srilankarocks!

Hello – If you’ve been following the blog (no chance I know!) you will have an indication of Christopher, he happens to me by boss right now.

Last Christmas our division happened to receive an expensive hamper, filled with expensive booze and the usual chocks and cheese. Now Chris happened to be in the other division so he technically did not qualify for the goodies.

Now we all knew Chris had a thing for bottles, he’s been on a collecting spree for as long as I can remember. Matter of fact the first day he drove his vehicle (I happened to be a navigator again), both of us were shivering half way through ..he couldn’t drive for shit, let alone driving we had a time stopping the car at color lights..So I was very much surprised when I thought the goal was to get home w/out smashing the rearview mirror too may times, when the man pulls over (not literally we were pretty much still on the road) parks and asks me to pick up some bottles that a colleague had brought from a U.S trip!

Now that I have clarified how much these mean to the man, Let's go back to the story behind the bottles.We decided to switch the labels of an expensive looking French wine with a bottle of Vinegar cork and all.(Somebody ought to have told me the man was gonna be my boss someday!!)Removing the label was easy, finding a cork was not! After spending like most of the lunch break we managed to get that right..Now the easy part, walking up to Christopher I casually mentioned we had a Black and an expensive wine, I said I am taking the Black and no one else wanted wine.You guessed it, the man’s eyes lit up and he was already thinking of Christmas.

Off he went the day before we closed for X-mas with the wine bottle tucked in the lap top bag. What nice friends I am sure he was thinking.We could not wait, so we were disappointed when he did not turn up for work on the 28^th when we re-opened so we could hear how nice the wine was! Nor did he turn up on the 29^th or 30^th.The man was missing, finally turning up on the 1^st.

It seems that he was not sick, but the nephews were. Apparently the Chris clan give the lil boys spoonfuls of wine at X-mas!! They’d been purging for days and he wanted to know whether the wine was bad!!

Wasn’t me, wasn’t me.

To make up and most importantly now that he is my boss now, I did give the boss a nice bottle of Chivas a few months ago. What with the reviews coming up and all it was too much of a risk. Lol was kidding – No I got it free and besides I owed the man the bottle - to be fair.

One lonely night ( I mean my folks were out and I was stayin by myself) I reached home at about 1:00 am after work, having paid the cabbie I heard someone screaming “Kowdha Enawa, Enawa” now for all you suddhas and wanna be suddhas that means “ someone’s coming, coming”.

I looked at the cabbie who was still doing the math for the change and he nodded saying he heard the same words. Now the irony is Alfaq had a lil scuffle with one of the bad boys over a trivial matter about a week ago. Kyokushin came in handy and the big bad wolf was on his knees, now Sri lanka being Sri lanka I was thinking maybe they had come to settle a score….that certainly was a possibility. These wolves were bad in that they were connected.

Right next to my gate there is this loud dog, for the two years I’ve been around the bugger barks his guts out night or day whenever he sees me.

On that night, not a sound…I must admit I was a bit worried. Since the cabbie will not so much as come closer to the gate, I could not check the whole house by myself thoroughly.I still thought I will do a quick run armed with a knife…that was the hardest part, I could not find anything that could hurt anybody…rummaging through the kitchen finally found a blunt as ever knife and checked the rooms downstairs and upstairs…nothing. Still not a 110% sure since if someone was around, since it's easy to move around from floor to floor while I was doing the rounds checking each of the rooms I decided to call the coppers.

Dialed the emergency number on the cell, ringining, ringing and 10 minutes later still ringining. That was a lot of help!

Called the HQ **(See abrevs post) for back-up and they were ready to come, but I did feel bad as I had already taxed the buggers a few times already…and besides they all had jobs and some were married so did not want them to get into too much shit.

You never know, there is a special operations jeep down my road everyday, it could have been one of the drug addicts from the area…further down my road the homies are not exactly the type you would Sushi with. For a cigarette they could easily thrash the shit out of you..yeah bigger badder wolves.

Last resort I called another taxi company I’ve been using for ages that had its base close to my place, the base manager there was a soft spoken good natured guy called
Well lets call him “Kula”. I explained the situ and the man volunteered to come himself! I waited and waited, a good 10 minutes later the dog started barking..I was not too sure whether that was good news or bad news…I looked thru the door view couldn’t see jack and besides I did not hear a vehicle driving up.

I called out for “Mr Kula” no answer, maybe it was stupid but I don’t know I just did it. Opened the bloody door.

Infront of me was easily 200LBS in a black shirt and black pants, hair flowing down to the shoulder and his head nearly touching the top of my gate. I must say I shat bricks and whatever else I used to suffer and constipate with..I know I couldn’t have so much as hurt him with any knife leave alone the blunt knife. I was about to pull it cuase that’s all I had when he called out “Hello Mr xxxx” now that’s the familiar voice of the gentlemently sounding Kula, I had no frikkin idea he was such a huge guy and that voice and body just don’t go together. I didn’t know what to do….I knew any robbers lurking would have fled seeing the big man, grateful I thanked him profusely for coming hid the blunt knife and while he was keeping watch at the door did a thorough check. Nothing!

That sorted went for a tea and ciggie with Kula and he dropped me back, needed the smoke real bad!!

Still not convinced there was nothing, I thought maybe my neighbours got robbed. What would they say tomorrow if they had been robbed and I knew something and didn’t wake them?? So I decided to wake them up. The lady of the house beady eyed comes to the gate asking who and I identified myself and explained that I reckoned there were robbers around and me and the cabbie had heard em.

To my amazement, her face turned red and mumbling she said “Son I am sooo sorry, my husband had a very bad dream and he was screaming his head off”!!!

What an awesome dream!! Scared the living daylights out of me, and nearly had the coppers in the neighborhood!! I was too sleepy and tired to get annoyed but I am still not sure whether she said "had a wet dream and said coming coming??" Possible right!!

Overall results of the MRA rally which covered 200km’s comprising of nine stages over the weekend:

1st Dinesh Jayawardane (Civic SIR)

2nd Rizvi Farook (Civic SIR)

3rd Riyaz Farook (Mitsubishi Evo)

4th Sajad Zuhair (Civic EX)

Dinesh J, Rizvi & Sajad drove exceptionally well pushing their machines to the limits.

See the problem with all things new is, it's hard unless someone takes the time out to explain what needs to be done, so when I was asked whether I would like to be the co-driver for the Rally I said yes (pls note co-driver is essentially navigator) little realizing how stressful that can be!!

The first stage is the "Recky" run, this is where the drivers get a hang of the road and get to tell the navigators which corners they need call-outs, which area's they need cautions for. The car I was in was fully race prepared with the exception of tyres, the Tarmac tyres did not give that much of a grip as the surface was mostly gravel. We also had the fog lights for better vision on the night..

On my side of the dash, the meters were mounted showing the reading. All I had to do was simply zero the meter at start during the recky run and noted down the distance at which each call out needed to be made, simple right? not quite. After the first Ricky run A-B 15.3 KMS and back the same route B-A I thought I had it all covered. Confident I was upto the task I could not wait to start the night stages. Sajad who drove the machine clearly told me the call outs he needed and the abrevs.

 As night arrived, I must say my knees were a bit shakey, the course itself was very narrow and the roads were full of sharp corners. To top it all there was sand here and there that made the driving even more dangerous which also meant I can not afford to get any of the call-outs wrong. 5-4-3-2-1 -Off we went for the first night Recky, MR (medium right) I called out at the top of my voice at 4mts into the run, there was no medium right..1600 mts into the Recky I called out slow left, again there was no Slow left. Now I was nervous and confidnece shattered! Sajad - Stopped the car, pulled the sheets from me and pointed at the top of the paper. I had been reading the pace notes from "B- A" damn it!!! You'd think it would end there, not quite, we also found out that since the meter readings were done where the the call-outs were it meant I was really not helping things, what I should have done is marked the pace notes so I can call out before approaching the "hazard" meaning the reading needed to be advanced. That figured the rest was relatively easy. Of course my addiction to WRC or PS2 proved to be a liability as half the time I had to struggle to not call the "slow left" as "short left". That was confusing the shit out of the driver and I am sure one more time and he would have somehow ejected me off the seat!!

Anyway that proved to be a an excellent learning and I guess that is why they have these Recky runs! Everytime we raced afterwards I checked a 110% whether I was looking at the correct pace notes ;-)) The first race stage was on Saturday morning and I must say we did fantastically, we were placed third overall and 1st on our class. The man at the wheel pushed and pushed and we were all over the place but I felt confident he could handle it. B-A stage 2 was a different strory, this gave me signs of what was to come. Appoaching a Medium left we came in too fast and did a 360 degree turn went sliding into the concrete signposts and as luck would have it, corrected and stopped dead straight facing the road. Scared? I honestly did not have time, I just looked at the next call out since Sajad had taken off already! He eased off a bit since that could have been fatal, I was asked to call this out on the next runs as we did not have it on the pace notes. We finished the next stage for the day also in good time and were happy with the overall performance.

The night stages - however proved to be a different ball game altogether, by now we had gained 22 seconds on the closest EVO competing for third place overall! The first A-B run was uneventful and everyone drove rather cautiously since there was a drizzle and the route was a death trap at night. B-A we threw caution to the wind on the straight, we realized unlike the others our pace notes did not carry a heads-up when approaching the few straights. Thereby loosing some relatively easy seconds. Pushing hard on one of the straights I remember calling out for a "Slow left", the pilot of course was flying low and managed to slow down in time but the roads were wet (it had been pouring!!) we jus slid off the road and onto a ditch..We lost a good two minutes there and that easily cost us third place overall. Although we won our class, it would have been better to place along with the high powered B16A honda's.

Apart from us Dinesh J and Rizvi were battling it out for 1st and 2nd in the Honda SIR's. Positions were swapped on various stages making way for an exiciting last lap. In the end Dinesh managed to win with a close 28 seond lead overall. Rallies are super fun and super stressful, especially the night stages and I guess especially in a place like Sri Lanka.

I recall one stretch we were hammering away and a sickly looking dog was just standing in the middle of the road, inspite of all the racket we created with the straight thru exhaust and the works the bugger refused to budge. Sajad steered just in time to avoid the lil bugger, maybe he was suicidal??

Rarely a month goes by without someone in the Queens country getting caught with the pants down. It's happening at such alarming pace you wonder whether it's part of the job description! I am not talking about celebrtities or just anyone but high profile politicians who seem to be straying at a rate..

You would have thought after the infamous "Profumo" scandal they would at least be descreet, sign a pre-nup before getting into an affair? lol thats a bit far fetched, but I just cant believe they would be so careless as to leave room for the paparazzi to get hold of the mistress and yes the kiss and tell diaries and sometimes pics that prove it all. Mr Prescott seems to the be the latest victim. At 67 you would think the man would be better off doing a jellie than bonking a temptress but the diaries seem to prove the man's still got it..Maybe he is not 67? maybe he is from Pakistan? thats possible right? Maybe Viagra's that good?

Anyways - You have to give it to the folks at News of the world, like it or not everyone looks forward to the weekend rag to see who's exposed this week, some of course might be opening the rag sheet after a few prayers hoping their own skeletons are not exposed.

Remember the fake sheik sting on Sven? that was brilliant but badly timed, just before the worldcup you dont wan't to upset the team and or the manager which is neerly what they ended up doing. After the death of the princess Di this was probably the only time there was so much public backlash against the weekend rags..I guess its human nature also, people love a scandal.