my people

I am repeating my blog entry titles, ain't I?

Anyway, here's an assortment of Sri Lankan people... now before you go around making mental notes that this what all Sri Lankans look like, lemme say, this is only a subset...

During this trip I must say I re-discovered my people... For some reason, I used to think of Sri Lankan people as, well... let's just say, not the sort of people I'd like too much... But I had very pleasant experiences at the passport office, at the airport (albeit my camera was missing... but it could've been stolen in any number of places including NYC, and Doha...). Sri Lankans, can and will definitely think outside the box - a little bit of bending of the rules is not uncommon, if you look innocent enough... I know what you are thinking - who looks innocent? But to my own surprise one of the officials at the airport called up another and referred to me as an innocent girl and he was not intending pun!!!! But such flexibility of rules is also what makes corruption such a normal thing, coming to think of it... In the West, a rule is a rule - people will not and can not think outside the box and as a by product, there's also less corruption... But anyway, it wasn't just those two places, but everywhere I went I felt Sri Lankans were not as bad as I thought...

It reminds me-
*it is good to have low expectations
*upon my return from China I was raving about how nice the Chinese people are, to which my Chinese friend said, "yeah they are nice as long as you are tourist; if you try to get a job there, it's a different story"