One kick in the groin and two shots of Monday Angst.

Well it is another Monday... middle of the month… nice!!! The pressure of closing billing for the end of the month has not really caught us by our vitals… yet! But it is the relative calm before the storm because it is the end of the second quarter and my numbers are shot to shit. Well that’s another rant for a rainy day. It started out as if it was going to be a good Monday till evening where I had to attend a meeting which was disastrous. To say the least.

I went to present some work to a star CEO Well the work had been approved by his team before and it was just to get a nod of approval.

A piece of cake or so I thought till he shot the work to bits. The real kick in the balls was that he was right. And whatever said and done it is hard to admit that sometimes the client can be right.

Well I had to go home early to take the wife to a dental appointment. Amazingly the doctor could not do what he was supposed to do as there was a mild infection and she had to take a dose of antibiotics and return the next week. It was too late to go back to office. So for once I was at home by 6.

And so it was movie time.

Started the evening watching a old drama called The House of Sand and Fog starring Ben Kingsley. Which was good but of course had a sad ending which left me kind of down. Then it was time to watch a movie called Basquiat a true life story of an American artist who appeared from the gutter rose to great heights and died at the tender age of 27. Of course the movie was another downer and now I am feeling really depressed as I tap away at my keyboard watching the original Woodstock concert. Well hopefully it would cheer me up.

But trust me Basquiat is one amazing movie. Firstly it has an amazing sound track with some great music. Secondly it has an amazing cast including Dennis Hopper and David Bowie who plays Andy Warhol. Some of Andy Warhol’s actual videos were featured in the movie. I must say the art was good too but to be honest I thought Basquiat’s stuff was kind of crude and I would not pay good money for it.

Nevertheless it is a good movie. A must watch movie I might add. Specially if you are interested about real life biographies.

Frolicking Friday. Groaning Saturday!

Groans! Moans! Grunts! I feel like an old man with arthritis. Well it is a tired and achy CJ tapping in these words on a Saturday night. Why are you feeling this way you might ask? Well guess it is because I did something which I don’t usually do. Go partying. Well if you can call it that. But guess this is my idea of what partying and since this is my blog what I say cannot be argued with.

Just a little bit of background. I have been partying since I was about 16 I have now lost all desire to go out and be seen. In fact when I was going to the blue elephant the cover charge was 150/- and Kapila was serving drinks. Anyway the past few years I have calmed down quite a bit. Wildlife to me is actually meant a trip to the jungle. And an enjoyable time is a gathering of good friends quiet company sharing a bottle of wine over good conversation and maybe sharing the occasional joint.

Anyway Friday began at the gym and since I had just started a new workout which focuses more on fitness I was feeling utterly useless and hopeless by 9.30 in the morning. Well I got a call from my good friend YP at around ten and he was elated that he had news of his first payment from deal had been transferred to him. Well of course this is a cause for celebration and it was agreed that we would meet up for drinks that night. Well it was a tough day and quite a busy one and when I was done it was past eight. And the three of us arrived at the SSC air conditioned bar. Well first a beer and some food was followed by shots of old arrack and coke. Of course the food was delicious. Specially wiping the gravy of the barbecued pork with cheese toast is heavenly and I am unable to find words to describe it. Well as the night continued the crowd of three became eight and a good time was being had by all. Towards midnight everyone decided to head to Sopranos for some karaoke. I must confess that this was the first time I have been there. And I was quite intrigued by it all. But oh boy some of them were singing really badly. And it really hurt my ears. On the other hand two of the people who were with us sounded absolutely brilliant. Well from Sopranos it was to Sugar we headed. At one in the morning it was kind of dull but gosh by two the place was rocking. The music was good and we were having a great time and I must confess that I enjoyed myself too. The ultimate treat however was to be eating a sugar hot dog at three in the morning. I still wish I could have had two or three of them.

I was drinking the whole night but I was not drunk just high and buzzed. But nevertheless waking up on Saturday morning I was hung over as hell. I would have liked nothing better than to sleep in the whole day. But sadly there is no rest for the wicked and I had to be the driver for my wife and her friend and bunch of kids. Well I did manage to get in another hour or so of sleep and managed to drive out of the house by 11.30 or so.

Even though I had taken a long shower and had breakfast I was still not feeling all that great. In fact it was agonizing. My joints hurt with every step I took and my eyes were red and there was an overall sense of what I call AMDG better known in the vernacular as a case of “ali meali dubala gathiya”

Well I had to pick our friend and her Kid from Colombo 5 and then drop the kids at a lunch somewhere past Battaramulla then take the ladies out for lunch and then go back to pick the kids up once more. And then drop our friend and her kid back home before I could crawl back into my bed and sleep some more. Damn it! This was lot of driving around to be doing whilst having a hangover. Well I did give it my best and managed to conclude project successfully without harm to anyone or anything. Being offered a beer at the place where the kids were being dropped helped. As well as a nice lunch at Amrit Masala. With Naan and Biriyani and paneer curry followed by lassie was heavenly.

Generally I get sleepy after a heavy meal and now this situation increased two fold. And on the way back to pick up the kids I got the munchies once more and ended up picking up ice cream at the McDonalds drive through.

Even though I thought I might not make it to the end the long drive finally was over and I did manage to crawl back into bed and here I am right now still weary. This is the time I ponder why on earth do I have to drink? Sadly I will forget what it felt like till my next drink.

Being blind to the blind?

I am guilty! First of shamelessly copying a line from a campaign by O&M. Well guess if imitation is flattery this is double flattery because by copying them I am imitating them once more. OK now it is time to stop the bitch fits and get back to the real issue. Which is the second thing I am guilty of.

I have seen them at the Apollo hospital junction where Park Road intersects with Baudhaloka Mawatha which is near the Airtel office. I think I have gone past them every Sunday for more than a year without really taking notice of them till now.

What are they doing? Well from what it seems they are selling tickets and trying to collect funds. But in reality they are begging. I think this a great barometer of the social consciousness of the powers that be. It is the responsibility, no duty of the government to look after its people specially the handicapped and the ailing. Well sadly the care for people expressed by our policymakers are limited to words and not to actions.

In a lighter vein I think this is a very inefficient way to beg. Specially for a Firstly I think it is a shame to our government when blind men have to beg. A government is responsible to look after its people. Especially the handicapped and it is sad that our handicapped have to beg on the street to fend for themselves.

On the other hand I could not help but think that this was a rather inefficient way of begging. Because it is highly unlikely that anyone would get out of their vehicle and come to them and give them money while they are waiting for a red light to turn to green. The maximum stop would not be more than 2 minutes. Even if these guys had someone who could see then they would be able to get them to collect the money on their behalf moving from car to car instead of reaching out from the side of the road. Which was still quite dangerous as I have seen many cars trying to avoid bumping into them. Even if they positioned themselves outside the food city which is a couple of hundred meters away I believe they would do better than being situated at their current location.

Of course this is my warped logic. I believe the laws of economics will finally come into play. They would not be standing in this particular corner for so long if they were not making sufficient money to make ends meet. Or at least their income was up to expectation. Guess they just never heard of profit maximisation.

A "C" string? What will they think of next?

Generally I am in the habit of ignoring all the junk mail which seems to flood my inbox. However sometimes I find the most intriguing and juiciest tit bits through them. For instance I discovered Loon Tao through them. As well as the fact that the Hamburgers sold at Sugar can now also be bought at the Odel Boulevard.

Well this particular mail really hit me in the face with its title. Which said that the C string is here. Now if the mail was not from Midnight Divas I would not have even opened it thinking that it was with reference to some kind of guitar string. It always intrigues me how the two strings which I know in underwear (yes G and C) are both guitar strings as well.

Anyway I was flummoxed to say the least when I saw what a C string was. Well it was like a hair band and a sanitary napkin have had a child. It had no waist around it. Guess you need to tuck it in the vital places and hey presto you have the comfort and protection of underwear without the threat of Visible panty line.

Just a little piece of information which a researcher friend shared with me about the underwear habits of normal lower income working girls in our country. Apparently the use of thongs is quite high. And they want the world to know that they are wearing them but without them peeking out of their pants like what would happen in a western country. How does one indicate you are wearing a thong without showing? Another clever Sri Lankan innovation: where white pants. Make the whole world aware that you are wearing a thong by innuendo as there is no visible panty line. I thought that was quite clever.

Well I am waiting to see what the next string would be?

Stripping for your (kids) supper aka the story of the stripper mom. Another true story

I have great regard and respect for those in the sex trade. You know not only the ladies of the night but also those ladies who perform the function as hostesses at seedy karaoke joints whilst letting themselves get groped as well as the masseurs in what is shamefully known as a spa. I think it takes great courage and determination to take that desperate step.

This is the true story of a lady I met one day while I was on my way home from church. Lets call her Clarice. I first spied her hobbling along the muddy path which links PCAG to Kirimandala Mawatha. She was wearing a ragged dress and a pair of muddy slippers. She was balding and her hair was in patches. But the copper color streaks through the black and the grey showed that she would try to dye it whenever possible. I still don’t know what made me stop my vehicle and offer her a lift and thus started a relationship which has gone on for nearly three years.

This is her story. She was a little loco so there might be some inaccuracies but the gist of the story is correct.

She would have been a very good looking girl in her younger age. Young, innocent and pretty it was not long before she fell for someone who was double her age and married at the tender age of 15. She had three kids with this man. I believe she was happy with him and everything was going fine. When he died. Leaving her to take care of three kids with no income. Sadly Clarice was not educated. She could not read or write. To date this makes travelling a nightmare for her and there have been many instances where she has got lost by getting into a wrong bus. And people have found her fallen on the street.

Well she had three kids to feel and out of the goodness of her heart she actually went and adopted another girl as well.

Sadly there is no one who would offer a decent job for someone who had four kids and can not read or write other than a servant. Which means that she would have to keep her children under the care of someone else. She did not want to give up her children and so she decided to become a cabaret artist and dance for all these bachelor parties. She used to tell me she used to get 1500/- per appearance which means it was quite a lot of money at that time. Well with this money she brought up the kids and all of them are married and getting along ok. Not that they are well off but one could say they are comfortable with a roof above their head.

Sadly some of the traits such as strength of will, independence, determination and sheer courage which helped her to bring up her children against all odds now began to work against her. She could not live with any of the children. She was always fighting with the spouses as well as the grand kids making it an absolute nightmare for everyone in that house.

Which means suddenly she had no place to live as she was not welcome in any of her kids houses. She actually managed to find a place for 500/- well it’s a room and she has to cook in it. From what she was telling me it would have been a miserable hell hole. Because it used to leak into the room when it was raining and once she was telling me how their were rats in her hand bag and eaten it. Of course she had only one hand bag which means that she had to carry her stuff around in a “Siri Siri” bag for the next couple of days. Well sadly she was diabetic and her the lack of food and understanding of how to treat herself took its toll. She was kicked out of her room and no one wanted to rent out a room to a sick old lady. No one wanted to deal with the responsibility. She did not have any money. She got 1500/- from the church a month which she would manage on. I helped her out with a couple of thousand more and occasionally give her some vials of insulin. She used to hangout in church and beg from people. But with all that it was a meager existence.

Anyway since she could not read or write her habit of taking her medicines were quite erratic I am sure. Sadly bad meals improper medicine and lack of proper living space made her worse. It was a vicious cycle. The less money and facilities she had the more sick she got. The more sick she got the less money she had because she could not go out and beg. She used to move from house to house. Sometimes with a friend. Sometimes with a nephew occasionally with her children. Still she would fight with the kids and storm out of the house. As she became weaker she would go missing for days. Sometimes she would be found fallen on the road and taken to hospital. However unwell she was she did not want to give up her freedom of movement because that was the only independence she had and she had to hold onto it. Sadly she had to lose that too because a couple of days back we finally managed to get her into an Elders Home which is run by my church. And as she entered the home she fell seriously sick and was admitted to intensive care and it was diagnosed as renal failure. After many years of abuse the kidneys had finally given up.

Sadly the best thing that could happen is for to her to die soon. To end the suffering. Not necessarily for her but more for those around her.

Emptiness

Going for lunch to UK!

Well guess this is the most obvious attention grabbing headlinethat any moron can think of. And guess I am one of them too. There were too places in Sri Lanka which was known as UK before. And I am sure many a people would have spouted the words I am going to UK trying to surprise or impress people. Of course till now UK meant Uswatikiyawa near Pegasus Reef Hotel and the other was Udawatte Kele in Kandy. Now there is a third UK fortunately one does not have to travel too far to go there. Of course I am talking about the Urban Kitchen at Arpico.

What was the former Arpico food court was taken over by four astute businessmen one being Raju Chandiram famous because he was the ex husband of Otara and the other being Jehan Kumara who I believe is a musician. I have heard of this place before mainly because one of my friends is doing their marketing and communication plan as well as implementing it for them.

After dropping my domestic in the main bus stand I had nothing to do till I had to pick my family up when they got back from camp. I was hungry and was thinking maybe I should head down to the CH and have a beer and a nasi goreng. But when I took the turn past Arpico Hyde Park corner - since I had heard about UK so much from my friend - I thought I might as well give the place a try.

So I walked in.

Well I must confess it was not your usual food court. And though the furniture was nice I really did not like the green plastic furniture somehow. From the way the entrance was done I somehow thought the setting would be more elegant. But I loved the look and feel of the open kitchen all stainless steel and light and with the chefs working hard behind the counters.The first thing which struck me as I walked in was what should I do? Is this place self service or do the waiters serve. My friend has told me it was a sit down diner but as far as I could see there were two self service

stations and no one told me what I should be doing or where I should sit. Well after observing things for a few minutes I sat down at a table and had to wait a couple of minutes before I could catch the eye of a waiter and ask for a menu.

I must say the menu was wide and amazing. There were lots of stuff I wanted to try. There was Western, Middle Eastern as well as Asian and Italian items on the menu. The drinks menu was nothing too exciting but there was one particular item which really caught my attention it was called crusty orange on further enquiry I found out it was fresh orange liquidized with crushed ice and then sugar syrup added to it. Wow it sounded heavenly. Well I asked for that and a nasi-goreng and the food was served pretty fast. The crusty orange lived up to expectations but I must say the nasi was average. Firstly I expected the quantity to be a little more for the price I paid. I must say it came with a kick ass chilli paste which really rocked. But overall my impression of the food was average. In fact now I was regretting not having gone to the CH because the nasi there is soooo good. My mouth was yearning for a CH nasi even though I had just finished a UK one. Well the food being average was further reiterated when I ordered my dessert which was fruit salad and ice cream which was nothing much as we

ll. But overall the place is nice. And there were many dishes and salads I want to try out in the future. One other thing which I really want to sample is the pizza provided by Regina Magherita the Italian restaurant down park road. Overall the bill was a little less than a 1000 bucks and I thought it was value for money considering it was slightly upscale than the food court at MC and I had the privilege of being served at the table instead of going from pillar to post to get my food. Which I absolutely hate.

Well another little delightful thing I found out about the place was that it had free wi fi so I spent some time there just surfing and looking at all the people who were walking in and out. A point I made to myself is I am going to bring my kids and come over there one of these days soon. But it won’t be because of the food.