Tiny Little Fractures

I have no idea what this picture has to do with the post, I typed sloppy reporting into Google and this showed up. Gotta love old Pete though…and miss the Libertines

I seem to hear a lot about the death of Mainstream Media and the rise of blogging as the new news medium. I personally don’t think there’s much to choose between the two, case in point were two articles I read on BBC and Fortune recently. The one on Fortune by Eric Ellis on the “Flying Tigers” did read more like a personal blog post or even a rant rather than a legitimate article. I was under the impression there was two types of articles in such magazines, “news” articles which should be accurate and dispassionate and “opinion” pieces which should involve more analysis and will obviously have some bias as a result.

Where does Ellis’s article fit into this? It’s certainly not dispassionate, nor does it involve a lot of analysis or even thinking for that matter. In fact he trots out that tired line about “the Tigers’ Eelam is a country, with all the accoutrements of state” not mentioning how the Sri Lankan Government and Sri Lankan taxpayers foot the administrative costs. Ellis displays an embarrassing lack of context, no more so when he titles his article “Eyewitness account of Tamil attack.” But then I guess he was just lazy and more intent on getting down the pool at GFH than thinking about what he was writing.

Another article that appears to include the most amazing cop out was this one on Muhammad Yunus dropping his aspirations for a political party in Bangladesh. One of the last paragraphs gave me pause for thought: 

“But correspondents say that many people questioned whether he had over-estimated his popularity in rural areas, where his bank’s high interest rates are disliked.” 

Eh? I could have sworn this was the same man who just got the Nobel Peace Prize for being the “World banker to the poor”  whose micro-credit schemes are available “even to beggars.” Also the Grameen bank is majority owned by the “rural poor it serves” so it’s not even Yunus’ bank. It just seems like some journo wrote up a third of that article, couldn’t come up with a valid reason why the chap was pulling out of politics (maybe he’s just tired of bullshit), really wanted to head down to the pub and just made something up.

Even I don’t…oh wait…there’s that bottle of wine left over from last night…

White House spokesman on Wolfowitz’s long overdue departure:

"Paul Wolfowitz is a good man who is passionate about the plight of poor people in the world.” 

Of course with a track record like his one can’t really doubt the veracity of that claim.

After all, I hear in his early days even Gandhi-ji applied for an internship with Halliburton. But his dress code wasn’t acceptable.

Or rather lack of. Check this article out here, especially the subheading, "plight of the Tamil Tiger community." To even type something like that really beggars belief with regard to stupidity. It’s reading small town hick papers like this that make me think that most journalists are idiots. Was the embargo not lifted on the NE during the ceasefire, is it not in fact true that throughout the war the Sri Lankan government has provided humanitarian relief to the conflict areas. Relief that has with relative frequency been Shanghaied by the Tigers. I’m glad god motivated Dr. John Whitehall to train Tiger medics, maybe his next step up should be funding some cyanide pills.

Gah, I’m just annoyed at the shoddy reporting in this article, the implication that the Tigers renouncing their demand for a separate state was the basis for the ceasefire. Patently untrue because first they never renounced anything, they just said some legal gobbledygook that made it sound like that (confirmed by the fact that Prabha said he still stood by his order that if he ever gave up the demand for Eelam, his troops should shoot him) and to be honest the Tigers never went into a ceasefire. Unless of course said ceasefires are characterized by hunting down political opponents and intelligence officers and gunning them down in the streets. Oh yeah and importing the odd plane and a few more weapons to enliven things. Piddleshit.

Oh yeah does anybody else find it odd that the photograph was taken by Ned Kelly?

Here’s the continuation of part 1 from yesterday and this part is a whole lot more serious. I finally got off my lazy arse and despite massive amounts of sleep deprivation courtesy Chinky Pinky and Cricket Captain I woke up early doors on a Sunday and drove down to the Pasadena temple. Admittedly I may have had some ulterior motives in volunteering (apparently it’s a good way to…cough…cough…make friends) which in the end didn’t really pan out, but it was a pretty ‘interesting’ experience. Putting together bags of food was a frenetic activity and O’s energy for a skinny chap was amazing as was his crazy driving skills. Here was a man who had undoubtedly learnt his road skills in Sri Lanka.

We ended up distributing the food bags in Skid Row which was an experience in itself. The poverty was a real slap in the face, people who have just made the wrong decisions or never had any opportunities in life, mired in drugs and alcohol. The spectrum in characters was suprising, there were the hustlers who talked their way into getting around 5 bags of food each, the truly grateful people, others who would just grab their food and walk off, a vegetarian bum of all things and another one who tried to teach me CAD. Surprises never cease I guess and I guess I’ll be back next month to help out. One Sunday out of the month isn’t too much to sacrifice and who knows, maybe on some small level I made a difference.

P.S. If anybody is in the LA area and wants to help click here.

Tina with her tablas but sadly not with bare feet (courtesy her website)

The last time I tried to volunteer my erstwhile services things didn’t really go to plan. It was a Tsunami relief concert in the Bay Area and R and I had the bright idea of going and lending a hand to the Sri Lankan contingent there. Of course the night before we very responsibly got utterly trashed, talked crap to some fine ladies and ended up with about two hours sleep before the event. R could barely drive the next morning and I spilled coffee all over my only shirt, which to add insult to injury was a pristine white. 

Rolling up to R’s cousins place was an inauspicious start, I had never met C before and I think he was a bit befuddled by a vertically challenged Sri Lankan reeking of equal parts alcohol and coffee rolling up to his door and asking to borrow a shirt. This while R did a reasonable impression of a man breathing his last in the car. In the end all we could offer at the concert was some light lifting and drinking all their water, while staring wistfully at the profusion of cute Indian girls and trying to come up with something to say that didn’t involve throwing up all over them.

I think R and I cemented our reputation with C and his gang (though C I think has forgiven us because he’s a good mate now) when after spotting Tina Sughand playing the tables barefoot both of us broke in backstage looking for her. After considerable effort, being lost several times and dodging security guards (I tell you its all about confidence, walking in like you belong) there was a totally unbelievable moment. R turned to look behind him, stopped square in his tracks and nudged me so hard I currently have both my kidneys on my left hand side of my body. I turned around to see Tina walking by with her retinue. I think she was befuddled as well too see two brown guys standing there, looking very dodgy, with their mouths open wide (possibly drooling) and puppy dog eyes (I’m hoping). She did give us a sweet smile (though that may have been a hangover induced hallucination) to which I believe my reaction was my tongue dropping out and a thin stream of drool piddling out of the side of my mouth. I have not the foggiest idea as to how R reacted. 

I funnily enough can’t remember anything more of that day, just Tina playing her tablas with no shoes on. For the umpteenth time I regretted drinking so much, nothing ever good comes off it. I always end up on the roof of someone’s car, pissing FG off, passing out at a Denny’s or in this case missing the opportunity of a lifetime, to mack on possibly one of the sexiest people I have ever seen. Imagine I had full control of my facilities and had come up with an amazing line. I could be sitting watching Tina play her tablas all night long…sigh

P.S. A fantasy about getting it on with Tina Tabla was not the point of this post, which was in fact about a volunteer experience I had this weekend, but I’m too tired for now. Await part 2 of Volunteering and then there’s volunteering. I would say with bated breath but I wouldn’t want anyone to hurt themselves.

Has bugger all to do with this post but is a beaut of a car

Mahinda mamme really outdid himself arguing the case for purchasing four MiG29’s at a total cost of probably around $60 million (or in Sri Lankan terms, a gadjillion Rupees, in layman’s terms, a whole lot of bloody cash).

Apparently it is not a knee jerk reaction (why would he ever have thought that?) but is part of a “planned development of the ADS” (Air Defense Systems to us laypeople)…err…then why pray tell did we spend almost $10 million on buying MiG27s recently?

Makes no sense to me, if I’m saving to buy a Porsche Carrera GT in a few months time, I’m certainly not going to buy a NSX to ‘tide me over.’ But then I don’t have a scarf cutting the blood supply to my brain, or in fact stand to make a few million from brokering the purchase of a NSX and a Carrera GT.

NB: all facts and the premise for this blog post were shamelessly ripped off from Iqbal Athas and his Situation Report.

It looks like there’s a bit of fraud floating around Sri Lanka and this time its two big alcohol companies that are involved one of them being DCSL. I personally am not that fussed with the allegations, for one thing they were defrauding the government which in a way is kind of ironic because it’s the government that defrauds us. Also the fraud was in a good cause, well at least a good cause in my books. Seriously don’t you think keeping the price of arrack down while giving less money to monkey Mervyn and his clan to buy Cayennes is a good thing?

What I loved about this article though was the last past. As opposed to a sting in the tail, the customs officer, Sanath Fernando, who was interviewed mopes about how high risk the investigation is and how “sad to say” they are “awaiting a response from the authorities to our request to send a team of Customs investigators to France for further investigation into this racket.”

I actually did snort some cereal through my nose when reading that sentence. Typical of our “trustworthy” customs officers that fraud happens in Sri Lanka and they want a team to go to Paris. Must be something in the water (or the arrack).

Yes this is very random but my last post got me ruminating on a most peculiar hatred that I have. A hatred for the toad, no not the much maligned cane toad but the more innocuous common toad, Bufo melanisticus (or something along those lines). And why do I hate the common toad? Well in a burst of even more randomness, it has to do with my house. The one that I grew up in that is, not the overpriced, cookie cutter house that I live in now but the wonderfully airy, original, eccentric house I grew up in.

Unfortunately as lovely as the house was and is, with open spaces, an indoor garden with a pond it was not designed to be toad proof. This was especially true for my room on the second floor which only had two true walls. On one side it had big sliding glass windows facing the indoor garden side while the other side was a half wall facing into the house (nobody could look into my room from that side because on the other side of the wall it dropped into the den downstairs, I just thought I’d clarify because I always get that question). Unfortunately this rather eccentric design meant that when the toads that inevitably found their way into the indoor garden decided to mate, the croaking/moaning reverberated up through the den and into my room. It usually sounded like a 20 pound toad was sitting by my ear amorously serenading me.

At the best of times this would have been infuriating. Now the thing is as a youth in my prime I loved to sleep (in fact I still love to sleep, but old age has made me an insomniac) and I found this nightly chorus impossible to handle. The only option I had was crawl out of my bed at ungodly hours in my PJ’s, grab a torch, a bag and crawl around my indoor garden playing Steve Irwin with a bunch of horny toads. What was really annoying was if they spotted me and jumped into the pond, things used to get infinitely complicated and wet at that stage. Several months of this and bulging siri siri bags full of amphibians and I thing I went a bit mental. Multicoloured toads used to dance in front of my eyes at all hours, cavorting and copulating, taunting me with their croaks and hopping just out of reach as I fell face first in the mud.

I must have thrown out at least half a tonne of toads, I threw them out the front door, out into the back garden, off my balcony and on one memorable occasion I even tossed a full, tied bag out by accident onto my neighbour’s roof. The next door maid had awakened to see a plastic bag mysteriously trying to hop in multiple directions in their garden. She of course being quite the sharp pencil assumed I had something to do with it and promptly delivered it to our rather befuddled maid. I finally solved the issue by first putting some ravenous Oscars into the pond and eventually a couple of terrapins (who in fact are still there, increased in size by a hundredfold) and the only toads I found in the pond afterwards were semi-masticated ones.

Now don’t get me wrong, I love amphibians and did in fact spend time one summer attempting to research them up in the mountains (something I’m yet to live down because CP called me at a delicate moment that I had just let a specimen escape from its tank and I had to beg off the phone call to capture it. For some reason all my friends find that hilarious). After all Sri Lanka is the hotspot for amphibians, a little known fact that I am inordinately proud off. But Bufo melanisticus I can do without.

It really is nice to see that I’m not the only one who can take a wrong turn. As to what a toad was doing almost a 100 meters down in Loch Ness of all places, I’m sure would take some explaining. Surely after the first few meters this directionally challenged amphibian should have realized there was something amiss.

Must have been a tourist toad.

I’ve been intrigued by RD’s recent expose on Sri Lankanisms and I have one more to add, the long goodbye. I’m not entirely sure however whether this Lankanism is widespread or whether it’s just me and the lunatic asylum that makes up my family. My dad’s side is the worst at this though and any family function involves a ridiculous amount of goodbyes. There was one particularly memorable night when the whole clan was there, the half French cousins, the half Welsh ones, the arty aunt and the dignified aunt along with the Grandparents. The guests of honour were some old family friends and their two daughters (wonder what happened to them, they were quite delic back in the day). 

The first goodbye was said around midnight in the salé. The whole troop then moved to the front door of the flat and stood around talking for about 20 minutes before decamping to the front gate. More talking, half inside the apartment building and half spilt onto Havelock Road. More talking for about half an hour before the guests got into their car. Things approached a farcical level when the family continued talking to the departing guests while they sat in their car. I just wished we could have done this inside where I had been comfortably ensconced on a sofa. Another 15 minutes of talking and the night was finally over, a good hour and a half after the first goodbye was said.

I find that either because of my rapid ageing or genetics I do the same thing now. Even the online world is not safe, though in this case I wasn’t really to blame too much. As Sri Lankan’s I think a simply “bye” or in my case “laters” just doesn’t cut it a goodbye has to go on for at least eight lines!

N:  hey ive gotta run….mothers day..have to take the mater out for dinner and all that jazz

J:  hehe

J:  alright

N: mystery cleared up and im glad this was u! and not some random wierdo….catch u laters

J:  yeah me too

J:  ttyl

N:  tc and happy monday!

J:  keep in touch…

J: 

J:  tc

J:  bye bye

N:  will do..laters

J:  yeah.. laterz

I’m getting more and more disillusioned with the organizations that are supposed to be promoting righteousness and humanity in the world. For me whether you are fighting for the environment or peace credibility is key. For example having that monkey Mervyn Silva making speeches at a peace march automatically voids any semblance of credibility that the other participants in that march may have had as trying to bring peace to Sri Lanka. Similarly histrionic screaming about rainforests being cut down at an ‘acre a minute’ doesn’t really do any good, because if that figure is wrong (which some people say it is) then your cause is lost no matter how worthy it is.

And that is why I have finally lost any faith in Amnesty International. One would think that if AI was going to launch a huge campaign to get Sri Lanka to “play by the rules” that they would get their facts straight, but unfortunately it seems they were too sloppy to do so. The AI website states:

“Some 4,000 civilians are dead; over 300,000 people are displaced; homes, schools and places of worship have been destroyed, all since the fighting intensified in April 2006.”

I personally thought that 4,000 figure seemed a bit high and did a bit of digging. From the BBC site: 

“More than 4,000 people - troops, Tamil Tiger rebels and Tamil, Sinhalese and Muslim civilians - are estimated to have been killed in Sri Lanka since late 2005 when a sharp escalation in violence began.”

The SLMM has this press release on the CFA’s status five years on which states "4,000 people".

Yes I know any civilian death is wrong as in fact is any combatant death when a ceasefire is supposed to be on but in distorting the facts like that AI has made a critical error. They in effect lied. And now they have lost all credibility.

Nope its not sex on the tap. Don’t get me wrong that’s nice but you can always head out somewhere, drink a bit, chat up a five, head home and then shock yourself in the morning once the alcohol has worn off. No what I really, really miss about not having a significant other is having to iron my own shirts, especially now that I work somewhere where for four days of the week I have to wear pants, shirt and a tie (ah the days of going to work in shorts and flip-flops).

I wonder whether I should use this as a closer the next time I’m out, “umm…I have a Rival Premium Iron with auto-shut off, care to finish that drink and come try it out?”

Somehow I don’t think that would fly.

Its 1am and I’m wide awake, which is odd considering it has been a hectic, bone numbingly tiring week. In fact it was only while dropping Chinky Pinky at LAX that I realized that the week had really flown by and it was already the weekend. All the way there and all the way back all I wanted to do was sleep, obviously a bad idea when zipping around at 80mph. 

This wanting to sleep at inappropriate times is a bad habit of mine, every single lecture I’ve ever been in, I’ve wanted to sleep. I in fact used to go to sleep in front of my Chem tuition teacher’s face, much to her surprise and chagrin. But when I can sleep, when I’m lying in bed and its nice and cozy I don’t fall asleep. It’s the darndest thing and one of the main reasons why I like drinking on the weekends. After about 9 or 10 drinks at least I go to sleep (or pass out, take your pick) and sleep the sleep of the dead without random dreams. One said random dream involved the front section of a KLM flight landing point blank on the top of my head (I don’t know, I can’t control what I dream about!).

That said, the alarm is off, the pooch is snoring and I’m going to try and get some shut eye, hopefully wake up late tomorrow, head to the gym, change the oil (the car’s not mine), get some new brake pads and then spend the rest of the weekend prone. Until I have to pick up CP from LAX on Sunday night though…but that’s two days away…weekends never last long enough.

Future jailbird (photo from here)

I’m unashamdely blogging about Paris Hilton today, yes she’s hugely irrelevant as are the vast majority of the people the paparazzi chase and she represents everything about pop culture that I despise, but this is too rich to go uncommented on. Somehow Ms. Hilton going to jail for a month for driving on a suspended sentence is “a waste of taxpayer’s money.” I’m going to go out on a limb here and assume that if I got caught for a DUI and then caught again driving with a suspended license not once but twice I’d be in jail as well, so why would she think this is unfair? Her excuse for breaking probation was also a classic one, she didn’t know she was on a suspended license. Now I know all of us have those blackout moments when drinking but not being able to remember a DUI?! I guess there’s blonde and then there’s blonde.

Kathy Hilton’s response, which I happened to catch it as ‘breaking news’ while channel surfing, to the sentence was even more amusing. I believe she said something along the lines of “it’s a shameful, shameful day for the Los Angeles police department” (or some other drivel along those lines). For the life of me I can’t figure out how some people can get so divorced from reality. Driving drunk is a cardinal sin over her in the US and isn’t really tolerated like it is back home, so I don’t see how she thinks she’s being singled out.

Oh yeah now there’s an online petition to seek a pardon for her sentence, citing the fact that she is a ‘role model’ and brings “excitement to our otherwise mundane lives”. Riight, the least she could have done is used proper lighting for her breakout hit instead of that freaky pointless night vision crap.

Personally I’d rather sign this petition. How about you?

A less impressive, but smokey fire  close to home
 

Oh but someone always does. I was up on a site visit in the Calabasas Mountains today when lo and behold a thick column of smoke was rising in the distance. It appears the California fire season has started (well it’s debatable as to whether it ever ended, as we had fires in December and February). This one is currently raging around Griffith Park which is thankfully miles from us. I haven’t had the misfortune to have too many hairy experiences with wildfires though the fam have a couple of times. They not once but twice had to pack valuables into cars and await a possible evacuation order as flames jumped into the air a couple of hundred feet away from the homestead.

My personal experience with wildfires was nonetheless surreal and involved driving home along the 101 through the Valley as the hills on the sides of the freeway glowed and sparked in the night. There was plenty of time to enjoy the Danteish views as well as the technically 45 minute journey took around 4 hours. As it was a stick shift car I could barely feel my legs at the end. The cruel irony was that I had to wake up the next day after 4 hours of sleep and head back into work on a train that rattled through some Apocalyptic terrain. Everything was black and there were even a few minute fires and embers that glowed on the tracks, something that did not really fill me with confidence. But fire is a part of life out here in Sunny SoCal, I just wonder what this summer will bring.

Life as I know it… 

Up at 6am to a bloody annoying Samsung alarm (actually I’m up a bit before the alarm goes off, wondering why I can’t sleep and dreading the alarm going off) 

Shower, shave, etc, etc…chow down on some brekkie and into the car at 7.25

Sit in traffic on the 23, barrel down the 101 at breakneck speed 

Sit in office at 8.05

Wonder how in the fuck I’m going to get my 8 client billable hours out today

Eat an energy bar at 10.00

Keep wondering

Salad at 1.00, it maybe healthy but it still tastes like shit…gooey, green shit a cow shat out…

Still wondering

6.30pm, make some shit up for my client billables 

Head to the gym

Lift weights, run until 8.05 

Head home on a mercifully traffic free freeway

Eat some pol sambol, parippu and bread 

Surf the net, think that I should really be doing something constructive like reading my camera manual or scheduling that credit card payment, respond to some long overdue emails, etc, etc…but that just takes too much effort

Still surfing net

9.30 go to sleep…

Repeat

See anything at odds with this lifestyle and being an island boy at heart?

It must be something in the stars, or at least that’s what the astrologer that I was dragged to while I was back home told me. Last week was tough, the learning curve I have to suffer through is ridiculous and ten hours daily grind is starting to sap whatever optimism I’ve managed to salvage over the last few months. Even the fact that I am not alone in my misery, that this feeling of darkness and despair is prevalent from the San Fernando Valley, to Colombo and the northern territories of Australia is not enough to cure what appears to be a decline down to manic depressiveness. Yet I’m still an optimist, I tell myself that no matter how long and dark that tunnel is there will be light at the end of it. That it’s just a matter of surviving, taking it a day at a time. And hopefully sometime there will be that light at the end of the tunnel, perhaps in the form of a sunset by a warm tropical beach.

Oh yeah this bad time is supposed to last until mid July, why do I doubt the veracity of that? The weekend is ticking away, maybe a trip to the gym, get some endorphins pumping, stop the insanity chewing away at my grey matter.

So I was reading the SLFP’s devolution proposals the other day, yes I know not the most exciting of bedtime reading but I believe it is important that one keeps abreast of such things. After a 10 hour day at work (sadly the norm now, which is exceptionally difficult for someone like me who is a beach bum at heart to handle…but…oh well…what to do) I really don’t have the energy to rip this arse wipe proposals to shreds. There was however one item that really made me pause for thought, I initially thought my math must be off and if it is, someone please do correct me. The evidence is below:

“1.1: There would be a Chief Minister for each district”

“At present, though there are 25 districts recognized by the present Constitution, the number of districts could be increased to 30 by a Delimitation Commities on the basis of geographical and demographical factors.”

Hold on there Mahinda mamme, you want to add 30 more ministers? On top of the 150 odd (plus or minus defections/defecations) we already have!? Please tell me this is a bad joke…

Photography is a tough to become good at, well as most things are I guess. But to me being essentially a scientifically minded person, the arts have always been dark mysterious fuzz to me. This despite the fact that there are a fair amount of arty people in the family. But if there is one art form I’m starting to love and really get an understanding of its photography, heck I’m even considering it as a future career (assuming I can get good enough, heck even that greatest of greats Frans Lanting started in his thirties). Of course a major part of photography is an ‘eye’ for a potential image. It’s easy enough to imagine a good composition in your head when presented with amazing scenery or a beautiful person or a striking bird. However what I see when I peruse the works of the greats is producing a quality image in a more mundane situation.

For someone like me however a great deal of luck is needed to produce a picture in such a situation and that did happen on the way back from Big Sur (more on that later). N wanted to get some nuts on the 146, don’t ask me why but apparently that highway is the place to get nuts. I wandered outside the isolated shop I noticed the lines of crops on the other side of the highway…hmmm…might be an interesting picture with the highway providing a horizontal line and the crops at right angles to it. So I started clicking away, after a few tries I knew when I had to press the shutter to get a car where I wanted it in the frame. Quite pleased with myself I looked to the right and couldn’t believe my eyes. Centering the camera I held my breath, whispered a quick prayer to the gods of good timing and pressed the shutter. The result?

Serendipity