Colombo has a perahera (elephant, fire and awesome parade). Well everywhere has a perahera, but Gangarama Temple in the city has a boss one. Briefly interrupted by war, the colorful Podi Hamduruwo has brought it back in style. I attended for the first time and it was pretty awesome, and well organized. The Kandy Perahera is a bit of an endurance event, but this one was more modern.

Colombo’s somewhat eccentric Gangarama Temple is holding a grand procession near the Beira Lake. Basically everything around the Daily Mirror office and the Beira Lake will be closed to traffic, besides elephant, dancer and fire-bearing traffic (route list, of sorts).

I spoke to a trishaw driver about expenses. He said a new trishaw cost about Rs. 389,000, and at the rate he goes he has to upgrade every few years. He said a meter costs about Rs. 9,000-11,000, petrol costs about Rs. 2,000 a day and I guess that’s about it. He said he did less trips before the meter (say about 10 a day) but he can’t get a hires without a meter these days. He said he does about 20 fares a day. He seems to be doing OK.

Happy birthday to the late Neelan Tiruchelvam, peacemaker, killed by the LTTE in 1999. He would have been 68 yesterday. His trust staged a performance of Ravanama by Maya Krishna Rao. It was… interesting?

Navin Weeraratne posted the photo above yesterday, which is hilarious. The letter ‘r’ fell off and the ‘Shirtworks’ sign briefly read ‘Shitworks’. Good times. I thought it was the usual fail and thought little of it. This evening, however, I saw an actual response from Shirtworks, not defensive, but a promo saying ‘Shit Happens’ and offering a 25% discount (for HSBC cards).

Sixteen years ago, yesterday, a 440 pound bomb tore through downtown Colombo. It killed 91 people, injured 1,400 and left at least 100 people blind. It also made the city recoil from itself, leaving the city center largely abandoned, only to slowly emerge today. It also made tourism drop by 40%, a figure that is also only now recovering, post war. More than anything, however, it just left people stumbling, bloody and reeling, onto the shattered streets of Colombo.

Colombo has one modern bus, but I saw like ten parked opposite Galle Face Green. I hope they’re coming soon. Opposite GFG is like an unofficial parking lot. You used to see military vehicles, then steamrollers, now buses. Rows upon rows. You can’t quite see from this photo, but there are at least 10 buses parked here. These are the new Volvos These are Micros, and I think there is one Volvo now running on the Galle Road. You have about as much chance of catching it as catching a unicorn. Hopefully this lot should improve the odds.

To buy a good rice and curry you need to find shops which are still home businesses, usually nameless and hidden on the street. If you know where to look, these are the best meals in the city.

The city has posted signs asking people to use garbage cans, without actually installing garbage cans. While education is important, it should be linked to possible execution. Right now these signs just hang out there, being purely theoretical. While I appreciate the effort, I’m still walking around with popsicle sticks in my pockets.

Any given Sunday they sell art on Greenpath (Nelum Pokuna Road), but today they had full stalls and a grand affair, sponsored by Keells I think. There were hundreds of people walking around, I saw Saskia Fernando, Dian Gomes, Ameena Hussein, etc, so people from the art and business world, plus tourists and students and parents and kids. It’s a great thing.