A cup of tea
An afternoon cup of tea on the balcony – and this time it really was tea, and not “tea”! Freshly brewed Broken Orange Pekoe.
Steve
All Change
When I first came to Sri Lanka in 2007, a tall building was akin to those in the foreground of the above image, and the exception the 152 metre twin towers of the World Trade Center of which you can see one to the extreme right bisecting the horizon.
All change now though!
Steve
Lit up for Vesak
Vesak is a holiday traditionally observed by Buddhists and some Hindus to commemorate the birth, enlightenment, and death of Gautama Buddha. Being the most important of the Poya full moon days, the Lotus Tower was consequently lit both last night and this. With permission to climb to the highest point of our apartment complex – 146 metres above ground level – and involving a vertical ladder in the dark for the final piece (thank heavens the camera was in its rucksack, secure on my back and not swinging around), I was rewarded with some spectacular images.
Here\’s one of them.
Steve
Outside at last!
Needing cash as the market traders who come to our apartment complex mostly don\’t accept bank cards, my Turkish friend Mehmet kindly took me to the ATM that is just a few hundred metres from home; managing a substantial business in the food and beverage industry, he has a curfew pass as most of what he does cannot be done remotely. After withdrawing the cash, and knowing both that I had been nowhere for two months and that the city is preparing for the phased removal of daytime curfew on Monday, he suggested that we take a drive through the city.
It was a weird feeling to see empty streets in place of chaotic congestion, and police or military checkpoints every few hundred metres – but lovely to at last get out, even if only for a few minutes.
Steve
Waking up
A phased lifting of the curfew starts on Monday; no travel between districts, and the last digit of ID cards and passports dictating which day of the week you can go out on, but a lifting none-the-less. By pure chance, Rennie and I can go out on the same day – but the kids can’t! Hopefully as dependants they can come with us even though the ruling makes no mention of this.
In preparation for the lifting, Colombo is slowly waking up. We’re not looking forwards to the resumption of pollution – both noise and fumes – in the weeks ahead, but the city is no longer sleeping. A few days ago, construction workers appeared at the site adjacent to our apartment and started removing temporary weather protection from the emerging tower – which at over fifty eventual floors including car parking is going to dwarf the thirty seven where we live. On Friday the workers were in full swing and the tower cranes busy all day.
Something to photograph, so I did! The final two images were taken from the roof – 146 metres up and the tenth tallest structure in Sri Lanka – so imagine the tower under construction rising nearly half as high again. The curved end is the car park ramp – and in the final image look how close it is to the adjacent tower. I wouldn’t be happy if I owned one of the apartments and was about to swap a view of the sea to looking directly in to someone else’s home.
Steve
Aquabatics
I’m very aware that it’s just under two weeks since the last post so thought I’d better put that right. It is eight weeks today (Friday 8th though the post will be dated 7th as the server is in the US) that we’ve been under total curfew. With every day all but identical to the previous one, it’s increasingly hard to find interesting things to photograph of relevance to this blog.
Last Saturday afternoon the kids had the large swimming pool to themselves, so practised “aquabatics”, performing all sorts of manoeuvres. Lots of fun, and a welcome change.
Evening meals were ordered from the poolside bar, and somehow some special tea – this time of 48% ABV and hailing from Glenn Garioch – managed to find its way in to the adults’ glasses! 🙂
Steve
Afternoon “tea”
With alcohol being prohibited around the apartment complex swimming pool, here I am with my good friend Mehmet enjoying a nice cold and very precious (neither he nor I have many left) mug of “tea” on a hot and sultry late afternoon last Sunday. 🙂
The curfew was supposed to be lifted on Wednesday just gone and was then extended to next Monday, but we’ve this evening learned that it will now be in place until at least May 4th. If this proves to be so, that’ll be just a few days shy of eight weeks confined to barracks. Writing of barracks; an outbreak yesterday at a large Navy barracks of 4,000 personnel and family members is part of the reason.
It’s getting tedious now though, with every day the same as the previous one and the limit of our travel being apartment, small business centre a few floors down, tiny shop the floor below that, buying groceries from the market traders coming to the car park every few days, and the swimming pool. That’s it. For six weeks gone and still counting.
Alcohol sale has been banned under curfew and is unavailable for home delivery, so those precious final few tins of “tea” need to be stretched out a while longer!
Steve
The Lotus Tower at Easter
The Lotus Tower was lit up on Saturday night to mark the Sinhala and Tamil new year as well as Easter. Torrential rain stayed away just long enough for me to take these images. It struck me how much the adjacent construction site has progressed since the last time I was photographing the Lotus Tower, but it would have been far more had there not been over a month and counting of curfew; the site has been eerily silent all that time with the only movement being the orange tower crane weathercocking in the wind.
Steve
Wilpattu Revisited
Bar one short lifting of the curfew to allow shopping as described here, we are now three weeks in to seeing nothing more than the apartment complex where we live. We have the apartment itself, a swimming pool, a multi-storey car park and lots of stairs for walking and I can work from a small business centre, but that’s it. The gym was understandably closed early-on and the nearby Devi Park is just a tantalising tease. Putting even one foot outside the complex is forbidden, and like across so much of the planet, weekend trips to the countryside are out of the question.
Yesterday, I therefore enjoyed re-living the long weekend of 7th to 9th March when my friend Ranil and I visited Wilpattu National Park for a wildlife photography trip. This started out as the challenge of producing a one minute video for a talent contest between friends but it quickly became apparent that three minutes was the bare minimum in order to avoid sudden curtailment just as it got going.
I have none of my normal video editing suite with me here in Sri Lanka (just the very simple video production features of Microsoft Photos) and instead of a powerful self-built media PC only a business laptop on which I cannot install any software anyway, but wherever you are in the world and whatever the local circumstance with this pandemic, I hope you enjoy the resultant three and a half minutes escape to nature.
Steve