Governors camp – my pre-trip stop.

Generally we leave for Yala around 4 in the morning to end up in our bungalow by 12 noon. This means one has to wake up at 2.30 in order to get the stuff ready such as ice and other frozen foods and to pack everything and pick the people up from their houses. I always found it a strain to wake up that early and rush around making sure that you get to the park on time to make the most of your holiday. Also for me a Holiday really begins on the day you wake up in that location and not on the day you drive down. I know it sounds a bit crazy but then that’s the way I am and I offer no excuses.

On this outing my kids and the wife were coming too and I knew for a fact that they would find it difficult to handle this early morning rush. So we decided to do something different. To drive to Yala the previous day at a godlier hour and spend the night at Governors camp.

It was one of the wisest decisions I ever made.

We picked the kids early from school and had a leisurely drive along the new Panadura Horana Ratnapura road which is completely done up now and is amazing to drive on. It is not used by Lorries and buses as much as the high level road is which makes it an easy, fast and stress free drive. In fact we found ourselves in Ratnapura in ninety minutes on that day which was awesome. Alltogether it took us less than five hours to get to Yala and this was at a very relaxed pace as there was no pressure to beat the clock.

Governors camp was all that I imagined and more. In terms of the setting it is as good as staying inside the park except it is more comfortable and clean. The only limitation being that you have to go to the main entrance and pay the fees and get a tracker every time you want to get into the park proper. As the name connotes it is a camp not a hotel and it is inspired by the wild life department bungalows. There is a dormitory which can sleep ten comfortably and a separate eating area.

The sleeping quarters

Clean crisp sheets feels so wonderful after such a long drive

Places to just sit back and do nothing in....

Simple yet elegant thats what I like about this place

I love these arm chairs it was so relaxing to chill out on them

The little things which make a big difference

The toilets... love the color scheme!

What I liked about the place was it was nice and windy so it was not too hot. Also we received a warm welcome by the staff. It was lovely to walk in and have a hot cup of tea relaxing in one of their comfy arm chairs with the wind blowing gently against our skin. Also the cook was excellent. No excellent is an understatement he was out of this world. In the night he made us Noddles Kothu which was the first time I had heard of such a dish and it was utterly delicious. I must confess I felt this particular dish was quite unsuitable for a jungle environment because the sound of the clanging while the kothu was being made really disturbed the still of the night. And the breakfast oh wooow !!! Fish curry with extra goraka, pol sambol, parippu and homemade (should I say camp made?) string hoppers. Another wise decision I made was to order the food from the camp instead of taking the provisions which they would have willingly cooked at no extra charge.

Our amazing breakfast

Sadly we did not spend enough time there to absorb it one hundred percent. For instance I could not check out the beach though the kids said it was lovely. I also heard that they have a couple more properties of their own in Uda Walawe and Wilpattu and that the Uda Walawe property is supposed to be breathtaking. Well that’s another outing waiting to happen.

The beach out side the camp it is supposed to be beautiful but we are warned not to swim as the waters are very rough.

A little gem...

"A man who wants to lead the orchestra

must turn his back on the crowd"

- Anonymous

Believe it or not I found this quote in the back of a church leaflet.

Damned if I do and Damned if I don't!

Oh how strange are the challenges life throws at us.

This all happened a couple of weeks back when we pitched and won quite a large piece of business from a new client. Let's call it brand X. Everyone was thrilled. Now this new brand we got was in direct competition with a product one of our existing clients were marketing. Let's call it brand Y. However since they were working with another agency on this product there was no conflict of interest. At least that is what I thought. As it was ethically correct I went and officially informed my client that I would be working on brand Y. The first response was but we thought you were working on brand Y. Well the bottom line after much discussion was that they wanted us to give up product X and they were willing to give us product Y to placate us. Now I am stuck between the devil and the deep blue sea. Firstly how do I go and tell company X that I don't want to handle their business. There is always a chance that I will jeopardise my relationship with them for good because of this. Secondly; in terms of income we would make product Y will never even come close giving us the revenue we would get from product X. On the other hand if I don't give up product X it will jeopardise my relationship with the company who markets product Y. A company who has had a strong relationship with us for a long time and is also one of our important clients. This is my quandary. But guess finally I will have to bite the bullet and kiss product X goodbye. They say a bird in hand is worth two in the bush. But I wonder what one would say for two birds in hand? Sigh!

Some interesting 'facts' which i didn't know

If you yelled for 8 years, 7 months and 6 days you would have produced enough sound energy to heat one cup of coffee.

If you farted consistently for 6 years and 9 months, enough gas is produced to create the energy of an atomic bomb..

The human heart creates enough pressure when it pumps out of the body to squirt blood 30 feet.

A cockroach will live nine days without its head before it starves to death. (Creepy.)

Banging your head against a wall uses 150 calories an h

The male praying mantis cannot copulate while its head is attached to its body. The female initiates sex by ripping the male's head off.

The flea can jump 350 times its body length. It's like a human jumping the length of a football field.

The catfish has over 27,000 taste buds.

Some lions mate over 50 times a day.

Butterflies taste with their feet.

The strongest muscle in the body is the tongue.

Right-handed people live, on average, nine years longer than left-handed people.

Elephants are the only animals that cannot jump.

Cat's urine glows under a black light..

An ostrich's eye is bigger than its brain.

Starfish have no brains

Polar bears are left-handed.

Humans and dolphins are the only species that have sex for pleasure.

Well now I know and guess - if you got this far- you know.

Urghhhhh to kill

Generally I am a gentle and peaceful soul whose feathers rarely get ruffled. But as I write this I wish I could march into HSBC find the person who hires people and shake him till his bones rattle and tell him to do his job right by hiring competent people.
The start of my frustration was when I decided to get my wife a supplementary HSBC credit card. The special discounts and offers at keells were too good to pass.
Coming to think of it I actually had not thought about getting one till I called their customer service hot line for some other matter and they up sold me onto requesting for one as they have been trained to do.
A couple of days later I get a call from a lady who inquires about me requesting for a supplementary card. I notice that she is finding it extremely difficult to converse in English. I try to switch to the mother tongue but she doesn't seem to want to do so. She wants to come and deliver the application and collect it from my office. I realize she has to travel by bus and somehow I felt sorry for her to have to go through all that stress on my behalf. So I tell her I will pick up an application fill it up and have it delivered to her desk. She takes some time to understand this. But says ok and gives me her mobile number to contact her. Couple of days later I see a missed call from the card center. I call her on her mobile - you cannot call back on the incoming line - and identify myself. It seems she has no idea of who I am or that we spoke before and what we agreed upon. So I repeat it all over again and tell her she would have called me to follow up on application and hangup. Finally I get the application ready with all the documents and try to get through but the phone is switched off. I could have just sent the application direct to the card center but did not want to deprive the poor girl of her commission. Finally after a few days I get through reintroduce myself once more and go through the whole rigmarole of what we agreed on and finally make her understand that I am willing to deliver the application to her office. She gives me the address and I send a messenger to deliver it. Since it was a bank holiday she was not there and the security on duty at the bank say they cannot accept the letter. I send it the next working day and it is delivered to the bank counter on the ground flow of the Wellawatte Branch. Next day I call her and she has not got it to her hands even though it is addressed to her specifically. Then she tells me that the address should also say third floor, something she did not mention when she gave it to me in the first place. Fortunately we knew who the letter was delivered to and I gave her the contact. But even by the next day she had not got the application to her hand. And when I repeated the name of the person who it was delivered to for the second time her reaction was as if she had heard it for the first time.
By this time I was about to explode and then she says that even if she got the application she has to see the original documents personally before accepting it. Even I am surprised at myself on how I maintained my cool till I hung up.
Then I went and kicked the tires of my car.
There's is a Sinhalese saying which goes even a tiny drop of cow dung can spoil an entire glass of milk. And that is completely true in this case. My high regard of the standards of HSBC has been sullied by this incident. Sadly I don't blame the girl she clearly is not equipped with the skills required to handle her task. It is those who are responsible for filling this vacancy with an incompetent person who should be shot and hung.

An anticlimax of the fishy kind...

It was a beautiful morning we woke up to at Governor's camp Yala. And we were sitting and enjoying our morning tea and the bird calls and looking forward to the breakfast we had ordered of stringhoppers sambol and fish curry. The bungalow keeper was having problems in starting his trishaw and he said he wanted us to go bring the fish for breakfast.
The moment my cousin and I heard that we exchanged looks of absolute bliss because we love fresh fish. Images came to our mind of the trishaw driving into the kirinda harbor and the fresh catch of the day coming out of the boats and being laid out on the ground. Our taste buds were palpitating with excitement waiting for the moment the taste of fresh fish curry touched our mouths. All that was missing was a majestic music track to the vivid and beautiful scenes which were going through our minds. I must say they would have been worthy of being displayed on Discovery Travel and Living.
And then he spoils it all by saying the fish has been stored in a Freezer in the junction.

My own love song... A movie I liked

Some movies make you cry whilst others make you laugh or just feel lovey dovey. And certain movies make you want to get stoned. At least for me. Basquiat was one such movie and natural born killers. Well "My own love song" cannot be described as a powerful movie like natural born killers it was pretty plain and down to earth and has a simple story line. But it still made me want to role one and smoke up and just chill.
This was a movie I picked up completely by accident when I was looking for some weekend entertainment. Actually what caught my eye was that the music was done by Bob Dylan and there was Rene zellewegger. Well I am not going to be giving you the whole plot of the movie cos you can easily find it elsewhere on the net. But just say I never new Rene Zelwegger could sing. She does a version of "this land is my land" which left me speechless. And then there is a scene with Nick Nolte talking with some weired drum beats in the background and everyone is buzzed out after eating hash cake. I am still trying to figure out how to rip it and post on here. Guess I will figure it out in due course. But till then I am mulling over how long it has been since I got stoned. Joint anyone?