The Lair

A car, a bus, a train, a plane and then several traffic snarls compounded by pouring rain. But I came home. Home, to a city that becomes nearly uninhabitable after a minor drizzle. But I came home in a deluge, the aircraft descending through the murk of clouds. I came home in the middle of a cloud burst that threatened to make Colombo a lake, with haphazard tramlines of vehicles stalled in a traffic block that seemed to stretch interminably. Of course, there were vehicles trying to maneuver everywhere to escape the inevitable, they were practically climbing onto each other in a futile attempt to escape the the block and as usual, making things that much worse.

Is this a good time to mention that I really really wanted to take a leak and the drip drip of water down the windows of the vehicle wasn’t exactly helping? Well, yeah. At least the copper who stopped us at a checkpoint (always happens) took pity and told us to stay in the vehicle - nice of him considering that he was getting soaked himself.

The next day, traffic in Colombo nearly ground to a halt for a different reason. A random search-every-vehicle operation started in Bambalapitiya. Everyone, including people travelling by bus, were stopped and checked. This made for an exciting Saturday morning if you hated work and wanted to spend the day just staying on the road. For everyone else, well… unlucky. This day was also made notable because elric had to slap me (Yes, really. You can ask him about the sordid details). Actually, the slapping incident may have been Sunday morning instead of Saturday; but that’s just a technicality. I also visited the Inn on the Green. Decent place, terrible choice in EPL team supporters. Also a few heathens because one guy clearly hadn’t heard of the word pansy being used as an insult. It apparently struck a chord, he kept repeating the word at random intervals and shaking his head thereafter. I’m told he’s a writer. Maybe the word will make an appearance in his next body of work…At least we didn’t call his favourite football team a bunch of wankers, he should be happy.

Yeah. He outweighed all three of us by a good few kilos. I don’t know what I was thinking either.

Today, I’ve eaten my weight (seems like) in steak and I’ve had an over tabascoed, under vodka-ed Bloody Mary. The German Restaurant (errm. Now called the Bavarian Barn) still has a lunch time offer which makes it one of the cheapest places to get awesome quantities of really unhealthy (but oh so delicious) artery clogging steaks.

Random trivia: I discovered over the weekend that the Sinha regiment celebrated 50 years of existence at the start of this month.