White knuckle drive or Independence Day?

I think it was all the Dutch courage I drank last night and the subsequent hangover I felt this morn that got me out of bed and into the truck.  Judging by the way the inside of my head felt, I knew I could handle whatever those Colombo drivers would throw at me!

Our mission: photograph what we could before security showed up.

I would kill to "liberate" these signs.

We went out the back way of our building to the school.  There is an old factory out there that has the coolest signs on it.  They started to clean up the grounds a few days ago which led me to suspect something nefarious is afoot! (Sadly, it happened to the Elephant House GoDown across the way in Slave Island).  I got out there with no problems and parked.  Of course, 2 foreigners walking down the street in that neck of the woods does draw a bit of attention.  I quickly took a few shots before the security guard came over to see what was happening.  Okay, I use the term "see" very loosely as his glasses were so thick and dirty!  He chatted us up and we came away not sure if we'd been invited to go in and see it or it was being torn down for condos.  Time will tell.

I was starting to feel a little bit cocky behind the wheel so we explored a bit.  Nice for G to be able sit back and scope out things for once instead of always driving.  We had to find a gas station and we did, near "Inner Flower Lane".  Sounds slightly pornographic but so be it.  G, of course, had to tell the gas jockeys that I had been a tuktuk driver in Canada so all these guys came over and peered at me!  If he's not telling them I'm a tuktuk driver, he tells people I have rellies in prison...which I don't!!!!

Road Warrior.

We arrived back home uneventfully.  It feels good to be back driving.  It has been 3 months, probably the longest I've gone in awhile. I find that your relationship to the host country changes once you begin to drive.  You begin to spend time in your vehicle rather than dealing with people.  Sometimes that's good and sometimes that's sad.

A rare sight in Colombo.

Be busy or be seen as being so...

Is this the scourge of modern times, being busy?  Being busy is being seen as being important.  "Places to go, people to see, things to do?"  When you're not, you feel like a loser.  "When did this happen to us?"  I remember days of nothing to do as a kid and it was fabulous.  Plus I never felt bad about it.  I guess the closer I get to death, the more I'm aware of timing passing!  

The dust has begun to settle here in Sri Lanka.  The kids have begun to make friends and hang out.  Greg's got his golf buddies.  I've found some yoga, though it is not exactly what I was looking for.  I like the vinyasa-style but my wrists are aching from all the downdogs etc.  I'm loathe to go for it because I don't want to lose my yoga practice.  But of course, that's a sign from yoga that I'm doing something I shouldn't.

But I'm still not satisfied.  I've got enough piddly stuff (household stuff) that I have to hang around for which would be okay except our internet usage is throttled so I can't even download stuff.  (That's why I've made the Java Lounge, the Official Wifi Stealing Shop of pegthaccompanyingspouse!)

I want/need to do something creative.  I've noticed that when I lie down in corpse pose at the end of my yoga practice there is no energy circling in my palms.   I can summon it, but it doesn't feel right, because before it was generated spontaneously.  (I wonder if I need to be reiki'd.)  Back to creativity!  I've talked about joining the sketchbook project out of the.   Brooklyn Public Library.  In a nutshell, it is bunch of people who share their experiences of life through their journals. They are given a set of parameters to follow and a specific size book.  They then send these to the library and the library will save them or digitize them.  Then the books tour the US and into BC.  It's very cool, but a little bit daunting.  As you may have seen, I have a cartoon character that I use to illustrate my journal/blog.  But my Archie's style seems so lame compared to what others are doing.  But I won't let that stop me. 

I think my blog group is at an impasse.  I've got to get people to kickstart their blogs because realistically it just makes more sense to "publish and be damned!"  Also there is enormous satisfaction in your first post.  I know that I checked it every few days as I was so chuffed with what I did!  I also assumed that there would also be a flurry of comments and an intro into the rarified air of the bloggers universe.  Alas no, but I'm still having fun.

But something's missing...maybe I'm not busy enough!

A UN Day shout out to Sue...thank you!

M futzed around with his camera and made this. Pretty Awesome!

 The dreaded day arrived...UN Day at school.  It actually had nothing to do with the UN but it was more a celebration of diversity at Overseas School of Colombo (OSC).  It's pretty cool that there are roughly 42 different groups in such a small school and that's not even counting the dual nationals!  I got rooked into being the Canada Country Rep so had to set up a table for this day.  I have to be honest, people were kinda sh*%$y about helping out so the workload was on my shoulders.  Luckily, M was extremely helpful in the baking dept. ( Not so much the cleaning up dept though!)  He made the shortbread cookies.  What was kind of nostalgic for me was being in the kitchen with him and pulling out the decades old cookie presses I used with my Mom to make these cookies.  He made one batch, I, the other and promptly declared his batch shorter!  Cheeky monkey!  I made 2 batches of Nanaimo bars.  They are no-bake and actually quite easy to make. 

This is before my head spouted holes.

 Of course, at the root of every event is "what am I going to wear?"  So this is what I came up with!  Quite effective I must say!  I think though some people thought me a chicken but I was making a statement...yes, a STATEMENT.  You see, I did have help at the table from a French Canadian guy, I was the English Canadian and my headgear represented the First Nations...get it? Oh well, made me laugh.  I think I poked a few of the smaller kids eyes out with it though.  By the end of the day those teeth that secure the headband to your hair were doing some serious stuff to my skull.  I was happy to get it off!  

Our lovely Canada table.

 So here's what my sister's generous contribution looked like!  Thank you so much Sue!  Everyone loved the Timmy's boites and were bummed that there weren't any inside!  I used hockey pucks as the name cards for the dishes and the HBC cookie tin you gave us at Christmas.  The principal of the elementary came through and made dollar size pancakes for the table and they were a great success.  But judging by the feeding frenzy, spoiled meat and fridge goo would've have also been a big success!  M was so proud of his cookies and told lots of his teachers he had made them.  He plans to bake for his buddies this weekend.

I'm sure he's texting "Oh Canada".

N, as the eldest Canadian, was the flagbearer.  He downplayed being the flag guy but I noticed come the morning of the day he carefully selected an outfit which represented our flag.  He is funny that way.  We had about 7 kids under our flag but as mentioned before there are a bunch of dual-nationals.  We got lots of people come up to us and say that they were happy to see that Canada had a separate table from the Americans and that, that hadn't happened in a long time!  A few people came up and thanked me for my work when they heard that I did it all by myself (and M). That was nice. Sue was right about that when she said not to pull out because of lack of assistance, just go do it.  Besides this is payback for all those people who went before me and did this for my kids at our other schools.  Don't tell anyone but, it was fun!

This is what happens at my house after "Law and Order."

Okay, not too bad for a 1/2 hour fooling around in my bathroom.  I got the idea to recreate some famous shots after I got turned down to participate in a traveling skirt of a certain colour blog.  It was like high school all over again! The cool blogging girls didn't want me!  Wah! 

You see while I was waiting to find out whether or not I was accepted, I had the brilliant idea to use the skirt in a shoot that would represent Sri Lanka.  What's more Sri Lankan than an elephant?  Who is more fashionable as a fashion photography than Richard Avedon? So why not recreate his famous shot of Dovima and the elephants here in Colombo?  But alas I won't be using the skirt of a certain colour in my next shot.  However, I did find a great location and when I can convince somebody to come with me to help shoot it, I'll post it.

In the meantime enjoy my first attempt...they can only get better!  Thanks to Nancy Cunard and Google Images.

It kinda snuck up on me...

Canadian Thanksgiving...I had totally forgotten that it is this time of year.  That's the only problem with the tropics is, is that it's like Vegas.  The light and temperature are such that you never really notice the passage of time.  However, unlike Vegas there are no free cocktails! 

Our Head of Mission (HOM) opened up the OR (Official Residence) to a pot luck dinner for the staff. She has a lovely house and it was very welcoming.  The kids could run around the yard and chase the dog.  It is the cutest dog ever!! She's a West Highland White Terrier and a dead ringer for that "Maggie" who stars in those commercials back home.  I COVET that beast.  Even though I really like the dog, I can't understand why my voice goes up several pitches and I want to say repetitive stuff like, "who's a good doggie", "does your mummy wuve you...yes she does!" I never even spoke to my own kids like that!  What gives?!

Anyway I felt the time was right to introduce our family tradition to the rest of the world (hopefully to get a laugh this time!).  No, it is not aspic, nor ambrosia salad, nor any other of those wonderful 50's concoctions, it is the Rice Krispie Turkey!  Ta dah!

Next year I'm going to develop rice krispie giblets to go inside! Stay tuned!

Happy Canadian Thanksgiving Everyone!

May you be surrounded by family and friends and that you take the time to appreciate all that you have in your life and the fantastic place we call home.

"Glocal?"

There is always a bit letdown when something is realized.  I've been nattering on for yonks to anyone who would listen about the Sri Lankan Design Festival .  I even wined and dined a few hoping to score free tickets or contacts, but to no avail.  So I girded my loins and went down to AOD and just signed up.

The Sustainability Session was the part I was most interested in .  I was hoping to get some insight into how the business works.  So I got my myself down to the Mount Lavinia Hotel and was the first to arrive!   It's a lovely old hotel and the lobby was buzzing with fashion/design types.  Once inside the conference room, I thought that I had dodged the ticket guy and was going to get a free ride but no.

Anyway there were some interesting types in the audience.  This tall, slim fashionista in very chic grey stripe saree comes in with an entourage.  I thought maybe she was a Rajapaksa or a model but no she's the lady that established the host school and the Festival!

After many air kisses, we got down to things.  Turned out that it wasn't exactly what I had imagined! Honestly I wasn't sure what to expect.  Turns out, that they dealt in a lot of generalities.  I guess because I'm a conference/meeting newbie I had visions of indepth discussion, passionate discourse, fists pounding on tables, people storming out, but no.   However, I did learn a fair amount about standardization, partnerships and industry problems.

At the tea break, I got chatting to a very interesting woman who had spoken the night before at the "Colours" session.  Her name is Jane McCann and she is an English professor involved in a very exciting project in the UK.  It is called "Design for Ageing Well, New Dynamics of Ageing."  She is a part of a group of English academics doing cross disciplinary work on ageing.  She is on the design side of things.  Professor McCann was quite intense and I have to be honest, she was preaching to the converted!

I didn't get a chance to speak with her but there was another lady here from Draper magazine in the UK.  I would've spoken to her at the lunch but I felt a bit anxious about the taking the train back, a bit tired and frankly, I did feel slightly lame about being there as "Margaret Peters....Private Citizen."  Honestly there is nothing wrong with that, but after sitting for 5 hours I was knackered and my smooze mode was off. To my credit though, I did go up to the tall glamourazon and thank her for the conference.  Then I skittered off into my taxi.

Definitely the best was saved for last.  This is when they introduced the young up and coming designers.  The trend right now is to upcycle and use different of fabrics or unexpected types of processes.  There was a very cool young lady who had been partnered with a IT firm and had come up with a fabric that is hand woven by local women.  It's manufacture has a very small footprint as everything is done "organically", for example they use cow dung to bleach the fabric to an off white.  The sample jea that they show was awesome.  Oh yeah this is the cool part, they weren't dyed they were digitally printed.  Unfortunately I couldn't get over to see them up close but I love the idea of how it was produced.  Patagonia did too and there is interest from them.  Global + local = glocal!

"Omm Pah Pah...omm pah pah, everyone knows!"*

Wow!  It seems like forever since I last wrote even though I've been thinking about the blog everyday.  You see I'm trying to get an expat bloggers groups going.  I want to write with a community of people who have interesting experiences to share.  I also want to know how other expats view life abroad. Since I instigated this thing,  I gave them a challenge to "find their voice" They have to write a 300 word draft everyday (subject doesn't matter), then decide which one represents their truest voice.  The plan is then to discuss this next time and move on to another subject, ie.. photos/video.  Topics are supposed to be organically generated, but for the first little while I think there should be some structure.

Aren't they gorgeous?  Dancers at the festival.

This weekend I got to see Sri Lanka through German eyes!  It was the 60th anniversary of German/Sri Lankan Friendship and there was a street festival celebrating it.  Who knew?  There was the usual collection of pretty darn awesome cars and obviously a growing local taste for luxury vehicles judging by the line ups around the Audis and Porsches. (Cripes, there is even a Lamborghini dealership in town.  Which is pretty vulgar when you think of what that amount of money could do here.)

It's the perfect Bug colour and not modified!  

There were also friendship groups from the various Universities around the country and the girls looked so cute decked out in dirndls and the like.  I can't imagine it was fun to wear white tights in this heat.  I got quite few great shots of the colour and pageantry that went along with the festival.

 They had stilt walkers, puppets and these way cool giant Sri Lankan and German characters.  I got video of them somewhere!

What's a street fair without food!  We went with visions of Teutonic wursts and bretzels dancing in our heads and weren't disappointed.  Although I am not a big fan of the rather rude looking weisswurst, I was happy to try them.  The pastries were good and G happily bought a loaf of 2 tonne bread.  There was heaps of beer but my stomach is still a little queasy after a bout of "mystery disease" this weekend.

I'm usually a Maclaren girl but I'm willing to compromise for German/Sri Lankan relations.

I included this picture because not only are they a beautiful, happy couple, you can see how Sri Lankan women tie their sarees.  If you notice around her waist is a pleated, peplum type fold.  This is unique to here.  People also wear the classic Indian style with the drape over the front of the body.  I have yet to see though the Gujarati-style where the drape comes over the shoulder from the back.  Interesting tidbit:  all female government workers must wear saree.










*Thanks to "Oliver" for the lyrics.