Important Travel Tip regarding clean toilets

One of the down sides of travelling in Sri Lanka is access to clean toilets. Us guys can easily do it outside behind a tree but when you are travelling with females and little kids this becomes even more important. In fact access to clean toilets is so important to me I pay nearly double the market price for Ceylinco VIP insurance just so that I can access the VIP rest areas which are situated in about 8 locations throughout the island. But fortunately I don’t have to do so anymore.

Because I have learnt that every food city outlet throughout the island has a very clean toilet on offer to visitors who patronize their outlets. I was originally told of this by a friend and then I have visited at least two outlets where I found visitors toilets which are extremely clean. Thanks to the extensive food city network now access to a clean toilet is no more a problem wherever you go in this country.

I must raise my hat to the management of Cargills for being so thoughtful my sincere wish is that those who make use of these facilities will at least buy something from these outlets as a gesture of appreciation. 

A not so funny humorous perspective…

I was on the road to Wilpattu with some overseas visitors. We had stopped in the heart of Puttlam town to buy some provisions. When I heard giggles in the background. It seems my visitors found the name board of a store funny. I looked at the board they were referring to and for the life of me could not understand what was so funny. It was another regular “dealer board” as we call it in marcom jargon with a name of a paint company dominating it and the name of store spelt out in small lettering. I was wondering if there was some kind of typo  - as it is bound to happen in Sri Lanka – which made them find it funny. There was nothing I could see. After much probing it came out they thought that the brand of paints which was advertised “Asian Paints” was extremely funny. After all no one would had a brand of paint called Negro Paint or Chinese Paint or Caucasian Paint for that matter. I could see where they were coming from but to be honest I did not find it as amusing. However I could not resist telling them that they called it Asian paint because the only colors were on offer were shades of Brown and Yellow. J

Sri Lankan Ingenuity at its finest aka as Poor Man’s zoom.

Sri Lankan Zoom Lense

I kid you not this is a true story.

At first even I thought this kid was crazy when he was holding his phone against the viewing lens of a pair of Binoculars.

I saw this strange sight as I was spending a couple of days (yet again) in the warm embrace of the Master Campers crew in their camp site in the middle of the Uda Walawe jungle. Our visit has started well. The moment we drove into the camp site we were able to see a baby elephant and its mother drinking water on the opposite bank of the river virtually a stone’s throw away.

When I saw this site I knew things were about to get even more interesting.

It was not a sophisticated phone. In fact it was a cheap Chinese phone. Because the young man who owned it was not a sophisticated person. He was a poor young laborer who did most of the hard manual labor on the campsite. But he was not poor in ingenuity.

When I made enquiries about what he was doing he said he was taking a picture of a rare bird which was a Black dwarf king fisher. The bird was so far away I could not even catch a glimpse of it.

But amazingly see how the picture turned out.  I know the quality  is not the greatest but I don’t think any one would believe that this picture was taken by placing a camera against a pair of binoculars.

Pure Genius.

This is how the pictures turned out.

An interesting book with an identity crisis – The Professional by Ashok Ferrey

I was excited from the moment I heard that there was a new Ashok Ferrey book was out and it was a full novel instead of a collection of short stories. My excitement was at fever pitch when I got the book into my hands and started flipping through the pages. The start was excellent and all it did was to whet my appetite to devour the book.

But as I was getting deeper in to the book something kept gnawing at the back of my head. Believe it or not it was a video of (one) of my favorite comedians Papa CJ. 

However there was nothing funny about this  video as this was a serious presentation he was making at a TED conference on “Being Yourself”. The sad thing was that this gentleman who was so used to making jokes could not make a serious presentation without drifting into comedy mode. To such a degree it diluted the point he was trying to get across. It was ironic.

This book made me feel the same way.

It was a beautiful story about a young man who has to resort to being a male gigolo to make ends meet while he is in the UK. The way the book started I believe he intended to write a dark, deep, serious story quite similar to Colombo by Carl Muller - but somehow he could not help but digress into the funny quirky humorous Ashok Ferrey we all know and love to read.

And therein lay the issue with this book. At least in my eyes and make me refer to it as a book with an identity crisis. Having said that I must confess that I did thoroughly enjoy reading the book and have no regrets in purchasing it.

Good food at the Paradise Road Promenade cafe.

The Thai Style Fish Cakes were out of this world

Actually great food to be quite honest. I just did not want to be too complimentary on those folks from the heading of this post itself.

For those who don’t know this is the little café which is on the top floor of The Paradise Road Promenade down Dharmapala Mawatha. It is a quiet place which is rarely crowded and is a lovely place to spend a couple of hours with a book or magazine. I go there regularly to fill up on coffee and cake. Yes they have the same legendary double chocolate cheese cake, chocolate cake and carrot cake served at the Paradise Road Gallery café but in addition to that they also serve an amazingly good Passion fruit meringue cheese cake which is NOT available at the Gallery café.

Oops I realize that I am digressing. This post is not about the divine sweet treats that are on offer at this location. You see I just discovered that the promenade café does great mains as well as desserts. Something I have not found out for all this time and I am kicking myself for it. I knew they had a limited menu but I was never motivated to try any of the items there as I have NEVER seen anyone consuming anything other than cake and coffee. What a shame. The other day me and one of my colleagues walked in their for coffee and cake and decided to try some of the food out as we were ravenous.

What a wise decision it was. What I did not realize was that they had a full time chef on duty and he makes the food then their freshly. Since we were the only people here it was like having a private chef prepare a meal of us. Which was a lovely feeling

The food was absolutely lovely. Especially the Thai style Fish cakes we ordered. The subtle flavors were tantalizing the taste buds. Heavenly, exquisite and out of this world were the words my dining partner used whilst rolling her eyes orgasmically as she was savoring the food. We also ordered a vegetable salad as well as a lemon chicken dish which were all good. The portions were generous and the prices were quite reasonable I thought.

Everything was good other than the fact that I am just kicking myself for not having discovered the food side (for the lack of a better word) of the Promenade cafe before. 

The Vegetable Salad - excellent

The Lemon Chicken sandwich with Pesto was good too.

Ships that pass by day…

She walks out of a dressing room after a fit on.

He is seated on a chair, head bent over his phone waiting patiently for someone.

Their eyes lock together and light up and they automatically smile warmly at one another. 

Just like good friends do when they see each other after a long time.

There is genuine affection between them and he nearly stands up to walk over to her and give her a big hug. Just the way he would have done before.

Then a dose of reality splashes all over them both.

They are not meant to be friends. That was a long, long time ago.

They had parted bitterly. 

Shards of jealousy, anger, and betrayal ripping through the bonds that held them together so strongly before.

But now there was no boiling rage.

Just sadness on how two people who once shared such intense feeling that one would know when the other was thinking of her; could have grown so much apart. 

Just like ships that pass one another during the day. Seeing, observing acknowledging and then moving on leaving a cluster of ripples behind which will disappear within minutes.

Have you discovered the “The Base ball’s”?

I just did and thought they were great. They are a bunch of good looking guys who take popular songs and then do a classic American style 50’s version of them. Listen to this version of “Torn” which they have done, its absolutely wonderful and really infectious.  The  most amazing thing however is that these guys are from Germany.