Lesbians Penguin Party... now that i have your attention

You know when you don't expect things, and then *WHAM*, something unexpected happens? Well, I had that today. With and email. It's quite easy to become quite blasé about the whole poor people stuff when you live and work in a developing country that was devastated by the tsunami. Every day I work on these issues, and become quite desensitised to the whole thing. Except this email I received today had nothing to do with the tsunami… but it was from a friend who set up this awesome program that has children on the streets of Dhaka running around taking photos of their daily life (www.visibleworld.org). Visible enables you to see what they see.. and the photos are darn amazing. Check out the link, and find out more about it, because this may just be that *WHAM* you were not expecting – or it could be that link that wastes another 5 minutes of your work day, either way it is a win win!

This also inspired me to put up some photos of my field visits, to try and give you guys a better idea of what I am doing. Now, my photos are nowhere near as good as poor uneducated Bangladeshi kids can do; but what do you expect, they are small and can get the better angles. This photo is of a “beneficiary” (slowly but surely, I am going to introduce both readers of this blog to the development industries terms) in the soon to be constructed “low cost housing”/”permanent housing” program house thing. I would go into more detail, but

.. and on the way to checking out that soon to be constructed house, we had to drive through Bundala National Park (a RAMSAR wetland). There were lots of cool birds as hundreds and thousands of migratory birds are wading there. But alas, I was too tall to take any good photos of them – I think I might hire those Bangladeshi street kids for my next field visit. Though I did manage to catch a dude going to have a bath. Don’t worry neo-cons, he can do it without taking his Lungi/Sarong off, and still EVERYTHING will be clean!! Fun to watch if you got a spare seven seconds, and are a voyeur, and don’t have a girlfriend, and don’t mind being watched while watching, and .. well maybe you shouldn’t watch, but all in the name of science!

Finally, before this blog becomes a blook, some people are out there spreading rumours that we don’t have friends. Now I want to put that to rest by saying Emma has plenty of friends here!! Here are some photos of a house party at Bill’s place (god damn he’s a funky son of a gun.. check out his moves!), complete with Zhera, Clody and Zofia. Check out the link to Zhera’s blog.. she fell out of a tree and bruised/fractured six ribs. Whilst I am sure she would love to believe she was in the tree in the name of development; she was pissed as a fart at 3am in Colombo.

Peace, Love, and Lesbian Penguin Parties.

Byron