Summer

My friend has passed his exams. After so much worry that he’ll have to miss most of the Summer holidays, it turns out everything’s rather fine. So we can go ahead with our little project (more to come later, maybe).

Us international school students/foreign university students refer to the period between June/July and August/September as Summer. This is despite the fact that there is no real Summer in Sri Lanka. It’s hot all year around, bloody hot in June and July, but it’s hot either way. In the UK people revere the Summer, although I personally prefer Spring, which sounds more, well, get-up-and-go after the morbidity of the Winter.

In Sri Lanka, we’ve split up the seasons according to rainfall, since that’s the most change in weather we usually get. We’ve got the Monsoon season, and, well that’s all I remember. I’m sure I learnt this stuff in O/L geography. A bit of a shame I don’t remember, I sort-of liked the subject.

The UK Summer means 90% rain and 10% sunshine, and increasingly hot days [rant about Global Warming goes here]. Before I left the UK, we had some really wet weather, and then some really hot weather. British rain isn’t the sort of rain we get in Sri Lanka. In the UK it’s just always there in the background, slightly annoying but inconsequential. Life goes on regardless. In Sri Lanka the rain falls at an epic pace and in massive batches, successfully bringing the country to a halt. If we’re so lucky, there are days when it rains so much in the night that it’s taken for granted that the roads are clogged, and nobody bothers to go to school or work.

I do like the Winter sunshine in Britain though. It’s cold, but the sunshine is just glorious and often the skies are clear. There then seems a sort of clarity in the air. Also, the ridiculously long Summer days are nice. And thanks to the Summer I get ridiculously long holidays to spend in Sri Lanka. But I still prefer Sri Lankan weather, even though almost everyday is a fight against the forces of sweat and stink.

Watch the Sri Lankan skies at sunset. There’s always a red hue. It looks beautiful, and you get it every evening. It’s worth living in Sri Lanka for these little things…