More than just curry

Have been pleased to find that there is more than just Sri Lankan food on offer here. Obviously it's more than reasonable to expect that there would be plenty of that and talking to some of my local colleagues they prefer to have curry for breakfast, lunch and dinner and you couldn't pay them to eat anything else.

But being a well-travelled Aussie, I'm used to variety in my culinary options. Am currently typing this feeling very satisfied with the lunch delivery organised by my Scottish colleague from Hazari's, an Arab fast food restaurant that makes pretty tasty pizzas and wraps that are totally different from anything you've ever had before. I'm very pleased to add the word mannakish (a stuffed flatbread kind of thing) to my vocabulary. Mildly spiced, not drowned in cheese, they are GOOD! Thank goodness for travelling chefs who choose to set up in far flung corners of the world.

The recent past

As a newcomer to Sri Lanka stuck in an office in the burbs it's easy to forget the horrors of the recent past here. And it's not really a topic you want to bring up with new people you are trying to make friends with! But I've a lot to learn. I wonder what the Sinhala equivalent of 'gaijin' is?!

Albright report slams Lanka

July 24, 2013 from Colombo Gazette
A report compiled by a committee chaired by former US Secretary of State Madeleine K. Albright has criticised the international reaction to Sri Lanka during the final stages of the conflict despite embracing the Responsibility to Protect (R2P) concept.
R2P focuses on preventing and halting genocide, war crimes, crimes against humanity and ethnic cleansing.
Released by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, United States Institute of Peace, and Brookings Institution, the report said that tens of thousands of Tamil civilians died at the end of the Sri Lankan civil war with little international outcry or effective UN response.
Former U.S. secretary of state Madeleine Albright and former presidential special envoy to Sudan Richard Williamson co-chaired the working group which compiled the report.
On Sri Lanka, the report says for over twenty-five years, the conflict in Sri Lanka pitted the army against the separatist insurgency of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE). However, levels of violence escalated rapidly as the government pursued a strategy of military victory and advanced into LTTE-held territory between January and May 2009.
During this period, the civilian population suffered significant casualties and were unable to escape the conflict zone due to LTTE threats and the Sri Lankan military’s prohibitions on movement.
The United Nations estimates that up to forty thousand civilians were killed and hundreds of thousands were displaced during the final phase of the conflict, which ended with the defeat of the LTTE and the deaths of its senior leaders.
“Despite the high number of civilian casualties, the international community did little beyond issuing statements of concern. The UN Security Council, High Commission on Human Rights, and General Assembly held no formal sessions on Sri Lanka during this period. In Sri Lanka, both the government and the rebels can be faulted for failing to protect civilians. However, the international community also neglected its responsibility to take timely action when it was apparent that violations of humanitarian law were taking place,” the report said.
It goes on to say that the case of Sri Lanka exemplifies a challenge for implementing R2P when sovereign governments confront an internal threat from a group that is designated as a terrorist organization.
“Since the end of the conflict, the government has steadfastly denied that the mass killing of civilians and war crimes took place. While launching its own inquiry into the military’s actions, the government has obstructed international efforts to investigate potential war crimes and crimes against humanity. Critics question the independence and balance of the government commission’s report and argue that accountability requires a more credible investigation. If a recurrence of conflict in Sri Lanka is to be prevented, the international community should help the government respond to the needs of all communities in the country, while undertaking a national reconciliation process that addresses wounds inflicted during nearly three decades of conflict,” the report said. (Colombo Gazette)
http://colombogazette.com/2013/07/24/albright-report-slams-lanka/

My local Chinese has the delightful air of the mildly dodgy

This is the review from Yamu, a local website with well written recommendations on places to eat and drink etc. I had seen a local joint "Chopsticks" on my tuk tuk journeys to and from yoga class and couldn't be bothered cooking last night so thought I'd check it out.

"If you happen to be in Nawala, or reside in the lowly 'burbs of Nugegoda or Dehiwala, Chopsticks is a fine place for a meal and drink. While the drinks aren't super cheap (big Lion - Rs. 250), the place has the delightful air of the mildly dodgy. And the food is great."

And it was fine. Nothing fancy but more than sufficient for a local joint. Framed black and white photos of Danny and Sandy (from Grease), Liz Taylor, Elvis and a random assortment of other western movie stars dotted the walls in random locations and the decor was Sante Fe-esque. the distorted stereo boomed out Meatloaf and other 80s and early 90s classics. It's that odd kind of time-warp setting that you find in lots of developing countries that is somehow charming for its earnest mix of thrown together influences with no sense of irony intended.

All the young men heading upstairs to the pub definitely didn't know what to make of me sitting there reading a book on my iphone drinking a beer. Oh well. It's the most local food joint to my flat I've found so far (not counting MacDo) and I don't want to overdo it on the curry to the point where I can't eat it anymore. 

Hooray for the mildly dodgy.

"Once a woman cut off the neck of a she goat and suffered in hell because of that action, She had her own head cut off as many times as she had hair on her body. This is the fate of all who commit sin."

Take what you want from today's Buddhist lesson from Gangaramaya temple. Happy weekend all.

 

Building on happiness

The weekend before last I stayed at the beautiful Villa Bentota, just outside the seaside town of Bentota about 2 hours drive (65km) south of Colombo. Designed by Geoffrey Bawa, Sri Lanka's most renowned and revered architect, it really was a space that made you feel beautiful and elegant. And yet it wasn't overly imposing or grand, just very refined and thoughtful.

This article I found in the paper sums it up well:

"It’s not huge, big architecture with a capital ‘A’ but it’s about how people experience it. The architecture doesn’t dominate. The use of the space dominates and how people feel in that. It’s around people, and how they live…there’s a subtlety that’s just beautiful."

Spaces that make you happy. We don't often consciously think about it, but you know when you are in a place that just makes you feel more alive and that you belong in that space. Trouble is, like business class, once you've tried it you don't want to go back to everyday economy non-design!

Personals of a different nature

So the search for a life partner is done very differently here in SL - it seems parents put the advertisement in the paper spelling out the desirable traits and asking for horoscopes, even for adult children who have professional degrees. And the status of siblings seems also to be of import. Tells you quite a lot about the culture here. I wonder if this is changing at all as more and more young SL's are educated abroad?  

Bentota - the photos

Epicurean delight

I convinced one of my colleagues, Peter, to join me in an epicurean degustation at Tao, a fusion restaurant in the oh so elegant Cinnamon Grand Hotel complex down by the ocean. We careened up in a fume spewing tuk tuk, which thankfully dropped us away from the elegant main entrance, so it wasn't quite so evident that we were ring-ins from the humdrum outer suburbs.

The set menu had half a dozen entrees, a trio of mini soups, about 8 mains and 6 desserts. Morsels and mouthfuls, it all added up to a sublime feast. Unlike other degustations I have had the pleasure of enjoying, this one had less heavily constructed food and relied more on simple fresh ingredients simply prepared and paired with complimentary or surprising accompaniments.

Seated by a gleaming deep sapphire pool, breeze in the palm trees, delightful Argentinian wine, it was the epitome of elegant life in the tropics.



And the most delightful bit? With tip and taxes it was AUD25 each. We may just have to go back again next week!

local weather forecast

At least it's consistent! And I know I don't need to pack a jumper.

The treatment of women

A recent blog post from New Internationalist was timely as I settle into a new culture.
http://newint.org/blog/2013/06/14/women-violence-india/
Sri Lanka is not India however there are similarities to be found.

In a country which had the privilege of having both the first female prime minister and president in the world, there are marked gaps between rhetoric and reality. The guidebooks all say that because of the influence of Buddhism here, that SL is a safe place for solo women travellers, however I haven't found it to be particularly so. Already I have had incredibly rude things shouted at me by schoolboys, been mocked by boys on the beach outside my hotel in a very explicit way, and been generally harassed by touts and drivers in a popular tourist area to a far greater extent than I have ever been subject to anywhere in the world. My colleagues have told me a few stories about women they know personally having been physically threatened whilst here too. Of course the majority of places and people are kind and welcoming but it's certainly a different atmosphere than anywhere else I've been before.

I've done a bit of research and there seems to be more of a consensus in local media that single women are socially unacceptable and generally seen as "easy prey" or "fair game". (Sunday Observer 25/02/07). A UNHCR report (Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada, 2004) also reports that "spinsters, a term used in reference to single women, are also discriminated against and are not socially accepted in Sri Lankan society (Daily Mail, 8/08/03). One source notes that single women have in the past been referred to as an anti-social group (ibid.).

Wider than the issue of how comfortable I may feel here though is the fact that one in every five households are female-headed, due to the civil war but also the 2006 tsunami. Female-headed households are "deemed to be inauspicious and are not culturally accepted (ibid.), are seen as unlucky and are "generally not invited to community ceremonies such as weddings and festivals (Daily News, 25/03/03).  Female-headed households are always under the threat of rapists, womanizers and often become easy targets of criminals" (ibid.).  

I had a tuk-tuk driver in Negombo the other weekend who asked me if I was married and when I said that I was not, he replied "you cannot be happy if you are not a wife and have children". He was a nice friendly guy, but that was his world view and it was incomprehensible to him that I might be happy as I am.

I don't know where I am hoping this train of thought will lead, I guess it is an observation of my current experience, and we shall see what I learn and observe during my time in this country which may not be the tropical paradise it may wish to appear as.

Traffic delays for traffic surveys

Our driver was late picking us up for work this morning. His explanation was there were traffic delays because they were doing traffic surveys. I didn't quite know what to make of this until we emerged onto the main road, which is usually quite congested at the 715am peak hour, to find a row of uniformed policemen holding the cars back at the pedestrian crossing, making it easy for us to get out across the three lanes of road (which translates to 6 to 8 lanes of traffic). As we looped back in the opposite direction we could see a dozen or so young people, presumably university students, casually dressed in every day clothes and sandals, with clipboards in hand leaning into the drivers' windows asking a bunch of questions.

One can only imagine the type of questions being asked - "how do you find the traffic congestion along this stretch of road?", "how long does it take you to get to your destination?".

The traffic snarls on all the side roads and stretching far past our turn off did not look pleasant. Hope they got some useful information out of the exercise!!
Photo from the Asian Times. That traffic looks remarkably ordered though! Normally there would be two more rows of tuk tuks woven in there too.

Colombo wildlife encounters

 House crows - If you think Alfred Hitchcock's 'The Birds' is your worst nightmare, then don't come to Sri Lanka. The house crow is the most ubiquitous of birds, everywhere and in almost plague proportions. Being corvids, they are also pretty smart, and incredibly bold and have no problem prancing onto your table to help themselves to something they want. Beware the beak!

 Considerably cuter than the crows but just as cheeky, this chipmunk pushed the lid off my bowl of Bombay mix that was served with my beer and proceeded to have himself a little spicy feast.

We have a couple of geckos darting about our living room walls. Figure they are good for keeping the insects at bay. But this little guy, no bigger than my pinkie finger, decided that my bed was a comfy place for nap. I think he was more scared than I was, poor little guy.