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Going Back To Ceylon

Back when i was in Primary 2, we had this Indian classmate (of Tamil descent). He came from a very rich family, one time he took a week off school coz his family went back to visit their ancestral homeland in Ceylon. By that time Ceylon was already long known as Sri Lanka, but somehow our parents and us still referred to it as Ceylon. So for weeks we kept teasing him about “balik Ceylon“.

The funny incident was one day when he had already left for the holiday, a teacher asked, “where’s that Indian guy?” to which the joker of the class Azmi replied “kena tembak robot Cylon“. The Battlestar Galactica series was pretty popular back then, the original Lorne Greene / Dirk Benedict one not the new sexy one. Azmi got scolded by the teacher for his cheek, of course.

Mention of Ceylon or Sri Lanka always conjure up that memory, plus maybe my Form 5 geography random factoids (“Ratnapura juga digelar ‘Kota Permata’…”)

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Anyway, few days ago i was reminded of it again as the longest armed conflict in Asia had “reached its bitter end“, with the defeat of the LTTE. But most reports also added that the conflict will still continue guerilla-style.

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