Sri Lanka - Wellingama and Mirissa

The boys with Luke Prior, on the beach in the evening, after releasing 3 turtle hatchlings.  Great excitement. The
turtles wasted no time flippering down the beach and ... gone (into the mouth of a waiting couta?)
Note the cozzie - very much a firm favourite :-)

How cool is this place?  Free standing, solitary house on an island, built in the mid 1800s by a guy who was obsessed
with gardens.  There's no bridge.  You get to it by getting wet if the tide's in, or staying dry if the tide's out.  Patrick and Anita stayed here, and it was Anita's 50th birthday - so people rolled in for a party - which was delightful.

Standard transport, the good old tuk tuk.  This was a larger one - space for four.  Mostly they had space for three.  Makes me think that Simon bought the double cab of tuk tuks.  The driving is mildly insane.

Rolling along - four seater.

I really liked this street scene - particularly because the real guy's pose in the street is mirrored by the mannequin's 

pose in the background.  Tuk tuks, motorbikes, coconuts and bananas.  This is the main road from Galle through

to Mirissa beach. 

Ange on Wellingama beach.  Hot, big, very flat beach - fantastic surf - which you cant see here because it's so
far out - wide enough as a beach for at least one secondary break.

Mirissa beach - bars, restaurants, fit young people with tattoos - that sort of thing.  We had a delightful dinner.

Inside a Mirissa Beach restaurant - voila - we have a bicycle - been waiting for me for a looooong time.

Sri Lanka, in-land a bit

This is Abby and Savav's supercool house which is off the coast, tucked away in the low hills above the rice paddies.  When the tsunami thrashed this area in 2004, it was used as one of the evacuation points for people who had fled the water.  Hugely cool house.  Hugely cool people.

Looking out one of the upstairs windows over the gardens and rice paddies beyond.

Definitely not for Cape Town - wild bathtub

Innocently on one of the sofas, waiting for me :-)

Sri Lanka - Galle Fort

Galle Fort is fantastic - literally a fort - walled all round, with a Dutch, Portuguese, British, Sri Lankan influence making up a somewhat labyrinthine little city.  The balcony looking over the inside courtyard of Jane and Giles house where we were staying 

The base of Galle Lighthouse, still necessary and in operation - like the lines of the wall and steps - and the bloke with his bike.

Breakfast-time - how cool is the old brickwork and renovated beams inside the house?

A gang of friendly schoolgirls - mega friendly nation - such a pleasure.

Part of one of the many fish markets along the coast.  Judging from what you can buy, the ecosystem is looking good, decent size reef and blue-water fish - including yellowfin tuna, king mackerel etc.

In need of Linda's skills?  Looks like M.T. Norman could use a sorting out.

 

It cost R120 to hire a motorcycle for 24 hours - seemed like an absolute must - so when the heat was getting a bit brutal around mid-day we could roar around exploring the fort without breaking much of a sweat.  The boys were pretty tireless in their enthusiasm for it.  I managed not to fall off it at all.  This is just outside the fort - you can see the wall in the background

Couldn't resist it - such a beautiful armco barrier - from this morning's ride

Mechanical art

Sri Lanka to follow - but couldn't help attacking this first.  This stuff I LOVE LOVE LOVE - mechanical artists taking kak old garbage wagons and turning them into utterly beautiful pieces of mechanical art. 

First up, Honda CX500 (subtly dreadful bike, but also had a psycho version that was turbo-charged (!?!), though definitely not the one in quesiton - late 70'; this

turned into this (via bits and pieces scavenged off Ducati's various):

Or, this, 1970's BMW R60/7 boxer:

turned into this super groovy scrambler:

Yau Ley on a winter's day

The air numbers were not looking good, I've been sick, etc etc - just mounting a few excuses why I didn't head out on my bike this morning - and wont be doing so tomorrow either. So it was with cheer that I heard that Tracy had phoned and the Black Shrimp was heading to Yau Ley. 

From the shore, fish farms out to the right, the seafood restaurant jetties in the middle, the shrimp
moored at the end of the second one.

From the water it looks like this - a teeny little village, the restaurant with the blue wall, and the
rest somewhat down at the heel.

 

If you go off the beaten track, into the bush above the village there are the ruins of
houses hinting at a more glorious time.  Seems such a waste.

Some are just eaten up by the undergrowth - this one succumbing to the roots of a rubber tree.

Inside the village itself are some of the teeniest houses imaginable.  This one is maybe
one and a half times the size of a double bed.  I wonder whether they too will be eaten
by the jungle some time.

There are still signs of life, I walked past this patio with its garden shark chilling in the sun.

I love the Shrimp, it's super-slow-moving and mellow, helps you look at the things you're going past.

Soccer with a difference - Tai Tam Tigers surprise

I went with Ange to watch Ev play against Tai Tam this morning.  We picked up Max.  Ev said, don't bother coming to this game, we smashed them last time, I'm going to be doing nothing... how wrong he was.

Deadpan fail - clean sheets make you smile.

Max looking cool; big day in the office with plenty of bumps and scrapes to show for it.

It was like being parachuted into amazonia - Tai Tam was not the team expected, not at all - this time round it was an all girls team, and they were giants.  Heated debate in the car on the way home provided no clarity - it was a league game, so one cannot (in theory) trash the rules - but even I, the most dispassionate of parents, couldn't believe that the sisters that rolled onto the field were of the same age-group.  They were massive; as in 50% of the team were Aiden's size.  Their smallest player was Max's size - and he the tallest in Ev's team.  And they were not there to stuff around. It was properly physical (at first, a case of "huh, what's going on?!!", thereafter a case of "stuff this!!", time to drop the gloves and fight with your sister.)  In the end the difference was the keeper.  They didn't have one, and had to rotate players through the goal.  Ev was an absolute beast - pulled off some killer saves, those fingertip tricky ones from goal-mouth melees, and Max, good Kiwi boy that he is, was kung-fu flying into them as if on trial for the All-blacks.  In the end it was 3-0.  Have a nice day.   

A weekend at home - little things

One of the things that brutal travel does to me is make me a total homeboy.  I think that's the first time that I've used that word, homie - so that's what it means, homie.  There are beautiful things in one's homenvironment.

Holly's incomparable tail; bee thorax and expression-brush rolled into one.

This is the screen picture on this computer...

This is a fossil that I bought from a slightly strange guy in the Hogsback...

Here they are superimposed on each other, with the fossil at 50% transparency

And then discovering things from your past (the matching colours did it for me)  - like Anton Kannemeyer and Conrad Botes - true artists and iconoclasts when the country needed it most.  The very opposite of the Steinhoff Stellenbosch boeremafia.  If you ever see an exhibition in Joburg by either (or both) fokken doenit net :-)

Ag just two more from the haircut day - really like them :-)

Back to the combat zone

We went to watch the Cell C Sharks play Racing 92 in Aberdeen last night.  Jussus!  I left feeling that the boys really should be focusing on soccer only - rugby at that level is simply hazardous.  Not so much for the boys.  Aiden played back to back games for the Stingrays 1sts and 2nds this evening, and Ev spent the morning at a tournament against the old nemeses - Valley, Football Club and HKU.

Rolling out for combat - because with Ev, that is what it is.

Packing down at lock (with the blue skins) as the Stingray's scrum gets on the front foot with a big shove

In the thick of it, double shove to the face - huh?

London smiles

10 flippin years!  The delight of seeing Mungo, pic by amazing Robyn

Ed Hulina proposed a team building evening which involved a cooking course. It was so cool. 
Here is the inestimable Amit Chakarabarty, my counterpart from Mumbai, with his hand-made pasta.

On the way to a team dinner - my US colleague Randi Tolber loving the lights of Soho.  Had a funny moment in the
cooking course - one of the chefs was an Irish guy with a delightful Belfast accent; "What's yer naime luv?  Randi.  Aye, of coorse it is".  Very funny.

On the way to the office - how fitting - a Chinese flag alongside two British.

The wonderful Dana Day - my EMEA counterpart in our very groovy new London offices