I’m wading up to my neck off Casuarina beach. Mainly trying to get away. Indirectly from Colombo, but directly from the 700 Sinhalums on this here beach. Last time I was the only one here. Now there are so many people that they emit a loud murmur, punctuated by hoots and screams. In the evening this Jaffna beach actually kinda sucks, the water is grey and we hobble in and out, stabbing our feet on rocks on coral. The driver is laughing at us, I think. We’re laughing at ourselves. How silly to be invaded by the Sinhalese.

The Jazeera has an interesting and well shot segment on Sri Lanka. The money part is about 13:00 in, an interview with Mahinda Rajapaksa. I actually agree with a lot of what he has to say. Except the part where he says that they didn’t kill any civilians. Though I don’t think they were targeted. Per broader reconciliation, he says that people on the ground want homes, jobs and education. Which, in my brief experience, is true. Say democracy and they’re like ‘we don’t care’. So perhaps he’s right in that the basic living infrastructure needs to be set.

Sri Lanka is like Facebook gone amuck. It’s all about the hook-ups. To get anything from a decent meal to your kid into school, it’s best to know a friend of a friend. Someone printed a Yellow Pages long ago. I’ve never used it. To find a plumber you call your family, to find a job you ask your friends, to find a lover you get introduced. Really, it’s all about the references. This has the effect of making things either absurdly easy or absurdly hard. But it isn’t entirely bad.

I love the Iron Man series and am largely entertained by even it’s latest, lamest incarnation. I simply enjoy watching Robert Downey Jr. act and interact with his robots and stuff. The story, however, I find hilarious. Iron Man doesn’t actually help anybody. He basically creates problems and ‘fixes’ them, in the sense of periodically destroying large parts of his city. In the first Iron Man I kept track and I think he saved literally 17 people. In doing so, he killed like 50. It was basically some random villagers in Afghanistan. In the second one I can’t recall him really saving anyone at all, besides himself. The movie really is all about him.

I like MIA’s music, the new single XXXO is pretty good. Her politics are I think worse than wrong headed, they’re spray paint ignorant. There’s very interesting article on her in the New York Times magazine. Her musical progression has been interesting, as is the history, but the best part is the sheer absurdity of some of the quotes, the juxtaposition between here black-and-white, jingoistic politics and the reality of her life. My favorite is the one about the bread rolls.

I think the end of war has left a big void. It’s not that one enjoyed the elephant in the room, but the place seems a bit empty since its left. I remember watching the news in Singapore. It was about building hospitals and helping kids and stuff. I was terrified. I couldn’t wait to get back to the chaos of Sri Lanka. But now that chaos is somewhat stilled, or at least reached a new baseline. Things are still fucked up, but not magnificently, lyrically so. It takes some getting used to.

The International Crisis Group issued a report. Lydia Polgreen of the NYTimes filed a report from New Delhi publicizing this analysis from Brussels. Which shows about how relevant this is to Sri Lanka. The basic allegation is that Sri Lanka’s conduct of the war was illegal. The recommendation is basically a UN occupation of the island to sort things out and prosecute the elected government. I thought this was over. It’s like a wedding anniversary with your ex-wife.

I hang around the Sunday Leader office. People from foreign news organizations drop by like it’s a pilgrimage site. I run into the BBC correspondent at Park Street, I hang out with some of the New York Times people when they’re in town. I enjoy having conversations with similar people, but in terms of covering a country I think it’s a bit off. A lot of international and local coverage tends to revolve around the same English speaking, NGO oriented crowd. However, the people you can talk to are not necessarily the people you should be talking to. If you’re talking professionally, that is, and not for fun. They could honestly get more relevant information from a random trishaw driver.

I can’t speak Sinhala let alone type it, yet I know that it is a need. Years ago I wrote a Sinhala font and always imagined a transliterated solution, where you could type ‘mata bada gini’ and it would type the appropriate Sinhala. Right now the dominant way to type is with the Wijesekera keyboard layout which has no relation to the letters on the board. Transliteration at least lowers the learning curve a bit, especially since almost everyone in Sri Lanka can recognize the English alphabet. I just discovered (via @dinidu) that Google has a transliteration solution which works for Sinhala. It’s pretty cool. Try it out.

Boston’s Big Picture has some shocking photos from the street war in Bangkok, Thailand. Personally, I think the Thai government is illegitimate. There was a military coup that overthrew the elected government and constitution. Then there was another election which the Reds (Thaksin’s proxy party) won. Then they disqualified that PM for taking cash to appear on a cooking show. Then the yellow elites protested against the replacement. Then they installed their own. The rural, disenfranchised poor protested and they’re being shot in the streets.