One one things

When foreign ppl ask me what they should look at in Colombo I usually say Galle face and Independence Sq. I can’t think off too many other awe inspiring things to gape at. Not that Inde sq and Galle face are particularly awe inspiring, but I have a special attachment to Inde sq. I go there almost everyday now to take my dog for a stroll but my affair with inde sq started a long time ago. When I was about 5 my grandfather used to take me and my brother there to ride our bikes. Come rain or shine we’d be there, trying to outride the other kids and impress the little females pottering around in their frocks and pol gaha hair styles. Nine times out of ten i’d take a tumble and end up with scratched knees and a satisfied grin knowing that I can tell my friends about the scar I received while escaping a monster on my motorbike. One day it was pissing down and I insisted that seeya still take me for my ride and he reluctantly conceded. I still remember he sat in the car while I pedalled around in the rain, splashing into the puddles and generally making a mess. The next day surprisingly enough I fell ill, and two days later was diagnosed with dengue. The previous day I had drunk Cream Soda and for the next 12 years I never drank cream soda and never rode my bike in the rain thinking i’ll get a relapse.

As I got older my interest in the bike finally diminished and was taken over by cricket. And for this I returned to Inde sq. At first it would be that indominatable trio, me, aiya and seeya. Seeya bowling slow left arm spin, aiya bowling Sanath Jayasuriya style right arm off breaks with a faster ball thrown in for good measure. I remember scoring my first ever hundred against them on the grassy section just next to the main square. Indi sq is also the scene of my most embarassing sporting moment ever. On a special day my whole family came to play cricket, cousins, uncles, the works. To my horror I was dismissed, caught shaffi akki bowled ammi. Dismissed by a combination of females. This would not do for a proud 8 year old boy. I duely hung my head in shame and sat aside the rest of the game. I took a break from indi sq for a while except to take my cousin’s dogs, Brandy, Sherry and Tipsy for walks once in a way.

Teenage years saw more cricket in indi sq, but the opposition graduating from family to a whole troop of boys. Whilst cricket was the main intention, we always managed to keep half an eye out for a pretty face trotting around the square. Sometimes we’d go to inde sq to just chill in the evening and have a chat while the sun goes down. Eventually the mosquitoes make the dusk their own and we’d be forced to hustle away. After leaving school the same lot of boys began to go out in the night. Sometimes after a night out we’d get a pilla’s kottu and sit by the proud lions, eat up and have a chat under the stars whilst some of us sobered up enough to get back home. Independence avenue in the moonlight with no cars is a fabulous sight. With all those tall trees lining the road it looks like a guard of honour for anyone who comes along the road towards Mr. Senanayake.

Whenever I came down for holidays i’d drive my mother to inde sq for her evening walk while i sit on the car bonnet with my walkman, bopping to my latest cassette. Inde sq is a great place to relax, gather your thoughts, watch ppl, daydream and invariably bump into someone you’re acquainted with. When we got our puppy towards the end of last year it gave me a great excuse to go to inde sq almost every day. And as I do so even now I see other kids doing all the same things that I did in my childhood, having the same affair with inde sq. Toddlers playing cops and robbers, kids riding their bikes, older boys playing cricket, teenagers sitting on the ledges chatting about this and that and couples under umbrellas. I haven’t been through that final stage yet and I don’t plan on doing so anytime soon. Even though it’s just a square with an empty building and a statue symbolizing our country’s freedom, it’s a place that has become so familiar to so many of us and is somehow a lot more than just a landmark. There lies part of the spirit of Sri Lanka.

In September a friend of mine lent me a book called Freakonomics saying that it’s a very interesting read. I don’t normally trust her judgement in books and more often than not I end up returning them after a few weeks with no more than a chapter complete. This book however was different. I read the first chapter the day I got it and I was hooked. Unfortunately I was flying to England that night so I couldn’t continue till I got back. I finished it in a couple of sittings bc it’s extremely readable. It’s written by Steven Levitt an economist at Uni of Chicago and Stephen Dubner a writer for NY Times. The idea of the book, I think, is to show that empirical data is not what it seems to be at first glance. They question conventional wisdom by taking a closer look at empirics, and they explore some very interesting ideas by asking some very interesting questions. The best part about the book is that it’s a breath of fresh air to anyone who loves economics. I’m sure there are plenty of others who did A/L economics and loved it, but then went to university and got utterly and completely put off by the mathematics involved. Well, after reading Freakonomics I got a reminder as to why I loved econ in the first place.

The book starts by taking a look at the wonderful things we call incentives. The first question they ask is what do sumo wrestlers and school teachers have in common? and go on to discuss the incentives behind cheating. If a day care centre starts to fine parents who get late to pick up their kids, you’d expect the amount of parents getting late to reduce right. Right? Maybe not. In Israel a day care centre imposed a fine of $3 per hour of lateness and found that the incidence of parents getting late increased. There are two incentives at work here, the incentive from the fine and the guilt incentive. The fine allowed parents to “buy” away the guilt incentive and $3 per hour was not high enough a fine to override the guilt incentive.

The second question asked is how real estate agents are similar to the Ku Klux Klan. In this chapter they look at the role of information in reducing the power of “experts” and the role of the internet in this. The KKK was brought down by a guy going undercover and exposing their often child-like secret codes to the public and causing much humiliation to members. They show that there is racial and age discrimination in the Weakest Link (a show on daytime tele in England and for a while in the States). The third chapter asks why drug dealers live with their mothers despite the fact that the media portrays crack dealing as one of the most profitable jobs. They tell the story of an economist who lived with a Crack gang to discover the similarities between the Coccaine industry and McDonald’s.

One of the more controversial arguments of the book suggests that crime rates dropped in the States in the 1990s due to the legalization of abortion in the 70s. The argument is interesting, the theory is that kids who would have been aborted were the ones who are most likely to be unwanted kids. The parents were either not ready, not willing or not able to raise a child appropriately, and therefore naturally the kid wouldn’t have the most stable and solid upbringing and make him/her more likely to be a criminal. Furthermore abortion used to be very expensive resulting in only middle and upper class parents being able to afford one, and poorer ppl being less able to do so. As abortion became cheaper more poor ppl were able to afford it, reducing the number of kids born into poverty and therefore reducing the number of kids likely to engage in crime. The legalization of abortion meant that these unwanted kids did not make an appearence in this world and therefore the crime rate fell 20 years later. It seems a fairly water-tight argument, but it was challenged in The Economist last week. I haven’t as yet read that article but i’m sure it’s worth a look.

Finally the authors explore the art of parenting. Would you be happier to have your kid go to play in a house where the parents keep a gun, or in a house which has a swimming pool but no guns? The answer would naturally be the latter, but statistics show that more kids die in swimming pool accidents than as a result of gun related incidents. So why do we fear guns more than swimming pools? Bc our notion of risk is a combination of outrage and hazard, guns have a high outrage factor but low hazard factor whilst swimming pools have a higher hazard factor but minute outrage factor. Outrage trumps hazard when it comes to affecting our assesment of risk. This chapter also looks at the nature vs. nurture argument in the resultant lives of children and questions obsessive parenting.

Overall, the book provides some very interesting and compelling arguments. You don’t have to go away buying everything the writer’s say, but what you are likely to do is to go away being a bit more curious about the world and a bit more sceptical of conventional wisdom. For me the most important lesson was in differentiating causation and correlation when it comes to data. I find myself easily persuaded by statistical analysis and far too easily infer causation from correlation, a grave error as has been pointed out by Steven and Stephen. I strongly recommend Freakonomics of economists and non-economists, it’s got something in it for both parties. The book’s website can be found here. It includes a blog by the writers. Happy reading.

I’m back at home after what at times felt like a long term but at other times a short one. It’s always good to be back, and particularly in December bc a lot of friends from all over the world converge upon the Island. It’s my first 18 hours back home and somethings have changed while some have stayed the same. One of my favourite feelings is to get off the plane and feel that blast of hot humid air when walking down the stairs towards the bus. This time I was in for a pleasant surprise, the airport has undergone an amazing metamorphosis. There are now direct passages from the plane to the terminal (I can’t remember the technical term for that), and the airport itself is looking very flash, modern and posh. Except that I don’t particularly like the granite floors and the few emaciated christmas trees. But very impressive all in all. I think the immigration officers changed sometime ago, but the ones who used to be there were classic, they all seemed to share Vlad Lenin as their fashion icon. The beards, the uniform clothing and that “I hate you, you’re not letting me sleep” look stamped across their faces. For a few minutes I was wondering if i had disembarked at the wrong country when I got a nice reminder of where I was. One of the security buggers near the baggage claim place summoned me with a quintessential “sss sss malli.” I smiled and we had a chat during which he asked me for US$ in exchange for SLRs at the “hari rate eka”, he claimed to want to buy a fridge at the duty free but I suspect he’s trying to collect $s for some blackmarket deals. The customs buggers haven’t changed and are still very much of the Lenin mould. My one eyed me suspicously as if i’ll turn into a mushroom and then decided that I probably won’t so he let me go.

I got home to the frantic greetings of my puppy. She had become a “big girl” in my absence but is still very much a baby to me. Sometimes she falls asleep and suddenly wakes up and realises that i’m in the room she greets me all over again as if i’ve been gone for an year. Dogs are simply the best. Loyal, loving, devoted and unconditional. I think i missed her the most in my absence. Despite being exhausted bc of the flight delays I managed to stay up to watch the first part of the test match. Murali was in a devillish mood and bowled two amazing doosras to clean up Dhoni (pitched outside leg from around the wicket, turned past the outside edge and crashed into off) and Harbhajan (pitched on middle and off from over the wicket, squared him up, turned past the outside edge and hit off). I then fell asleep missing the rest of the game, even stevens at the end of play. Woke up around 6 and took the pup to Independence Sq. for a walk. Inde Sq. is much the same, couples under umbrellas, little kids on bikes, bigger kids in flash cars revving their engines as loud as possible, annoying stray dogs, DS looking grand but lonely and plenty of huffing and puffing ppl trying to get some cardio going.

Another change is the Acoustic show on TNL on Sunday evening. I only caught a few minutes of it but there was some very good stuff playing. I think it’s an excellent idea bc acoustic versions of songs are often so different from the originals. Adam Duritz of the Counting Crows once said of their Across the Wire acoustic Album that while they recorded it they realised for the first time how some of their songs were really meant to be played. That’s certainly an album worth getting btw. MTV (music) has done some bad things in their time, such as encouraging very ordinary music to get away with record sales purely based on the looks of the performer and the extravagence of the video. But one good thing MTV did was come up with the MTV unplugged stuff. Top three MTV unpluggeds are in my book; Nirvana, Eric Clapton and REM.

Went to seeya’s for dinner in the evening as is customary on weekends and met Leela after 16 years. Leela used to be the cook at seeya’s place when I was 5 but she left and was re-recruited last month. She recognized me instantly and I her. I used to play with her two sons Sunil and Kumar. Sunil taught me how to climb trees and Kumar taught me how to make paper rockets fortified by an iratta and propelled by an elastic band such that they fly above the water tank on the top of the Walauwwa. Sunil is apparently married now and has a kid and Kumar is working at Sampath Bank. It was good to hear that their next generation is moving beyond domestic work but sad to see Leela in the same state after 16 years, still trying to support her drinking husband. Leela reminded me that the first thing that I had ever asked her was “matata wathura tikak denna puluwanda?”

It’s been a nice chill start to what should be a pleasant month. Must set about discovering more of what has changed and revisit my old favourites that I hope have stayed the same. My mother was in Phuket for a meeting and had got me a T shirt that I’ve always wanted to have, the one with the classic Thai phrase, “Same same, but different.” Just like Colombo.

I’ve almost forgotten what it’s like to pull an all-nighter, it’s been so long since i’ve done one. The last couple of weeks have been excessively hectic bc finally all my slacking has caught up with me and end of term papers have begun rearing their ugly heads. I just finished my first presentation over here and it went alrite I thought, except the part of having to work like a biatch to get it done. It’s a massive topic, explanations of the collapse of the global economy during the interwar years, also it’s really hard to structure a nice coherent answer. Presentations for IPE are done between two ppl, and I was sharing the burden with a Nordic dude who reminds me lots of that backstreetboy who used to have the mushroom haircut (I know his name but i’m trying to be cool by acting oblivious). Annoyingly the Nordy had already got a good knowledge of the issue in his Monetary class so he had an advantage in splitting the question. He took the mainstream view and I had to fill in the gaps and try to explain the anomalies. Bugger.

So the past week i’ve been buried in early 20th Century political economy literature and surprisingly enough it’s been mildly interesting. We tend to underestimate the power of history a lot. There are an infinite number of lessons to be learnt and the advantage of hindsight is one of the nicest things to have, I must edit my letter to Santa and see what he can do. Several years down the line ppl will look through history books and pass judgements upon us the way that we pass judgements on the past. I was reading about economic policy in the interwar goldstandard years and thinking what a bunch of thick gits, sticking to a fixed exchange regime and raising interest rates while in an economic downturn. Historians in the future will probably look at SL’s recent election and have a good chuckle. But even worse, they’ll laugh at our dress sense and hair-dos (or don’ts), like the way we laugh at the ’80s, they’ll laugh at our taste in music, well some of us laugh at it right now. I do hope they have some good things to say about us too.

Anyway work moved on until last night when around 9pm I realised that I hadn’t even finished my reading, and I still had to organize my notes into a coherent structure. 12 hours to go. I had a midnight snack later on, topped up with coffee, by this point I had just finished reading the last paper and begun giving structure to that haphazard bunch of scribbles. It’s usually around this time that the urge to play Hearts and Minesweeper and have a chat on MSN are most pertinent, I tend to indulge every 20mins or so. Speaking of Hearts, the programmer deserves a pat on the back, almost everytime I try to shoot the moon the computer players seem to double guess me, I have no idea how it’s done, amazing. Around 2 I ran into a crisis and had to re-read a large chunk of a paper by a guy called Horowitz, as far as I’m concerned he was on about a bunch of cock that I could make no sense out of. But I had to work my way through it bc this particular tutor loves to grill. And you can’t dodge with him, he doesn’t let up until either you admit failure or you come up with something fully baked. But I finally finished around 5.30 in the morning leaving me a little over an hour and a half of sleep. But that’s quite pointless bc as soon as my head hit the pillow arguments were running through my head, questions, potential answers, nearest windows to jump out of, they all appear at once. I didn’t have time to dream, soon as I hit REM i hear the worst sound in the world, my alarm. Put snooze for what was supposedly 5 mins but I could swear someone changed it to 5 seconds. Up and about by 7.15, out of the house by 7.30, still pitch black and freezing, and I forgot my scarf and gloves. Bugger.

Get to the library, make a whole heap of photocopies of my presentation, I couldn’t be bothered doing powerpoint bc at 5am I just didn’t have the energy. Walked early into class, must be some kind of record, and I was feeling quite awake. It’s the last IPE class for the term so attendance is abysmal. The tutor ambles in and makes a B line towards me and says; “Hey, you know that Nordy isn’t coming right?” The bastard. He’s bailed on me. Never trust a Scandinavian. Thankfully he said that he’ll look after Nordy’s part of the presentation and that I can go ahead with mine. So I went ahead and it went alrite despite the fact that I was relying on Nordy’s paper to give my arguments some form of structure and template. The first question I was asked was if I was trying to answer a question, which is a bit embarassing bc I’ve just spent half an hour giving an answer. But to be fair it was just a haphazard bunch of theories with a semblance of empircal justification attached to them. I got through the grilling reasonably alrite so I walked home rather content. It’s a mara pretty day, shame that i’m going to spend the better part of it catching up on my REM. Two more essays due by this Friday. Bugger.

Thought for the day: If it is my human right to be able to work in Colombo, Kandy or Jaffna as I please, why is it not my human right to work in London, New York or Adis Ababa as I please?