“Rain” might have been an understatement.

Against my better expectations, I now find myself… well, “acclimated” is the word that Kara uses. Apathy might be a better choice.

The heat still rolls on, as does the sweat, but the only deficit I can complain about is any heat induced decrease of productivity. So much for kissing corporate American goodbye. It is so hard to get anything done. Like a creature suffering from reverse-cold bold, I find myself most afternoons laying on the couch, leg over the arm, laptop in tow, pretending I’m effective.

It was about the time I thought the heat might not be a deterrent from living here that the engineers told me that these are the cool months.

These engineers, Amitha (ah-mee-tah) and Anjuna (an-june-ah) have, to put is accurately, taken curiosity at me. I think they like me, but I don’t think I can say for sure. They are, however, enjoying my delight at the daily cultural spatterings they toss in my direction. I, in turn, am teaching them slang. (We started with “geek.”)

Sri Lanka, much like India, is known for their spicy foods. The have such a broad range of food options, sweet to spicy, that it is an absolute delight for the taste buds, provided you have the pallet. Kara (may she not suffocate me at night), does not. One day the boys (as Kara refers to them) returned with lunch packets. With the boys’ permission, Kara encouraged me to try this mixture of meats, vegetables, rice and spices, all wrapped up in a thin piece of plastic, twisted at the top, and like everything else here, packaged in newspaper.

Sri Lankans have an interesting way of eating. Kara and I have had a hard time finding silverware for the house because no one here uses it. Instead, a common meal is based on rice, which is eaten with the hand. You will pick out some curry mixture, or spice, or whatever is on your plate, and mix it into the rice with your hand, always the right (you don’t want to know why). I have been informed that locals are constantly mixing their rice, balling it up to create perfect little bites with precise portions of their favorite flavors. The food is then grabbed into the fingers of a cupped hand, with the thumb curled and held at the back. One opens his mouth very wide, sticks his fingers in and then pushes the food into his mouth with his thumb. Confusing? I am a pretty messy eater.

I think Kara expected me to gringo-out in response to the lunch packets, and what she expected to be unmanageable heat. Sure, they were spicy, but a good spicy. Turning her trick back on her, and winning points with the boys, I teased her for her taste buds.

This has become an interesting game with the boys, as they both seek out increasingly spicy local dishes. Today they returned from an afternoon break with what I think they called wavee. These little rolls with a local green pepper cooked inside are traditionally served with a chili mash inside, and of course, wrapped in newspaper. They offered me a chili-free version before I took the spicier option.

Trying to recover from the boys’ disappointment at not having found something to best me, I asked, on a scale of one to ten, how hot this was for them. “Seven”, Amitha said. We all decided that Kara needed to try these as well.

At the end of the day I walked out with the boys to the wavee stand, across the street from the Buddha shrine. I paid for the food and the boys said good night, making me promise a full report of Kara’s reaction to the chili paste. As I started back down the road to home, I took a bite into my spicy local haven and for the first time since I arrived, it began to rain.

Want to see where I live? (AVI, ~34MB)

A quick note from Carly, tuning me on to A Softer World.

The timing is funny. I have been bonding with Kara, a brilliantly open-minded Mormon who was terrified that I was going to hate her simply because of her religion. Granted, there is plenty of reason. But who am I to demand that she be open to me while I am not to her? Apparently this fairly simple concept has yet to reach the populous. “It’s refreshing,” she said.

At any rate, this is a really fun and tweaky site, and a wonderful follow up to Carly and I’s discovery of Frank Warren and his book PostSecret (and similarly titled blog) while in D.C. — Enjoy!

Or so says Lonely Planet.

Apparently 74% of the population here on the island is Sinhalese, while the Tamils constitute about 18% of the population. Each group has their own language, but apparently everyone uses English to talk to each other. That, however, is a bit optimistic. Yesterday we sent time running around Colombo running errands. Interviewees didn’t show up, computer equipment was a challenge to locate, and through it all trying to talk to people was tricky.

No one who has spent any time abroad will be surprised, but it was the people at McDonald’s who were the easiest to talk with. We were supposed to meet a programmer there for an interview. It seemed the most obviously American place that we could produce on the fly. Without much surprise, he didn’t show. A text “Sorry, I’ll be late. Can you email me the details instead?”

This from the programmer who was supposed to show up a week earlier, never called, but apparently was in the hospital. We later found out that his father shares the same name, and it was him who was incapacitated.

So, we called people tonight to set up interviews. Talking on the phone is impossible, and reading resumes is more of an artistic experience. You know that objective portion that is on every Microsoft Word resume template? The one that we hate to fill out in fear of being so ego-maniacal? Well, throw 3rd world and bad English in there and you get something like this:

“Becoming a professional with multi disciplinary specialization and contributing through knowledge to create humanitarian society by setting examples in leadership, interpersonal relationships and good conduct.”

Say what?

(By the way, on the stats portion this applicant was quick to include “Skin Tone: Fair.”)

It is hot. If every post while in Sri Lanka included this fact, it would remain an understatement. It is 10PM and we just got back from an action packed day in Colombo attempting (with varied success) to buy office and computer equipment.The trip out of Colombo was horrific. While it took us 25-30 minutes on a bus to get in, the end of day traffic made that trip easily 2 hours. Such inconsistency is everywhere. Used monitors are cheap, but surge protectors are $40 USD. Women are treated with a lot of respect, but I am expected to sit on a bus before Kara does.

Rather than suffer from the culture shock it seems best to just sit back and watch the idiosyncrasies roll on by. For example, when Kara and her husband moved into this new house (apparently just days before I arrived), she asked the landlord what the policy was with trash. This is an “upscale” neighboring city and one of the few places that you can get “reliable” DSL. Upscale or not, our landlord was apparently confused at the question.

“What should we do with our trash?”, Kara repeated. “Are there trash men?”

“Oh, no no no.”, the landlord replied. “Just throw it over the fence.”

So the story goes like this…

My plane rolls into Taipei, and it was a great flight all things considered. I slept for close to 8 hours (ah, Ambien) and was feeling great.

As we taxied to the gate, I could see a beautiful sunrise out my window. Being the technophile I am, I grab my cell phone to take a picture, but end up getting a text message via Taiwan’s GSM service. A message from a boy, “Happy Valentines Day to my favorite Valentine!”

The whole thing would have been great and truely flattering were it not for two things:

1. Text messages don’t have send headers – you never know if it was a group message or not.

2. I skipped Valentine’s Day this year. I took off from San Fran on the 13th, and landed here on the 15th.

All things considered, I think I am okay with this.

I have been preparing for Sri Lanka this week. It has been insane.

It has been an endless barage of appointments, some business, most social. Every evening on my calender was obligated to a different occasion, as if the ability to assign it an available time slot somehow also indicated that I was physically and emotionally available.

I spent several hours at the travel clinic running up quite a bill on my company credit card, and being told that I would certainly get maleria and die if I stepped into any of the grey areas on any of the endless maps that were shoved into a folder and then shoved into my briefcase. I intended to look at them. Really, I did. A glance at least. Then the side effects hit.

So with one day left before I go, it is only the most crucially important things that bubble to the surface — like, what am I going to wear?

There just isn’t anyway to pack. The weather there is supposed to be between 80-100 degrees each day, with so much humdidity that it rains multiple times a day. I would typically overpack at such a deliema. That isn’t an option this time:

Yes, as promised. I have about 1″ around the big metal box that is filling up my suitcase to pack everything I will need for over 3 weeks, and most of it has to be squishy. As I said, packing for this trip is impossible.

Fortunately, the standards are pretty low. Just a few weeks ago, preparing for D.C., I stood over the same suitcase thinking, “packing for this trip is impossible.” The problem was the professionality. How do you pack 6 different business outfits, evening wear for the arts, and casual wear for the touristing into a space so small? Personally, I’ll take a server to Sri Lanka any day.

Tonight, 6:55pm: Salt Lake International Airport

I know this is a bit Margaret Cho like, but it seems we both could use some digital help for our sexuality, albeit in different ways.

It is funny to write about this. The entire crux of a spiritual dating path is to not judge, while the entire purpose of blogging, and perhaps communication in general is to present judgment to someone else as a means of existential reference.

So, I contemplate the events of the last month with Shane, and I explore the emotions. It has been interesting (albeit probably obnoxious to read about) to choose not to distance or detach myself from the grief of the “loss.” In the past I would have worked quickly to eliminate the issue through a progressive series of emotional slight-of-hand. A little bailing wire hear, some plaster there, all to make sure that the rationalization sticks. “The following is an itemized list why what was thought, was indeed not the truth. It is our hope that with the provided insights, a change of perspective will eliminate the current undesired state of mind. Item number one…” This, from the overly competent demons in my head. But they don’t know about the baby. Or perhaps they simply don’t care.

While trying to stay on my spiritual path, I some times feel lost. The landmarks are all wrong, leaving me without a sense of self, let alone direction. Lame MapQuest – Google Maps would had this figured out, with a pretty picture none the less: “<– You are here!”

In the end, all I really know is this: “I liked him. I really, really liked him.”