when I visited him there several years ago, they very noisily made the call to prayer 5 times a day. I don’t know how anyone could pray or meditate on the greatness of God after their nerves had been jangled in such a manner; God knows I wasn’t feeling very prayerful after that kind of racket. But this mosque is very respectful of the neighbors. Adamaly Place is a side street off Galle Road which is the main road running along the coast in Colombo. It’s right in the middle of town, walking distance to my aunt’s house, and a block from Majestic City which is the biggest shopping center in Sri Lanka. Majestic City is a four-storey mall with a movie theater and café, a snack shop and a grocery store, several ATMs, all manner of electronic and clothing shops, and several shoe stores. Aside from the benefit of living next to a place with a grocery store and ATMs (you thought I was going to mention the shoe stores, didn't you...), the main benefit of living next to Majestic City is that everyone knows where it is, so I never have to worry about getting home from wherever I happen to be because I can just tell the tuk-tuk driver “near Majestic City” and they know where to take me – Colombo is still a maze as far as I’m concerned.

Here are some pictures of the neighborhood.

This is the ox that is usually parked at the top of the lane. He is used to pull an oil cart which I think contains kerosene - possibly for use in residential stoves. I was a little nervous taking this picture; I didn't use the flash.

The famous Majestic City on Galle Road.

Across the street from Majestic City.

Fruit stand around the corner...

...or, if you'd prefer, the place that sells WHOLE deep-fried chickens.

In case you missed that.









The local Kwik-E-Mart.

The house where I live; we have the right side of this very non-descript building which is essentially a duplex. The only way in is through the garage.

Once you go through the door from the garage into the house, you're actually back outdoors in this internal courtyard.

The other main living space is the living room/dining room. There are also a few bedrooms, a few bathrooms, a den, an office, and of course a kitchen. It sounds larger than it is, but it's very comfortable -- if a little on the shabby side (some major renovations would not be out of line).

The mosque at the end of the lane.