{"id":1189,"date":"2012-05-15T14:14:03","date_gmt":"2012-05-15T04:14:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/murraygunn.id.au\/blog\/?p=1189"},"modified":"2017-11-05T08:03:44","modified_gmt":"2017-11-05T08:03:44","slug":"sri-lankan-hamster-wheel","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/murraygunn.id.au\/blog\/countries\/asia\/sri-lanka\/1189","title":{"rendered":"Sri Lankan Hamster Wheel"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/a>My first spontaneous interaction with my Sri Lankan neighbours came on my second day in the country. I walked up the road to the East, past the IT Centre<\/a> and Indrani’s shop and into the jungle. When I turned around, a group of locals called me over to the side of the road where they were decorating a large wooden cylindrical structure.<\/p>\n

The group grew quickly as the men called for a daughter who spoke English well. ‘It’s a game for New Year called katuru onchillawa<\/i><\/a>,’ she told me when she arrived. ‘You must come back on the 14th.’ I looked over the contraption trying to understand its purpose. Spokes protruded in 4 places to create 4 parallel wheels on a single hub, which were in turn quartered by four thick poles. The men were joining the middle two wheels in a circular ladder and tying long folded leaves to the rims.<\/p>\n

When I walked past again the following day, the men were bending long pulpy wood segments to ring the central section. They held up some string on the quartering poles and I understood that these were to be seats. That would mean that the central section was a hamster wheel for someone to turn the whole system.<\/p>\n

<\/a>I missed the 14th because I was at the Kalutara festival<\/a>, but I returned as soon as I could. The locals saw me and called for all the families from the area to come and join. Soon I was sitting in one of the seats along with 7 others and a thin man was running us around. He only lasted 5 minutes before needing a break, so I offered to have a turn. Then the hilarity began.<\/p>\n

Here was a strange white man, taking the central role of the game, trying to run on the spot in a device designed for people with a much shorter stride. I began to lose my stride and imagined that if I stopped suddenly, centripetal force would send me over the top like a cartoon mouse. I’m guessing that I only lasted two minutes, urged on by cries of ‘Come on, come on!’, before I was flat on my face in a pool of sweat. The previous man then seemed like a marathon runner.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

My first spontaneous interaction with my Sri Lankan neighbours came on my second day in the country. I walked up the road to the East, past the IT Centre and Indrani’s shop and into the jungle. When I turned around, a group of locals called me over to the side of the road where they… Continue reading Sri Lankan Hamster Wheel<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[114],"tags":[127,129,115],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/murraygunn.id.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1189"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/murraygunn.id.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/murraygunn.id.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/murraygunn.id.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/murraygunn.id.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1189"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/murraygunn.id.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1189\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1716,"href":"https:\/\/murraygunn.id.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1189\/revisions\/1716"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/murraygunn.id.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1189"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/murraygunn.id.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1189"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/murraygunn.id.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1189"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}