This week the Sri Lankan Police have been stopping cars to conduct a survey on traffic. Colombo actually has far less traffic than many global cities, but it’s still not good. So what to do? The survey created more traffic and was only in Sinhala, but it’s a start. There are a few obvious answers already on the table.

Bob Marley is a trishaw God here. The most popular international non-prophet in Sri Lanka would probably be him or Che Guevara. Right now, Che Guevara seems to be winning (judging by trishaw art) but Bob Marley is much better IMHO, having not killed people or run prison camps. Anyways, since he died his sons have been carrying on the reggae/rastafari tradition, including one Julian Marley, who will be gracing our shores this Sunday.

Sorry for the long radio silence. I took a bit of a long weekend and my main computer melted down. Working on an iPad’s not much fun. The main thing about this long weekend was that it rained, and rained and rained and rained. And now that rains have stopped here, we see that a hurricane has struck New York, flooding subways causing insane amounts of damage. Bit of a deluge.

I’m all for the government’s urban renewal program which began with the Cinnamon Gardens police station and culminated in the lovely Dutch Hospital. Thus I was looking forward to the renovation of the old Colombo Racecourse grounds, which was just opened. But, so far, it’s quite disappointing.

I’m not a hater I just blog a lot. I’m all for development but seriously, who’s all this stuff for? The five star hotels, luxury high-rises (Krrish), the bourgeoise shopping centers. We need some stuff like this, but we also need public transit and education and parks for, you know, the public.

Sushi, typically raw fish on rice, doesn’t surprise me anymore, but the idea of raw beef on rice does. Yet it is insanely delicious. I’m thinking more things should be eaten raw, with the exception, I suppose of salmonella prone chicken. Raw food contains less calories than cooked food and it also seems to be effective birth control for people on a 100% raw diet (Discover Magazine). That’s a joke though. No one should eat everything raw, but fish and beef for pleasure? Definitely. Nihonbashi is the best place in Colombo, if you’re gnawsome.

The flipside of stalker customer service is the lazy kind. Where they don’t care or act like you’re quite rudely interrupting them. The most recent personification of this has been the staff at the ODEL Roots. This time I think I managed to get the concept down in a photo. Above is the juice guy, leaning on a fridge as he’s flirting with the cashier. His expression is like, ‘and what are you doing here?’

These are some things that annoy me about customer service in Sri Lanka. I’ve gone into great detail about people following you around at shops on YAMU. I really hate that. That’s one thing that super annoys me and which I think is objectively bad. Here’s that plus four more.

Tanja found this amazing event tomorrow, they’re trying to make the world’s largest kottu roti at Vihara Maha Devi Park tomorrow, 7,000 portions. Which I think means free kottu. I say inshallah because it may rain or something, and it’s unlikely that it’ll rain sauce. The title of world’s largest kottu isn’t highly competed for internationally, but it should still be a pretty awesome (and loud) event.

The White Horse bar, or brand at least, is old, dating back to colonial days. Generations of people have gone through that bar, wherever it is, drank with mates, met biological mates, gotten in fights, destroyed the furniture, again and again. The White Horse of today is actually a sterile office of a building turned into a bar, but it’s still the spot for underage drinking in the CMB. The old White Horse was somewhat the same, for another generation, but it had a bit more history and style.