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Well 2005 has been a pretty interesting year, it's had it's up and downs as usual, 2004 was a pretty crazy year as you can read here.

January - Archives

January was a pretty quiet month, I got my own hosting and setup some reseller packages for local users/bloggers at Malaysia Blogs.

My PC totally stopped working, was fried so had to virtually rebuild it, got back to the world of modern computing this month.

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I'm stuck writing reports, more reports and more reports...argh save me..

Well I finally got out of the hotel for a change on Sunday, it was a nice clear day, which was good.

We headed up to Kandy, the hill city.

The main attraction I think is the Tooth Temple (Dalada Maligawa) and the cooler less humid climate due to the altitude. The place was packed as it's a long holiday, Sinhalese new year fell on Wednesday and Thursday, so most people took Friday off and enjoyed a 5 day break.

It was a fairly long journey, around 3 hours, imagine a narrow winding road, not as steep and winding as the stretch to Genting, but pretty similar...but it lasts 3 hours, urgh.

whilst driving in Sri Lanka it's quite normal to have regular near death experiences, look up and see a huge bus with bullbars storming at you..

Deafened by the sounds of horns, choking on the exhaust fumes, it's lovely, really.

There is a lot of derelict shops around the place, a lot warn down facades and places that look like they are about to fall apart..

It's a fairly scenic place, more grass than Malaysia and less densley farmed forests.

The trip was nice apart from the horrible Tamil music blaring from the self-inclosed 6x9 under my nose..

I've heard kids TV show theme tunes more musical than some of those songs...argh

Cricket is very much definately the national passtime, you see kids playing it everywhere.

So after lunch at a chinese resturant (food was 'ok'), we headed to Tooth Temple..

One of the chief objects of interests in Kandy is the 'Dalada Maligawa' or Temple of the Sacred Tooth. This is the heart of Kandy, and the Tooth of Buddha is the heart of it. The relic came from India sixteen centuries ago, and moved from capital to capital always with the king. It is rarely shown and never leaves the temple. The temple and the 'Pattirippuwa', which is the octagonal building on the right of the main entrance, are enclosed by an ornamental stone wall and a moat. Upon entering, you pass through a small quadrangle and turn to the right, up a flight of stone steps, to the temple. The most striking features that attract one's attention are the unusual carvings, brightly coloured frescoes representing torments for various classes of sinners, and many images of Lord Buddha. The flower-sellers are ranged on either side and the atmosphere is heavy with the perfume of the white blossoms. Yellow-robed priests flit here and there, whilst the music of the temple bells and the rhythmic beat of the tom-tom fill the air with strange melodies that harmonize with the nature of the city. At the entrance to the sanctuary which contains the Sacred Tooth is an elaborate door, inlaid with silver and ivory, with two pairs of elephants' tusks on either side. Within this chamber is the huge silver-gilt, bell-shaped shrine that protects the Tooth. Inside this shrine are six inner shrines ornamented with precious stones of rare value.

It was heavily secured with metal detectors and two sets of guards before you reach the inner sanctum.

There was also a nice pictorial history in one room with dozens of golden statues..

As normal you had to remove your shoes too, but it was FUCKING HOT, I think my feet actually started smoking, the floor was like 6000 degrees.

After that we headed to a lake..

It was pretty and nice, but well it's a lake, who hasn't seen a lake before?

We headed up to the top of the hill and checked out the view of Kandy city..

Following that we headed to the botanical gardens, I didn't take many pictures as it was a botanical garden, mostly trees and flowers and shit like that.

Also some bats, by some bats I mean like 30,000 bats geez they are noisy

The leaning trees were kinda cool though.

There was also a nice pond..

With some flowers and stuff..

I think I walked about 3 miles, that's enough excercise for the rest of the decade.

Rest of the pictures are in the Gallery HERE.

It was a nice trip, was hell getting back though due to the long holiday and there were some kind of races going on up there..took us like 5+ hours, felt like I'd been shaken around in a peanut can for 5 hours when I got back to the hotel..ordered room service, watched some cheesy TV and knocked out.

Anyway glad to be back soon...kinda getting really really bored here...hope I don't get shipped off again as soon as I land, that would suck..

Next assignment is supposed to be 2 months in UK, but I haven't heard anything about it yet *sigh* I came to Malaysia because I wanted to live there...not spend 1 month out of 3 there. And being away sucks, can't blog so regularly, my average daily traffic has gone from 450 to 230, oh well, at least it'll keep my bandwidth down. I won't blog some controversial crap just to get attention, then publically apologise to get more attention.

I blog for myself, I appreciate my posts, so there's at least one I just happen to be good at traffic whoring (without pissing people off)..

http://www.security-forums.com is the ultimate testament to that.

Anyway kinda off-topic, take care for now

So some people say..

Let's me give you some more lowdown on Sri Lanka, those of you from Malaysia I'm sure you're aware most of the crabs we eat there are actually Sri Lankan. Cheap and tasty, so where better to gorge yourself on seafood than the home of said crabs.

So the weekend arrives, the guy here asks me what I want to eat...I'm like CRABS!! BRING IT ON..

So he asked around and took us to a place that he himself hadn't been before, but almost everyone else in the office recommended...you even had to book a reservation to ensure your place.

The internationally renowned Beach Wadiya

And the entrance..

Yes you see correctly, you have to walk across a railway track to get there..

A quaint little place, some 30 years old...unfortunately it was almost completely washed away during the December Tsunami..

The Beach wadiya had been patronised over three decades by all rungs of society both local and foreign. Britain's Queen Elizabeth's daughter, the Princess Royal had dined at the Wadiya, as did members of the Nepalese Royal family who were wiped out a few years ago by a fanatic who wanted them out of the picture.

Source: Sunday Observer

The Wadiya is an unpretentious sea-food joint off a virgin beach along Galle Face that has won international renown, if the newspaper write-ups and photo albums (which the owner produces voluntarily) is any indication. The acclaim is merited too: the food is ‘simply superb’ to use a Richie Benaud euphemism. “I am the most ‘unprogressive’ restaurateur,” says the owner, “this is the only branch even 30 years after inception.” And thank god for that. Sometimes smallness is a virtue.

Source: India Times

They serve seafood and alchohol, and they are on a beach?

What more can you ask for?

Unfortunately my colleague is not to fond of seafood, even at a place visited by Princess Anne and Richard Branson? Oh well, he ordered chicken...Just a tip, don't order chicken.

I think they probably didn't have any and had to go and buy some or they caught the chicken in the woods or something as the chicken came when we'd almost finished our huge plates of devilled crab, baked crabs, garlic praws, veges and rice.

It is a place to relax though, once a table is readied on the evening, it's not readied for a second sitting, there's no rush, no clearing, no expectation for you to leave.

You can just sit there all night and listen to the waves..

I must visit there again...maybe a couple of times before I leave.

The baked crab is said to be the best in Sri Lanka....being the home of crab, that's a pretty high accolade. Who am I to argue, crab with no shells...that's already a bonus, but it was fantastic.

The devilled crab would be more inline with what we are used to back in Malaysia, but man it was good...I think it had just walked out of the ocean 5 minutes before.

The sauce infiltrated every corner, devilled anything is available in Sri Lanka, is some kinda of spicy tangy style that goes well with pretty much everything.

One thing I did notice (Apart from the incredible freshness) was the fact even though the crabs were smaller than what we get in Malaysia, they were a lot more flesh and a lot less other stuff, the claws were small, but the bodies had less of that horrible white partition stuff and just loads of succulent tender devilled meat!

To 'devil' something, the ingredients go a bit like this:

1 Large onion
2 Fresh chillies
2 Cloves garlic
2 sl Ginger
2 Cardamoms
2 Cloves
375 ml Water
1 ts Chilli powder
50 ml Vinegar
1/2 ts Turmeric
1/2 ts Fenugreek
1 ts Salt
25 ml Chilli sauce

Had some very fresh prawns too..

Along with some kankun (Guess what that is?) and some rice, which was damn good too..

Once again, please don't order the chicken! Staff are slow at the best of times, order your drinks well before you need them..if you're lucky they might come, at some stage, initial food delivery is fast though.

All washed down with some *excellent* local malt beer, 3 Coins:

Leaving the all too familiar aftermath as so...

It was a beautiful experience, there are few things in life more relaxing than the sounds of waves and the smell of fresh ocean air coupled with the fragrance of fresh seafood accompanied by great beer...

It's definately a romantic and tranquil place to dine.

You're literally a few steps from the water facing the beach.

There was a harrowing reminder on one of the doors above 5 feet up, a tide mark...and a label saying "Water level, December 26th during Tsunami". The place was virtually destroyed and they are just getting back on their feet now. I am glad they are as it was good, I shall try and make it back in the daytime.

The hotel I'm in is very near the beach, but unfortunately there's nothing else much around in the way of resturants or shops, as it's the financial district.

I went for a walk along the beach yesterday, but I got tired of getting hassled by taxi drivers after 5 minutes so I just sat on a cannon for a while and took in the sea.

What did I do the whole weekend? Watched B-grade movies on CableTV, ordered room service and slept.

IT WAS HEAVEN.

If anything else significant happens I'll be sure to post.