Street Legal
My Sri Lankan/Canadian Dual Citizenship. The light was bad so I put it on top of a lamp. Then it caught fire.
Alternate Caption: I got my citizenship tatooed on my back. My parents beat me with sticks.
I finally got my Dual Citizenship. With the influx of immigrants to these shores there’s a 10-month backlog. Three months for approval, and then seven months for, uh, can I call you back? I’ve been here on a 30 day visa and I’m quite pleased to get this (back-dated) document. Now I can finally get an ID, driver’s license, bank account and travel. As another benefit, I heard Queen B talking about a draft if war breaks out. No matter, it is a little nice to be Sri Lankan. The documents the bureaucracy produces are a fetish in themselves – obscure, type-written fonts on flecked paper. If you hold it up to the light you see large lion watermarks. They’re like artifacts from a perfectly preserved colonial administration.
The scanner was kicked over one too many times so I took a photo. I put it on top of the lamp and it turned out kinda funny. The watermarks and color come out well, and you can read the print on the opposite side. Can sorta read my parents names in reverse. What I like is that the undercarriage of the lamp forms a shadow nexus at my birthdate. There are two, almost three branches going in, and then a blank spot. Then two branches going back out into melty darkness. Maybe that’s the Liberal Arts talking.
Outlets and Vents has an interesting post on being Sri Lankan, btw.
I started off not really liking General Sarath Fonseka, him being part of the aggressive war effort. I didn’t support the war (largely cause I thought it would fail), and I thought Gotabhaya Rajapaksa and Fonseka were gleefully stomping everything. Fonseka even came out and said “I strongly believe that this country belongs to the Sinhalese but there are minority communities and we treat them like our people,” in 2008 (
General Sarath Fonseka was arrested on a bunch of trumped up charges, but mainly for daring to threaten Mahinda in a Presidential election. Despite his poor health, Fonseka was arrested in February 2010 and sentence to three years. Word on the street now, however, is that he’ll be released soon. Like any day now. President Mahinda Rajapaksa has told 
I’ve been testing a lot of apps. A very interesting one is iPlayboy, from Playboy magazine. It’s bad porn but a good magazine, especially since you can read issues from its cultural heyday – the Mad Men era of the 60s.
I’m going to get back to blogging. I buy a shitload of stuff on my iPad. Not that I like spending money, and the exchange rate terrifies me, but it’s just so easy, and so good. For example, I’ve been reading comics again. Spiderman, and 
Welcome, countryman. I guess we can expect more local expletives now.
wow 7 months 4 approval eh? i was hoping to get it done over the counter when i’m home end of the month.. dream on.. lol.. how much does it cost now btw?
rs 200,000 (!). It took 10 months total, maybe cause I missed a few bribes or something.
well done.. u got it done in under 1 yr without any bribes that is heartening .. lol.. didnt know u couldnt get a bank account without SL citizenship tho.. hmmm..
I think you can get an account as a UK National or something, but I was trying to get one as a Sri Lankan. They were asking me for ID which I didn’t have.
When you get your NIC, notice that the lines aren’t actually LINES, but lil writings saying ‘Sri Lanka’ :)
hah! and WHO figured that out? i cant believe the nerve of this woman.
does it really matter??
so indi why did u decide to live in SL as opposed to living in canada or the US or anywhere else for that matter? apologies if the answer to that question is somewhere in the ‘about indi’ section… i must hv missed it..
There’s so much that hasn’t been done here. You can do new things without moving fossilized crap out of the way. Don’t have to get a job. Like my family. I guess smaller pond would be the shorter answer, though I work on the Net as much as anything.
Also think the region is on a general uptick. Possible to make more money here than in the West.
so u don’t hv a job? and yet make more money than u wud in the West.. how does that work m8?
don’t make more money than in the West. Said it was possible to make more.
I think India is coming up and Sri Lanka has to screw up way more than now to not be carried forward.
hmm i wish i had the same confidence in SL as u seem to do… abt being carried fwd..
tend to have the same concerns with SL as savi3. Good place to be (at least now), where we will go is another matter. As for making money, think more opportunity lies outside.
dude,
All the Sri Lankans had to wait until the other passengers entered the gate.
cheers.