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Project 365 – Week 31

This week, I discovered that being a translator is probably not a career alternative I should pursue. My friends, in the spirit of keeping things bilingual for their wedding, had asked me to help out with certain tasks (e.g. translating wedding ceremony programme, speeches), and working from English into French, oh dear… I am lucky I have other wonderful friends around me who helped to proofread my translations, and I also roped F into translating some particularly tricky texts. What would I do without them?

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Street art

29 Jul: This piece of street art reminds me of the sculpture of Le Passe-Muraille to commemorate Marcel Aymé that can be found in Montmartre. The main differences? This is on the other side of the wall, thus forming a continuation of sort to the sculpture, and this is a very modern take, for I don’t think hoodie fits into the setting of Aymé’s story. Disclaimer: I don’t know if the artist intended this as an echo to Le Passe-Muraille. Total speculation on my part.

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Musing: when love and culture collide

Last weekend’s wedding in Lorraine (the region in France with 3 international borders!) kickstarted what I have dubbed the summer of wedding attendances. With six invitations – two coming from a same couple but for celebrations in different countries – under our belt, of which two had to be declined due to timing issues, we have effectively three more to go, unless there are more invitations due to arrive that we are not aware of…

Heart

A little something I’ve noticed – none of our friends and family are organising monoculture weddings. Each and every single one of these weddings involve the coordination of customs and celebrations of two different cultures; Indian-Irish, French-Dutch, French-Lebanese, French-American, and Malaysian-Chinese. Now, how’s that for diversity?

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Ceylonese Tales

When Eve announced that she was getting married and the wedding would be held in Sri Lanka, I was all one big ball of excitement. A chance to see a new country, a chance to indulge in Sri Lankan cuisine, a chance to experience traditional Sri Lankan wedding not to mention other cultural gems – what else can a girl ask for? Travel partner? Check – Claire has agreed to go on a roadtrip with me. Oh yes, we were all set.

Errr, let’s paddle back a little.

Honestly, we were not terrible well-prepared. Sure, we coordinated our dates, we roughly planned our route and we booked our flights. That was about it. Even on the day prior to departure, we had not a clue how we were going to get around (there was vague idea to hire a car) nor have we any accommodation booked, save for the few nights in Colombo when the wedding was due to take place. You know at this rate, we were in for an adventure.

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Luckily, Pras came to our rescue. As we had only about a week on the road before settling in Colombo, our best bet for travelling would not be on the mercy of public transports that might take us forever to get from one place to another. At the same time, driving some place where the rules of the road were unfamiliar to us (well, mostly Claire, since I don’t drive although I could read map!) was not a good idea either. Pras contacted a driver with a van for us, so for our trip, we now have a chauffeured vehicle. Super handy. No slugging bags everywhere, no jumping onto oncoming buses, just freedom to go anywhere we wanted.

We managed to cover quite a good part of the island despite the chronically sluggish driving speed. What distance that could normally be reached within an hour in developped country would take 2-3 times longer here. Not that we were in great hurry, since that gave us a chance to enjoy the view along the route, but it did make time estimation rather tricky. Especially when we were aiming to be in certain city at certain time. We were pretty much always arriving later than we thought we would be.

We toured the southern half of the island, although I wish we had had more time so we could have explored more. Two most notable sites that we couldn’t fit in our schedule are the ancient cities of Polonnaruwa and Anuradhapura. They lie just too far up north for our schedule and time constraint. We also missed Adam’s Peak further south…

In the next few posts, I’ll try my best to relive my Ceylonese Odyssey, the good and the bad. Well, not exactly bad, but definitely a small few misadventures here and there. For now, I leave you with a set of “portraits” I’ve shot during my trip. Have a good weekend y’all!

 

All posts in this series:
Sri Lanka: Ceylonese Tales
Sri Lanka: Trekking Sigiriya | Flickr Photoset
Sri Lanka: Cave temples of Dambulla | Flickr Photoset
Sri Lanka: Cultural evening in Kandy | Flickr Photoset
Sri Lanka: Pinnawala Elephant Sanctuary | Flickr Photoset
Sri Lanka: We sort of saw Nuwara Eliya… | Flickr Photoset
Sri Lanka: Morning hike at Horton Plains | Flickr Photoset
Sri Lanka: A room with a view in Ella | Flickr Photoset
Sri Lanka: Tissa, Yala and safari | Flickr Photoset
Sri Lanka: The southern coast | Flickr Photoset
Sri Lanka: The old fort of Galle | Flickr Photoset
Sri Lanka: Roadtrip ended in Colombo | Flickr Photoset

Day 120: Wedding photoshoot

Choosing a single photo for today is tricky, since I was on a walking tour of Montmartre and saw plenty that are interesting or amusing. I guess that means I need to set up a separate album at some stage. (I am already terribly slow in updating the blog, ooops.) For now though, one from among the firsts of the day – wedding photoshoot at the hill of Montmartre. The poor girl was coooooold, and in between shots, huddled enveloped within a huge furry jacket.

It is not uncommon to see wedding photoshoot around Paris. By the Eiffel Tower, next to fountains of Place de la Concorde, along Champs-Élysées… What is rather curious though, is that usually the couples are either Japanese or Chinese. I have not yet seen any French ones doing the same. Perhaps it has got to do with Asian tendency for establishing an entire album of wedding photo ahead of the big day. If French don’t do that, then it goes without saying they won’t have time to run around the city for posed photos on the wedding day itself.


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