I like birds with long legs.. and short skirts

I sit here at 7pm on a Friday at work, with a dude loitering around and wating for me to leave so he can follow suit, and to top it off a plane with hopefully me on it is to depart in a few hours - and I ought to pack at some time. This could all lead to a "So I better be quick and make this short and sweet - happy new years merry christmas let's get drunk". But no, that's so not my style. Instead, I'm gonna make that loiterer wait and earn his money! The longer he looks at me, the slower I type..

As some of you may know, I had huge plans for the weekend past. I was going to spend it in the south-east corner of Sri Lanka and soak up the atmosphere of migratory bird species at two awesome national parks (Yala and Bundala). Unfortunately, Murphy and God decided to kick me in the nuts.. Cartmen style. Yep. It rained - the entire weekend. To put it in perspective, as one the only Delegate in that region of Sri Lanka for the Red Cross, I was giving weather reports as the RC was preparing for flood / humanitarian relief. Can you believe it? I'm happily on my weekend wanting to voyeur on some birds, and work is calling - the mobile phone is very disrupting for twitchers you know. To top it off - the migratory birds weren't there either. None of the thousands of flamingos could be found. The late rains has meant the birds are late too.. so I was stuck. In a flooded region, with nothing but a new camera. Fortunately, there was a little island in the middle of a lake that had a huge nesting population of Ibis, Spoonbills, Comerants, etc - so I went to the jetty...


and took a photo of some nesting birds...
The next day I decided to be stupid and go to Yala national park in the rain...


Plenty of wading birds around...

Peacocks are cool.. especially these males with their feathers. Yes, feathers on a bird!
These were some mating king fishers... awesome blue KF's here.
Spotted deer...
I am a huge fan of parakeets.. but they can be hard to spot sometimes!
And this the peace resistance (more appropriate consider the war situation to say it like that). When I was buying my camera, I joked to my brother who was wondering why I was wasting my money - it was all for the bee eater. I just wanted a photo of the bee eaters here, they're cool. First outing baby, makes it all worthwhile! (almost)
Monkeys had the right idea.. being in the air and not in the flooded waters...
A lizard.. wow.
This dude was cool, he walked around for ages kind of eyeing me, and kind of eating the entire lake...

A rarity.. spotting these huge owls...

Is this not the most stupid looking wild buffalo you have ever seen?

And outside of the park, I saw a squirrel.. I just like the fact the dragon fly flew into the photo.

I got bogged in big four wheel drives twice last week. Once on site, where the driver aimed for a huge hole and the front left vehicle dropped so far that we were resting on the chassis. 5 villagers came and helped us out.. I was taking photos (next blog, maybe). The second time was in yala, when the truck literally floated away at one point. Me and my italian mate had to wade out of the vehicle while he accelerated into a bigger hole - luckily, he got out.. luckily, we got out.

I was going to go to Bundala the next day.. despite the rain. The park was closed.. all the roads were being washed away. The RC was giving away rice packs though. I got stuck in my hotel. Boooooooooooooooo.

I also went to Ampara this week for some work. I don't like to post too many work photos, work already does that here, here and here. But with my new camera, how could I resist.

This was a really nice family in Kalmunai. The guy on the right spoke excellent english, and his parents couldn't stop smiling - of course, until you pull out a camera, at which point all Sri Lankans put on this look that has absoloutely no facial expressions. His dad was cery photogenic though.
I kept getting harassed by kiddies, all wanting to touch my new toy..err camera.. and pointing at my earing. To shut them up, I took a photo of them.

Sites like this really make me peeved off. *Did I just censor that? Fucking hell* This was a river that flows through the coastal community and to the beach, where they steal sand. Blatent disregard for the local environment.. anyway, cool crow in the bottom right.
And that's all folks. Have a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year. Drive safe. And i will roger back from the UK hopefully with some photos of FOG! Yay!

Peace, Love, and Furry Animals,

B.

The trouble with the rat race is, even if you win, you're still a rat.

I am in two minds. Both of them are quite empty and hollow at the moment, but still, two minds nonetheless. I am at work and bored, and of course this provides the opportune setting for some blogging. Unfortunately, I have done nothing interesting since my recent post – oh, Marie came over and cleaned my house on Sunday and finally that HUGE pile of clothes that had been washed has now also been folded, but still sits on the spare bed. I don’t know why I have a closet, I never use the thing.. it goes from washing basket, to washing machine, to bed.. wait a while.. then on my back, only to be discarded into a washing basket again. But back to where I started, two minds. Should I blog, or should I wait til sometime after the weekend when I plan to go to Bundala National Park and take some well wicked photos with my new big ass camera of the migrating birds through the wetland on the South/Southeast coast of Sri Lanka? As you can probably tell, I decided to do the former and blog.

I personally don’t have any interesting photos to throw up on the blog. BUT, a good friend in Melbourne has been working herself busy, diving into the depths of the Tasmanian, Victorian and other oceans to voyeur on some of the finest fish, corals, grasses, seahorses, underwater mammals, and what not. Agnes really does have some cool photos.. check them out here and here. Unfortunately, as with many other budding amateurs with an expensive camera (like me), Agnes likes to post all her photos – which to a marine biologist could be interesting, but to a layperson like me that goes “ooer, orange” it’s a bit much. Sorry Ag!

Another interesting website to fill your boredom and procrastination with is Sam’s. Check it out here. Sam is an Aussie living in Colombo who usually I bump into at The Commons, Odel’s, Deli France, The Cricket Club, or any other delicatessen / pub / restaurant in Colombo. Tonight he will also be frequenting Inn On The Green, where a team of us plan to lose once again in the weekly trivia. Anyway. He has just come back from a cool trek in Nepal with some funky photos.. unfortunately, he too suffers from the “amateur photoitis” something like 60 photos of Nepal alone. Not to mention 120 of Thailand, then Sri Lanka, UK, blah blah blah..

If anyone else has some interesting blogs / websites to keep me entertained, feel free to send them to me – may just write about it. And of course with Emma being away, feel free to send me porn Chris, but Joel let’s keep the farm animals to a minimum shall we?

Oh by the way, a HUGE CONGRATULATIONS to Joel for getting Married, and then deciding to hire a car in Vietnam while on a honeymoon only to crash into a motorcyclist. Unfortunately, he doesn’t have a blog and refuses to send me the photos of the guy writhing in pain whilst floored.. but if you would like to laugh at him as all his friends have, feel free to email him at: jozza_the_hippy_backpacker@yahoo.com.au [He’s not really a hippy backpacker.. at best he’s a flashpacker – yes, he has a backpack, but he also has a hairdryer and stays in 4.5star hotels]

Finally, if you care what music I am listening to at the moment: Currently it is Anti-Flag which I am led to believe are touring Australia and thus are all over JJJ. My radio as of tomorrow will be tuned into the Ashes where the third test will be starting, and with any luck The Ashes will be finished by the time I get to the UK. If you have any interesting music that you are listening to, drop me a line always looking for something new and “developed”.

Peace, Procrastination, and stupid roadside checkpoints!

B.

The title of this blog: "The trouble with the rate race is, even if you win, you're still a rat" - Quoted in C. Hamilton, Affluenza; originally by Lily Tomlin (American actress whom played amongst many things President Bartlets second assistant in West Wing [Deborah]).

Whirlwind trip to buy toys and porn...

Unfortunately, I forgot the porn. Unless you count FHM, though soft porn really isn't porn (accordint to a judge that said Zoo was "smutty but not obscene"). Though my trip to Melbourne did include many many cool new toys. For the dedicated readers of this blog, you would know that I fancy myself as a twitcher cum photographer - but without the patience or the skill. Welp, I have completedly compensated for all that lack of ability with a brand new camera. Woo. If you would like to know what I bought, click here and here. And I also travel lots, and what better for the frequent traveler than a PSP (PlayStation Portable) - I am not sure what's more fun, playing the thing or on airplanes have little boys behind you sticking their head through the seats to try and get a peek, only to then decide you would rather listen to music than him going "Dad, I want one too!". Yes. I am now officially geeked out - broke, but geeked out nonetheless.

There are two things that best set the standard of my trip. A) My shopping spree which you have heard of. And B) going directly from the airport to a bucks party, where the buck died in the ass at around midnight and Johnny and I partied til about 4 in the morning. Hard core? Not quite.. jet lag works wonders. I tried to keep the jetlag (i.e. sleep in late, go to bed late) for as long as possible - I initially tried to keep it for the full two weeks to I would be fine when I got back to Sri Lanka, though that didn't quite work. Heck, I still got called a piker for passing out in bars at like 3am!

I could write an itenerary of things I did.. but that's no fun. And to be honest, I couldn't remember half the things I did. But some highlights were chillaxing with mates, seeing my new baby nephew Bails, being bagoobled by the buildings in the big smoke, hanging with my bros, going for a drive through the wide open spaces (ignore the fact that it was destination Bendigo), eating my way through town.. oh and of course seeing Emma and going to the Wedding which was the reason for my whole visit.

I got told I write too much on the blog. Generally, people said "I am illiterate, please don't write I just want photos". Unfortunately, I don't believe in lowest common denominator. But I hears ya. So from me, tada, and from my camera, hallo hallo.

This is my home town, Melbourne:


Here is the steps of the state library where people in suits try to get their two minutes of "nature" during the summer.. the rest of the time, they are in AC or heated cubicles acting like drones.. poor suckers (yes, you!):
Here is me, embo, and some friends (not sure why this photo of the 400 made it.. but anyhoot):
Here is an alley that had cool grafiti, near to Yen which has the best noodles in a box!

This was my favourite piece of grafiti:

Not sure what happened with this photo, but cool hey?
This is my brother. Yes, he may look like a tool, and that's because he is.. but at least he has clean teeth! This was one of my first photos with my new camera.. SWEEET.
Emma and I went for a drive to the country, Bendigo.. I liked the open spaces.
This is the guy I went to see.. lucky it was only 2 hours to get there! Hi Paul!
This is my first bird photo.. a Rosella.

If you are in a cubicle in the city, these are the closest things to birds you will see in Melbourne. Pidgeons and Seagulls (rats with wings):
I liked this photo. When playing with my new camera, I took random photos.. this is the lemon tree in my parents' back yard. SOUR!!!

This is the beautiful bride and bridesmaids' getting ready on the day of the wedding (I got to be paired up with Karen on the right - she's like me, a tree hugging hippy pinky lefty socialist bleeding heart, and thus we made a great team):
Unfortunately for Katie, this was the boobie prize: The groom on the morning of, you think he was wigging out? You'd be wrong, he's usually like this.
Peace, Love and stupid little packets of peanuts on airplanes,
B.