Do’s and Don’ts

What not to do when going on a Trek (through hell ).

DON’T wear sneakers!

Don’t be deceived by the image. These shoes aren’t designed for rough terrain. They’re no different from Sam Vimes’s cardboard sole shoes. Yeah sure, Sam likes it that way ’cause he can tell where he is just by feeling the cobblestones on the street, but when you’re legging it through a trail, and a rough one at that, the last thing you want is to feel the ground!

With sneakers on you’ll first feel EVEY single stone. A bit later each stone will feel like a sudden spark of electricity shooting up your foot. If you press on, eventually, your foot becomes numb. Yup, sneakers are a definite no-no! If you’ve got nothing else when taking on a trek, go buy yourself a proper pair of trekking shoes.

Do eat and get plenty of rest before your trek

You need to be charged up for it. ’nuff said.

Do take water and food along with you.

If you think you’ve got enough food and water, you haven’t. Take more. And then some…

_______

Do’s and Don’ts aside, I got a fair share of cuts, scratches, leech bites and bruises.

Got a cut on my wrist trying to fish for some mackerel… out of a tin can.  Yeah, alright that may not seem very ‘rough n’ tough’, but when there’s nothing else but can of jack mackerel, and 10 people share it right out of the can… THAT’S… ok, pure desperation caused by hunger. Heck, if we didn’t have that tin can we would have resorted to cannibalism and eaten each other by night fall.

The leeches weren’t too fond of me though. I had only two of the little blood suckers bite me. One at my ankle and the other on my clavicle (shoulder blade). St.Fallen and Little_Boy_Blue on the other hand… The leeches were drawn to them… possibly the effect of the weed in their blood

Here’s how leeches suck blood:

A blood sucking leech attaches itself to the skin of its victim using its suckers. It makes a small wound in the surface of its hosts skin using three serrated jaws just inside its mouth. It then releases saliva into the wound, which contains the anti-clotting agent called hirudin. This keeps the blood flowing freely. The saliva also contains a substance that blocks nerve transmission from the pain sensors in the skin, so that the victim does not notice its bites.

It may sound like something out of a horror flick but it’s fine. You don’t feel it. You’ve got nothing to worry about ’cause the only superficial blood vessels are your veins. So at the very most you’ll just have a bit of a scar for a few days.

And here’s the bruise I got after a buffalo pulled a Zinedine on me…

The picture was taken this morning, it’s turned a ripe shade of deep purple now.

It was a crazy trek but the guys were awesome. All the rest of you girls should join them on their next adventure. You’ll be in safe hands I can vouch for that.

As for me, I’ll be sitting out the next one. My parents weren’t too pleased that I hadn’t kept them up to date every second of the day about where I was and whether I was still alive. So I’m going to have to wait for this to fizzle out before I can go anywhere with friends again

Hyperchondriac

We’ve all heard of hypochondriacs but there doesn’t seem to be a term for those of us who don’t care much about our health or who are in denial about being sick.

So I’ve coined the term ‘hypERchondriac’, a logical antonym. And that’s what I am. Well not that I should care much about my health given that I have an incredible immune system. Although as I type up this post I’m suffering from the symptoms of the blasted viral flu that’s being doing its rounds- Fever, weak muscles that have rendered me immobile, trembling, breathing in large loud gasp like Darth Vader and a sore throat.

Why has my incredible immune system failed me? Read on… (except for those of you with a weak constitution. You have been warned)

Went to bed late on Friday, so after just three hours of sleep I found myself rushing around a hospital all morning ’cause my mom had to undergo surgery. Getting drenched in the rain in search of a pharmacy that sold her particular brand of pressure pills and the over all fatigue must have made me susceptible to the flu virus floating around the damned hospital.

Sunday the symptoms kicked in but as always I paid no attention to them, and flatly refused to see a doctor. Come Monday I felt I was on my death bed, I just wanted to die. So I caved in… To the docs it was!

Doctors are sadist I tell you! He prescribed some HUGE yucky pills. So with my revulsion of pills that has lead to several, hour long show-downs with them before breaking them into teeny tiny pieces and swallowing them, you can bet I couldn’t keep these meds down. And since my only nutrition intake has been tea, I puke it all out. I’m stomach’s been empty for about 2 days now.

I just HATE pills. First I tried taking one and then stuffing my mouth with chocolate. Unfortunately, my taste buds aren’t working right making the dark Toblerone taste absolutely revolting!

I might have painted a rather ugly picture of my sis to some of the bloggers at a recent meet up… I feel a bit guilty about that now. She only goes loco when she’s stressed out. She’s been checking on me at odd hours of the night and solved my I-hate-meds-so-much-that-I-puke-them-out problem by crushing the tablets and mixing it with honey for me. And that worked brilliantly!

Anyhow, having an immune system like mine, I should be up and about soon enough. Although I was looking forward to watching my blood being drawn out…

MetalHeads to the left of me, girls to the right

It’s been over a year since I’ve set up this particular blog. This one’s my third in my 6 years of blogging and if there’s one thing that I’ve found interesting about this one, it’s that people seem inclined to believe the author is a guy.

In an attempt to figure out why and how my blog gives off that vibe, I’ve asked quite a few people, including some of my close friends who chanced on my blog and assumed The Messiah of Madness was a guy. They offered that it was the contents and the title of the blog that had lead them to that surmise.

Well I’m The Puppeteer now, although I don’t suppose it quite helps dispel the guyish vibe Oh well, you’ll never find me titling my blog GirlyZone or I♥Pink! Perish the thought!

Prodding around a bit more and scrolling through comments, I’ve managed to draw up the general persona my blog seems to project.

A goth-like guy.

Some admitted to categorizing me as such ’cause of my predilection to Heavy Metal.

It’s quite fascinating really. The idea of girls liking heavy metal is apparently out of element. But I guess  I can understand where they’re coming from if the Siva Hela gig held a few months back is anything to go by. The guys to girls ratio would probably have been 8:1 .

And that being said, besides myself, there was just one other girl who Headbanged. That is if you exclude the bizarrely dressed foreign lady who stood with her arms firmly beside her and nodded her head rapidly. Watching her reminded me of a wind-up mechanical chicken, except this one was on the fritz.

What people have to get straight is, while I do listen to Heavy Metal, I do appreciate other genres of music. I listen to Alternate Rock, Jazz, the classics as way back at the 50’s (who doesn’t like the Doo wop?), even Beethoven! I like all sorts of music, the only exceptions being Hip Hop and RnB *shudder*

If you didn’t notice the title of this post is a rip off of ‘Stuck In The Middle With You‘ by Stealer Wheel. I wasn’t kidding when I said that I’ve listened to about all the genres of music before deciding that Metal rules!

As for the ‘goth’ bit- Apparently, all guys who like Heavy Metal dress up like goths.

Oh well, I guess we’re all at the mercy of stereotypes, there’s nothing much that can be done to diffuse them. Of course, stereotyping isn’t actually detrimental, it only becomes venomous when it’s done will intentions that are… ridiculous. Such as a hierarchy in society or colour bar.

A friend (who was rather ticked off at not being able to figure me out) insisted that I make a profile of sorts. But since there’s enough and more about me in my posts, I’ve put up a picture instead (Gravatar pic). And yeah… I’ve added a filter… Tad apprehensive about having a proper picture on the net… *shrug*

Finding a picture wasn’t easy, figured I’d fetch one off my FaceBook profile pics but then I don’t really have that many… What can I say, I’m not one of those shallow self-absorbed types who have pages and pages of profile pics Heck, my profile pictures don’t even fit the quota of 10 pics per page!

Anyways, that’s one of my most recent pictures. Hopefully I don’t look like a guy in that one.

Tag thread.

Tagged by ‘the boy on the run‘ on the five word thread, here’s my response.

Nothing.

It’s strange really. As I’ve mentioned in a previous post, having been born during the war I’m finding it hard to accept that it’s actually over. The idea of Sri Lanka not being in a bloody battle is alien to me. Prabharakran’s body, Mahinda making an official anouncement, the celebrations, I haven’t gained closure from any of it.

That being said, there are other reasons as to why the end of the war hasn’t had that much of an impact on me.

Being part of a minority within a minority, I don’t think Sri Lanka has fully accepted us as a part of the nation. Recently, attempts have been made- my community was wedged into the President’s post LTTE speech, it’s been included in newspaper articles as well as the government registration website. However, it would seem that the President hasn’t quite wrapped his head around who we are and how we configure in the scheme of races in the island. Where I’m going with this is simply that I was never made to feel as though I belonged here. While I adore Sri Lanka there’s still a certain degree of detachment I apperceive from the people here.

Also, living in Colombo, I haven’t been exposed to the raw side of the war. In comparsion to the explosions and deaths in the north and east, I’m lead to believe that we’ve seen nothing! I’m not going to pretend to be some Colombo moron and set crackers a light, because honestly what do I know about the death and destruction of war?

I’m just a city dweller who’s been bulwarked from the worst of the war by the limits of the city. Sure, we’ve had our share of Palintonon attacks in the form of sucide bombers, but it’s in vast contrast to what those in the north and east have faced on a daily basis.

The only effect the war has had on us is in the economic perspective.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m glad that the killing has ended. Even if none of the hundreds and thousands of casualities of the 25 year war were related or even connected to me, they were human beings- with families, dreams, aspirations… So you can’t help but feel relieved that it is finally over.

However, I’m not going to pretend that I fully fathom the death, destruction and trauma of the ethnic conflict that plagued the country for more than two decades.

Since I’ve diverged from the original concept of this thread and just about everyone has been tagged as it is… I won’t be tagging anyone. If you haven’t been tagged, consider this an open tag.

Laptops for spare parts?

Anyone know of a place that would buy laptops for spare parts?

I’ve got my eyes set on a laptop. Figured I’d sell off my old laptops to buy that one.

There’s no point in selling them for second hand use. The more recent laptop is in terrible condition with the LCD screen screwed up. The older laptop is much hardier, go figure.

It’s survived all the abuse I’ve put it through! One of more horrific incidents was when I had taken it to school. There was no rule about bringing laptops to school but I didn’t want to risk it getting confisicated so I decided (against my better judgement) I’d store it under my desk. I returned to class after the break to find a muddy shoe print planted square across it…

Even while my second laptop is a pile of junk, my old one is still… useable but a bit too wonky for second hand use.

So if you know of any such place, do let me know. Sooner the better.

Thanks!