Every Sri Lankan shop and lunch joint serves chilled cups of yoghurt. They cost 20 or 30 Rupees and, after a spicy meal, are a cooling salve. Like Coca-Cola, the tropical heat occasionally gives me a sudden craving for the product, which I cannot control. Like Coca-Cola, one brand (Highland) tends to dominate, but not necessarily because it’s the best.

In this taste taste I bought all six types of yoghurt that Cargills had and tried them. These are the results, from worst to best.

Kotmale

I’ve had and enjoyed Kotmale before, but in comparison it emerges as the most chemical of the yoghurts. My tasting notes were ‘feet, bacteria’. It smells chemically and I don’t like the square/deep shape. Being used to Highland, any departure from that form factor is extremely disorienting. Taste can overcome that brand bias, but Kotmale tastes like ass.

Ratthi

I like the Ratthi brand for some reason. It seems Indian or exotic or something. Sadly, it tastes mediocre at best. Rathi is an unpleasant yellow color and rather watery. The packaging is good and I’ve enjoyed the yoghurt well enough before, but in comparison it looks more sickly than the others and the texture is infirm.

Highland

Oh Highland. This is the cup of yoghurt. If I get anything else I’m confused but every single kade will have Highland. Objectively, however, it’s not that good. The edges are a bit scummy and, as comforting as the taste is, it’s still artificial. Highland can also taste really really bad if it’s a bit warm. Like from the PA Supermarket at the end of Duplication Road. Never every buy anything there, it’s all gone bad. They once gave me bad Toblerone. How is that even possible? It’s bomb shelter food.

Ambewella

Now we are getting to the creme de la creme.

Do you know what’s funny? Like one year ago, Ambewella gave you a free glass if you bought four boxes of milk. We could only afford metal cups at the time and this seemed like a great deal. I bought Ambewella religiously, also buying far more milk than I was used to. They eventually stopped including the glasses but I kept buying the milk. Now I don’t even know why, I just buy it. It comes in these horrid cartons and spills everywhere. That’s good marketing.

Anyways, after the street corner spew of Kotmale and Rathi, Ambewella is like the Gato Negro of yoghurts. Cheap but quite good enough. My tasting notes say ‘warm, developing deep taste’. Unlike other yoghurts which simply cover the tongue, Ambewella unfolds. There are subtle notes of honey and lingering notes of hakuru and brown sugar. Quite nice. I should say, however, it gets a bit much, which is why Ambewella is only number three. The first bite is great, but it got a bit too intense.

Anchor Newdale

I normally hate this yoghurt because it comes in a tall, kiddie cup. Not a man’s yoghurt. Purely on taste, however, it’s excellent. It has some of the depth of Ambewella with the consistency and comfort of Highland. It is the perfect hybrid, yoghurt, not too high brow, not too bacterial. Good color, decent nose. A fine yoghurt.

Anchor Newdale Stirred

This doesn’t really count, but it’s quite good. Spilled this on the table and ate it anyways. I think there’s some still there, actually. You know when you stir the yoghurt or ice cream at the end, to get that liquidy dip? They have oompa loompas or centrifuges doing that for Anchor Newdale Stirred. It tastes like sugar. Pretty good. Looks like snot, cup is too large, probably doesn’t belong on this list, but it’s good.

Caveat

So, I’m probably still going to eat Highland. That’s what I grew up with. Like Coca-Cola, the brand has an actual neurological hook. One thing I would like to note, however, is that, supposing you really like yoghurt, you cannot buy a larger size. If you want yoghurt for the week you need to buy seven little cups and the cashier has to give you seven little spoons. I find this baffling, but I cannot find a large container of yoghurt that’s as sweet as the little ones. The big ones are sour, whack yoghurt that might be good with falafel but I don’t have any falafel. Getting a sweet yoghurt in bulk is, in my experience, impossible.

There is, of course, Barefoot and ODEL, but these are a few places a bit more off the grid.

McCallum Street

If you have a tolerance for dust, these age old book stalls at the end of Darley Road are the place to go. You have to dig, but I’ve found gems like a North Korean Juche guide to art and an entire collection of F. Scott Fitzgeralds. They also have ancient issues of Wallpaper and Lanka Women if you’re into that sort of thing. Their kids selection is hit or miss, but there are some absolute gems, like a huge, almost painted edition of Babar. It’s a used bookshop so you can give and get.

I’ve written about here previously.

Sarasavi, Nugegoda

Sarasavi is a mainstream bookshop, but their Nugegoda branch has some weird gems. There’s a quite comprehensive Sri Lankan section up top which includes a pre-colonial Kandyan cookbook. The recipes seem to involve a retinue of staff and days of preparation. Dip the fish in lye, cover in this, layer in that, fold under, clean, filet, marinate, escalate, etc. None of the dishes seemed makeable, but interestingly authentic. They also have a bunch of kids comics illustrating the lives of Da Vinci and Alexander The Great, among others.

For kids birthdays, I’m usually the party pooper that gives books, and they have a big puzzle book here that’s a good gift for almost anyone. There fiction section is a bit whack however, but they do seem to have a lot of educational books.

Read And Seed

This is literally a room in someone’s house, 119/6 Kynsey Road. They have a small selection of curated books, but it’s not much more than you’d see in another Kysney Road house. These books are just for sale. Some interesting biographies and stuff, but not a very wide selection.

Gandhara

I haven’t been here in ages, but they used to have these red-bound ornamental books, you know, the ones you see behind people in photographs? Intentionally or not, some of these have really good content. I found an exhaustive history of the penis, among other things.

And… that’s all I can think of off the top of my head. For new books and stuff, Amazon does deliver here, instantly if you have a Kindle.

Thus, I was surprised when I (randomly) visited Guitar Center and it immediately told me that they ship to Sri Lanka. First off, it’s quite smart to pick up my Sri Lankan IP and give me relevant information, and it’s thoughtful. I’m not actually buying anything from there, well, I guess I might look around.

I’m actually quite touched that they’ve implemented such a personal algorithm. So, thank you for giving a shit about the Sri Lankan consumer. I actually ran through and checked out a $110 guitar. The shipping cost is $112, so not great, but that’s still competitive with a normal Yamaha round here. I’m not buying either right now, but still, nice that they care.

A Storybook Pillow

This is not the diary of a Japanese courtesan (an instance of Zuihitsu, a precursor to the modern blog). Neither is it an erotic film of the same name. It’s quite literally a book sewn into a pillow.

It’s pretty cool because the book is soft and kid resistant and still quite clear and readable. The outside is plush and the pages are, I think, polyester. They’re called Storybook Pillows and they’re made by this Senario company.

What also interests me is that they’re not dumb books, they’ve picked classics and reprinted them on cloth – Babar, Arthur the anteater. And I think it cost about Rs. 1,000. I don’t remember. House Of Fashion occasionally has good stuff in the kids section, like Reservoir Dogs action figures.

Solar Guru on the train

I was in the sun for hours a day and spoke for like 10 minutes a day, so it might have semi-worked. As it was, however, the solar panel was in my pocket getting close contact with linen. All that happened was that I got black and had to plug the phone into the wall at night. That said, I was able to go days without charging this phone, but that may just be its nature.

The Guru is a very simple color phone, no Internet browser, no 3G, just a phone. The SMS was a bit annoying cause the T9 would keep turning off but that’s my only complaint. It had a flash-light which really saved my knees many times in various bat-infested forts. However, there are many cheaper phones that do the same things. The only difference the Guru has is that it carries its own solar charger, but the charge is so weak that it’s essentially a gimmick. If I was stuck on a desert island (with signal) I could leave the thing out for an hour to charge. When you’re stuck in some town or hamlet, however, it’s not especially viable. Just find a plug point like anybody else.

It’s a cool proof of concept. A cheap phone with solar power. Just not especially practical. It’s still a fun phone to carry around.

Otara is quite dedicated to this helping out the street dogs thing which I think is commendable. She launched a clothes line towards that end and all the puppies on the catwalk were available for adoption. I thought initially the show was for dog clothes but it’s for human, with proceeds to help humans. If I could go one day in Colombo without seeing saggy tits/distended uterus/droopy balls and decaying flesh that would be a good day. Till then it is nice to see culture of any sort in Colombo.

As the most recent Culture Vulture (PDF) mentions, stuff happening now includes the Neelan Thiruchelvam Lecture: “Constitutional fairly competent & polite utopias: a conversation with Neelan Thiruchelvam” by Em. Prof. of Law, Upendra Baxi at BMICH, Rm A (FREE). I also hear that Anjali is having another Artwalk fashion show on the 14th, in the warehouse behind Park Street Mews.

Anyways, IMF bailout is on the way, stock market is up 2.5%, here’s to Colombo.

HSBC ad from Horton Plains via Shuyu

HSBC is truly the world’s local bank. They’ve picked up all the nepotistic bullshit of Sri Lanka like a sponge. First off, you can’t get an HSBC account at all without a reference. Then, once in, you cannot get an HSBC Credit Card without a cash deposit and a reference. Then, after years of dutifully paying your bills, they need one more family reference to issue a credit card with actual credit. And that family member has to have a landline, not a cell phone. I understand that Sri Lankans are pretty shoddy credit-wise, this is true. However, if HSBC had any decent customer management they should know me by now. Three years ago I sat down with my mother and gave a Rs 50,000 deposit for a credit card. So it’s basically a chequing account that I pay interest on, but whatever. I have had this card for years, and I pay my balance every month (automatically). I have built a credit record over three years with HSBC and they still want to know ‘who do you know?’ I’ve been giving them my money for 3 years and they still treat me like a stranger. If I had anywhere else to go I would tell HSBC to go fuck themselves, but I don’t. So HSBC will keep providing poor customer service because the bar is low and I as a consumer have to suck it up.

In Sri Lanka I am often forced to deal with bad companies simply because the competition treats me worse. Take the UNP vs the SLFP for one. HSBC, for example, is still an international bank. Commercial and Sampath aren’t. I can walk into ‘my’ bank in Singapore or Montreal or whatever, which is cool. Unfortunately, HSBC Sri Lanka adds nothing to the HSBC brand except Sri Lankan bureaucracy and incompetence. In Canada my friend got a credit card at a baseball game with less hassle. I could walk into my branch at the Bank Of Montreal and they’d look at my income and history at the bank and judge me on that. Not who my family was. Not who I knew. I had no relatives in Quebec and no credit history, but I built one over years and they respected that. HSBC doesn’t respect my credit history, they still want to know who my family is. I find that insulting and very unprofessional for a serious bank.

What if I had a willful marriage and pissed off my whole family? Does HSBC not want my business? What if I’m an orphan, or what if my family is too poor (or smart) to have a landline? What if my extended family is abroad, in Jaffna or not talking to me? Is that another class of people that HSBC will not serve?

I always thought banks judged people based on their financial and credit history, but HSBC continues asking about my family. I don’t mind giving HSBC my payslips, I don’t mind them knowing my credit record, but they have no right to ask me for references after I’ve been their good customer for 3 years. I am the reference bitch, I’ve been here. Look up my accounts, I pay my bills on time and that’s all my bank needs to know. I’m honestly tired of pulling strings, I just want a bank that treats me like a customer, judged on my merits as a customer, not based on who I know. I think that’s called customer service. It’s not really practiced here, so I guess the world’s local bank has adapted.

Image originally from Leisure Times.

Walk into a place and nobody even smile at you. Unless you know somebody. Walk into anywhere as a generic customer and people behind the counter just ignore you. I’m in Laugfs in a sarong, trying to get some razors. Nobody there and three people at the registers, but nobody even looks up. I need to open the case but the employees just continue their conversation, forcing me to interrupt. Looking peeved, guy unlocks the case and goes back to his chat. Same thing everywhere. Service staff either follows you around like a thief or ignores you like a leper.

Any grocery store is pretty bad. If you ask where something is they won’t know, or they’ll tell you it isn’t there (even if it is). If I walk into any store I have to know that a friend successfully bought X product here and insist on getting that product until the staff caves.

Mechanics are the fucking worst. I used to go to Mag City but they’re just horrible. They never listen and they always fix something else. Go to adjust the suspension and they drop something and break the windshield. Replace the windshield, but the damn rear view mirror falls off. Tell them to fix that. They wash the car and put the rear view in the glove compartment. Assholes. Talked to a guy there. Said they need to bring in like 20 lakhs total each month, 5 lakhs apiece. Something.

Other places with consistently bad service – any laundromat, any store in MC or Unity, any government office (ye Gods), etc. Kinda baffling cause Sri Lankans are naturally hospitable. If you’re a muckety muck or get a reference through a friend the experience is fantastic. Also, service at street places like Pilawoos, petty kades, etc is perfunctory and good. It’s like you put Sri Lankans in a building and they get surly and bored. The worst worst is all the clothing shops where people just follow you around and stare at you. Half of the country must be just standing around at any given time. Government parasites, security guards, parking attendants, tea boys, peons, etc.

But it’s really simple. I’ve worked in customer service since I was 14. If you just smile at somebody as they walk into the door that makes all the difference. And if you just transfer that hospitable instinct to work it’s above and beyond. I don’t get why most Sri Lankan stores can’t do it, but I guess they do pay fuck all. Meh.

PS. I had an older series of rants on shoddy customer service called Gadjits

I went to Pettah over the weekend, looking for this particular Motorola. It was a cool day, laden with yesterdays rain. First I drove through Pettah looking for a theoretical parking spot and finding none. The streets are occupied with people, flowing around the slow moving car like ambivalent waves. No parking no parking no parking. I had originally parked next to a fetid garbage dump/housing project but decided it was too far. In my meanderings that’s exactly where I ended up, and where I parked again. Hop a three into Pettah. I remember seeing cool stuff in Pettah when I was a kid, but as far as I can tell Pettah is full of junk. No offense. Seriously though, it’s a bunch of too-tall socks, cheap cloth, knives, and electronics from 1983. It feels like Blade Runner except without any cool stuff. Maybe I’m wrong. I walk past a big kovil and get some peara (guava) in a bag. They put some chili on it, which I’m not used to. It’s pretty freaking good.

A Pettah Kovil. Much taller and cooler

Pettah is, above all, different. As boring as Colombo is compared to the rest of Sri Lanka, there are still some interesting spots. Fort was cool before security concerns shut it down, and Wellawatta is interesting as a South Asian city with cramped high-rises and dosai joints. There are some tree lined roads near Thumulla where you feel almost free. Pettah is more entertaining for the mess and crowds – the bazaar. My problem is that most of the stuff at the bazaar is just crap. Worse than crap, it’s the same crap. My main gripe with shopping in SL is that every store sells the same stuff. You find the same overpriced electronics at every store in MC and Unity, and in Pettah it’s the same thing. Except the electronics are from 1983. There’s also the same cloth, same patterns, same same.

The achcharu is good though.

Plastic photo by Anmalhe

What GOSL should do is simply tax plastics at a higher rate. If they want to designate that to an environmental fund – perhaps to alleviate the countries dependence on open, untreated dumps – it would be cool, but even if it goes into the Rajapakse feudal trust at least the society would get some benefits. If you pinch the manufacturers and stores directly they will either cut down on use or give you more money. Either way you win. Under the current system nobody wins, and there aren’t even opportunities for more government tax fraud. I can understand acting against the national and environmental interest, but have you thought of all the Pajeros you could buy?

That little kade is one of my favorite things admist the crowd and chaos of Union Place. The food is great, the bread is good, and the service is, well, a hand through a glass till, but I think the lady smiled once. More than anything I’m hungry, and hunger is the best chef. Here’s what’s on offer for breakfast.

Malu Paan

Literally, a fish bun. I am firmly against fish for breakfast, but malu paan is actually great. Depends on the baker, of course, but it’s savory and spicy with just enough bread to temper the steel.

Seeni Sambol and Bread

Seeni Sambol is sugared onions, but savory. Not sweet at all. It’s spicy and served between two heaving hunks of bread. Cheap but airy bread usually, quite good. Not cardboard Prima toast, this is paan.

Other Stuff

The latter two are all I get, but through the window I see Roti and sambol (katta or something I’d guess) and assorted short eats.

I don’t know where they get the food or bake it (besides the seeni sambol I see them making) but it’s good street food. The place closes by lunch, but it’s a saviour for breakfast.

This photo has been censored to protect the innocent toothless lady

Sri Lankan has some cheap (Rs 27,000 with tax) flights to London. Me being the geeky nephew, I become de facto travel agent for my uncle. However, what should be a simple procedure took ten attempts, four computers, three emails, four calls to the bank, three trips to the bank, two passwords, one key token, and hours of time to complete. There are two systems at fault here, one is the Sri Lankan online booking systems – which randomly rejected 50% of the computers we tried. The other is HSBC, which imposes draconian security measures on a country of 575,000 credit card holders and 200,000 Internet users. I’m all for security, but some stuff just goes to far. I also think that the Sri Lankan Airlines online booking system is poorly designed but I’m more angry at HSBC for making Internet Banking and Shopping so ‘secure’ that no one can use them.

Normal Experience

In my experience, this is how you buy things online. You go to the site. You enter your product information. You enter your credit card info, and the check bits on the back. Plus the billing address. I have trouble remembering my own info so I have to look it up sometimes. Click purchase. Done.

Sri Lankan Experience

Go to the Sri Lankan Air site. Enter all your info, which takes about 5 minutes. Click ‘Buy Now’. Wait another 2 minutes for the page to load. The page returns this cryptic ‘Booking Failure’ error which gives me no information as to what went wrong. Try again. Try again. Try on different browser. Call the travel agent. She succeeds on her computer. Now the credit card doesn’t work. Now we move into stage two of ass pain.

The Sri Lankan Airlines site is defective. It’s not reading cookies or something, but worst of all, it returns unusable error messages. It doesn’t work on my laptop, but it works on my mothers. It worked on my Uncle’s office machine, but then it stopped working. In the time it takes to gather all the banking passwords you need the connection times out and you have to start over again. It sucks and I would rather pay a travel agent to avoid the headache. However, that is nothing compared to the mindfuck of using an HSBC Credit Card.

The HSBC Experience

My experience with HSBC has been pretty bad. When I opened my account they gave me ice cream. That was good. Then it got bad. For one thing, you need a ‘reference’ to even open an account, which I find kinda backwards. Then they gave me a credit card which is not really a credit card. They asked me for a 100,000 deposit and I have a 100,000 credit limit. I would understand, but I have a steady paycheck and the account is linked to my parents so it doesn’t make sense to me. Plus they’re holding onto my money and collecting whatever interest there is. Wtf. In Canada I could literally get a $10,000 credit limit card at a baseball game. Perhaps they don’t understand the meaning of ‘credit’.

As another experience, I sent a check to this guy in India who couldn’t cash it. It got returned to HSBC Pelawatte. That branch called me literally 15 times to come pick up my returned check. But I don’t want my returned check. I just told them to cancel it and leave me alone. I honestly felt like they were harassing me they called so much, about a non-issue. Just cancel the check.

Finally, this is not my experience, but a friend of mine made a deposit into someone’s account in Indonesia or somewhere. Not a huge (business) amount, maybe $1000. HSBC accidentally issued two payments. In order to sort the problem out, HSBC Sri Lanka froze the individual’s bank account in Indonesia. More accurately, they requested that her bank freeze the account (which they shouldn’t have done), but that was the effect. She was walking around and went to an ATM and suddenly she couldn’t withdraw money, all because HSBC screwed up. It was a small amount, but HSBC imposed the most severe response, which they have a pattern of doing.

Another thing is that freaking keychain they force you to wear. I’m quite happy with my current keychain and I’m not changing it, but that means I effectively can’t use Internet Banking anymore. To login to Internet banking you have to enter your name and password. Fine. Then, however, you have to enter a randomized code from this keychain within 5 minutes. Now in addition to worrying about losing my wallet, my cell phone or my mind, I also have to worry about this dinky plastic keychain. Not to mention that there are like less than 20,000 Internet Banking Customers and even less Internet criminals who could use Internet Banking. It’s already nearly impossible for HSBC clients to use, so I’m not too worried about criminals. Seriously, I can’t even login to my Internet Banking account now, and I’m me. That’s amazing security. Nobody can use it.

Not to say that the security measure may not be useful, maybe it is. However, I have dealt with banks with many more customers than HSBC Sri Lanka and they have never made me so uncomfortable as a user. My Bank of Montreal account did begin asking me for secondary passwords, but that wasn’t a physical item they forced into my overstuffed pocket. I even spoke to someone at HSBC (on an unrelated matter) and he said that yes, the security dongle was probably overkill. The Internet Banking is so small and the potential for fraud so low that they could go with less severe security, like that used by huge banks in other countries. Or not.

This HSBC Experience

Anyways, my uncle was trying to put the ticket on his HSBC Credit Card. He’s had it since the 1993 so I wouldn’t think this is a problem. However, the card fails. Now we realize that we have to call HSBC to somehow activate the card for Internet Banking. This, to me, is the end of Internet Shopping in Sri Lanka, as if it isn’t already hard enough. I have never in my life had to activate a credit card for a specific vendor channel, and this makes casual internet shopping a righteous pain in the ass. So he calls the bank. He tells them that he now needs to register for Internet Banking and get that damnable dongle, even though he doesn’t have a banking account. It’s just a credit card. Whatever. Plus plus plus, in order to even get the dongle, he has to preregister, using a PIN number they gave him in 1993 (!). Just to repeat, to even start the process, he has to dig up a piece of paper from 1993 which had no use at the time. Otherwise this process is going to take weeks and he won’t get his ticket. Wtf.

Luckily my uncle is organized and is able to round up this archival document under some passports and dinosaur bones. So he enters the pin. Great. Now we have to wait till a working day to collect the damnable dongle from the HSBC branch. This is Saturday. Wait till Monday. Uncle drives to HSBC and collects dongle. He enters it into HSBC website at work. We’re not even done yet. In order to shop online he has to activate the ‘Verified by Visa’ service which gives him another incomprehensible password. To reiterate, you need a token to get the password to get the password to make a purchase. It’s like motherfucking Lord of The Rings getting this airline ticket.

Conclusion

Now he has the passwords. All two of them. And the token. We’re ready to go. He comes over to the Samarajiva Internet Cafe after work and we try it. Again the SriLankan site fails on my computer and gives me no reason why. I walk over, get my mother’s laptop and try again. For some reason it works. We enter the credit card. We enter the check bits on the back. We enter the ‘Verified by Visa’ password. We wait. We have a plane ticket. Wtf.

In short, the SriLankan website is unacceptably buggy and it drives me crazy. In long, the HSBC Internet Banking/Shopping service is the most draconian and unusable I’ve ever seen and it doesn’t bode well for online shopping in Sri Lanka. There is a balance between security and usability that they don’t seem to understand. That line is intelligence, and it involves thoughtful security that enables rather than disables your customer. The current HSBC Internet services thoroughly disable anyone without a geeky nephew, and even that geeky nephew is too pissed off to use them. That’s not good security and it’s not good business and I wonder if Commercial or Sampath has done better. Maybe HSBC can do better, but this experience was terrible.