Hello FAB People,
Greetings from New York where I am attending the New York Fashion Week!
This time last week I was in Sri-Lanka, a beautiful tropical Island in Asia in the region of the Maldives with beautiful people, lovely beaches and amazing food!
The island is home to 20million people and used to be known as Ceylon. Primarily known for tea production (Yes...Even Lipton tea started from there), this is a major tourist destination attracting visitors from England, Sweden, France and Russia. I might as well have been one of the first ten black men on the island as you will see from my experience.
Now to the fun stuff! I got into Colombo about 3 weeks ago and immediately I felt everyone was staring at me right from the airport and indeed they were! I quickly asked Gihan, my half-SriLankan companion what this was about and he told me that these folks hardly ever see black people on the island and I was even lucky they weren’t touching and feeling me yet! Wow! I really didn‘t have to work hard to be a superstar in these parts! As I was escorted to my vehicle I smiled and waved at my fans that hurriedly waved back at me obviously excited that I had taken notice of them!
After my red carpet entry into Colombo, I headed straight to my 5-Star hotel, The TAJ SAMUDRA and my red carpet treatment continued! The TAJ is synonymous with Asia and has a good network of amazing hotels.
Two hours after I had settled in, I headed to the lounge of the hotel hoping to get a feel of the people as I could not sleep. I liked their music and the DJ was good. I met two SriLankans in the lounge; one is an individual I named Gangster shortly after meeting him as he obviously acted like one and I could tell he was bred in South-London from his accent and the “other chap” was from NewYork (I don’t think he was exciting enough for me to remember his name or better yet name him! Lol!)
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| WITH GANGTER AND THE OTHER CHAP |
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| WITH GIHAN |
After listening to the music for about an hour, I asked to meet the DJ and asked if he was interested in playing some Nigerian Music and he said YES! I quickly made my way to my room, got my case of CDs and immediately handed him the latest CD I had purchased in Lagos. Fast forward 60 minutes later and the whole lounge had come alive as the DJ played "Something About You" by DR SID! It was amazing! Everyone was dancing! I even attempted to teach some of these dudes some local steps (not that I can even dance but at least I was better... Lol!). Dr Sidney Esiri, Please note that I introduced your music to Asia and be sure to give me some credit when you eventually start touring Asia! Same note goes to PMAN! I took Nigerian music to Sri Lanka. All my CDs eventually got missing so... believe me, they have all the CDs of every major Nigerian artist going around in Colombo!
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| WITH SRI LANKAN DANCERS |
I moved hotels a week later to a town called Mount Lavinia so I could be right on the beach and that proved awesome. I also discovered here that I could get amazing sea food for the cost of a snack at Mr Biggs or KFC!
The most popular means of transportation in Sri Lanka is the TUK TUK! Now that’s a funny name for a 3-wheeler also known as KEKE MARWA or NAPEP in Lagos, Nigeria. I recall telling Chaminda, my local driver what his vehicle was called in Nigeria and he actually parked to have a good laugh! That made me laugh even more... TUK TUK?! Please!
Don’t get carried away thinking I was having this much fun for 3 weeks! I only had weekends to see the country as I was hard at work during the weekdays. However, my last 3 days were spent touring the country whilst recording the pilot for one of our shows on FAB TV.
We travelled the country and visited quite a number of interesting places and you should read about this on our travel pages in the June edition of FAB Magazine! Now that I have leaked that, look forward to TV experience like never before come December, 2011 in the form of FAB Television.
Stay FAB!
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