Second day of second year and finally St. Andrews feels a little like that cozy second home with the happiness of two consecutively sunny days (a miracle really) and even interesting classes along with our usual mockery of the living scenery among other things and people of course. I suppose I'm surprised that I am starting to like- even momentarily love bits of the place with its quirks and small towny traditions. When you're sitting on a wooden bench in St. Salvator's Quad on a sunny late-afternoon watching this beautiful lawn and ancient buildings; the chapel, the clock and even the occasional seagull lazing in the dreamy sun you remember why two years ago you really, really were so positively anxious to get accepted here and were so excited to go here. It's easy to forget when the rain is everywhere, your shoes are soaked through and you're perpetually cold that it's for days like this you chose to come to a place so steeped in beauty and history despite everything and everyone else.

 

Perhaps it's the awkwardness of freshman year that has finally left my system and in finding the confidence that I know a little more than a new set of Bejants even if it is the back path to DRA or where exactly the Holy Trinity Church is. Perhaps it's the beginning of a more optimistic me willing to accept that this place is now home for 7 or 8 months a year and hence make the best of it (ok so that didn't sound too optimistic but get my drift right?). Perhaps it's remembering the excitement this weirdly wonderful place contained for me when I looked from 6000 miles and a few seas away only two years ago. The anticipation to learn all the strange subjects I have chosen and just bask in the quaint antiquity of the bubble by the sea.

 

My theory is that college is one of those places you strive to get to, the goal you want to accomplish when you get your results on a sunny July day. I suppose for some it is incidental, inevitable or even something done on a whim but to me and others it's a life plan- something you know you are meant to and want to do. But college as it turns out along with a million other worries of freshman year is mostly anticlimactic to people like me: not completely what you expected. It maybe more, it maybe less but never entirely what you picture in your head. It's also that sense of accomplishing something but not having the next stage quite figured out yet because everything you anticipated you has you contained in a 4 year envelope before real life begins. But once you're found your little place in that institutional universe unto its own, the excitement for that next stage, the next plan begins, finding and stunting your pessimism about a year past and reminding you that you are indeed living an accomplishment or even a dream.

 

Here's to beginnings, findings and remembering...

 

 

There is a broad gap between disagreeing with what I say and causing a minor situation. Yes I am impertinent at times, even rude, even a couple of toes out of line but I am still entitled to an opinion regardless of how many of you think I'm a smart assed punk with too much time on my hands. The purpose of a blog is to speak your mind and not lose your words in a web of political correctness or simply being polite. If that were my intent I would be studying journalism hoping to land a job at a newspaper. If ever I get tired of the Social Anthropology and venture out into the media I promise to be less offensive. 


 

First of all the blogging has been sparse i.e. almost non-existent because I’ve been confined in the summer breezing doing nothing and accomplishing all those menial summer goals of catching up on reading and film. Nothing much has happened, hence the lack of posts. The blog hasn’t been forgotten. I was giving myself a break until I returned to the bubble but this rather self-righteous prat left a comment on “Descending into Darkness” which was just begging for a response.

 

“I dont usually dignify unhinged rants but one could help notice your abusive personal remarks about Eric Ellis' story after a reporting assignment to Colombo in April, and your own observations above upon your return, a desperation you express which seems remarkably similar to his earlier, observations which you then bucketed, without much of an cogent argument.

 You wrote then "You haven't the faintest clue about what the truth behind the war is and it’s shameful that its people like you who write for the bigwig magazines are believed by the wider world." But then you write basically the same thing as he did, for your pathetic blog, a few months later when you actually saw what he had already.

You claim its easy to observe from a luxury hotel. Perhaps, but he was there in Colombo. You were across the world clearly wasting daddy's cash in a British university. Maybe its your youth (you own 'bratty and opinionated college freshman' seems an apt description). You may learn, but first I suggest you learn some manners. And humility.”

 

First of all to this asinine schmuck who so kindly commented that I was “wasting daddy’s cash in a British university” and needed to “learn some manners. And humility.” Tsk tsk- I don’t think I need to justify my opinions to someone who thinks that getting a solid education is a waste of money.

 

Secondly, the fact that I am fortunate enough to get a great education doesn’t make me impervious to the situation in Sri Lanka or spoilt. I make an effort to educate myself on the war and the ethnic conflict which is more than I can say for a lot of people. I was born here and I have lived here my entire life save for the last year when I was away in college. It concerns me that my entire lifetime here has been defined by this ridiculous stalemate war.

 The Eric Ellis article: Freedom of speech entitles me to an opinion and I was simply pointing out the flaws in Ellis’ article. An opinion I stand by firmly because Ellis’ condescending criticism in nothing more than a insubstantial puff piece which international readers will forget about in 5 minutes because no one cares about a bungling island nation with little international significance. Do you really think anyone would take the war in Sri Lanka seriously based on that perception alone?

 

My observations on Colombo deals with the great change I’ve seen in Colombo in the very short space of a year. It’s not the reflection of someone visiting the country for the first time or someone with an outsider’s perspective. It’s the standpoint of someone who calls Colombo and Sri Lanka home, someone whose heart will remain here. I blame such desperation on the government because I do not agree with its policies or ignorant cretins such as your self whose narrow-minded criticism on someone calling for a change is the root of the stunted development plaguing Sri Lanka. My remarks deal with the flaws in the system which fatuous half-wits like you help sustain. It’s not a commentary about how from a star-class hotel I was watching the incompetent soldiers checking out women and how hotel management lie to keep the guests calm.

 

It is also a fact that more people read an international magazine which paints a misleading picture, than the blog of a “bratty and opinionated college freshman” and I for one don’t like the fact that Sri Lanka will be defined by such a foolish commentary riddled with flaws.

 

So, what according to you is the truth behind the war?   You are what you read Mister and by calling my blog pathetic, you are in reality complimenting yourself because I think your inane resentment mirrors worse: your ignorance.

Colombo has morphed, Sri Lanka has transformed but perhaps it is I who have changed by losing hope for my home.

Tuesday night we met up after being away from our island home for many moons. Over talk and banter of freshman year it’s highs, lows, moments of perfection and scandal we noticed something. The something was intangible, a dark presence, a change, a sinister shift in the winds from South to North and North to South. This something haunted the streets, shadowing home like a dark cloud. The something haunted the streets now deserted by 9; an early hour by usual standards when the streets would be buzzing with cars and people. The something kept the watchful police and rifle laden soldiers on edge demanding identification, almost harassing, almost helpless at the face of their job but taking a very macabre pleasure out of tormenting busloads of people or a passer-by. I can’t put my finger on it but the change was bad, something I can’t explain but it makes me feel edgy and uneasy almost frightened and unsure of all that rubbish that has happened to the place I called home.

We’ve been hearing stories of people being taken from their homes not to be heard of again, ransoms and bribes and just this sinister presence of a stale war still in motion like a marionette of self-centred politicians lining their pockets one after the other fuelling a racial feud I cannot see outside this so-called war that has defined my nearly 20 year existence. The feeling of living in a police state or under some kind of military regime is poignant as we pass check point after check point barbed wired and frighteningly permanent like the fixture that is this war with no winners. As frequent as the checkpoints are the flashy billboards of the dumbasses who run the nation and the war exploiting the people and a racial conflict which doesn’t exist far beyond the war between the terrorists and the government. And then we hear of these Tamil people no different to the Sinhalese being taken away from their homes by force and coerced and carted off to the traditionally Tamil north. People are being ripped away from lives they have found in the capital, the places they have learnt to call home in the past few years of relative stability following the ceasefire agreement of 2002. What does this all mean? What does all this portend to our fragmented homeland? It is wrong the government advocating such a violent infringement of human rights in the form of nothing less than ethnic cleansing. Where now is the difference between the government and the militants?

I am mourning the slow and painful demise of my island home pursuing a mirage of peace. Hope is lost, faith is mislead as we all Tamil or Sinhala are descending into a darkness stemming only from a political corruption that deviously plays the flaws of our races…

Yeah somehow or the other it became a couple of weeks since I came back home to sunny (hot, steaming, hot, scorching, hot, parched, did I mention hot?) Colombo after the flight from hell (a 20 hour delay- I kid you not) and I didn’t really get around to blogging- catching up with sleep, television, and food and friends.

I am picky about airlines and Sri Lankan despite being Usually Late is actually one of my preferred means of air travel (The food is tolerable despite being of the airline variety, the flight staff always pleasant and polite, and most importantly direct flights from LHR to CMB) Little did I expect the nightmare the materialized on Sunday. So my journey began Friday morning: St. Andrews to Edinburgh to Southampton to Bournemouth. A couple of days of lovely southern weather and 7.30 am Sunday morning I was off from Christchurch to High Wycombe (pit stop at the Cat lady’s (the aunt) house.  From High Wycombe to Heathrow with plenty of time to spare for the 21.35 flight to Colombo just so that I didn’t end up in the middle of the middle isle like last time. So waited in queue and waited more but no sign of checking in and people were getting restless and started going up to the Sri Lankan counter. Finally they decide to print out some fancy letter saying that the plane had been diverted to Frankfurt due to technical problems and hence a delay until 01.15. *Sigh* the not so happy hazards of air travel but no worries really… A little extra airport time didn’t kill anyone right? But what a waste of paper, I would’ve been happy with an announcement. So after an extra long security check (the groping sans gloves is really starting to bug me- yuck!) and a couple of hours walking up and down terminal 4 in search of a Body Shop (which doesn’t exist- how stupid!) received some good news: yes the flight would be leaving at 23.20.

So of course boarded and everything but no sign of take off until he pilot announces “Oooh yeah problem with the weather radar- should be fixed in half an hour” Such big, fat, chunky words of unadulterated deceit. So we haven’t taken off yet but the flight attendants start serving dinner- not weird at all… Two hours later the dumbass pilot finally says oops sorry we can’t take off til at least 8 am, time to offload. I could’ve dealt with two hours at the airport but what the hell- two hours stuck on a bloody plane without taking off?! So we left but the ground staff refuse entry unless we go through immigration again- joy… So over a hundred tired and angry passengers wait and wait by the luggage belts with no one saying anything and the poor KLM ground staff taking the heat from the collective frustration in a closed down Heathrow. Where the hell were the Sri Lankan reps? It wasn’t pretty- at all… Finally the moronic ground manager for the airline and the ditz at the counter who I semi-yelled at last time show up and make promises of accommodation with no apologies and too much ego. This ground manager chap is strange fellow- conceited for sure and not much a manager of anything. The counter skank fluttered about like a distressed butterfly

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