Happy New Year folks!...Sri Lanka '09

It's been almost two months since I've been at my writer's cubicle in my lone office building I call my fishtank, but Happy New Year's guys. My boy Abdi put it simply by saying resolutions shouldn't wait until New Years, that's why I as well urge you all to pursue DAILY goals this year and be happy with yourself. I did it for me in '09 and it's a formula that works, therefore I'll keep it up in '10. It felt weird saying '10 out loud.

The final days of '09 were hectic for me and full of circumstance and happenstance I couldn't see coming from a mile away. If someone told me in January of '09 that I'd be experiencing all the things that I would be by the end of the year I'd have told them to go to hell, more on this later though. I'm delineating now and will be finishing the blog with what my time in Sri Lanka was like, you MIGHT want to read it.

Lanka


Instead of having one long drawn-out post of my adventure I've decided to break it down into categories:

Money
People
Places
Weather
Culture
Life


The reason for these being that bulk reading(such as the reading invested into my most lengthy posts) should be selective for some people, so I'm giving you that luxury in hopes you will read it in parts, or be a normal reader and read it sequentially, which won't matter because you could still read it in parts and it would seem normal...ENJOY!

Money

Currency in Sri Lanka is called RUPEES, the same RUPEES that India, Pakistan, Nepal, and Burma, although they all have different values in their respective countries. The Sri Lankan equivalent to the Candian Dollar is one one hundredth of a dollar, so...

ONE CANADIAN DOLLAR=ONE HUNDRED RUPEES

I know you all saw the picture I posted of my show of money on facebook, which flashed an impressive display of $400 in Canadian, $100 in American, and over $1000 rupees. Well now you know that I only had a measly $10 worth in Rupees. Here is a list of actual prices and comparisons between Sri Lanka and Canada:

In Canada, adult bus fare is $2.75 Canadian, so you'd think it would cost around 275 Rupees, it actually costs 5 Rupees, which is less than a friggin' penny...and when they increased the cost from 4 Rupees, there was an outrage among public citizens! Those cheap bastards!

In Canada, a full course meal with dessert and appetizers costs anywhere between $25 to $30 at a middle class restaurant. Do you actually think it would cost between two and a half to three thousand rupees in Lanka? On the contrary, I found myself paying for EVERYONE's meals because each full course meal for a single person came to around one thousand to fifteen hundred rupees, which is about ten to fifteen bucks. Now this includes appetizer, main course, drinks, and dessert (plus 10 rupee tips lol).

In a final comparison, it costs about three dollars here to use the web at an internet cafe. For three dollars in Sri Lanka you can use the web on EVERY computer at the cafe for an hour because it only costs 20 rupees and hour, which is 20 Canadian cents.

I found myself affording a lot more things than I thought possible because I had forgotten how cheap everything was. The only thing unaffected by a currency difference was electronics which were about the same price (laptops, PC's, iPhones, etc.) and residential housing. When I went to the local Western Union every week to change my money, I'd give them 5 20's and they'd give me back 10 1000 rupee notes. Luckily the money is thinner than regular money so it didnt have to fold hard to fit in my wallet. I did have two other currencies in my wallet at the same time though and my wallet did explode, but more on that later. Everything is cheap in Sri Lanka, which is why my late grandfather (who worked as a diplomat for the UN) chose Sri Lanka to be the perfect place to retire. Great food, great weather, and a relaxed and inexpensive lifestyle.

People

The people are all very dark obviously. The island (also referred to as the Pearl of the Indian Ocean) is situated so close to the equator that through centuries of reproduction our skin has become a chocolate brown colour. The people here are generally nice, but because the country borders third world aspects and the GDP is so low, people don't make enough. Sri Lanka is a prime example of a community of people that are money-starved. This circumstance has mutated the character of most-low income families.
You wouldn't believe how many people would beg me for money, and when I gave them 5 rupees (5 cents), it was the start of a new life for them. The day we were leaving, our servants, driver, and gardener (who came off schedule) were waiting by our front door...NOT TO SEE US LEAVE, but because they expected a monetary gift which was tradition. Now the servants and the driver deserved it, but that damn gardener didn't do shit. He saw us once and didn't even say hi, but I gave him a single rupee coin and he said thank you. Skinny old bastard.

There are all sorts of people in SL. There are white people, a lot of asian people. I'm not too good on defferentiating the types of asians so I'll just say asians. There were black people, surprisingly. One of them had a huge afro, no lie. I saw him at the Bata shoe store at a major mall in Colombo. There were Australians in the internet cafe with me, those hard-working bastards...it's your vacation! Enjoy it!

Now there are tamil and sinhalese among the Sri Lankan people. I think being tamil will mean you're secretly shunned, even though you shouldn't be. I'm sure you all read my previous post about the Tamil Tigers and their thiry-year long war with the SL army. Well the war is "over" and the leader of the LTTE was sniped in the forehead. No it wasn't a decoy one of his former general who is now a politician identified his body. Anyways, the only Tamil I heard being spoken was INSIDE the domestic sphere. EVERYWHERE outside in EVERY part of Lanka I went to they were speaking Sinhalese. Fortunately I was quick to pick up on this. My brother wasn't so smart and I noticed people looking at him when he'd say tamil words out loud and people would look at him. Now remember I don't know either language, well not anymore. So when I noticed this small trend in language happening I knew when to keep my mouth shut. Fortunately our driver knew Sinhalese so he could communicate with the rest of the outside world for us.

A few final things I'd like to point out in point form:

Grown men DO hold hands just like Russell Peters said. I saw three of them walking and two were hand-locked together while the third wandered behind in lonely pursuit.

Sri Lankan people STARE hard. Not only at foreigners but at their own. I'm 6'2 with a large afro and mocha skin and boy did they never get tired of looking at me...maybe they KNEW i was a foreigner but I highly doubt that.

Most people are easily influenced by money. Give them 10 rupeess and they're at your feet for the day. I had to be careful how much money I gave the servants and driver because too much would mean they'd expect more from my grandmother (who they work for).

The intelligent people in the country are INTELLIGENT. There is no such thing as sub-par intelligence, it's either utter dimwitttedness or bright-as-a-lightbulb intelligence.

THE REST OF THIS BLOG WILL BE CONTINUED IN THE NEXT POST...STAY TUNED LOYAL READERS...

-BLOG OUT-