driving test and just lots of really pointless rambling

i went to do my sri lankan driving theory test the other day! it was really fun! they gave us a number (i was 233) and told us to turn up at some primary school for 1.30. i am always very punctual (stop it, i am!) so arrived at 12.30 and waited for an hour in the dusty yard under some avocado trees. during that time i did some standing up, some crouching and some poking things with sticks. OOO and the most exciting thing was that i saw a huge green ant, it was green. and really big for an ant.

then other people started arriving and it was 1.30! but schools don't kick out till 2.30! so we all waited for the children to leave so we could get into the classrooms and do the test! so i waited for another hour in the sun. during that time i did some more crouching, some dropping things in the sewer and some drawing on the floor with my umbrella ferrule (vocab.). it wasn't as much fun as the first hour!

finally it's home time for the kids and test time for us, all 250 of us! so the organiser bloke gets on a chair and calls out numbers for people to go and take the test, but he stops at 125. why??? because the classroom is too small to hold more than that! you see there is always a logical answer to these things! so i wait another hour. in this hour i reprised all my activities from the previous two hours, and also ran off in a frantic hurry to buy a pen cos i didn't have one.

so 3.30 comes and we go into the classroom. there are only about 80 child-sized desks so everyone else (and me) have to do the test on our knees. it takes me only 8 minutes because i am VERY CELVER and then i leave.

it was a really fun day!!!

i need to lie down, have some pics to keep you company



it's a frog what was in a pond somewhere. see its little eyes!



this is a mine for mining things, the way it works is, you go into it and mine things, then bring them up and sell them!



here are some things from the mine, these are all rubbish but they are still made of emeraldy sapphirey stuff, they just aren't worth anything because the colour is wrong and they have flaws and they're uncut.

homesick

well, a bit...actually it could be the gin and passion fruit i'm drinking because there's nothing else in the house, except lion lager, which is the best beer in sri lanka and still tastes like hofmeister.

so, i shall post some pictures of home to make me feel better



rabbit poo and grass, dartmoor. you just don't get proper poo out here, it must degrade too quickly in the heat or summat.



what majestic buildings! what bright lights! surely man has triumphed over nature, not like sri lanka where nature sucks blood out of me at every step



sri lanka has NOTHING like this.

nuckles

me and coz went to knuckles on monday ages ago. it's some hills that look like hills, or to the trained eye, a bit like the lake district. it's still the nicest place in sri lanka:



we were there for a reason, to give bags:



to some children (reason: not entirely clear. something to do with coz and the rotary):



being observative and a scientist too which teaches you to spot these kind of things i cleverly noticed that many of them had bags already. disaster!

but it was OK actually, they still seemed dead chuffed with them, in fact i was giving out the bags and they kept kowtowing, or whatever the thing is when you kneel on the floor and touch the other person's feet. no bugger told me they'd be doing that, it was really weird. what kind of face do you make when people are bowing and scraping like that? i tried for a benevolent compassion tinged with understanding and pity but it just actually looked like a cross between bored and smug. people who know me will say that's the way my face looks usually anyway

UPDATE: photo links were borked; fixed them. Also, i now understand why the Rotary are so named...
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because they keep going round and round in circles!

MALAKA RICE

this post is dedicated to all my Greek friends



malaka rice! ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha haaaa!

boring post :(

sorry it was raining so much in t'forest i couldn't take my camera out much. i did eventually get a half decent photo of a blue magpie but they're tricky to get. this one just about does it, you get the idea anyway:



there's a nice green lizard, this was about the 10th attempt at getting a photo and he'd turned his back on me in disgust:



about the most interesting thing we did was make a scrabble board! someone (nihara) had worked out where all the squares go and how many letters there were and that, so we drew it! it was fearsome, but you have to hold your breath while playing or you blow the pieces off