Postcards From Sri Lanka

Entry 1


You may be wondering why I named my blog a pocket full of postcards...well...I love writing postcards...but that’s about as far as I get...

Postcards from SRI LANKA

Green is all I see! I have been quite deprived of this colour for quite some time now due to the drought and I am utterly amazed at how refreshing it is, complete with coconut palm trees and exotic bird noises, yes I am in the tropics! But let me start at the beginning. The van drive from the airport was the flashback of the century...from the first moment that Madame humidity embraces you like a long lost child and staring crowds look at you like your a visitor from another planet...(and i'm not even white) complete with some probing questions, par examplé 'ahhh baby you vear from?'

The reminiscing didn't stop there...as I was greeted by something you really forget when you have lived in 'sanitisedville’ for 4 years, this being the smells. An interesting concoction of diesel fumes and unknown substances...which really makes me realise that the Plaza public toilets were like a bunch of roses in comparison, and of all the holding of breath that was done there is comedic relief in comparison to the reality that holding your breath is now a past luxury. Nevertheless you become accustomed to the ‘interesting’ smells once your attention is drawn to the passing traffic! Passing is putting it mildly really, when in fact it is hurtling past you, overtaking, passing the decorative road ornaments know to us as traffic lights with a simple 'toot' of the horn to warn incoming traffic, who are at the very moment of completing a left turn kindly informing you of this by sticking an arm in said direction. And there you go, smells become rather irrelevant. This is however all upstaged by a slight change, being a pedestrian rather than a passenger! This gives jay walking a whole new meaning, as you play a game of cat and mouse in traffic, however by the third near miss you realise that as long as you walk with one arm extended towards oncoming traffic you will be quite fine, because they will actually stop once your hand is touching the car or trishaw...all character building for a person that places crossing busy roads as number 2 on her list of fears. However when all is said and done these very factors are what sets this 'Pearl of the Indian Ocean' apart and really adds a bit of spice to ones life, because in the end, for this girl anyway, clean smelling countries, with perfectly obeyed traffic conditions and little green men to indicate you can 'walk' are just not as exciting really!

Pondering...

I begin this blog pondering and wondering how far I will get...because being the perfectionist I am, I do somewhat have a penchant for pressing the ‘delete’ button regularly in the attempt to ‘perfect’ my prose. One would think that considering I have written a journal since I was 10 a blog would be quite a natural transition, however this is not as straight forward as it appears. You see journaling has always involved pen and paper and when you write you don’t have a delete button, apart from the option of crossing out what you have written, or the dreaded use of ‘white out’, both of which are strongly avoided by perfectionists for the obvious reason that crossing out and ‘white out’ do nothing to make the page look appealing! And well for this perfectionist, the appeal of a beautifully written page is highly favoured and therefore ‘what’s written is written’...Nevertheless I will give ‘blogging’ a go...be patient and kind to me ‘cyber space’....because the posts may be far between...but hopefully not few!