That Forbidden Fruit...

Huhh ...huh..uuh..huhh..uh..huh!

Yep, that’s me panting. No not physically, just mentally. Panting! My brain is panting, my mind is panting, and my own conscience is panting. Life has become a constant marathon, with no time to live!

I remember my life’s motto from a long time ago to just one year back. Live to Eat! (I assure you I’m slim in figure and do NOT resemble a pig). Food! That’s all that mattered back then. Somehow I stumbled upon this sect of people who “worked” for a living, who claimed they “Work to Live”. So I thought I’ll try this cool thing called work, and found out that they were SO mistaken. You don’t work to live, you live to work!

Is it just me and the cubicles around me? Or is this the global trend?

Did I choose the wrong class of work? Or are all classes of work, addictive and time consuming as mine?

Am I just a weak athlete, or is this race really hard to run?

I remember reading about an underwater archaeologist who said, “Diving, is the greatest joy of my life, and now I get paid to do it”. How great is that? This was my idea of work. But no! Maybe I still haven’t found a way to get paid for the greatest joy of my life (eating, with dancing in second place - proof, of my un-piggish figure). I know you don’t get paid to eat, unless you’re the taster to the king, where again, you may jolly well end up being poisoned to death. As for becoming a professional dancer, well, after my first dance competition I learnt that training with someone else can be even more stressful than my live to work routine.

It’s amazing that…

…the last time I went on a 3 hour walk on the beach at 5am was before I started working.

…the last time I sat under a tree and had an endless nonchalant chat with a friend was before I started working.

…the last time I danced 3 hours straight to Sun-FM music (including commercials) was before I started working.

…the last time I learnt to play a song I liked on my guitar (know a few chords, that’s it) was before I started working.

Have you noticed that we even plan our recreation and relaxation now? We plan our time with family and friends, so that we can somehow fit everything in to our live to work.

We now pay for head massages to relieve stress, when all we need is sufficient sleep.

We make appointments for foot care, when all we need is a nice sand scrub and a sea water splash by the beach.

We go to the gym to work out or for aerobics lessons to keep fit, when all we need is to do our own work at home and maybe play some cricket on the road, like we used to.

But we Live to Work, so forget about sleep, beach and cricket, and get professional help!

I some how trace this all back to Adam and Eve. Now if this hungry couple had not eaten that forbidden fruit, we would all still be in the Garden of Eden, eating all the yummy fruits without a care in the world. And Live to Eat, we literally would!

The Holy Bible. Genesis. Chapter 3.

Biking Colombo

I changed best friends again yesterday. No, not the human ones. Nilu, Saandra, Sunimal you guys still rule. Nish and Titto too. Most of the time, the best friend would be the book I’m currently reading (at this point it’s a book called “Founts of Sinhala” and yeah it’s a good read) or sometimes the weekend. But this time it’s the new bike I got. Well I didn’t really get it, and it isn’t really new. This used to be my brothers bike and now it’s at home. It has given me this new freedom to go places whenever I felt like it, explore new roads (Gosh I love doing that) since I don’t drive (yet).

Oddly enough, Colombo is new to the whole ‘chicks riding bikes’ deal (as the males themselves would put it) and therefore, there is no end to the comments and the ooohs and the aaahs. Well you’d think I’d get offended by them, but surprisingly, not! It’s much like tuning in to a silly comedy show, except that you’d have to listen to it over and over again until you knew the script by heart. ;-)

It’s a good thing too, to learn how to control your bike cos when the local three-wheeler drivers see a girl on a bike, they suddenly forget about the hire they are running, and before you know it, where you go is their destination. Bringing you down is their new goal, and they’d follow you for miles trying to knock you down. Not that I want to imply that I rode for miles (maybe a couple), but well, you get the drift. And my new goal is to somehow maneuver the thing to get two of those dudes to collide in to each other and for me to come off unscathed. Or maybe I’ll leave it to Charlie’s Angels or the like, for there won’t be no camera tricks on our old Galle Road.

Two observations, on the whole biking fiasco.

1. It should be made mandatory to wear a helmet for ANY kind of bike. (be it motor or mountain or the plain old ‘push’)
2. Your butt hurts a lot more when you’re on a bike and you’re riding through rocky roads or nice carpeted ones with humps every 10 yards.

So all you folk out there wanting a little bit of childhood fun, borrow the next door kid’s bike and ride away. And if you’re a girl, trust me; the fun will be two fold!