Pri's blog

I don’t really DO Christmas... and my best December 25ths have been spent in  London in my sister’s flat, drinking the rather lethal hot punch my brother-in-law prepares, watching Bond movies on television while the men (brother-in-law and son) prepare the Christmas meal; stuffing myself up with whatever fantastic menu they decide to lay out at whatever time (brunch, high tea, supper), and then full of good food and drink, falling asleep on the couch only to wake up on boxing day, happy that the whole event for that year at least, is behind me!  This year I am in Colombo.   As season’s greetings flood my inbox, facebook, twitter, etc etc  and the Christmas songs reach such a crescendo on Gold FM as I drive frantically to and from Arpico, Selyn, Barefoot, Paradise Road, Rhithi (cannot handle a pre-Christmas ODEL, I am afraid) filling in the gaps in my gift list, there are three thoughts I would like to share with you... The first thought  is related to ...

There was an interesting debate among colleagues that was triggered by the simple fact that I shared the official government calendar for 2014.  The Calendar has, as it has had in the previous year, and possibly many years prior to that,  the sub title -  Buddhist Era 2557-2558. This triggered a discussion on whether it was appropriate to have that on the calendar or not.  The argument against seemed to be based on it being seen as an imposition by the State of Buddhism, into areas that are perceived as secular and non-religious. [Though of course, as was pointed out,  the Gregorian Calendar is not really secular at all, based on the fact that it counts the years from the birth of Christ!] What was interesting was that we were having this debate at all.  Obviously, the current context has made us all ultra sensitive to certain issues, and the whole question of a state religion led some of us to be uncomfortable, others to be resentful (not overtly ma...

A couple of days ago some of us were talking about all the changes that were happening in Colombo. As readers of this blog might have noticed, these changes do not happen without some heartache for many of us old residents, though of course the real impact is on those residents who are being displaced or losing their homes and whose voices are not always heard on the likes of this blog.  For them it is much, much worse.  But read more about that here . Our recent conversation was whether the beautification, a component, albeit a small component,  of the Metro Colombo Urban Development Project funded by the World Bank and which is, in essence, a flood control project was being monitored in its implementation, especially its accelerated CHOGM implementation.  We rather cynically observed, that if the new developments had not taken issues of drainage into account, they could result in more flooding, which of course would go contrary to the whole objectives of the p...