Entry #1

In preparation for the trip, I've decided to post ideas that I picked up from my travels, ideas I've had whilst brushing my teeth and just random tidbits I found through research. Some will be ambitious, some might not. It could be a total hoot or a complete fail. Most posts will probably be about none of the above, but I'm going to write it anyway. 

Travels 2011

Last year, I went to south-east Asia. I was one of those gap-yah types. I even bought myself a moleskin, the hall mark of a gap-yah ass. 

I taught English in Cambodia, tutored street kids in Nepal and jazzed up hospital wards in Vietnam. I thoroughly enjoyed my experiences in all those countries, exploring each vibrant culture through food, music, transport systems and night-life. Each country had its own flavour, manifested in several ways. Vietnam was perhaps the most peculiar.  It was a world where coffee beans were passed through the digestive system of a weasel. The people didn't seem to take to tourists very well, but that said, the volunteers we worked with were wonderful. The food was simple: each ingredient left to tell its own story. Noodle soups were my favourite. It always felt like the Vietnamese had no time to spare, the hustle and bustle of the streets of Hanoi started early in the morning and continued well into the night. The roads were filled with swarms of motorbikes with no regard for rules. Absolute refusal to stick to the appropriate driving decorum. Red lights didn't mean stop. Green didn't mean go. Waiting to cross the road would result in you waiting for hours. You had to just walk, make your way across the road, the motorbikes would work their way around you. I was always uncomfortable putting my life on the line like that. 

I volunteered with Haniah, a friend from school. It was our first night there, we met Anisa and Christian. Beth was arriving the next morning, so the rest of us went for dinner. It was posh. Dark wood tables. Stools. We were all discussing our travels: what we'd done, where we'd been, all the cool things we'd seen,  the foods we've tried, the mishaps, the number of flights we'd booked, infections we'd caught. It was Anisa's turn. She told us about Tenteleni. A project, based in South Africa, that she'd been to the summer before. She'd taught English at a local school alongside other activities including setting up a library. *lightbulb moment* I've always wanted to do something like that in Sri Lanka. When they were in South Africa, they sourced books from wherever they could. Put up posters and flyers around their resident town, it was a very successful book drive. They'd collected books, organised them, implemented a system and managed to form a library. That's what I want to do. A non-partisan project. The idea speaks for itself.

1000 books

1 Library 

1 Village

There was a Channel 4 advert for the National Year of Reading where celebrities read small extracts from different books and it was all edited so that they were finishing off each other's sentences, making sense and not making sense simultaneously. It was delightful! That's what I want to do for my promotional video. My dad is on site now so I'm going to get him to video a handful of children reading excerpts. Maybe get them to recite Bharathy, Avvaiyar or perhaps Thirruvalluvar. Make it look viral by getting him to tape it on his phone. I'll use my amateur editing skills to put  together something quite shabby but chic.