I Hunupitiya The Fool
Tailights in the Intermonsoon
Today I was stuck in traffic, folding up the feeble sides of the trishaw to ward off the rain. We left at a reasonable time but something was deeply, deeply cocked and Kirimandala Mawatha was a time killing zone. ith the traffic and the inter-monsoon rains the trishaw fares have gone up and getting around is a bitch. The bus is the same rates as ever, but I pity the fool stuck in those overheated lunch tins at rush hour. What’s worse is that they’re now making entire stretches of road one-way. If you get kicked in one ball at a time it does feel much better. Now getting in and out of the city is going to involve a scenic tour as people loop around to their final destination. I feel so safe that I don’t think I need to leave the house anymore.
I’m sleepy and I’ll only get into one thing, and that’s the new traffic plan effective today. That plan is, get the fuck out of Colombo. It basically makes half the streets in Colombo One-Way though I don’t think they’ll print signs before South Korea invents hovercars. So there’ll be a bunch of confused cars with middle fingers and 400 cops with white gloves and a whole lot of fun.
I am all for security measure, but I think there’s a line between being secure and serving you’re citizens, like in yesterday’s banking post. I would say that the first rule of security, like medicine, is do no harm. Unless you’re sure that a change is going to have a positive effect, then don’t do it. The act of getting in there and messing around in medicine and policy can be destructive and you need to make surgical interventions wisely. I don’t see how this one-way thing improves security at all, nor do I see how this invisible benefit is worth the implementation cost – especially the two weeks whilst Colombo is switching and we effectively have our pants down. If the LTTE wants to pump in Gelginite might as well do it while the cops (literally) have their hands in the air. If you can think of an obvious security benefit do tell me.
One Way Ticket
This map may be completely backwards or of another country entirely. Don’t use it.
I have crapped together this map, but I still can’t make any sense of this. I may have gotten the One Way direction wrong cause the wording is ambigious. Anyways, as far I can tell, we’re supposed to enter Hunupitiya/Kollupitiya through Duplication or Thurstan Road and exit through Maitland Crescent and Reid Avenue (wtf?). The exit route is circuitious and kinda pinched near Clancy’s, and this sucks. I don’t go into Kollupitiya as much as I exit to Bamblapitiya, but what to do.
- R A de Mel Mawatha (Duplication Road) ‘ To enter Colombo from Buller`s Road Junction to Liberty round-about.
- Thurstan Road ‘ To enter Colombo from Reid Thurstan Junction to J O C round-about.
- Cambridge Place ‘ To enter Colombo from J O C round-about to National Museum on Marcus Fernando Mawatha.
- Independence Road ‘ To exit Colombo from Nanda Motors Junction to Public Administrative Junction.
- Maitland Place ‘ To enter Colombo from Public Administration Junction to Maitland Crescent.
- Maitland Crescent ‘ To exit Colombo from Horton Place to Independence round-about.
- Reid Avenue ‘ To exit Colombo from Independence round-about to Reid Thurstan Junction.
- Rajakeeya Mawatha ‘ To enter Colombo from Reid Rajakeeya Junction J O C round-about.
- Gilford Crescent ‘ To exit Colombo from Cambridge Junction to Reid Avenue.
- Ananda Kumaraswami Mawatha ‘ To exit Colombo from Liberty round-about to Library round-about.
- Dharmapala Mawatha ‘ To enter Colombo from Red Cross Junction to Liberty round-about.
- Marks Fernando Mawatha ‘ To enter Colombo from Glass House Junction Library round-about.
What’s even more exciting is that we have two weeks of people figuring out what’s going on and making U-Turns and taking right turns from the far left lane and all matter of fun-ness. Plus, all the roads between Galle Road and Duplication are now one way or the other, seemingly at random. It’s all for the best though. I’m sure someone has planned out the traffic flows and calculated that this is the optimal layout to, um, defeat terrorism? Grow poppies? Protect the children? What?
Story from lankapapers.wordpress.com
I recently wrote about gay marriage, which is not even on the radar in Sri Lanka. But we have another type of marriage discrimination here as well. Foreign marriage. If you marry someone non Sri Lankan, they can never become a citizen. Their lives and their rights to even be in the same country as their children are permanently unstable, and it’s patently unfair.
When 
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 
that’s an LT colombo map, that is.
(useful thing to tear out and tape together to carry round town, hence I recognize the break line between pages, though I dunno the term for it. I assume there is one.)
Well then – it’s a good thing they decided to scrap the whole idea.
its been scrapped? Maybe the police men got bored of the vehicle searches, and they’d rather prefer to wave their gloved arms around.
We sent the coppers Indi’s remix of our map and they were so petrified by the badly drawn arrows, they’ve decided to shelve the plan and try again when we least expect it. So it’s back to what we quaintly call ‘normalcy’ for the moment.
grow poppies, grow poppies!
As far as I’m aware Colombo starts at the Dehiwala bridge and ends in some part of Modera or Mattakkuliya. How the fuck cars from either end are going to enter Colombo through Thurstan road I don’t know. I think they might be having helicopters to transport car and passenger by air from Williams Grinding Mills to the Thummulla Junction. Shanthi Vihar and UoC grounds to be used as landing pads. Cuntos.
You know, these initiatives might be okay, if at the very least they gave the public a decent amount of notice. I heard about this particular plan on the day it was launched, and the Galle Road one-way thing (a few months back) the night before it launched.
In any other country, they would have at least two weeks of massive publicity for a major road network adjustment, to ensure everyone was aware of the changes, and to allow drivers and commuters to plan new routes if necessary.
But then this is Sri Lanka, a “land like no other”‘… :)
I love Sri Lanka but I’m learning to hate Colombo. One of the factors I took this job over another was the fact that they had their office in Kohuwela.
With the money the gov collects as vehicle taxes we should have have more flyovers and Maglev’s whizzing around.
If you want to remain sane and love Sri Lanka, stay the hell away from Colombo!