in the off-ing

Organized an offsite off a beach resort in Beruwala during which many topics including program implementation calendars were discussed. The evening saw a water polo match and a lot of drinking, including a session by the beach with all of us dancing and singing baila and assorted tamil songs. Then it was a session with the 'cool' clique (every office has one) where cigarettes and more alcohol were passed around while 'love failure' was discussed in great depth drawing on the personal experiences shared.

Then I met 'Amden'. Amden was the name of a German warship which eluded Allied capture during World War 11 and managed to sneak through Allied defences. It has become the nickname for those who are basically clever, manipulative and capable of achieving their own ends. (Ranil Wickremasinghe, ex-presidential contender was nicknamed Amden). Anyway Amden also is the name of a cartoon character, and there are thousands of stories spun in the collective national consciousness about Amden. (Amden stories are told at funeral gatherings, when according to Buddhist rituals, the body has to be accompanied for four days prior to the funeral and for all 4 days there is to be no sleep, to watch over the body. So to pass the time, and keep awake, Amden stories are told and exchanged.).

I suppose they lose the flavour, and the humour when not told in ribald Sinhala, but here are some anyway.

Amden is coming out of his mother's womb. Being the naughty fellow that he is, he wants to come out feet first, and not head first. So he keeps pushing his feet out and back in, playing a game with the doctor and nearly killing his mother. So then the doctor takes a cigarette butt and singes his feet the next time he shoves his feet out. Then Amden leaps back, puzzled and sticks his head out to see what was up and the doctor hauls him out with both hands.

Amden is at school and asks his teacher a question: Why are fish so flat? Nobody else knows the answer and Amden puts up his hand to answer the same question. Frustrated the teacher asks why? And he says because the whales sat on it!

Amden asks another question: Why do the eyes of prawns bulge out so?Nobody else knows the answer and the teacher, increasingly frustrated asks him why? And he says that the prawns were watching the whales who sat on the fish!!!

Last one for today: Amden is a great graffiti artist and adorns the school walls with three dimensional pictures. His teacher calls his father and says: his art is really fantastic but he can’t keep drawing them on school walls. The father said: Better he draws them here than at home: At home he drew a 3D picture of a naked female and so realistic it was that the father tried to… you-know-what and in the end ended up getting his you-know-what twisted!

Then the weekend was spent morosely moping around the place for no substantive reason really other than the mood struck me and I was annoyed with and at everything so I stayed at home and watched eight episodes of the second season of the O.C. which didn’t work it’s magic and then I fell asleep reading the Economist, which by the way, rocks. Girls and boys, we have a new editor in da house and boy, is the difference marked and noticeable. There is poetry in every article. And I love it. Here’s to good writing!