Sketch-tastic

Amazing website of sketchers around the world contributing their work.

http://www.urbansketchers.com/

Russell's Rust Bucket

My good friend Russell is the Executive Creative Director at Grants in Colombo and has a great eye - this is taken in Gampola. Russ - just giving you some publicity!

Spacey Days

It's the anniversary of the NASA Space Programme and Space Suit - I love the idea of space travel and the fact that the universe out there is so immense, unimaginably vast and full of planets and peoples/beings we don't know yet.

Anyway, I thought this picture really captured the excitement, energy and innocence of space travel. Great shot with rich background.

Neela on the BBC

My mother was interviewed by the BBC on Sri Lanka and the hopes for private sector involvement to develop aspects of society to help the North and East move forward. It is about sports and how that can be a big contributor - interesting thought.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/8518653.stm

Picture taking

I have been thinking a lot about taking photos - portraits mainly, framing people and trying to capture their expressions (cliched yes but true) and its been something I have thought about for a few years but never had the courage to do much of. Sure I have taken tonnes but never with a serious art in mind but I suppose part of the art is in the understanding of the technology you use to bring your vision to life.

Lee takes photos and he is so good at it, he has a fantastic eye for perspective - seeing things I don't.

I have come across this photographer in my web trails (Behance.com) and he is very good, celebrity taker too though not always: http://www.behance.net/Gallery/Portraits/412762?utm_source=Triggermail&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Newsletter+Feb+10

His name is Joao Canziani, hopefully I can achieve a smidgen of his level one day after all it's in my blood.

Alexander McQueen

A tragic story of a talented individual wasting his life too soon. His work was genuinely home grown fantastic, his Paris line was finished before his death so there is now a scramble of curiosity as to who will take over the Gucci Group owned company.

Tax this mo-fo's!!!!

Now this is a damn good idea: take from the sickeningly rich bankers and put it back into the people who saved their greedy asses in the first place. The organisation only has a small support base but I think we need to grow it - after all the bankers are only going to contribute 0.05% of their earnings but that's still almost £10 billion!

http://robinhoodtax.org.uk/

The Mazzetti Higginsons

So we made our way down to the Prince Arthur on Forest Road in Dalston to meet Glyn, Ella, Ro (Ella's mum) and baby Harper - she has grown into such a person! It was super fun seeing them and feasting on some delicious cuisine. Click here for more photos.

New genre? Oh yes.

Thinking

Advertising is in my blood thanks to 2 generations before me entrenched in it and photography, art, journalism and creativity. I subscribe to a number of incredibly good blogs on the subject - and I think I'm going to start contributing more to it too - after all how else can we start to evoke change? Only from within.

And there you have it

So the result - what a result. I had a fair idea that was going to be the case, at the end of the day Rajapakse is a preferable option to a more unstable Army General. There is a lot of unhappiness in Colombo but that is amongst the more middle upper class, businessmen and women - the most vociferous of the lot.

At the same time, many Tamils in the North (Vanni) voted for Fonseka but equally many Tamils further north (Jaffna) and in the East (Trinco, Pudu, Ampara) voted for Rajapakse. Ironically the usually angry Tamil diaspora sided with the Fonseka crew not realising that they were aligning themselves with what they call the 'Colombo elite' who they hate and continually condemn as being manipulative and ignorant of the needs of the people on grassroot level.

At the end of the day, if there is anything I have learnt from this election is that anyone will side with anybody as long as they are set to benefit as individuals - not as a community or race. So we're a selfish race but what a place to start - at least its only up from here. And this election has been the most comedic mish mash of people coming together taking sides with others I never would have imagined - its like Cilla Black's Blind Date on crack cocaine.

The point is, we just need to commit ourselves as individuals and as a nation to putting pressure on people we know who have influence in high places to start the reconciliation process. And more importantly to start making sure that we address the needs of the Tamil people because they have been silenced and ignored for too long.