One one things

A few months ago I got an advert in my inbox for a SLkan airlines deal to Goa. 3 days, hotel and airtickets provided, all for 30k. As usual a whole host of ppl expressed initial interest, I think there would have been about 8 of them. With time this number dwindled down to about 4 and later 3. Goa is a place I’ve always wanted to go to, I had heard much about the lifestyle, beaches, portugese hangovers, Goan fish curry and of course the parties. As we began the planning process we felt it would be a bit of a waste to just go for 3 days, it seemed far more sensible to go for about a week and explore the place properly. But then 6 days seemed a bit much to be partying, what with our age and all. I felt that Goa had a fair amount to offer, but my companions were of the view that it probably wouldn’t have as much to offer as some other parts of India. The Slkan airlines deals continued to improve, and I came across one to Kochi in Kerala for 3200 bucks plus taxes (12500). Now this was very tempting, and we had to put aside our Goa books and got hold of some South India and Kerala books. So about a month ago we decided to scrap the Goa plan and decided on Kerala instead, I didn’t mind at all, Kerala has always been on my must visit list. Goa would have to wait.

Unfortunately at almost every step in the planning process something went wrong. First of all buying tickets was very messy. The deal was only valid on the internet, and at first the website was giving trouble and refusing to process the transactions. Finally when the website sorted itself out, it turned out that both my credit card and my friend’s card had some sort of online purchases limit so we couldn’t buy it online. After much hassle trying to alter credit card limits, switch to better cards etc. we couldn’t find anything that worked. But then luckily I had a few spare skywards miles from my London days so I got myself a return to Trivandrum for 10k points. A got hers on skywards as well and G got his using an old credit card of his. 2 weeks left to go and our tickets were sorted, next step was getting the visa. Getting to the Indian HC was another battle as obstacles popped up every morning. Early morning meetings, dodgy stomachs and oversleeping thwarted our first three attempts, and finally last thursday we all managed to get ourselves out of bed on time with stomachs in tact. Indian visa queues are not fun unless you’re keen on a tan. After an hour or so of accumulating BO we got into the relative cool of the building. I was nervous bc my photograph was attached to the application form using just two grains of rice, we seem to lack glue technology at home. The three of us walked up together for the interview process, he glanced at G’s application and then took mine and looked at it very carefully. He took a red pen and put a big red circle around “Profession: Economist” and “Exact purpose of travel: Travelling around Kerala”. He then asked me a whole series of questions, where do you work? why are you’ll going to Kerala? Where’s your office? He then went through all my visas, asked if I was still a student in the UK and then about my last visit to India and details about the conference. He was friendly throughout, and didn’t even look at A’s application before passing us all through.

We were out of the HC by 10.15am, boss calls me sounding stressed as hell, budget days are never fun. Luckily A was free at 4.30 and she went and picked up our visas, unfortunately G had to wait for 5 working days since he had some residence visa in NZ and apparently the Indians needed clearance from NZ before they could let him go! (they had the cheek to charge him 200 bucks for the overseas fax as well). Since then it’s been crazy busy, I’ve had some workshop all week and with the status quo work on top of that plus trying to make up for a week off, serious overtime. On Saturday we made our first tentative plan of what we want to do in Kerala. It goes something like this. First night (24th) in Trivandrum and early morning on Saturday leave for Kochi, stopping on the way at Alleppey to make arrangements for a houseboat for later. Spend a couple of nights exploring Kochi, it’s supposed to have some nice buildings, an interesting history and an old fort. From there head to Periyar national park on the other side of the state, 8 hours by bus. A couple of nights in the park, doing a bit of trekking, boating and of course tiger safari. They have this amazing sounding deal called the Priyar tiger trail, where you spend 2 nights trekking and camping in the forest, guided by reformed poachers. Unfortunately it’s US$300 per head or something, and it’s not available at the time we’ll be in Kerala. From there we head west to Varkala to spend a few days at the beach and try their sea food. Having acquired sufficient UV rays we head back north to Alleppey to spend a night on a houseboat in the famous backwaters. We then return to Trivandrum to see what this city has to offer, at first glance there doesn’t seem to be much, but we’ll see. We have an optional 2 days here, if it’s useless we’ll most probably head towards another nearby beachfront to recharge batteries. If all goes well we’ll be back in Colombo on the 4th morning, a full poya day’s worth of recupperation.

After all this planning we unfortunately had another hitch. A was having difficulty convincing her parents that everything is planned and accounted for. They seemed quite nervous and stressed out, and on wednesday night A had to pull out. Last minute efforts were made to salvage her chances by making confirmed hotel bookings for the first few days, but it was too little too late. It was sad for A, but then its a parent’s job to be nervous, and it’s understable I guess, we only had very sketchy plans. She didn’t want to stress them out too much so she bailed out. So it would be only G and myself, this isn’t a problem bc we’ve travelled alone together in the past and it’s been awesome. This afternoon I dragged myself out of office and picked up my first backpack from PG martin’s, it looks spacious and sturdy and has more pockets than I could count. We considered getting matching “hazard orange” coloured backpacks, but within 2 seconds thought the better of it, I went for the decidedly more macho red option. And now I must start packing, the flight is tomorrow night at 8 so we need to leave by around 4, which means a hasty exit from a roundtable discussion I’m obliged to show up at in the afternoon. Parents insisted they sort my medicines out, and now I’m prepared for everything except snake bite. Immodium was number one on the list, followed by other GI drugs, everything else is secondary. I still got some work to cover, but I can’t seem to concentrate right now. The butterflies have begun to wriggle in the stomach, in 12 hours I’ll be in Trivandrum airport trying my best Malayalam to hail down a cab.

I’ve heard a couple of stories of how Unawatuna got its name, the one that sticks in my head is about how one of Rama’s (of Ramayana fame) warriors (Lakshman I think) was injured in battle, and Rama sent Hanuman to the Himalayas to bring back some herb which was apparently the only cure. Unfortunately Hanuman had some confusion as to what herb was required, and so brought back a large chunk of the mountain, which promptly fell just off that precious bay on the outskirts of Galle. So ppl saw this huge chunk of mountain fall and said “onna watuna!” Which soon became Unawatuna. It is still beyond me as to why Hanuman returned from Indian via Galle, specially with excess baggage in the nature of a mountain or part thereof. Anyway, this is clearly bastardized so I came up with my own story, which I feel is far more apt. Back in the time of the British Raj, the government offices of the Galle region were plagued by workers taking time off to go to the beach and relax. They’d show up at work the next day and tell the boss, “aiyo sir, I got una sir.” The British initially being the proper chaps they are decided that ill health demands rest and maybe these poor devils are just plain sickly creatures. However with time these sickies became a very serious issue. One day the governor himself was visiting when several of the workers failed to show up, and were obviously being quite merry on the beach. The next day they were all summoned by the governor, demanding explanation. Naturally they prompty replied, “sir, una sir!” and the governor in utter exasperation yelled, “una?! what una!! all fired!” And away went the excuse of una, from it arose the name of one of my favourite places in Sri Lanka.

I was there last weekend, fingers and toes crossed hoping for some decent weather. I had a heap of background reading to catch up on for work, and there’s no better place to do that than by the beach. A couple of friends decided to join for Saturday but I was going to stay on a bit longer. The drive up is always lovely. It usually takes about 2 hours to get to Galle if you leave at 6, but a twenty mins delay in leaving saw us arrive closer to 9. It’s always nice to walk around Fort a bit, it had just rained and so it was very fresh and the air was crisp. Fort was quiet despite it being a Saturday morning, and we walked around into a couple of churches, the Dutch reformist and the All Saints, the former being far more interesting than the latter. I love the architecture of the houses and buildings around the fort. You find the classically styled old houses with the massive mada midulas, separated by the narrowest roads and the odd old government building. I saw my grandmother’s old school Southlands, and it’s funny how she used to describe it in stories and I’d imagine this huge place with strict nuns running around, when in actual fact it really is quite small but quaint. We saw a boy diving into the ocean from the ramparts, I first thought he was committing suicide, but it seems he (and some others) does it for money. He saw me from a distance taking photographs and waved me over, but we didn’t have time to go all the way there, couldn’t afford to lose beach time.

We stay at the Zimmer as always, but Tilak was away for the day and would only be back in the night. Nevermind though, we leave our limited belongings and take the short cut to the beach, passed the Lucky Tuna and a short walk along the beach to the Western edge of the bay. That first dip in the water is always the loveliest. Nobody says a word as everyone is just too eager to get out of shirts and other excess clothing and dive in. And then you hit the water, drowning out all other sounds, and its just you and the ocean, for a precious few seconds it feels like you’re where you belong, at home, and there’s no greater calm. You splash out, shake your head like a wet dog and join in the giggles of pure, spine tingling, childish excitement. We spent ages in the water before venturing back onto the beach and just lay down in the sun, soaking up its splendour and smiling to ourselves. The kids in us came out to play so 5 22/23 year olds went about making a sand replica of the Welle Devalaya, with a moat, a bo tree (a bo twig in this case) and a priest to boot (a thambili kenda). That was followed by digging a massive hole and burying the smallest among us. More giggles as our mental ages dropped exponentially.

Hunger eventually got the better of us so we dragged ourselves off to the Lucky Tuna for some lunch. A quick shower downstairs and we were all far hungrier than we realised. The LT is a solid place, the upstairs has a nice view and the shade protects you from the brilliant sun. Lucky Tuna special fried rice, devilled cuttlefish and lime juice was the order of the day. And how it went down. I love walking down Welle Devala road after a sea swim, everything moves so slowly and its nice to say hullo to some of the shop keepers that know us. We headed back to the Zimmer armed with ice cream to relax and put a chat. But before long we were out in the sea again. This time we got planted outside the Happy Banana, I brought my books, notepad and cigars along. Lighting a match on the beach is a bit of a mission. Being a the rookie I am i tried to light it with my back to the sea and using one match. One of the guys at HB watched me with amusement and said to try two matches, still no luck. I gave up soon, but the guy took the cigar from me, turned to face the sea, used about 4 matches and lit it in a flash. I was a happy bunny. After an hour or so of reading and mouth cancer inducing behaviour, it was time to get back in the water. I could see the clouds gathering in the distance so we wouldn’t have much time. The water was rougher and less pleasant than in the morning, but it’s really hard to complain about the sea in Unawatuna. It was time for the friends to depart so we headed back to zimmer, sorted out the little expenses and I waved them off. Tilak still wasn’t back and I didn’t know the new guy who was manning the place so I had a shower and went back to Happy Banana since I had promised the woman there to come back for dinner.

It was still early, around 6, so I ordered a pot of coffee and got back to my books. The only complaint about the HB is the music, 50 cent and the like isn’t very appropriate for laid back unawatuna. That said they were playing Marley for most of the early evening. I’ve really begun to like Sri Lankan coffee, the stuff at HB was super, good strong body and gives a kick. I’ve got a pack of Hansa at home and it gives my Jamaican Jabalum coffee a good run for its money. The manager walked by with a glass in hand and smiled at me. He didn’t look Sri Lankan, so I asked him if he’s owns this place and if he’s Sri Lankan. He said no and yes, and I told him that he looks Carribbean, to which he laughed heartily. We had a chat about the work I was doing and it turns out he knows my boss from some earlier work, and he seemed to take a quite keen interest in what I was reading. I was getting hungry so I asked about the fish they had available but there wasn’t anything that tickled my fancy. The waiter suggested I try the sea-food platter. I wasn’t too keen on this bc sea food platters usually have a sameness about them. But then this apparently had lobster, king prawn and calamari in it. The waiter reassured me that it’ll be worth it. And how. It was possibly the best sea food I’ve ever eaten. There was a huge, and i mean giant crab in it, half a lobster, 3 massive prawns, calamari, some wonderful fish steaks and chips. But the best part was the sauce that it was marinated in. It was a lemony, garlic sauce that was wonderful, complemented the seafood perfectly. I spent close to an hour eating it, partly bc the dish was huge, the crab shell challenging and the flavours demanded savouring. I honestly don’t think I’ve ever been that satisfied after a meal, and all for 750 bucks. I left a good tip and promised that I’ll return the next time as well.

From there I went back to the Lucky Tuna for some curd and treacle. I took the table on the beach, books, pen and candle light, feet on the sand and the sound of the waves. It beats any library in the world. I worked for another solid couple of hours with a Santana CD playing in the restaurant and my two old canine friends Sana and son at my feet. It was getting late so it was time to head back to the Zimmer. Tilak still hadn’t arrived so I sat down for a chat with Dulantha, a new caretaker/manager of the place. We had a long chat about the tourism situation, politics and life in Unawatuna. He told me about how the ppl in the village are an “amuthuma set ekak” who have been completely warped by the influence of tourism. He said about how he’s trying to start up his own place in Talpe, a couple of villages beyond Galle, but that with the current situation things are really difficult, specially after the attack on the Galle naval port. And finally he said that there’s no military solution to this war, that without an apt devolution of political power we have little to hope for. I nodded in agreement. Another overnight guest joined us for a chat. He’s a young guy just out of uni, literally a week ago, and working for a cellular phone company that has sent him outstation to do some work on one of the towers. It turns out we were in the same school a long time back, he was just a couple of years senior and knew most of the ppl I know from that school. The three of us continued to chat for a couple of hours, three strangers alone in the same place, but all three feeling strangely at home.

The next morning Tilak was back, it was lovely to see him after a couple of months. Breakfast at the Zimmer is always wonderful. All the guests and Tilak sit at the same table, share the same food and have a chat. One of the guests is more like a tenant, she’s taken a year off after uni, taken the upstairs room (the room where I stayed in on my very first visit a little over a year ago) and has been working in SL with some of the tsunami affected schools for the last year or so. She’s a Sri Lankan, born and bred Brit, and from the little I know of her, a good solid sort. The other guest was an oldish french lady who could speak a few words of English. The celltell guy had to leave a bit early so he missed out on the wonderful indi aappa prepared by Tilak. The food was excellent as usual, sour fish curry with indi aappa and pol mallum. Tilak taught me a great trick, I was having the fish head, and he said to squeeze some fresh lime over the curry and strings just before mixing it. The result was lovely, a little extra tangy kick. Our fourway conversation was quite amusing. Sam speaks excellent french from her time in Uni in England, Tilak is pretty fluent too, not just in French but in English, German and a couple of other languages, amazing guy. I could remember a bit of OL french, so our conversation was mainly French with a bit of sign language for my benefit. We spoke of all sorts of things, exchanged our tsunami experiences, the situation in Colombo, international opinion of Sri Lanka and so on.

I was keen on getting to the beach early in the morning, but the breakfast banter was too much fun to leave so I stayed on for much later than planned. Just before I got ready to leave there was a bit of a commotion on the street, a whole bunch of ppl were running up WD road towards Galle road. Sam looked quite nervous bc she explained the last time she saw ppl excited like that was when the Dakshina was under attack. Indika and Dulantha went to investigate and came rushing back saying that they have caught a Tiger. This was not good news, it was quickly ascertained that it was indeed a 2 legged tiger, and he was apparently being beaten up on the road. From the sketchy details we got, it seemed that there was a Tamil chap who was staying at the Blue Moon, who had wandered into some of the tsunami housing early in the morning. He had failed to produce ID and apparently tried to attack those who questioned him. He was then beaten up and the cops are now handling the situation. The village was abuzz after that, but I decided to head to the sea before any further complications arise. The weather was not very good and a storm was imminent. As a result the water was choppy and I was alone in the sea at 9 in the morning. Nonetheless it was nice and refreshing, but I waded out when the water got a bit too rough for my liking. I worked for another couple of hours at Zimmer before heading back to Colombo.

The drive back was gorgeous, open Sunday roads, sea breeze, shutters down and radio on, perfection. The only danger is when you get a bit closer to Colombo and the traffic increases but you still drive aggressive and try to overtake everyone going under 60. It’s always nice to get back to Colombo as well, spent the last hours of the weekend with the family and took the dog for a walk. Home sweet home.

It’s almost the weekend and I just had a glance at The Island front page as a last effort of procrastination. One of the headlines reads, “Army shells miss SLMM chief: Oslo calls for explanation” That’s a bit harsh isn’t it? Can’t expect those shells to be so accurate.

Reminds me of some other funny headlines I’ve seen and heard of in our newspapers. A couple of years ago the following was on the front page;
“Train to Pakistan comes to Colombo” It was referring to a movie that just began screening in Colombo, but with South Asian rail networks, one could never be too sure.

An old favourite, the accuracy of which I can’t guarantee, is about the time Mrs B had just opened up a new waterway around the same time that China’s PM Zhou Enlai (pronounced chew enlai) passed away. One of the Sinhalese papers allegedly had the following summary of the news;
“Sirimawo paippey aree, Chiney chew giya…”

Off to Unawatuna for the weekend, w00t.

I’ve never been a big fan of arranged marriages, particularly the whole horoscope part of it. Yesterday however I had to dabble in the fine art myself (minus horoscopes). My dog just celebrated her 2nd b’day, and is now 28 in human years, so it is high time she settled down. We never really wanted to have pups, our devil is a handful in her own right and I wasn’t too keen on being woken up at 4am by a fistful of pups barking for food. But a couple of months ago Uzbeq (one of her many nicknames) ran into a few problems. She had become very vocal, attention seeking (more than normal) and had started to dig up the garden. Things became more peculiar when she began to bite my pillows and try to dig up my bed as well. It came to a point where I couldn’t look away from her for more than 10 seconds without her whimpering and giving me a look of pure pathos. We still didn’t think it was much of a big deal until she started to carry around her little pink, smelly soft toy around everywhere she went. She’d take it in her mouth and whimper with a distressed look on her face. We decided to call the vet, and I had my first suspicions of a pseudo-pregnancy. The vet confirmed this when we said that she had her last heat about 2 months ago, her 2nd heat. Her body was telling her to expect a puppy, and so she had been digging the garden and my bed as a nesting place. The pink soft toy was her baby in her eyes. Naturally everyone in the house went ga-ga, teq was going through psychological stress so more attention was to be showered upon her. She remained highly distressed out for another week or so but then she recovered to her normal crazy self. But we were warned, if she isn’t crossed on her third heat, she’d have a far more severe pseudo-pregnancy including false contractions. Not part of the plan.

So her heat is due in December, and we had to act quite fast to find a potential mate. Everyone was keeping half an eye open for a healthy looking male lab. Fellow inde sq dog walkers were told about the requirements, family, friends and pretty much anyone who dropped into our house. There were a couple of options available, a 6 year old lab who was later deemed too big, a one year old liver coloured guy who was too young and another 3 year old who lived too far away. And then some excellent luck. We found out that there was a black male lab living, next door! (well three doors down to be precise). They had moved in recently and everyone was very excited by the prospect. Discrete inquiries were made from the security guys; “how’s the family? how old is he? How come he doesn’t go for walks? what’s his name? is he friendly?” and so on. To see his name is Sam, 6 years old, and belongs to an Indian family. So on Sunday ammi and I walked up and knocked on the door, the family was out so we asked them to give us a call when they’re back. The lady of the house calls us later that evening and says to come by the next evening, with Teq.

I rushed back from work that evening, tried to spruce teq up a bit, gave her a small pep talk and off we went. As usual her behaviour was horrendous in anticipation of a walk, jumping up and down and looking like a foosa. But as we approached their gate Sam began to bark, and Teq seemed to get a bit nervous. I was worried bc she’s never been good with other dogs. Whenever we try to socialize her she’d ignore the other dog after two sniffs and go greet the owner instead. So we were hoping that with the heat she’d conjure up some good hormones and get horny. We rang the bell and out came Sam and the owner, she seemed very nice and friendly and was very happy with the idea of love thy neighbour - canine chapter. The dogs were a bit apprehensive at first, separated by the gate, Sam barked to confirm that it was his terrain, and uzbeq stuck her tail between her legs and sat behind me. In the mean time we chatted about how we should proceed and gave indications of our basic concerns, ie. no fleas, hope your bugger is clean etc. Teq soon lost her shy girl/playing hard to get attitude and strutted up to the gate and began to bark away as well. I have no idea what they were telling each other but both were wagging their tails, and didn’t seem aggressive. Sam soon began to whimper and prance a bit; the female had clearly established the initial underlying power relations. That’s my girl!

So the first meeting was a success. They didn’t hate one another, and the humans concerned got along too. We walked back home and Teq seemed quite pleased with herself, waddling along, wagging her tail and smiling with her ears back, much like a girl after a good date. (At least in the movies). We had a house meeting soon after and everyone was informed of the developments while Teq sat aside with her tongue out. We’ve already started discussing puppy names, and I thankfully have veto power bc the suggestions so far have been atrocious. Teq still feels like a puppy to me, and I couldn’t for my life imagine her as a mother. She still acts like a baby, running around with her toys and chasing after imaginery cats. But Sam seems lovely, and at 6 years old he should be a good calming influence. He even has a tinge of a white goatie, much like that chap Amithab Bachan! But the best part is that he lives so close, it feels like things will be more under control bc of that. It promises to be a dramatic couple of months, fingers crossed.

Poor form these days. I’ve just been through 15 pages of mathematical dribble which concluded that the average Bangladeshi will increase consumption by about $1 if income increases by $1, and that if they have more access to credit that they will increase consumption by a greater amount. And the buggers use about 10 different models to prove this, GETS, ADF, BETS, FUKS..bloody jokers. And for good measure they rape Friedman, Modigliani and other consumption bad boys in the process.

In other poor news I managed to put my trousers into the washing machine with my Ipod in the pocket. I thought I had lost the bugger so I was looking round frantically when I came home to find it on the washing machine, clean as a whistle. As expected it didn’t work despite trying to tip the water out of it from all possible angles. That’s what happens when technology makes things smaller and smaller. I comfort myself knowing that it was a Shuffle, 2nd hand, and had served me for a good year after serving my flatmate for a couple of years before that. Doesn’t stop me being a monkey though. I miss it at work now, whenever my concentration would drop I’d put it on and listen to whatever was on the playlist for the day, and would be on the money fairly soon. The sound of the A/C seems louder now, almost drowning out my rumbling tummy.

As a final piece of worrying news, I’m increasingly suffering from road rage. Contrary to what most ppl think, driving in Colombo is a hoot. Never a dull moment with these trishaw buggers squeezing in from all over, competing with the car in the next lane as you both edge forward at the traffic light waiting to get ahead when the green comes on and of course avoiding pot holes and the mad buggers who jump into the middle of the road and grin. At which point you can’t help but grin back, shrug your shoulders, and keep driving. It’s life and death at the best of times but I can’t help but enjoy it. If I had to drive in some place like England I’d be lost, what with all the order, ridiculous. Sadly of late I think it’s been getting to me. I’ve been swearing to myself, putting the shutter down and gesticulating, giving mock kaney paras and generally being a bit of a chav.

The other day I had just left home and was driving down my road when thadang, hena noise like i’d been slapped by a saucepan. To see the car coming on the other lane had whacked my side mirror, which duely snapped onto my shutter. Thankfully the shutter was up bc it was hot, normally I avoid the A/C bc I spend the whole day in a A/C room so its nice to get some fresh air. Anyway after the initial 3 seconds of shock I looked back to see the other bugger had stopped about 30 yards down the road. I felt my blood boiling and I reversed all the way back. Now all the three wheel buggers on the road know me so they were up in arms running to the other car and making the person get down and generally looking rather menacing. Then an oldish woman steps out looking nervous as hell. My heart melts and I walk up to her and ask her if everything is ok and whether her car is damaged. Not a scratch it seems. I still dont know whose fault it was, and she didn’t seem to know what was going on so I said ok let’s leave it and we went off. It’s quite funny that the only two (touch wood, thuk thuk thuk) accidents I’ve had so far have been down my own road.

But yes, all this angst is I think due to the weather. Seriously the timing is awful. It’s nice and sunny all day, and then 5′ o clock when I’m out of work and driving home the clouds form like some army that is really peeved about something or the other. Then just when I get home and strap up the doggie for her walk the rain falls down in buckets. By around 6 when I’m ready to go for a swim gadugudas the thunder and lightning take over. The other day I was so desparate I went to the pool anyway. Within a few minutes the pool attendent comes looking like mother superior.

PA(MS): *clap* *clap*
Me: Moko aunty?
PA(MS): Pissuda oy?
Me: Aiyooo aunty…
PA(MS): eliyata enna, haiyo lamayo.

The lightning doesn’t allow me to watch the cricket either, not that it’s been flash (pun intended though it is bloody awful). I’ve been disappointed by the Champs trophy, not only bc SL is out but bc the standards of cricket have not been great. The matches have in general been one sided and plagued with really shoddy displays. For instance the West Indies batting against SL, Windies again tried their very best to lose to India despite having the match in the bag, Pakistan against SA, NZ against SL, SL against Pakistan, India in general. So many really ordinary matches, I guess the pitches and the dew haven’t helped, but it just seems everyone is lacklustre. But then it’s the Champion’s trophy and nobody really gives a shit do they? In other interesting cricket news Minki van der Westhuzian has been named cricket WAG of the year. w00t! Also not bad for Murali’s missus, beat a pop-star to second place. Excellent quote by the director of Stickcricket,

“Minki is a cricket fan’s dream woman. She’s sleek, sexy and with a successful career to boot. Cricketers attract a finer class of WAG. While football is a game for chaps copping off with Chavs, cricket is a game for gentlemen going out with goddesses.”

Quite right too. Yet another moment that I lament sacrificing a career in cricket for one as an economist. Buggeroo.