Wednesday, April 19, 2006

I wish we had that here.

Last night I had a band practice and left the studio at about midnight, drove home and realised that I hadn't eaten since lunchtime. So at about 12.30 AM I was driving around my locality, a suburb about 8 or 9 miles outside central London, desperately looking for a takeaway joint and nothing, nothing at all was open. Not a sausage, quite literally.

One of the many things I love about Sri Lanka is that there is always plenty of activity going on whatever the time of day or night. Here in the UK after about midnight, except in central London, everything just shuts. There are no people on the street apart from the odd drunk staggering home or the occasional night worker. There is no noise and the streets are deserted.

In Sri Lanka I find that "busy" atmosphere on the street electrifying. The constant buzz, the continual noises, the little kades serving hot food and drink that are open on every street corner, the three wheelers plying for trade.

The commodity of time always appears to be more plentiful in Sri Lanka. Or maybe here in London we just don't have it. I see people on the street in SL, it can be any street, and they happily stand around watching the world go by. They're not rushing to get somewhere, they're quite content as they are. Here in London anyone who behaved that would be weird, we constantly do everything at the maximum speed possible. We never stand still, we are always on the way to somewhere or something.

So there are two pearls of wisdom I wish to impart:

1. Work for tomorrow, but enjoy today too.

2. Open an eating establishment near my house. Serve rice and curry 24 hours a day. Please.

Thanks.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

you should def move to NYC then.. but ya i was just sat here after work wishing i could hv a typical SL rice n curry meal.. sick of the rubbish indian take aways i hv once a week. hv u tried Sainsburys 'Sri lankan prawn biryani' it is yummy !!!!

Anonymous said...

The high street in Harlesden NW10 is open 24 hours a day and that includes the take aways

Rhythmic Diaspora said...

Ok - I'll meet you in NYC then! I'll check out the prawn Buryiani and let you know.

As for Harlesden it's a bit of a trek for me to drive over there at past midnight.

Thanks for reading my blog.

R

s said...

wow - that's pretty bad. even in sleepy ol' Cristchurch, New Zealand(where, if you go out on a tuesday night, you'd literally only be dancing with backpackers, prostitutes and boguns) you can find Japanese* food till 3 in the morning.

*i personally prefer japanese to the other late night pie/hot chips/hot dog options that are also available.