A grasshopper walks into a bar...

and the bar tender says, "We have a drink named after you!". The grasshopper turns to the bar keep, "You have a drink named Fred?"

Boom Boom Chink.

It's been a long time between drinks for this Blog.. longer than I would like anyhoot. Though, I like to think that my lack of quantity implies a higher quality.. gives you a longer time to soak it all in. I also live in a fantasy world where the best things in life come free, like cable TV and air conditioning and dad's car. I've spent a lot of time watching west wing, my life surely is on the up.. and between episodes, if I am not too lazy, I sometimes I get up and look out the balcony to see other rooftops and hear the mongrel dogs downstairs barking and yapping away. There are lots of rats in Sri Lanka, no doubt about it.. just look at the number of road-side stalls selling "meat". But the other form of rat here is not the rat with wings known as the pidgeon, no.. they do have crows, but not quite the same. The other rat is the squirrel. It's a cute rat, but I still aint going to eat it or go near it. here's one outside my balcony during season 4 episodes 5/6 of west wing:


I like to try new things.. sometimes they work, sometimes they don't. I was at the supermarket trying to get the dude to explain what this weird shaped and even stranger coloured fruit thingymajig was. They call it a dragon fruit (oooer, so friggin' scary!!). After about 8 minutes of me saying, "I don't get it.. " and shaking my head slowly from side to side, I bought the stupid thing. There's no taste to it, but it looks really cool on the inside.. kinda like a Kiwi:


A few blogs back I posted a pic of a bright red draqgon fly. Since then, I have been speaking with my legal team about that day. They said there was nothing they could do for me.. sp I epoke with my public relations crew, and they said I should be upfront about things and put it out first.. need to beat the enemy, otherwise it looks like I am hiding things (and as per the photo below, you can see I don't hide much). I have a problem. I like crack when I am taking photos.. I'm sorry mum, I can change.. promise!!
NB: That is purposely low resolution. I don't want any strange crack fetish people out there downloading the photo and cropping it to just my $2.50 coin slot, blowing it up and then blowing themselves off. Though for $9.99, you can subscribe to byronandemma.xxx.blogspot.com and get the high res version.

While reminiscing.. here are some more photos from Ange's (AYAD Ange, not Kiwi Ange) going away party. Here's a fun story.. when I first met Ange I was drunk as a skunk outside the Aussie High com after a second thursday of some random month. I was introduced to Jo and Ange

[THIS STORY HAS BEEN CENSORED BY THE DICTATORS CENSORSHIP BOARD OF THE UNITED STATES OF WOMEN WHO SAY "OH, YOU CAN'T SAY THAT!".]

I actually wrote a really funny story that would have made everyone bar one person in this world laugh. However, after having it posted for less than 24 hours, dearest Emma read it and threatened to remove m two hairy balls with a tea spoon and some fishing wire. Now I don't know about the other guys out there, but I have become quite attached to my saggy hairy ball sack for many reasons, and I don't feel like losing them over some dodgey internet blogger story. So I've been censored. But everybody knows that censorship can't work forever. The emotions behind that story still boil within my body, and on top of that I now have resentment for women with fishing wire and spoons. This is not over.. oh hell no. This is not over by a long shot!

[AND BACK TO THE STORY...]

We've had many beers since.. ahh what good times. But now she's gone. This is everyone having fun at Zanziba at her going away...

Erm sadly, she's not actually in any of the photos. Oh well..
And so life goes on in Sri Lanka. Despite the conflict and everything else that's going on.. there's still sports. Sri Lanka has some weird sports, but one of the ones Emma seems to like is indoor volleyball. Sorry, no beaches on this tropical island (go figure). So at the rest 10th South Asian Games held in Sri Lanka, Emma and Amy whipped off to see the volleyball. I packed for a pending field trip. Emma's short, so her view looks something like this:
Later, they went court side with an awesome view and even got sweated by some of the players.


And last week, the reason for me not blogging is that I was on a week long field trip to the south and east. Was pretty cool. When I was in Hambantota (South), the weirdest thing happened though. I've never seen this before, nor my driver who has been living there his entire life. These huge winds were coming from the interior over the shrubbs and across onto the beach.. it's very dry inland , and it was ripping up the soils and creating a sand storm. This is what we had to drive through.. only for about 12 minutes before it died down:

I wasn't the only one stunned by this though.. here's our friendly grasshopper that hangs out in the office (he's standing on a divider between cubicles.. I think that's a political grasshopper with a social commentary!):
So the South might have been windy and dirty and shit, but the East is sunny and hot. This is the first time I have been back to Ampara since.. since well I don't know when, but a long time (3 months?). I stayed at Bills place, as per usual. And I met up with some of the gang. Killed some aliens or something on Playstation with Nelson. Drove some wicked cars doing some awesome takedowns with Thandi. And ate some chineese at Ol' Chineese. Oh, memories flooding back.

I did do some work though. I don't usually post about work or field trips (well not as much as I could). Basically, I try to exclude my politics and work and limit my writings to dogs having sex and other weird things. But here is a funny funny dude.. he's a mason at one of the housing sites, and he was sitting there sifting through the sand (I dunno). And all he wanted was for me to take his photo. He spoke no english, but made a lot of noise and kept smiling and shaking my hand. The photo for work I sent out is him working and sifting sand.. the photo for you guys is him two seconds later smiling and waving. I know he couldn't understand, but I did promise I would blog him:

I had a different driver this time round. He's a nice guy, and we had some beers. All good. But he's driving.... man, he's stop and go and accelerate and brake and jerking me backwards and forwards. I couldn't sleep in the vehicle, and I even brought Hank, my pillow. He likes to drive fast when he can, but not too fast for Mum to worry. But at one point we were in stop and stop traffic, and he was edging as close as possible to the car in front. Suddenly, the boom gates go down, and unlike the car in front we didn't make it across. This is a dodgey wooden boomgate resting on our big nissan patrol.. we all felt stupid that day:

I like graffiti. Here's some really nice stuff from Moriaketoria down south, at a fishing village. I think it says it all.....

Peace, Love, and Ooey Gooey Graffiti,

Byron