Alex’s mom is a ho. She’s a cat, but still. For the last few months there’ve been any amount of mewling, petulant Toms skulking around the garden, sneaking into the kitchen and peeing on stuff. Now, predictably, she’s pregnant again. Worst of all, since I adopted her last surviving kitten, I feed her sometimes as well. I’m pretty sure she’s going to give birth on my verandah.

The worst days are the ones that don’t end, like yesterday. The best days are often ones where something tragic doesn’t happen, making ordinary life incredibly sweet. Today was a bit of both.

Richard Dawkins (scientist and popular writer) spoke at the Galle Literary Festival. His talk covered evolution, alien life, Buddhism and – of course – organized religion. I think that religion is part of human evolution, like any other trait, not something opposed to it. But anyways, here are a few videos and tweeted quotes from Dawkins presentation before we get into it. He’s damn interesting and the crowd was electric and packed.

You know when you go off the net for a while, then you come back and nothing has really changed? One time I went off for six days and when I came back the Arab world was on fire. But that doesn’t happen often. Most of the time you come back and there’s 30 minutes of email and reading that you would have normally spent the whole day on. Makes you wonder.

I used to walk everywhere in Montreal, take the metro or the bus, or bicycle. It was great. Been trying a similar lifestyle here, but it’s hard. Streets are literally quite shitty. I was walking around Wellawatte and this guy was walking his dog in front of me. The dog shits and they both keep walking. If I didn’t see, I would step in the shit. This is where everybody walks, so the next person will step in the shit. Dude doesn’t give a shit.

The shitty thing about having a cat addicted to Valium is that every pharmacy in a three mile radius think I’m a junkie. I wander in with a three month old prescription saying FOR A CAT on it and they basically just stare at me. Thing is, I ran out of pills yesterday and he just had a seizure so I had to wake up, beg and cajole the LAUGFS guy at two in the morning to score like 5 diazepam which, incidentally, costs Rs. 1.30.

Went down south, and boy things have changed. Firstly, Mirissa is the new Unawatuna, Unawatuna is the new Hikkaduwa, and Hikkaduwa is, like, Mount Lavinia. There is also a thick and nasty coat of smog from Kalutara to Panadura. My poor old car overheated after the Expressway and broke down in Weligama. Met a lovely mechanic who gave me a bill for like Rs. 200, which I respectfully overpaid. Limped back up the old Galle Road, stopping every 50k to rest the car and look around.

Colombo slowly but surely spreads south. First people flocked to Hikkaduwa, making it uncool. Now Unawatuna is effectively a suburb. Next it will be Mirissa, and the meh will spread on to Hambantota before it turns around and starts affecting Kalpitiya, then round Yala to Arugam Bay.

I swear I’m not a cat video kinda person but I thought this was cute. This is the first time Alex (the epileptic kitten) has seen himself. He stared for a while, tried to fight and later ran straight into himself. It was pretty funny.

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays everyone. It was yesterday but I spent most of the weekend eating or sleeping on the floor so only getting around to writing this now. What is Christmas in Colombo like? The shopping is there, and the dinners. Perhaps one difference is the fireworks, going on late into the night. This holiday seemed more lively than before. Hope it was nice for you as well.