An AFP story about Sri Lankan eye donations has been making the rounds. Around Colombo 7 there’s a sign that says ‘eye donations this way’, which I always found a bit odd. There’s also old images like the above, of a Bodhisattva donating an eye (in Mulkirigala). Turns out its not so odd after all, Sri Lanka is among the top cornea providers in the world.

A lot of people are protesting online that no stray dogs in Sri Lanka should be killed. But some should. It is not healthy to have stray, mangy, bitey dogs running around a city, not healthy for anyone. Normal policy is you put them in pounds, make them possible for adoption and euthanize them if they’re not. Vaccinating or sterilizing them and sending them back out isn’t a good option.

Alex is a cat (a kitten to be exact). He’s basically addicted to Valium. If he misses one dose he has seizures, which are absolutely pathetic to behold. As long as he gets his meds, however, he’s a lovely and personable cat. He likes biting and play-fighting and sleeping in improbable positions.

In this video, Andrew Sullivan (a gay, HIV positive, conservative Catholic blogger) talks about why he started meditating. In his case, it was precipitated by Internet overload and rather scattered thought. For me, each time I restart meditation it’s much the same thing. Not the Internet so much, but if you sit and just listen, there’s a huge amount of cacophony and noise in your head. In mine at least. If you listen long enough, it kinda fades away and you’re left with a stillness. As they say in Eat, Pray, Love, if you leave a vacuum, God can rush in.

Halik is full of weird ideas that end up knee deep in paddy fields or getting chased by elephants. He had this idea to go for a 5 km cancer run in Colombo, which couldn’t possibly go wrong. It didn’t. It was shorter than I thought, and for a good cause, beating Halik. JK, raising money for the Maharagama cancer hospital. Very good organization by the Colombo Uptown Rotaract Club.

Some friends of mine are doing a story and they managed to score Rs. 300 of heroin without too much difficulty, but reports are that the supply has dropped noticeably in the past few weeks. Hmmm.

Interesting and all too common story of shoddy medical service in Sri Lanka. I don’t mean shoddy medicine, I mean shoddy service. In SL we have free health care, but your choices are to wait and be messed about or go and get actual medical care at a private hospital. The problem with that is that private hospitals are insanely expensive, like a hundred dollars a day for saline and monitoring. And even then they don’t always offer decent service.

I wrote a post about adult film theatres that has somehow turned into a debate about obesity. As in, are Americans fatter than Sri Lankans. The answer is, of course America are fatter. This is not because Sri Lankans are better people, it’s really just for lack of opportunity. As I was reading in a recent UN Food Ag Org report, one third of the food in the world is wasted or lost. In the west the waste it at the consumer level, here we lose it at the production level.

Sri Lanka has free public health care but a lot of people don’t use it. I have dealt with public health care only briefly. My girlfriend once went and spent about 6 hours over two days just to see a doctor for the kid. I think it’s the time issue that makes people avoid it, I dunno. Luckily I’ve avoided the hospital except for a brief bout with dengue/viral fever, and that under company health care. Recently, however, I checked the girlfriend’s kid into Lanka Hospitals for observation and it was really expensive. I wonder how the system sustains.

Since the western world started cracking down on cigarettes, the cigarette companies have started pushing their wares in the developing world. According to the WHO, ” Tobacco kills more than AIDS, legal drugs, illegal drugs, road accidents, murder, and suicide combined.” For this reason it is regulated, as it should be. Actually, for these reasons it should be illegal, but that’s another story. The story now is that, since western governments are cracking down, the companies are moving east. Smoking already kills more people in developing countries, and yet tobacco companies have relatively free reign here. Sri Lanka is a bit ahead on regulation, but in places like China and Indonesia, smoking is regulated little or not much at all. This has catastrophic consequence like the smoking toddler in the video above.