Let me paint you a picture...

When I think back on my time in Sri Lanka, the image that first comes to mind is the one to the right: ->

Not the tea plantations, the haunting exterior of the Hill Club, nor lilies at the Temple of the Tooth. Not the top of Granny's head as she knelt in the dirt to bless me, nor the checkerboard tiles and creaky old bar at the Galle Face, not the perfect blue bay at Unawatuna....but the table out the front of Suite Lanka, in sunset, looking out over Hikkaduwa beach.

Its funny what sticks with me after a holiday. Often the things I remember most clearly are not the ones I thought I would while I was experiencing them. The other parts of this holiday that touched my heart do come to mind, but always after this picture above. Maybe it's because we spent longer here than anywhere else? Or maybe it's because this image sums up the way I felt in Sri Lanka - chilled out, with my family, wrapped in God's warm blanket of sky and with the Earth's great bounties at my fingertips for the plucking.



Suite Lanka, like most of the accommodation in the Hikkaduwa Strip, is a guest house rather than a hotel. Eight rooms only, and we had two of them with a connecting lounge. No TV, no phone, no neon lights, no music through central speakers, and set just out of the main strip (which is full of backpackers, package tourists and surfers. Not that I have anything against them - I have been both of the former, and my husband is still the latter - I just want some peace and quiet in this time of my life) And yet, just a 150 rupee tuk tuk ride to the heaving centre.

We stayed in Hikkaduwa because of Hambone and his love of surfing - there is a nice little reef break a 500m stroll down the beach. The rest of the beach also has surf - too much for a three-year-old Goldilocks, but fine for a seven-year-old "Lion" who likes to play dumping games with Daddy. In front of Suite Lanka the sand stretches for at least 100m to the sea, even at high tide. The rim at the Guest-house edge is lined with flowering sand weeds and watercress-like vines that wandering calves nibble at at dawn and dusk. Skinny fishermen come also at this time in dozens and heave in nets. It's a half-hour task, and no matter how many times I had seen it, I would go every time to photograph them before the fiery sky and check their flapping catch.

There is a more sheltered area just past the reef break in a little enclave in front of the Coral Sands Hotel. We spent a beautiful day there, bobbing between the glass-bottom boats and swimming between the tropical fish in waist-deep water. And if you like being in the thick of it, I would recommend the coral sands - it's basic - like a roadside motor inn, but has a nice pool and a lovely beachside bar where we had lunch.

Between the centre of Hikkaduwa and the 3km or so to Suite Lanka are a miriad of other guest-houses and eateries. Close to the Coral Sands, we ate a simple lunch at "JLH" - Devilled prawns (a popular local dish) and sauteed greens were superb, but the lunch was overshadowed by the view - waves crashing two meters from your feet, then ocean forever. Pandanus trees growing up through the decking and shading our frosty Lion lagers from the midday sun. Crabs snapping in tanks behind, fighting the others to the death in what seemed to me a futile exercise - they were all destined for the pot, whoever was the alpha male. There was another restaurant nextdoor which also gets the thumbs up from our driver, and the receptionist at Suite Lanka (Refresh).

One day we finally agreed to take the backwater tour that the waiter had been telling us to take. A tuktuk transports you to the mangroves that run behind, and then we sat on planks across a dug-out catamaran, and set off into the soft green water to explore the other side of Hikkaduwa. Two men paddled the boat past crumbling luxury weekenders and into deeper forest.

Water monitors sprawled lazily on tree branches and fell off in surprise when we splashed them. Mongooses spied and darted in the thick trees, and soon the trees thinned to show us a stairway. A monk in orange robes greeted us and led us up to the top, where we found the most amazing temple. We walked barefoot through the rooms of rainbow-coloured sculptures depicting the lessons to be learned in life, many more gruesome than one would expect considering the inner calm one hopes to achieve on the path to enlightenment. And upon exit we were accosted by happy children, dancing around Goldilocks, who as you can imagine is quite popular in Sri Lanka with his golden curls, and then me, with chants of "Take my photo! Take my photo!"

The area is beautiful in an entirely different way from the hills. It is flat. So flat, in fact that when the 2004 Tsunami hit, the water traveled more than 1.5km inland. You can still see remnants of its destruction. Whole villages lie vacant, particularly a little further up the coast around Kahawa, the original living inhabitants unwilling to return to the memories, and new folk unwilling to settle with the ghosts. Amazingly, there is a stronger colonial architectural presence in the area than around Colombo, and I couldn't help but wondering how much a rambling old Victorian mansion might cost to buy.

But that was before I saw Unawatuna.... but more on that in a later post...

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Hikkaduwa is about a two-hour drive from Colombo, and an easy one at that. On the way back to Colombo, we stopped at Club Villa in Bentota for lunch, and it is well worth the stop. Easy day trips in the area include Bentota, Galle, Unawatuna, and of course the backwater, which is smaller than the Kerala backwaters, but is just as good due to the birds and wildlife, and that temple. We ate at many restaurants in the strip, and all were safe. Suite Lanka gets my thumbs up, particularly for families - friendly service, large, clean rooms, great food, and the extras were surprisingly cheap. The kids loved the swing-chairs on the beach-front, and we enjoyed the extra relaxing G&T time they provided! We paid 259 Euros per night for the three rooms combined and were happy with the value. Simple rooms were much cheaper.

Party pies for adults

I love cooking for parties. It is the kind of food I really excel at - tit-bits that can combine my love of fusion food, and my desire to cheat at every corner. I make one hell of a Peking duck pancake, and my canapes (I reserve that title for anything on a biscuit or piece of Melba toast) are inventive and delicious. But (beside it not falling into the category of fusion food), this is my new favourite cheat. I served them at my husband's birthday party last week, and they disappeared before the steam ceased rising off them. 

Ingredients:

• One 200g packet of smoked salmon - preferably in steak form
• 1 packet of puff pastry squares
• half a tub of double cream
• sprinkling of chopped chives
• about 1- 2 tbsp seeded mustard
• salt and pepper

Instructions:

1. Preheat oven to 220ºC, then halve the cream into two bowls - put chives and salt and pepper in one, and mustard and salt and pepper in the other. Combine each separately and put the mustard one aside - that is your dipping sauce.
2. Cover a flat oven tray with greaseproof paper and cut each of the pastry squares in half to form a rectangle. Cut the salmon into 20 portions, and place at the end of each rectangle. Place a pea-sized dollop of cream and chive mix on each, then roll like a sausage-roll.
3. Cook for about 10 minutes or until puffy and golden brown. Serve hot with the dipping sauce.

Notes:
Would also work well with fresh salmon, but will have a milder flavour, and you might want to drop the temperature to 200 and cook for 20 minutes if you don't like your salmon red-pink in the middle (I do!) Don't forget to ask the fishmonger to remove the back bones with tweezers so you can cut the steak easier.

Taste Of Dubai

After waiting in excited anticipation for Taste of Dubai for weeks, I woke up this morning with a major sinus block. Overnight, my olfactory system had turned into what felt like a brick - yes, a big hard, rectangular brick. My ears were bubbling, my eyes watering, and all I could smell was the charming aroma of my own infection. More than half of what we "taste" is actually "smell", and my morning coffee was just bitter mud without the toasty nutty aroma. My omelet was just an exceptionally tender Wettex, and by the time I got to lunch, I was so completely full of snot that all I could ingest were peppermints and Ginger ale. Alack, alas, woe is me! Taste of Dubai would be like a sandwich made of sand.

Added to that, Hambone, my partner in culinary crime had to pull an all-nighter at the office. I snarled and whined like the unsympathetic wench I am, telling him he was destroying my evening, but he failed to provide any heartfelt apology, or change his plans for the evening. Then the weather changed, and the glorious spring day shamalled itself into an icy sandstorm, and so at 6:45 I found myself be-snotted, cold and alone in my soundless bubble, wondering why I had bothered coming at all.



My friend Sally works for MMI, and she had kindly booked me into the 7pm session of "who's wine is it anyway" at the beverage theatre, and so at least I had some direction to start my night. The beverage theatre is a small marquee sealed blissfully from the clamour and wind of outside, complete with fake turf and chandeliers. For a moment I felt like I was back in the Bird Cage in the Moet tent at the Melbourne Cup. But no champagne today - three glasses oddly positioned on a tasting mat set for four - two white and one red. The room filled quickly, and a presenter welcomed us with happy quips and a casual manner. The three other blokes standing near the bar looking like winemakers in their jeans and buttoned shirts were actually the MMI wine experts, and they would be playing a little game with us today. Each would, in turn, give us a speel on the wine we were tasting, and we would have to guess which tale was truth.

So as the ex-Aussie in the panel started to describe the first wine as a NZ Sauvignon blanc, I swirled it expertly like the pro I am, and delicately stuck my nose in the glass. I smelled.....wine. Great. For the first time that night I was happy I had no friends around me, because as a graduate in four years in wine marketing at university of Adelaide, they might have expected me to know what the wine was. Oh well.... Not NZ Sauvignon blanc, anyway. That wine has piercing acidity, and a distinct grassy-gooseberry taste that even my sick little system would have been able to taste. Second guy said "Pouilly Fume", a Loire sauvignon blanc that usually has a little oak. Possibly.... Third guy said "Grüner Veltliner", an Austrian grape that I drink quite frequently, with a Pinot grigio-like flavor profile and a gorgeous, slightly oily texture. And the texture of this wine was soft - softer than I would expect for a Sauvignon Blanc, even if it is Pouilly Fume. I couldn't taste anything, so that's what I picked. Wrong. French Sauvignon Blanc. Damn.

The nose of wine two actually did reveal something - maybe a little pear-like, spicy, fragrant. First impression said Alsatian varietal. The choices I got were: One - Loire Chenin - absolutely not. It was too rich and the wrong texture. Choice two - Aussie unwooded Chardonnay... Possibly - the texture was right, and it had the alcoholic warmth I would expect of a new-world wine, and pears are a chardonnay-typical flavor... But that spiciness was out of place. Then number three - South African Chenin Blanc. Well, in all my tasting experience I think I have only had one South African Chenin, and it was so awful, I had wiped the tragic memory away to spare myself the future pain, and yet I think I actually enjoyed this particular wine in front of me. Anyway, new-world Chenins often have a little residual sugar, and the tip of my tongue could find none there. Process of elimination - Aussie Chardy.... Wrong! South African Chenin. At 39 dirhams, I might give that a go when I can taste again.

Wine three was red, with light tannins and a little earth. Again, my nose eliminated all fruit aromas, but I could tell the wine was young, light, a little meaty, and lacking in any complexity great enough to wade deep into my sinus. Ok - Choice one - Swiss Pinot Noir. What? Do the Swiss make enough Pinot to export to Dubai? With the pitifully small range of wines we are offered here, would MMI fill a slot with something so obscure? No... Loire Cab Franc maybe? Possibly - the body is right, but the earthiness us wrong.... Third choice? Beaujolais - Bingo! And finally I was right. I had to stop myself doing a little Oprah Winfrey dance and chanting "Go Sarah! Go Sarah!"

Abysmal. One out of three. How have I dropped so far?

Luckily, I found non-drinking friends outside. They didn't care that I had lost my wine palate, they didn't even ask. We just threw ourselves into the fray to enjoy the more solid offerings.

They sympathized with my impaired taste-status, and deftly steered me towards PF Chang's Dynamite Prawns. They effectively blew the top off my head, releasing all blocked fluids, so after I was able to enjoy other things like Rivington Grill's crispy-battered fish, and carluccio's cappuccino truffles. Everyone was talking about the beef cheeks at the Wharf, but I was all full up at this stage and after a lovely hot, creamy and spicy chai latte, made my excuses and left.

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Taste of Dubai is still on for two days - and if you like your food, you really should go. A Standard ticket costs 75 AED, but you will have to buy your food and drink when you get inside (take water - at 20 AED a pop, that's outrageous) Most dishes range between 15 and 30 AED, and I believe are fairly good value. "Who's Wine is it Anyway" was only 10AED. You can buy a VIP ticket instead for 200 AED, and that will give you food and drink vouchers. Tickets at the gate.

Besides the Beverage Theatre you will find the the Philips Chefs Theatre, the Miele Cookery School, and the Piper Unwind Lounge. There is also a stage, which at the time I went was the source of some Elton John covers, which were probably OK, but to be honest - Taste of Dubai, I'm talking to you - Think about what people want when they are sitting down with friends and talking about food - Background Music please! Acoustic sessions, wandering minstrels, bossa nova - anything but "Candle in the Wind" at 1000 decibels. The rest of the Amphitheatre is laid with mini-marquees from all the best restaurants and food brands in town - you can even meet many of the chefs (e.g. Gary Rhodes, Suzanne Husseini) at their respective tents.

Opening Hours: Friday and Saturday 12pm noon – midnight (food & drink served until 11.30pm)
Location: The Amphitheatre, Media City. Click here for more information

PS. Taste Of Dubai provided me and several other bloggers with free tickets. If I had paid for it, I would have said the same.

Mother Mary

So first we arrived in "Little England", and then went to a big temple.... Step three of our journey was to see the real Sri Lanka. As I have mentioned, we have a Sri Lankan Maid-slash-nanny-slash-cook-slash-counselor working with our family. When she invited us to see her home town, we jumped at the prospect.

Mary is Tamil Sri Lankan, was born in the Badulla area, where her ancestors were brought from Tamil Nadu in India about two centuries ago to work the tea plantations. She is not a Tamil from the Jaffna province, who have been on the north-western tip in a majority for thousands of years, and from where the LTTE (Tamil Tigers) sprang. Her ancestors were willing to do the work that the local Sinhalese population refused to do, and to this day, still refuse. The Sinhalese will manage the tea plantations, wait the tables, drive the taxis, tend the sick, but they will never, never pick the tea.



When she was seven, Mary was sent out into service to work as a helper to a nanny for a Colombo family, and she grew up in that house. When she was in her early twenties, she took a post in Dubai. She married soon after, to another Tamil based in Dubai, and went back to Sri Lanka to have her daughter at around 30. She stayed with her for three months, then returned to Dubai to continue work. Her mother raised her daughter in the very rustic village of Spring Valley, for which you might find signposts, but you will never see marked on a map. Mary cannot drive a car, read or write, and has never learned any form of mathematics past addition or subtraction. She does not have a bank account. She has worked 6 or 7 days a week, 12 to 14 hours a day, most of her life. She has had good Madams and bad ones. Apparently I am one of the good ones.



Mary is fairly well paid as a house-maid, and earns around $600 a month. Her husband earns less as an assistant manager at a maintenance firm. When she had been with us for two years, she returned to Sri Lanka to buy a house for her mother to live in. It cost 22 Lakh - about $20,000, and a loan was taken out. I can only imagine the interest she is paying, and hope to God she is not being too severely ripped off, and knowing her relationship with God (she is a devout christian), I suppose it is possible she might be safe.

Mary and her husband must be paying at least $120 a month off on the loan. They probably lose 5% of their income in exchange rates and transfer fees. They support Mary's Mother, Mary's husband's sister, Marys epileptic brother, Marys daughter, Mary's brother's widow and to some degree, her son, his wife and his baby, They also send money bi-monthly to Marys widowed sister in India. So doing some math, I end up with everyone living on about $4 a day. (including Mary and her husband. He gets accommodation provided but no meals etc. Mary gets accommodation and all her daily needs covered, but still has to pay for her phone, clothes and outings)

So I looked on a map, and it said we had to drive 58km to find out what you get for $4 a day. Do I need to tell you it took longer than expected to get there? There had been very heavy rain (despite it being the dry season) and as the area is almost entirely made up of soft red-soiled hills, they have collapsed in piles over the roads and peoples' dwellings. The road is pocked like a dinosaur-egg-carton, and I threw my shoulder out twice just by trying to remain upright. It looks like there's been a war. We had to divert through Bandarawela, and finally made it in just over three hours.

Standing by the side of the road when we arrived at the meeting point, were 9 Sri Lankans in their Sunday dress, and smiles painted on their faces as large as I can imagine they ever get. They joined the 5 of us in a 9-person minivan, and we bumped our way through Badulla to Mary's house, which lies towards the edge of the town, halfway up a hill in a dirt-road area overlooking plains of vegetables and rice.

The thing that got me was that Mary is not poor. In Sri Lanka, she is particularly middle-class, especially for a Tamil. Her house is much nicer than I expected, and apart from the sparse excuses for kitchen and bathroom, I could have easily lived there - in fact, when I was 20, I'm sure the state of the house I was living in was very much worse (especially after a drunken flatmate burned down the front bedroom).

In my terrible ignorance, I had expected her to own a bedraggled and moist three-room lean-to in between a rice paddy and a railway line. I had wanted my spoiled and technology bound children to see other children who played with sticks. I wanted them to hurt, dammit. I wanted them to feel sympathy, stop demanding material items, treat Mary with respect.

Of course, I don't really feel like that - not 100% anyway. I'm glad that Mary is doing well, and that her family is benefiting. But the lesson I was trying to give my children was lost. While they sat on the chairs that are usually covered in plastic and happily ate packet chicken noodle soup out of Mary's best chipped porcelain, over a table covered in a cloth gifted to Mary from friends of ours last year in France, while my husband and I ate the wonderful food Mary had prepared with 9 on-lookers who refused to eat, I was the one that got the lesson.

In Sri Lanka, officially, 22% of the people live under the poverty line. But the poverty line is $2 a day. Mary and her husband have pulled several people over that line, but what do you get for an extra $2 a day? You get to live. You get to eat. You get to send one of your children to school. You get running water. You get a concrete floor instead of dirt, and you might even get a mat to put on it. You get to live in hope that your children will end up better than you do.

And so, that is why, at the end of our visit, Mary's 85 year old mother bent down and held my dusty feet in blessing. But was she blessing me because we increased Mary's wage and don't beat her (more blogging on maids in Dubai to come, I think), or was she blessing me for my future, hoping that I would one day step out from under my cloak of capitalistic greed and become as strong as her? I suspect it was the former, but if she had ever been given the chance to go to school, it may have been more propitious to offer the latter.

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The Road from Nuwara Eliya to Badulla is being re-laid, and is expected to be completed by mid-2012, but I doubt this is going to happen. There is an incredible temple to Sita nestled in the jungle just out of Nuwara Eliya that is well worth a stop - if for the recounting of the tale alone, and for some monkey spotting. This is followed by the botanical gardens, which I have heard are overpriced, but I must say, plenty of the information I found about Sri Lanka I have also found to be incorrect - I think things are improving exponentially, and much of what is on the internet is old news. There is a marked difference in the countriside on this side of Nuwara Eliya, it is less lush, not as prolifically cultivated, has a higher population density, and is poorer.

Bandarawela is a sweet little town with a gorgeous 2* inn that even for me (a 5* traveller) looked appealing. There is also a Geoffrey Bawa designed chapel in the town. Badulla itself is not a jewel of the area, but is worth a visit for those on a Buddhism trail for the ancient Muthiyangana temple. There is also a stunning bridge, and nature lovers would enjoy treking to the Namunukula Mountains, and around Dunhinda Falls. If you like quaint townships, pop down to Haputele, where you are also on the edge of Haputele Gap, and speaking of gaps, Ella's Gap is supposed to be beautiful too.

"The way is not in the sky. The way is in the heart."

While the rest of the world continued to throw the end of all hissy-fits, I had a holiday.

You may have already read a little about me and MY Sri Lanka (yes, that's right, I own it now), but now comes the interesting bit. When we decided to go to there, it was mainly because we have a Sri Lankan Maid, and so we believed we had a built-in tour guide. We decided to book in Nuwara Eliya, because this would allow us the benefit of visiting the centre of Buddhism in Sri Lanka, Kandy, and Mary's home town, Spring Valley, near Badulla.

We came to Nuwara Eliya via the Kandy rd, and I wasn't the only one looking whistfully out the car window, wishing that we had stayed there when we passed (after a 2:30am start, a 4-hour flight, obligatory airport battles and another 4 hours in the car with cranky leprichauns). But I underestimated what was still coming. Although already in high hills, we continued to climb towards the clouds, and they hid the eventuality of our journey - we knew we needed to get to the top, but where exactly was it?

Nuwara Eliya is about 200km from Colombo. That might sound an easy couple of hours, but Sri lankan roads are almost entirely just one lane each way, potholed, unsignposted, and with a population of 22 million in an island only just over 430km long, you can imagine how busy they are. Driving in Sri Lanka is like driving in India, and I can only recommend getting someone else to do it for you.

The scenery is beyond spectacular. About an hour out of Nuwara Eliya, the tea plantations start, and they coat the hillsides like unending topiary gardens. Every square inch is cultivated, and occasionally we also passed vegetable or rice plots (more vegetables and less rice the higher we climbed), terraced into the hillsides and giving the whole place an utterly fairytale appearance.

Graceful women with sacks strapped to their backs by headbands stooped over the bushes just like in the Dilmah ad. Huts in bright colours and a thin coating of black aspergillis appear, clumped in tiny villages every kilometer or so. They nestle around the tea factories, which themselves are identical elegant siblings. children rush out and wave spring onions or agapanthas at us, hoping for a quick sale, and despite the cold (about 16 C), everybody is barefoot.

We eventually arrived at Nuwara Eliya itself - a colourful village of tudor and cape-cod style housing resting in time around a lake and a shaggy racecourse. Many come here for golf, and the greens are velveteen masterpieces - I imagine they have been trimmed with the aid of a magnifying glass and nail clippers. You can read more about the unusual lodging we chose here, and you can see more of my photos of the tea plantations here.

The first day out was back to Kandy. When I had booked the journey, I assumed it was an easy day-trip, and it is, provided you don't have young, spoiled children. Fortunately by the end I was chanelling my inner Buddha, and was able to remain calm in a usually mind-scraping situation. The driver told us it was an hour and a half, but it was over two each way, and so with a 10am start, it left little time in between lunch and the return to enjoy Kandy itself. 

The greatest attraction in Kandy is the massive Temple of the Tooth, which is a UNESCO World Heritage site, and said to hold the Buddha's tooth - the only surviving relic from his cremation. I had read that 1 - it was expensive, and 2 - it was crowded, but I found both to be wrong. We were charged 2000 Rupees as a family (plus a token 100 for the holding of our shoes), and this allowed the four of us and our guide (Hasantha, our driver) to enter, and we were also given a mini CD to play later. That's about $20 all up. We arrived at midday and did not queue, nor did we get shunted around like canned sardines. 

The temple is made up of various buildings, ranging from origins as far back as the thirteenth century, and up to 1998, when the Mahawahalkada was bombed and needed to be replaced. Stepping through the entrance brings one into a haven from the clamour and smells of the busy streets on the exterior, and into an arcade with pic-nic lawns and trees with gnarled roots that could be sculptures. They lead to the Mahawahalkada, and walls and stairs with stunning relief sculpture. As you tiptoe in stocking-feet through to the main complex, you pass baskets of lilies and offering bouquets, which you can buy and present in the temple as your knowledge that life is a beautiful bloom that will eventually wither and die.

The roof is painted in more subtle and earthy tones than many of the Hindu and Buddhist temples I have seen, and I wonder if it has faded over time, or is a reflection of the dyes available when it was first worked on. Further inside are more paintings, carvings in wood, stone and ivory, brass antiques, and other treasures. Of course, we cannot see the tooth, which is protected pass-the-parcel style in 7 golden caskets, but the hall where it lies, and the people who manage to lose themselves in prayer despite the clunky tourists taking photos of them are attraction enough alone for me. I'm not going to take you all the way through, but lets say that your $20 family pass gets you a good hour or two of beauty to appreciate, as the entire complex is available to view.

Outside we found monkeys shagging on the fence railings, an elephant being washed in the moat, and people lighting candles and incense - another way of honouring the cycle of life. The grounds are enormous, and Hasantha took us down the back exit, where we found a market of flowers - purple lillies, orange marigolds and white jasmine, red and green tuk-tuks and Sri Lankan flags colouring the dirt road like a Gauguin painting. Don't miss that - it's free!

We finished with a lunch overlooking the temple from a nearby hill (another sterling recommendation from Hasantha) for which I have promptly forgotten the name - you will just have to book with him and find out for yourself.

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One of his students asked Buddha, "Are you the messiah?"
"No", answered Buddha.
"Then are you a healer?"
"No", Buddha replied.
"Then are you a teacher?" the student persisted.
"No, I am not a teacher."
"Then what are you?" asked the student, exasperated.
"I am awake", Buddha replied.  

You can read more about my own awakening and Hindu blessing in my next post.

This post has been linked up to Budget Travellers Sandbox, who run Travel Photo Thursday - and where you will see a gallery of likewise peaceful photos Of Wat Pa Po, Chang Mai

Is this the dawning of the Age of Aquarius?

Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, Bahrain, Yemen, Algeria, Morocco, to some degree Syria, and everybody is wondering about Saudi Arabia.

Ever feel there is something pretty big going on?

When I was growing up, one of my mum's best friends had a son called Justin, and he's always thought outside the very conservative little box we live in. I love Justin, and miss him - he's on the other side of the world, and even when I am back in Australia, sometimes I feel like he's on another planet. One of Justin's greatest talents is sharing a thoughtful and spiritual conversation after hand-crafted beer and quite a lot of good red wine. He's a very intelligent bloke, and I often marvel at all the miscellany he stores in his wonderful brain. One day about 100 years ago, we started talking about a musical I had just seen (Hair) and as usual we found our tangent. This time it was "The Age of Aquarius".

Up until Justin started talking about it, I just thought it was some hippie song lyrics, something to do with the liquid patterns of tie-dye, or the fluid life the musical prescribed, or even just something invented while the composer was on acid. It's nothing of the kind.



We all know that Aquarius is a division of the Zodiac, and we have 12 per year. Historically, the sign of the zodiac we would currently be in would be dictated by which star constellation the Sun happens to be passing through (there are actually 13, and the dates are not what we in the west currently match with each astrological sign, but that's not my story here). But that night, Justin and I were not discussing the year, but the astrological age - dictated by where the Earth's northern zenith points.

These different ages bring with them forces that are accepted by many to be world-changing. I suppose it's much like personal star signs - e.g. if you are a Taurus (like me), you are likely to be stubborn, an appreciator of beauty, and a little over-indulgent - particularly when it comes to food. Aquarius is the idealist, the early adopter, loving, motivating and and truth seeking, but also egotistical, bitter and brash.

Historically, earth-changing events have been blamed on the age they occurred in. Leo, the golden sign (and the one often associated with the sun) coincided with global warming and the end of the ice age. Cancer, a motherly water sign, caused the biblical flood and washed the earth clean so it could nurture a new beginning. Gemini, the ruler of words and speech, came with the introduction of modern script. Taurus, the appreciator of beauty, was at the Earth's northern Zenith when the pyramids were raised and jewelery became more aesthetic - not just a token like a boar-tooth. Aries is thanked for the Iron-Age, and the raising of the first armies of significant power. Pisces is the sign of the zodiac that dreams, is easily swayed, confused, intuitive, secretive and vague. The age has been blamed for the rise of so many different religions, and a blind lust for spirituality, or at least a position in a dream-like world, e.g. heaven.

Now it all gets very complicated and contentious, so I'm not going to tell you if we are in the age of Aquarius or still in Pisces. The age of Aquarius could have started as early as about 1780, or possibly won't start until 2600. What is generally accepted is that each age is approximately 2150 years in length, there is an overlap that can last between 150 and 600-odd years, and whenever or wherever it is, we are experiencing Aquarius's forces of influence right now. We'll let the die-hard astrologers fight over the rest - I'm going to tell you what the Age of Aquarius is supposed to mean for the planet, and you can make up your own mind as to whether it has arrived or not.

So let's take an excerpt from wikipedia:

"Aquarius traditionally "rules" electricity, computers, flight, democracy, freedom, humanitarianism, idealists, modernization, astrology, nervous disorders, rebels and rebellion."

Sound familiar?

So with all the recent news, I did a little hop around Wikipedia, and ended up in all kinds of exciting places, like "Maya 2012", "Rosicrucianism" (whoo-ee there's a da Vinci Code book there!), "New Gallilee", "Anti Christ", "Apocolypse", "Sixth Epoch", "Root Races" (suggesting Tasmanians are half-animal and Semitic people are degenerate in spirituality, the Sixth Root Race will be led by a re-incarnation of Julius Caesar, and the Seventh Root Race will live on Mercury - it's quite a funny read). I also googled "Age of Aquarius", and came up with some pages like this one along with many others written by people who obviously need to recheck the dosage on their medication. "Nostradamus" also had some light to shed - he believed that the Age of Aquarius would herald the upholding of truth in ways never seen before. Unfortunately he also predicted World War 3 in 2012. After all of that I started to feel like the world was ending, but it was OK because I would probably transcend into another dimension before it was all too late....

What I have arrived at is that there are many cultures (and many crazies) who believe that the world goes through stages that are actually (derr) global, and that there are also many cultures that have predicted that the area around the Middle East will be where it all starts to happen. And what will happen will be the beginning of the end of the world. However, "the end of the world" is not Armageddon with flames and dragons and Arnold Schwarzenegger. It is the end of this way of life, and a transcending into another. And before you start thinking that I'm talking about souls floating out of bodies and living in the clouds with virgins, stop and think about how far Human Beings have come. We just don't think like we used to. If you tried to put twenty-first century thought into an 18th century skull, it would probably explode.

And that brings us back to the Middle east and North African region, and the people who are rising up and shouting:

"I am better than this!"

Now going back to the Wikipedia quote referring to the Age of Aquarius:
"electricity, computers, flight, democracy, freedom, humanitarianism, idealists, modernization, astrology, nervous disorders, rebels and rebellion."

For me, this is a spiritual moment, an incredible moment in history, and I am beginning to think there is a great connecting power at work. It's not just one or two people, but thousands, millions even, all thinking exactly the same thought and deciding at exactly the same moment that it's time they brought change.

And what do they want? "democracy, freedom, humanitarianism, and modernization"

And how are the "idealists" achieving their ideals? Through "rebellion."

And in combination with their physical presence, what medium are they using to communicate their message - not just to those who can and will join the fight, but to those who can't or won't? Social Media, a product of "electricity and computers"

"Flight" in my opinion refers to globalization. Flight has made us closer neighbours - and brought countries and people together physically, and therefore allowed travelers to influence and be influenced by the thoughts of locals in a much greater proportion. This in combination with technology and global media has made people on the ground realize that there are other people in the world who are living the way they should also be living, and it makes them fight harder.

And the "nervous disorders"? Well that's just me having my little freak-out over the end of the world.

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I don't profess to be an astrologer - I know very little about the zodiac, except it is the cause of me being slightly overweight. This is just a gathering of information found from fairly good sources on the internet. I'd be very interested to find out what other cultures predict for the future - please let me know if you can shed some starry light.

The Bleak House

Can you guess where I am? I am standing in the shadow of a dark and imposing bluestone mansion, at least I would be in shadow if there were any sun. Mist creeps around me, leaving moisture on every surface, too small to see, but easy enough to feel. The mansion and the inclining garden behind it are not so lucky, the cloud fully envelops them from time to time, cutting off trees and parts of the rooftops, and for all I know, transporting them to another dimension or era.

My sons are untouched by the sinister feel of the place, and while they stamp their be-wellied feet in soggy turf, I shiver. Is it because this is the coldest I have been since I moved to Dubai? Or is it because I feel like I am in an episode of Midsummer Murders or within the pages of The Bleak House?

So take a guess. Highlands of Scotland? Dartmoor among the Baskervilles? The barren Normandy coast? Wrong.



I am 7 degrees north of the equator, at the Hill Club, on the outskirts of Nuwara Eliya (pronounced newerellia). Altitude is around 2000m, mean daily temperature in February is 15C, and despite the fact that it's the dry season, the township sees less than 6 hours of sunlight per day. So while its name translates as "city of light", even the locals call it "little England"

In 1815, the British were handed the colonial mantle of Sri Lanka (or Ceylon, as it was then) by the Dutch, who had in turn taken it over from the Portuguese. But the British were the first to delve deeper in the the mountainous central region, then named Kandy after it's capital city. They planted coffee and failed, then tea to great success, and left their footprint everywhere, not least at the hotel where we have taken up residence for three days.

If you go onto Trip Advisor and read the reviews for the Hill Club, you will not stay there. "Dirty", "Stuffy", "Unkempt", "Outdated colonial bigotry" are some of the comments that come up. And, it's true. The Hill Club is a pompous, old-monied, balding man in tweed with velour elbow patches and gravy dribbled on his jodhpurs. And....

Booking was a disaster - we booked two rooms months ago on otel.com, and only days ago, discovered that everyone had ignored my four requests for adjoining rooms "because of our young children", and suddenly we found that we could not stay there because children under 5 were not allowed in the club. After about 15 emails and two international phone calls, they finally managed to fit us in a Family suite in the "Chalet". We had also booked a room for our Sri Lankan Nanny (who joined us from Dubai), and were told at the last minute that she could not stay at the club because she was Sri Lankan (???!!!) And....

The rooms are cold, and only supplied with a one-bar heater. The carpet is worn and even ripped in places. They only supply our room with three towels despite the fact that obviously we are a family of four, in a four-bed room. Because of our three year old son, we are banned from dining in the club, instead having to take our meals in the Chalet. The service is slow beyond compare.

But....

Our booking company Red Dot Tours, stepped in just before we arrived and handled everything, putting otel.com and the Hill Club management to shame, even though I had stupidly booked through another company and they made no commission off our stay there.

The Hill Club apologize obsequiously (quite fun to watch, really) for the inability to house Mary, and quickly arrange a room for her at an almost sickly sweet B and B called Glendower, just around the corner.

The rooms are enormous, the Chalet charming, and there is a dining room with a sofa and TV and over 1000 free DVDs to choose from. Given that it is a family area, noise and mess flourish. Two butlers are to serve just our family for the duration, bringing us Tanquerays at sundown, silver-serving us dinner on the crispest of white linen, gently warming our marmalade for breakfast, and even putting velour-covered hot water bottles in our beds as we finish our dessert. How could you NOT like a hot water bottle?

The gardens are imaculate. Hedgerows, fucias, velvet lawns, pristine vegetable gardens, winding flagstone paths, enchantingly crumbing tennis courts, ancient conifers, smiling security guards with feathers in their caps, picket fencelines...And everywhere secret nooks with table and chair, perfectly positioned to view the garden and the pages of a great novel.

And the Clubhouse... The outside is all blue-stone and griffin crests, and the inside is a shrine to fading colonialism. The telephones still have dials on them, mahogany and teak abounds, de-bodied elk and boar stare menacingly down through glass eyes. First a rest in the reading room to eat warmed cashew nuts and sip Kir while thumbing the pages of back issues of the New Yorker. Next, the serpentine bar for a Bloody Mary - and although I cannot imagine the likes of Somerset Maughn slumped over it dreaming of something epically prosetic, I do see the need to compose something in the stuffy grandeur of this room. Maybe a poem? Or at least a condescending letter to imaginary children in a hoity toity boarding school back in the old country (Or maybe a blog post...) After, a Cognac in the Billiard room, where it is a struggle to reach half the shots due to the gargantuan table, and the staff stand by to compliment your shots and give the occasional golf-clap.

I find the need to start speaking with a lisp on my "th" sounds and a plum in my mouth, and the persona arriving upon me also demands a horseriding gait and a problem with gin and tonics. We snigger at the place, but secretly enjoy the old-school experience. We roll our eyes at the poor service, but marvel at the effort. We stumble back down the gently sloping lawn to the Chalet to relieve Mary of her babysitting duty and cuddle up with the kids in bunk beds with "hot botties" and then retiring to our own bed after sleep has taken them, dream that we are part of the British East India Company, pioneers in this mysterious outpost, and in on one of the greatest secrets in the world.

-----------------------------

My advice for anyone booking in Sri Lanka, use a booking company. It is not Europe, or even Thailand. You will need a driver to navigate the treacherous and unsignposted roads, and someone who speaks the language to sort out the inevitable issues. Tourism is only just restarting after years of war and a Tsunami, and you will not find many large hotel chains out of Colombo, but instead guesthouses and B & Bs and boutique hotels. They take weeks to respond to emails, if at all, and if in fact they even have an email address. The images on the websites are often misleading, and you may come across hidden rules such as we did at the Hill Club (which is in fact a "club" and not a hotel). Instead, call a booking agency, and double-check their prices with hotel booking engines, and bargain if they try to overcharge you. I would recommend Red Dot Tours to anybody (Jonah was my email contact, and Hasantha was our driver).

There are other placed to stay in the Nuwara Eliya area if "old-and-crusty" is not your cup of ceylon-tea (personally I kind of like it). We had a lovely dinner at the Grand Hotel, and it is a shinier and less squeaky wheel than the Hill Club. We have been told the Tea Factory is the best in the area, but is quite some distance out of town. Glendower was also very sweet, and had the most incredible mahogany bar I would have liked to warm my throat in if there had been time (although Mary's room did smell a bit damp and musty). 

click on the names above to link to the pages.

I remember yesterday...

Well, I'm home.

I'm sitting in my back yard in that surreal passage of time where holiday has not been over for long enough to transport your astral body back to ground zero. But very quickly, vacation-mode is slipping away, in converse proportion to the headache creeping in. An early start (5am), a flight with children (particularly the three year old, who's visa page nearly got torn out by an irate mother who wanted him deported - for a moment anyway), an horrendous long-weekend immigration queue that developed Indian queue proportions at one stage (1 person deep but 50 wide), and battling with epic proportions of absurdly shaped luggage including the standard 10 bottle in 10 plastic bag duty free wine haul (obligatory in dubai) and a 7ft surfboard in an 8 ft bag, and then of course said three year old who refused to walk and yet squirmed like a chocolate covered 15kg mongoose while carried. Marhaba Waltons.

But this time yesterday...



I was sitting in Somerset Maugham's old chair at the Galle Face Hotel, sipping on a kir royale. The age-worn tessellated checkerboard tiles warmed by the fading Colombo sun, the antique teak furniture creaking with the tales of the colonial derrieres that had once held their place, waiters stiffly standing on the sidelines dressed like pursers on the QE2 maiden voyage, children blissfully quiet due to modern technology (iPad and iPhone) and icy Shirly Temples, the television out of place yet forgivable, for it showed recent cricket highlights interspersed with tourism shots of the tea plantations and southern beaches. A rare moment to talk with Husband and reflect on life, but all we could do was look at each other, smile in that gaga way, sigh, and then look back over the gently rolling surf.

Oh yes, it feels very different now. I suppose still have the option of a twilight dip, but without the formally attired waiter bringing me Campari, the humidity right on the edge of pleasant and really-must-get-in-the-water state, the tanned and non-child-encumbered bodies lying on banana lounges unwittingly about to be harassed by the noise and movement of my rowdy brood. (Forgive me - it's years of having people like them sneer at me on aircraft when I am obviously in need of assistance with my children that have turned me to the dark side.) It's just not the same.

Rooms at the Galle Face Hotel are about the size of a small tennis court. They are in almost original condition, including the bathrooms, but are clean and like many parts of Sri Lanka, make the guest imagine for a moment they are royalty in a bygone era. The floors are polished smooth by the wear of feet over the last century, a massive mahogany wardrobe looms over my suitcase full of dirty clothes, and almost begs to be stocked with taffeta ball gowns and and in the corner stands a dressing table that really requires a pearl-backed hairbrush, a powder puff of antique proportions, and a jewelery box full of marcasite and jet.

The Galle Face Hotel is the old English Baron of Colombo. It was built in 1864, and sits at the end of the Galle Face Green, a five hectare expanse of lawn and dirt that is supposed to contain lawn on the edge of the Indian ocean. In the evening, it comes alive with market stalls selling the most incredible looking food - pancakes with trapped whole prawns that are eaten head and all, enormous flaky paratha-style bread, whole wok-fried soft-shelled crabs, and nuclear-coloured candy corn for the kids - all items loaded with a non-westerner amount of chilli. Beside me as I walked, vendors chased me to touch Goldilock's platinum curls, and tried to sell me views at dancing monkeys or cobras, and blasted my ears with kiddy-techno from the ice-cream carts. Below me muslim girls frolicked in full garb in the waves, and boys looked on in awe. Above me sailed one thousand and one vibrant kites that can be bought for less than $4 a piece, and on the lawns, mats were laid with miscellaneous florescent coloured vibrating, flashing and squeaking Chinese crap that the children insisted we buy instead of the stunning kites.

Colombo was a one day visit at the end of a journey both physical and spiritual around Sri Lanka (I will blog more about it in coming days.) If we had stayed longer, I would have visited Pettah market, and travelled further south to the Mount Lavinia Hotel, but apart from that, there is little but the Galle Face to keep you there. I had hoped Colombo would be a rambling colonial relic like Hanoi or Phnom Penh, but years of civil war and other drains on city funds have meant that only a handful of the best buildings have survived as anything but a blackened mess. In fact, I considered that some of the streets of Colombo would be an appropriate set for movies such as Oliver Twist, or Les Miserables - they appear entirely untouched (except by the monsoon) since the exit of Colonial British power - in fact, probably since before then.

It's not that Colombo is a bad place - like all cities, one cannot expect to know it in a moment, and time must be taken to scratch the surface to find the gold beneath the grit, however, the rest of Sri Lanka is so completely awe-inspiring, that staying in Colombo for too long will sacrifice the time in better places, such as Unawatuna and Nuwara Eliya. Over the next few posts I will talk more about my travels - I truly think you all need to know how wonderful Sri Lanka is, and hope you all have the opportunity to go there.

Visit the Galle Face Hotel website here

Kitchen Culture

In a couple of months, I will be sharing my three year anniversary with Dubai. I am so happy I am still here, what a wonderful place to live. And now, I will be accepted as a real expat - for those that have been here for a little longer know, that if you make it past two years, the place has your heart, and you will be here for five years, ten, or maybe even the rest of your life. But a little confession before I go on - until last week, I had never joined the cultural gig down at the Sheikh Mohammad Centre for Cultural Understanding. I know, atrocious! So on Wednesday morning at 9:50, I bombasted my beast of a 4WD past all others to grab the last remaining carpark at Bastakiya, and re-entered my favourite little suburban nook in Dubai to find out all about Emiratis.

In case you haven't been to, or heard about Bastakiya, it is a tiny suburb that holds the last remaining architecture of Dubai's recent history. It was cordoned off and preserved by (I believe) the UAE Architectural society, and the buildings have been restored faithfully and lovingly. It is a maze of ochre walls, wind towers, crazy paving, modern art, carved cedar doors, and is a cool, quiet step away from modern Dubai. The building I entered has been set aside by ruler of Dubai, Sheikh Mohammad Bin Rashid Al Maktoum, and now gives lessons in the way of breakfasts and lunches and informal chats in a majlis - sharing the history and culture with people just like me.



The courtyard is cool and whitewashed, with the sun peeking just over the upper walls and being caught in the cut-out stonework, embellishing the blank spaces with lacy patterns. The central floor laid with a mammoth red carpet and camel-wool majlis cushions, and the centrepiece - three massive covered cauldrons, bowls of dates and pretty coffee pots and tiny crystal or porcelain glasses. With my tummy rumbling, I counted every minute past 10am, the official starting time.

Finally Nasif claps his hands together and says "Hello, Welcome!... Has anybody been here before?....No?....Ah, good! You are all fresh! I can mess with you. Ha Ha Ha" He sits down with a smile and his confident eyes make firm contact with each spectator separately. He adjusts his white ghutrah, first lifting it a little at the ears, then throwing the tails over his shoulder. As he begins, Yusif comes around with the coffee, pouring the lightly couloured, cardamom scented Yemeni blend into tiny cups - only half full, so we don't burn our fingers. We are told we can ask anything we like - nothing is taboo, except preceding a question with the phrase "Sorry, I know this is a stupid question, but..."

One of the visitors has brought a baby - about a year old, and unburdened with adult abashment, she sets a path for the hidden feast. Najim's booming voice scares her off while his smile and funny face make her giggle, and then he tells us he has a two year old, his seventh child. "Only one wife," he says, "And I will tell you more about her...", chuckling to himself, waving a finger and shaking his head. From Chicago. One year older than him. Divorcee. He pretended to be his mother upon hearing of the engagement, wringing his hands, grimacing, then slapping both palms over his face while wailing in a high-pitched voice "Son, you will make me die!!!" I imagine how much he must love her to put his relationship with his Mother to the test. He tells us that only 12% of married men have more than one wife, and only 2% more than two. It is more than just the man's choice - it is about income, social standing, the likelihood of war, and how strong the man's constitution is - for many, one wife is more than enough, and Nasif happily has his hands full.

As we are presented with more coffee and dried dates from Ras al Khamah, he relates the history of the bedouin in relation to dates. The body can be entirely sustained on Dates and water for quite some time - they are high in carbohyrates, fibre, magnesium, potassium and, as is rare for fruits, even contain iron. They keep well, and were the staple of the caravan trade. In the months-long treks over the desert, they would even retain the pits, which could be ground and fed to the animals, or even used in a tea-like concoction.

Not before time, the food is served. Diabetics and carb concious, you may not want to read the following. Nahee - a dish of chickpeas - boiled, and flavoured lightly with sugar, saffron and chillies are accompanied by Khameer bread - more than the standard khubz, this puffy flat bread has threads of saffron colouring it, and has been toasted and glazed and topped with sesame seeds. Next is Balaleet, sweet white and brown vermicelli noodles with small pieces of omelet and the fragrant taste of saffron and cardamom. At the end are Luganet - fried dough balls somewhat like donuts. In scattered smaller bowls are our toppings - cream cheese and sticky, drippy, deliciously molasses-like date honey.

While I lick my fingers and try not to let the chickpeas roll off my plate, Nasif bares the historic soul of his people, and links it to the things that isolate them so much from western culture, their dress, the issues with women's rights, religion and spirit. He reminds us that the UAE has never been colonised as such - when the British left the "Protectorate" (as distinct from a colony) in 1971, they did not leave behind any schools, hospitals, or even many British people for that matter, and thus their footprint on the region had been less significant than it was in places like India and the US. Nasif reminds us that 100 years ago, British women showing an ankle were considered risque, and the equivalent to the industrial revolution only happened in Dubai with the discovery of oil in 1966.

So this product that the west so desires has in turn injected the Emirati people into western culture, and they live with us, whether they like it or not. But Nasif likes it. Many, he says, like it. However that does not mean they are ready to drop their history and become white trash. We talked about Emirati women, abayas and hijabs and although he does mention religion and modesty, he says the dress is significant more in a historical sense - cover from the harsh sun, protection from sand storms, and it even has roots in providing anonymity to royalty. (I am in the process of interviewing an acquaintance to get the female side of the story, so more in a following post.) After all, he says, if he goes out in his traditional dress, everyone thinks he is a Sheikh! His assistant Yunis is dressed in brown, and Nasif tells him he is not cool - white is what it's all about. And I have to admit - I love Arabic traditional dress, particularly on the men. They do look like princes, with their olive skin, piercing eyes and gleaming white robes. I have a particular liking for the more casual tying of the gutrah without the agal, and a pair of mirror aviators, preferably accompanied by an orange Lamborghini. Hmm, I digress....

We discuss the nature of the Emirati, and how they have changed in the last few decades. It used to be that if you remarked favourably on an Emirati's (material) possession, he or she would often hand it over as a gift.  Nasif says regrettably this has changed, because they are running out of Rolexes. There had been times when he thinks the people may have had their natures taken advantage of, and he says this has made them more wary of strangers, and less generous with gifts. But the feeling of "Arabian hospitality" is still alive, and he doesn't need to tell me that - I have experienced it first hand (see the wedding), more than once. I wonder, if the people are such open and giving characters, why are they over there, and the rest of us over here, so to speak. Nasif believes it is purely demographical - the portion of the total population that is made up of locals rests well under 20%. I do question however if this is the case for all.

And so I put out the call - I WANT EMIRATI FRIENDS! You might however have to put up with the occasional: "Sorry, I know this is a stupid question, but..." But I will welcome you into my culture, and tell you all about shrimps, barbies, and Kylie Minogue, hopefully in the candid and humorous method that Nasif has mastered.

The breakfast is 60 dirhams, and held every Monday & Wednesday morning at 10:00am and Lunch is every Sunday & Tuesday afternoon at 1:00pm. There are other tours and activities to try on the website: For more information, click here, or call  04-353-6666







 

Six degrees of digital separation

link to Facebook page

Last night I was watching Al Jazeera International, and it started to sound like Hosni Mubarak had finally resigned. Instead of breaking out the champagne, I calmly picked up my iPhone and verified facts with my friends on Twitter. Sure enough, he had not stepped down as president, and Al Jazeera also confirmed this several minutes later.

As I might have stated in previous posts, I am a thirty something very vanilla (ok with a dash of cinnamon) expat Australian housewife. I do not have a single Egyptian friend (not by choice). I have nothing to do with Egypt. I even wrote a post recently caning Cairo, although in my defense, the issues I had with it could easily be blamed on the government not the people. So how can I know what people are doing and saying in Tahrir Square almost before it happens?

Because when six degrees of separation is digital, there is NO physical separation - my friends, their friends, and the rest of the world live between the tip of my finger and the screen of my iPhone. I am living the revolution through people like @sandmonkey, @waelabbas and @zeinobia without actually even following them - I see their tweets retweeted (RT) by those I do follow, and the tweets I find interesting, I can "RT" myself. I was there when the crowds were thickest, when rocks started flying, and when sandmonkey got arrested. It's hard not to feel involved, and even harder not to form an opinion. And sometimes as I have lain in bed doing my last nightly flick through the recent tweets, I have found myself in tears, and my ragged soul has dragged me to my knees to pray for them to receive what I take for granted.



I ask myself - would I know or even care so much if I wasn't on Twitter, or even living in the region? I accept that because I follow several people in Dubai, some of them are from the Gulf and greater Arabian region, and so therefore there is a strong weighting on issues that occur here. I do not imagine that many of my friends back in Melbourne would have got into the Egyptian loop so quickly. Or would they?


As distinct from Facebook, subjects on Twitter are more accessable. Sure, anyone can load a Facebook page, they can make it a public one, and then anyone can access it, you can even write on the "Wall" if you "Like" the page. However, Twitter can bring any topic into any conversation with just a hash-tag (#). Whether you like it or not, if you look down your Twitter updates list today, you will find either #Egypt, or #Jan25 in there. And all you have to do to find out what everybody in the world is saying about it is click on it, and all you have to do to join the conversation is to add it in your own message. This links you not only with your friends or followers, but EVERYONE on Twitter who has hash-tagged that topic.

This week the # is a serious one, but assuming this will be over soon, we will again find things like #FF (follow Friday), #UAEWeather, #motherinlaw and #spongebob. And I do hope it is over soon, but I can't see that happening in a hurry. This is a different revolution. It is not 100% physical, and this changes everything. People will not tire - they will leave Tahrir Square to go home and rest, but they will keep up with events via the social networks, and return recharged, because the voice that they hear is not getting any softer - only now are we beginning to see the magnitude of the support behind the people on the ground, and this support, though digital, will continue to fuel them. I feel doubly for these people, because they will be pushed harder than any other revolutionaries - the whole world is watching, even 14 year old American Justin Beiber fans.

The social networks have made this a world-wide revolution, not just one for the Egyptian people, and many other countries are rising up, showing not only their support for Egypt, but their support for the ideals of this brave crowd of people, and the common desire for a better life, where everybody has a voice. This started in Tunisia, and is only getting bigger - there have been ripples reaching Jordan, Yemen, Syria, and there is even talk of what may happen in Saudi Arabia. Because with the increase in the use of social networks, everybody can have a voice, and the paths to silence us are fewer. (but don't say that to @mark248am regarding #BenihanaKUW)

PS.
Some tips from the one who has learned the hard way:

The start to using Twitter can be a slow one if you approach it like Facebook. Firstly, this is not about "friends", but about "followers", and they are entirely different things. Saying that, secondly, Twitter is not about followers, it's about following - for the start, anyway. And sure, you follow a few people, and they follow you back, and then you get some spammers, then some porn seekers, and eventually you find that you have some legitimate people who actually read what you say. In fact, if you have a website, sometimes they even go to it to find out what you can say in more than 140 characters (probably to their great disappointment in many cases). But the wonderful thing about Twitter is the connectivity to the rest of the world. Join in and feel the pulse of humanity.

PPS.

I don't work for Twitter