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Yala National Park

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Heading further around the south coast we reached the first of the National Parks (Yala), famous for the variety of wildlife, in particular leopards.

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These thrive as there is a plenitude of prey including: rabbits; spotted deer; and young bore (piglets) not to mention those delicious peacocks, that have adorned many a royal table. Yet they do tend to flutter off.

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Buffalo; crocodiles (that seem to coexist); and elephants are probably an even tougher proposition for a quick snack.

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The Magampura Eco Village Resort is comfortable but like much of Sri Lanka, after the lean covid years, could use a bit of maintenance here and there.

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Throughout the country electricity distribution is well engineered, predominantly overhead lines on concrete poles, presumably because of the termites.

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High voltage transmission is at 220 KV and 132 KV. The local distribution grid is typically 11KV, dropping to 230/400 at 50 cycles for domestic use.

But we did experience several brief blackouts. I looked it up.

The IEA tells me: "Sri Lanka’s primary energy supply mainly comes from oil and coal. Almost 40% of Sri Lanka’s electricity came from hydropower in 2017 but coal’s shares in power generation has been increasing since 2010. Sri Lanka is reaching universal access to electricity but clean cooking remain an issue with 15 million people still relying on biomass to cook."

 

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Travel

In the footsteps of Marco Polo

 

 

 

 

Travels in Central Asia

 

In June 2018 we travelled to China before joining an organised tour in Central Asia that, except for a sojourn in the mountains of Tajikistan, followed in the footsteps of Marco Polo along the Great Silk Road. 

Read more: In the footsteps of Marco Polo

Fiction, Recollections & News

On The Secret

There is an obvious sub-text to my short story: The Secret, that I wrote in 2015 after a trip to Russia. Silly things, we might come to believe in, like 'the law of attraction' are not harmless. 

The story is also a reflection on the difference between American and Australian stereotypes, that were evident from conversations on the cruise.

I lived in New York for some time and my eldest daughter was born there. I have visited the US fairly regularly since. It is, in many ways, the closest country to Australia that you will find, outside New Zealand.  So, I have often been surprised by how different it is in other ways to Australia, given the great similarities in the median standard of living, shared popular culture and immigrant demographics.

I have come to the conclusion that this stems from our different founding origins.

Read more: On The Secret

Opinions and Philosophy

Conspiracy

 

 

 

Social Media taps into that fundamental human need to gossip.  Indeed some anthropologists attribute the development of our large and complex brains to imagination, story telling and persuasion. Thus the 'Cloud' is a like a cumulonimbus in which a hail of imaginative nonsense, misinformation and 'false news' circulates before falling to earth to smash someone's window or dent their car: or ending in tears of another sort; or simply evaporating.

Among this nonsense are many conspiracy theories. 

 

For example, at the moment, we are told by some that the new 5G mobile network has, variously, caused the Coronavirus pandemic or is wilting trees, despite not yet being installed where the trees have allegedly wilted, presumably in anticipation. Of more concern is the claim by some that the Covid-19 virus was deliberately manufactured in a laboratory somewhere and released in China. 

Read more: Conspiracy

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