I (don't) have the powerrrrrr

Do not stand at my grave and cry,
I am not there; I did not die.
Anyway, I'm just a plug;
Get some perspective.

The day I had long feared finally arrived as I gazed down at the power cord tethered umbilically to the left side of my laptop to find its familiar white glow absent. Tenderly wiggling it around in its socket and aggressively forcing the prongs in and out of the wall, I was unable to re-ignite the spark of life. My laptop plug had delivered its final charge and gone to join the toasters in silicon heaven.

I was screwed.

We fort them hard, we fort them well

I regretted my decision to take the train down Sri Lanka's west coast before I boarded the vehicle, which began rapidly filling up with human cattle even before it came to a halt on the platform. Clearly, these people aggressively shoving past disembarking old women knew something I didn't, and my comparative politeness left me spending most of the sweaty three hour journey squeezing myself into the space in front of people's knees as an endless stream of snack sellers tried to mow down standing passengers with their aisle-wide carts.

Maybe that's why I was so relieved to arrive in Galle's historic Fort district, which felt a lot more peaceful and spacious than other cities in this country, and where I was only pestered by about one taxi driver per minute as I stubbornly walked to my hotel - an unprecedented improvement. I thought Kandy was quite nice, mainly for not being Colombo, but this place is properly nice. I couldn't wait to de-stress and get my work done before heading out early the next morning to take photos.

After a good sleep, Galle seemed less spectacular in the harsh light of day, but it's still the most attractive dilapidated colonial outpost I've visited - more relaxed than Georgetown and Malacca, less sterile than Singapore and the less said about Manila and Malang the better. I like it when people actually live in these heritage attractions, though I had a familiar sense of vague ancestral guilt that the place I felt most comfortable in Sri Lanka was the one largely built by Europeans.