ABBA

They look different to how I remember ...

The Buddhist TV

To my mind the most striking and remarkable thing about Colombo is its trees. While generally the town is short on the things that make it friendly towards humans, like pavements (which only exist alongside the main roads) and parks, there is always an abundance of wonderful trees.

Anyhow, one tree of note is found on R G Senanayake Mawatha, aka Gregory's Street (and as you can see why it has a certain homely feel to me - it is a broad, fairly quiet street with a pavement, it is lined with trees and even has red pillar boxes).

A little further down the road you come to The Buddhist TV, the home of the national Buddhist television channel and you can see here how they have cunningly disguised their broadcasting mast to look (a little) like a tree.

Where the streets have new names

The street names in Colombo have all been nationalised and the old colonial names shed. While I think this is a good thing it has not really been done in a very practical way.

Done well, Torrington Place - whose name celebrated Lord Governer Torrington (aka George Byng, the 7th Viscount Torrington) who was infamous for his cruelty in suppressing the 1848 peasant revolt - is now named Independence Avenue, which can only be a good thing.

But to give you some other examples, what was Albert Road is now Sri Dharmakeertiyarama Road and Church Road is now Sir Mohamed Macan Markar Mawatha. Now, while I am more than happy to wave goodbye to Albert and the Church, and while that last name is a wonderful bit of alliteration, it is just not practical to say when you are giving directions.

And being very aware that this could sound like a classic bit of British post-colonial colonial resentment ... I can say that this attitude is confirmed by a number of the taxi drivers of Colombo I have encountered who continue to use the old colonial names and often don't even know the 'new' street name (they have mostly been renamed since independence in 1948).

Father, Mother, Comrade Chief

(AKA Spiderman = American Power)

You Are Best

Colombo Swimming Club

The club is comically loomed over by this gigantic building that emits bat-like sonic cheeps as hammer guns are used in the concrete.

And of course, Arthur has always been here before. This cheesily titled plaque was put in a corner, by his favourite table (you can see him sitting in it in the framed picture, with the plaque installed behind him). There is no table there now however; just a service counter.

Emerging bat

I'm still trying to get a good picture of a flying fox. They are quite often around during the daytime, though dusk is of course the best time. Anyhow, I saw this one land in tree, memorized the spot and ran and got my camera. I was trying to locate it through the foliage with my zoom lens when it burst out from the leaves.

Angry Bike

After Iris's bike came out of the boxes it was only a matter of time before Arlo wanted something similar. So we went for the most low-key, culturally sensitive option we could find:

Lava Sky

Chicken Tandori Doughnut

Beira Lake Island Park

This park was marked on my map as a children's park. I took Arlo to check it out. The lake's waters are a stunning icepop emerald colour and they are navigated by a few immature pelicans dwarfed by swan paddle boats. You access the island via a pedestrian cable suspension bridge. As we crossed this I began to notice there seemed to be no swings and slides and that all of the sixty odd people on island were young couples, many nestling under umbrellas.We had stumbled into a lovers island. I scanned the tiny island in the hope that there might be one or two people on the island that didn't have a romantic agenda - but no. We left Noah's Ark and crossed back over the green waters.

Hand, Foot and Mouth Disease Pt. 2

The lingering after effect of this charming affliction is that the child's fingernails can fall out. So, while Arlo has recovered from this in all other ways a month and half back, his fourth fingernail fell off this morning.

Tropical Modernism

Geoffrey Bawa is Sri Lanka's 'Tropical Modernist' top architect. I know little about architecture and had never heard of him before I knew I was coming to Sri Lanka, but reading my Rough Guide I was struck by a sentence in his boxed mini-biography:
"Bawa often and famously designed buildings to fit around existing trees, for example, rather than just cutting them down."

Geoffrey Bawa's House

This immediately won my approval and piqued my interest and while I am yet to see this in Bawa's work I have noticed the incorporation of trees within buildings quite a lot around Colombo; both in plush hotels and also in more lowly contexts such as this example: