Monday 30 May, 2005

Hot

The idea of spending an hour a day working on a blog is becoming more and more enticing as the temperature climbs - internet cafes are air conditioned. it's 4 in the afternoon and very, very, sweaty. Being in a city during a monsoon is like a continual series of peaks and troughs. it explodes with rain so heavy you can't see a foot in front of you. It feels cool - cold even - for a few minutes afterwards then the temperature slowly starts to climb as the clouds clear. they slowly move in again, mountainous, grey and high - but not nearly as quickly as you'd like. I think if it was proper monsoon there would be alot fewer gaps between the rain showers.

I won't bore you with details of all my eating over here - but this morning I had pickled fish and rice for breakfast. It made me feel like I was overseas, having a (hot) adventure. Which I am.

This morning I went to an art exhibition of art by kids from the British School inColombo. The title of the exhibition was "The world through our eyes'. There were hundreds of pictures and many of them had names like ' I'm Hungry', 'Time of need', 'Twin Towers' and, 'Tsunami takes us by surprise'. Imagine this: colourful paintings by 6 year old of stick figures grabbing aat palm trees, inside a train carriage being swept away by a wave, or dead on the ground. All the figures had upside-down U mouths: they were very unhappy.

After that I went to a bookshop looking for a copy of Michael Ondaatjee's Anil's Ghost. I've read it, but want to re-read it while I'm here. I figured it would be cheaper to buy it here. Anyway, I went to the Trabrone Bookshop and the staff anxiously searched all the bookshelves for me - there was no organisation obvious to me other than books being separated into Fiction and Non-Fiction. They weren't even alphabetical. Anyway, when it became clear there was no Ondaatjee the owner turned to me holding up another book. 'Danielle Steele', he asked hopefully. 'She's very good.' I shook my head so he tried again. 'John Grisham?'

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