Sri Lankan Hijackings

So, we have managed to be hijacked three-four times in two days since we arrived in Sri Lanka.

The difference is, unlike India, these hijackings did not involve:

•      Food poisoning resulting in shitting and vomiting simultaneously
• Being driven two hours to buy illicit alcohol for my host family
• Being cornered and plied with dodgy alcohol and asked if I wanted to watch blue movies with same host family.
•  Eating at a leper colony. Food made by lepers.

 And unlike Vietnam we were not stolen away after our excellent tuk tuk tour of  Saigon to have a higher price demanded or else risk being abandoned in a very seedy, non-touristy area in 35 degree heat and 213 % humidity whilst jet-lagged and, again, confused.

Instead….

We arrived at Colombo airport with a severe case of dry bikkies due to the bright ideas that the first night of holidays brings. We had hijacked ourselves – instead of buying Toblerone and Chubby Sticks and tobacco at Duty Free we detoured….Announced: “Hey:  “I’ve been sick for a week but it’s officially holidays so let’s pay $90 each for a mix of vodka, gin and mojitos before 9 + hours of travel….Instead of buying water to drink on the plane let’s stay at the bar and buy some sort of other ridiculously expensive drink… that’s an absolutely excellent idea.”

5 hours after said mix of toxins and we were delayed in Dubai airport for 2 hours. And no alcohol to get rid of a chronic case of the D.Ts. It was quite bad. We hated the world a bit. And everyone in it.

Aaaanywaaay..

Arrived at Colombo at sometime between 10 pm the night before and 8 am the day after tomorrow. No idea what day or time zone or place in the world we were. And clearly we looked it because we were accosted in the very quiet, civilized airport full of tourists who clearly looked less befuddled than we. “Yes maam, you need taxi? Driver? Bus? Tractor?”

“Umm…Where are we? And do you know where we might be going?”

So instead of getting a taxi to the train station we ended up with a private driver all the way to Kandy – one of the best decisions we have ever made – we got to stop for fresh tropical fruit, sleep and arrive at Kandy 3 hours before the train. In our travel stupor we organized the same driver organized to pick us up the day after next to take us to Sigiryia rock. A supposed must. Ok.

So we spent our extra hours mixing duty free vodka into soda bottles and drinking by the pool on a national holiday when alcohol consumption was banned. It was an awesome night of enlightened banter. Epiphanies included.

On awakening after 28 hour of vodka and jet-lagged induce sleep we went for a walk around the lake. Only to be accosted by a giant lizard and a toothless, fanatical Buddhist cricket fan Sri Lankan who wanted to point out the very huge and obvious temple we should pray to. Yep, we see it. And we should also follow him to his school because he is also a teacher- of a school that our fellow Australian Ricky Ponting supports and recently in the last ten years visited. Righto.

Hijacked, at least not by ourselves so with no sense of guilt, we had a tour of his school where the students were away for the weekend but the monkeys were keen as chips for any kind of action. We were shown the one outdoor classroom for 1200 students – it did have a very large blackboard where Ricky Ponting did some kind of speech, the bathroom-sized kitchen and the Ricky Ponting built bubble taps that the monkeys had destroyed. We were then led to the shop where we could – and would- buy beautiful fabrics that the students had managed to screen print without Ricky Ponting. And buy tickets to some kind of dancing festival, which the teacher may or may not be partaking in and which may or may not involve monkeys and elephants. “You will see baby elephant dance, monkey dance, butterfly dance, cobra dance!” An hour, 3 cups of tea and shitloads of cash later we got back to the hotel, collapsing by the pool. Hard. Luckily we thought best to assume the tickets were valid and went to the festival to see some seriously excellent traditional dancing, although all animals were evident only via interpretive dance. Not in any kind of real world as we had clearly left that behind. Thank the gods.

Next day we hopped in the car to drive an hour and arrive at…a Herb n Spice Garden. Huh?  The car stopped, we hopped out bewildered – this was not a rock – and an extremely animated man told us all about the plants and herbal medicines possible for piles, gall stones, tinnitus, diabetes, cholesterol and other ailments we had no experience of. Dude- what fixes a case of the too many vodkas? A severe case of  What The Fuck Am I Doing? And Where and When? But he had a Sri Lankan version of a Jim Carrey face – it was so dynamic and mesmerizing that we walked out with creams for hair removal, colds and hair moisturizer – in case the hair remover didn’t work at least it will be super soft.

Eventually, after visiting gardens and a temple – amazing and beautiful and still a little unsure of how n why we got there – we arrived at Sigriyra Rock. Where another super animated Captain of the Hijack opened the car door for us and took us on a very educational, historical tour of the foundations of the crazy-arsed glamorous castle of a dude who killed his father and therefore had to have a very well- protected fortress that could also hold and bathe 500- women. And the guests who weren’t his relations out to kill him. It was such a beautiful place and without our unexpected guide we might not have seen that the very old wall paintings of women had “very big boobs” or that the painter had made a couple of mistakes so that some originally had three nipples and three boobs. Very culturally significant in the history of Sri Lanka. We might also have not appreciated the truly awe-inspiring effort it must have taken to build such a huge palace on the top of a massive mountain. And we would not have had so many photos taken of us sweaty faced, hard of breath and clearly terrified of the heights we were climbing on rickety stairs and tiny, steep steps. It is a really stunning place made more so by the stories he told us- with genuine pride- of the way it once was.

In just a few days we felt like we really had experienced the real and dynamic Sri Lanka. So the happy news is that, unlike some places where to be hijacked can be a little scary, so far our Sri Lankan experience suggests we should just say yes to all the happy, friendly peeps here and all will be pretty fucking cool. A little confusing perhaps, but cool.

AFL Withdrawal

It is 2.15 on a Friday afternoon. The students have left. One of the benefits of working here is that we finish early on Fridays, we can go by 2pm if not sneak out even earlier.  What is not a benefit is that sometimes, like today, we have to do PD on Friday afternoons and SATURDAYS!!!!!

This sucks arse big time, just to lose a Saturday sucks arse but what really sucks arse is that tomorrow is the 29^th September.  The PD starts at 9.30 am, exactly the time that the live coverage of the AfL Grand Final begins.

I’m not a massive footy head. I have friends and family who have followed the whole season with far more dedication than I have. But I really like watching live games and I really like watching the GF.  I really like watching Buddy Franklin (and maaaany other individuals; Harry O’Brien, Eddie Betts, Juddy, all the Joey’s legends….but they’re unfortunately not playing) Who wouldn’t enjoy the spectacle, usually it is a very social event, lots of people, alcohol, food, alcohol, yelling at the TV, more food and alcohol. Sometimes people fall off things, or over things- not necessarily because they’re cheering hard.  And it’s Aussie. It’s our tradition, my tradition, to watch it with drink in hand trying really hard to concentrate despite feeding my very short attention span vodka. To feel a sense of mateship and appreciate big, beautifully shaped men chase a ball and each other displaying athleticism, grace and violence. My favorite place to watch it was at my friends’ house in Jan Juc. The match coincided with Gordo’s birthday, so he generally had a bottle of birthday grog to dispose of.  But he was not always the one to fall over. We’d have great food and great peeps and big discussions, about footy and surf and the holidays and the dread of term 4 and I loved it. In the early days people would continue till they fell off or over things, climbed things, got lost or passed out. Later days involved eating and drinking, women chasing kids around while men developed tunnel vision and pretended they didn’t have partners or kids. One year we all ended up lying around in that curious stage of long term drinking that makes you feel both drunk and hungover at the same time, watching Tele-Tubbies with some of the kids. And eating chips and chocolate and cheese that had been sitting around all day. But always we were together and sharing the experience and loving footy.

And last year I got to go to the Grand Final for the first, and probably the last, time in my life. It’s hard to get tickets so I tried really hard to appreciate it even though it was last minute and ridiculously freezing for September and I had been on a drinking binge in Juc the night before. I had to drive back to Melbourne through hail then try and find as many warm clothes as I could hiding at mum and dad’s and as a result I went to the Collingwood-Cats GF wearing tights, trackie pants, hiking boots, a thermal, a flanny, gloves and a ski jacket. I looked like I had just emerged from hiking trip through the Grampians that involved mad Bunyips dragging me through the bush then getting me drunk. Luckily, my last minute spare ticket was for the corporate section where all the guys were in suits and ties and the women were in designer skinny jeans, sky high heels, perfect hair and makeup and none of them looked like they’d been partying with mad Bunyips.

Once the siren went however and I saw some of my old Joey’s boys running through the banner, and I knocked back three pints of cider, I loved every freezing minute of it and will remember it forever. Especially ‘cause the Cats beat the Pies.

So last Saturday, after having had a pretty hard couple of months (no, that does not include beaching in Lagos..), I got to watch the semi-final with some fellow Aussies while we sat around chopping a thousand kilos of tomatoes, eggplants, onions and garlic to make relish. Earlier I had made the odd FB comment that I started watching the footy in my undies (and that Buddy Franklin was welcome in there anytime..), I’d like to clarify that was before I went visiting these new friends…Once dressed and as respectable as it gets I went to the relish extravaganza and had one of the best mornings I’ve had since I’ve been in Turkey and it alleviated some of my homesickness. Because I am homesick, which has caught me by surprise, I miss Australia and my life there. I miss the island and the random insanity of it. I miss my friends and my clifftop track. I miss the open spaces and the bush and the beach. I miss my volatile Pajero. I miss driving and the Tiwi dinner club and the food and the coffee. I miss gluten free bread and the quiet and the stars. But last Saturday, hanging with some really cool new friends watching the footy and bawling my eyes out form the onions was Aussie awesome. So I was very excited about being able to do something similar tomorrow. Instead, I will be sitting in a conference hall, listening to really loud Turkish being translated into really loud English through headphones telling me all about Learning styles. And by “listening” I mean streaming the footy and checking FB and my emails and maybe writing another blog. I am a Global Learner after all, I learn best by doing more than one at once. So I guess I’ll learn a lot. And you bastards in Oz or watching the GF somewhere in the world better FB me so I don’t feel so homesick! And Go Hawks!

The Necessities.

Well. It has been an interesting “orientation” to my new school and home.

The school campus is a long way from anywhere. It’s on the Asian side of Istanbul which is now the “cool” side because it is very much a less touristy region than the Euro side. Because of the isolation we have to rely on school service buses which go to various places at various times or use the local buses – we haven’t had time to get onto those yet, so I can describe that inevitable getting lost experience at a later time. So sometimes the service buses go to the local shopping centre, it has supermarkets, an “Electro World”, some restaurants and clothes shops, you can get most things you need, although not a lot of things you want.. There are various other shopping centers such as IKEA where everyone buys everything to furnish their homes so they all look the same. They also run to other suburbs and into the Euro side some days. This means of course that:

 a) It’s great that we have our own, free transport system and we should shut the hell up and not complain and

b) We are totally reliant on a bus service in terms of where and when we go and when we return. Which has made a few of us feel very much like caged, restless, ungrateful guinea pigs.

There is always a taxi option but they are notoriously sleezy and not really any more likely to know where you’re going than you are. Which means it can take ages to get anywhere and often involves the driver pulling over 3-4 times to ask other taxi drivers, random pedestrians etc to get directions. Sometimes they even make phone calls – god know who to.

So during this period of orientation we had to work through a week – including our weekend- listening to a baffling amount of information that we will never remember about how we have to pay for phones being registered and for screen doors if we want to keep the monster mozzies out while not getting paid for six weeks and not getting paid for the exhausting orientation period at all. About which buses we could catch to places we can’t remember the name of and also can’t remember why they suggested we go there in the first place. Is there a fresh food market? Is it where we catch a ferry to the Euro side? Is it where we take our phones to be registered? Is there a fucking BAR????

And soooo sleep deprived. Because one of the advantages of living here is that it’s so close to the new airport – we can fly to lots of places if we ever get paid and get to have a weekend where we don’t work. So with this advantage comes the constant, constant, all day and night despite supposed time restrictions noise rushing, buzzing, roar of planes over our heads. The varying degrees of noise and proximity passing over head reminds you of either travel or to duck the fuck under your desk or bed because this mother is about to land immediately on top of you.

Then, after the working days and weeks there was the constant need to go shopping for essentials like sheets, towels, fans, toilet paper, food ( if there was enough time) . Racing around Ikea and huge supermarkets like we were in some kind of demented trolley filling race yelling at each other as we raced passed: Where did you get the clothes horse? Has anyone found peanut butter?  Coathangers? Coathangers? I NEED COATHANGERS!!!!! Scanning passing trollies with fear of the forgotten or jealousy over something someone else found that you know you will not have time to get. In fatigue falling into the Ikea deathtrap of buying crazy shit you don’t need even more readily. Nope, don’t have any sheets or pillows but do have a food screen thing to put over cakes I don’t bake or eat. 

Seriously, I don’t really love shopping at the best of times, but this kind of shopping under time constraints when exhausted and confused and not speaking the language was pretty overwhelming.

But now. I have sheets and towels. I have a phone that works and essentials in the fridge – like 4 types of hot chilli sauce, dried chillies and ginger..I have coffee. I have vodka. I have a heap of Lush products I didn’t really need but smell amazing. And there is a chance, a reasonable chance, that next weekend I don’t have to go shopping at all, the plan is to get shitfaced Friday night, go visit an island and lie around and swim all day Saturday and veg out in front of the new TV drinking wine on Sunday. No shops, no buses, bliss.