|
|
|
  |
| Sunday, 1 May 2005 |
 |
|
 |
Magazine |  |
| News Business Features Editorial
|
Mood for holiday dissin' the system - by rikki Avurudu is just about over with the long holidays for those who are working for a living or otherwise. This week after a reprise of two weeks of no column to write for, no Oomph Magazine at all for that matter, I have come ready to dish out more dirty linen that is strewn all over the frickin' society that is ours, especially during the holiday season that starts come the month of April. First and foremost, it starts off with the public transport getting more and more unbearable, you are squeezed into an even more impossibly smaller size, you have more sweat from other bodies dripping on you, have other peoples' armpit hair thrust even more into your face and breathe in worse body odour (more noxious than carbon monoxide). Not to mention that the time it takes you to get home or work, or even from wherever you are located within the vehicle itself to the door so that you may get off, grows exponentially by the day. Once you're off the rickety piece of steel or iron or whatever they made that junk from, you find it harder and harder to navigate the roads with crowds of people, their number increasing by the day, jostling you with humongous bags (the size and mass of which also grows by the day) from the famous department stores in the city and its suburbs. Suddenly your usual five minute dash to the office before you're deemed officially late-turns into a twenty minute shoving exercise as you struggle not to be pushed down and hence suffer slow excruciating but certain death by being trampled by a hundred feet. And every single guy who owns even a shop space that's not even wide enough for him to get through without performing yoga, has huge speakers standing proud outside playing terrible music extremely loud. Whatever the language, the music is absolutely crap and just makes you feel like puking on one of his blasted speakers just to show your appreciation. Then comes the holidays and suddenly the whole place is deserted. There are no grocery stores or pharmacies opened so that you have to stock on your food, drugs and alcohol for the so inclined. The clothing stores, malls, pool parlours and other places that people hang out all display huge white boards displaying the words 'CLOSED' in black lettering (so as not to discriminate the colour blind). And worst of all public transport inflicts its tortures on you in a different form; there are hardly any buses or trains and the few thatoperate are packed tighter than a tin of sardines and take hours to ply, not to mention the former speedy Gonzales suddenly drive under the speed limit in the belief that moving at snail's pace would help them acquire even more passengers along the way. Even if you were one of those people who preferred to use deadly three wheeled mode of transportation you would have found that while finding one to take you to your destination was hard enough, they also charge you ridiculously enormous fares. The people who have made it to the hills during the holidays find themselves in an ironically funny situation. Escaping to land of colonialism, they find that instead of escaping the heat of the metropolitan to the cooler climate, they are still all hot and sweaty because almost everyone from the much larger city is suddenly squeezed into the much tinier town square. And instead of rest and relaxation from your not so loved ones, people continuously run in to their colleagues and worse, bosses from work whom they were hoping to take a break from. And since most people get there by vehicle, the formerly peaceful city is full of traffic jams and fumes from vehicle exhausts. Did I mention that quiet nature walks and such suddenly look like a bunch of barbarians invaded it? As April ends and my yearly thirty days of suffering for the former half of the year (by the Gregorian calendar that is) is over I am thankful and preparing myself for the next thirty one days of suffering, though not as acute that shall prevail upon us Lankans in the latter part of the year. |
|
| News | Business | Features
| Editorial | Security
| Politics | Produced by Lake House |
