Working late so I go to KFC to get some nosh. Get two Zinger meals for myself and the boss. Looking absentmindedly at the local KFC Kottu and Biriyani when I notice the guy wrapping each of my drinks in a plastic bag and double-bagging my food. I groan inwardly, but it’s too late. The shit just stays in my car and if I take it home my mother insists on reusing it. I’m going to see this bags for the rest of my life. But whatever, I get my things and go to the car. What I notice is that the plastic is now extra thick, opaque and touchier than it used to be. And groan again. In a hackneyed effort to reduce plastic use the government has banned plastic below a certain thickness. Unfortunately, all this has done is led manufacturers to make thicker plastic. Volumes at stores don’t seem to have decreased, and the net result may actually be more plastic, and more money for plastic makers. It is like running economics backwards.

Every morning I’m late to work. For a week I thought I had to be there at 8:30, and I’d invariably arrive at 9. Then I found out it actually was at 9, and I became late again. This means no breakfast, or it would, if not for the local kade stand. I don’t even know what the thing is called, but every morning a couple knocks up in a little yellow stall and sells bites. She’s got a tupperware full of seeni sambol, slapping it on bread, and he’s handling the cash. I hand over Rs 15 and get a Malu Paan, wrapped in the some random printout from some random company. It is very good.

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.