The following article is written by Rtr. Miyuru D and edited by Rtr. Malesha R

Since the day I joined the club, we’ve been trying to organise club trip… that’s four years in the making since back then to now. It was Rtr. Riffath who was the Secretary when I joined, then Malshani, Rashmi and now Salman. Malshani became the president this year. That trip idea’s gone through a lot.

So this is the story of how it finally happened. I’m glad it did happen for a number of reasons, the main one being that two men (Rt. PP Muji and Rtr. PP Zayan) I respect very much are nearing the end of their Rotaract career and I wanted us to chill out with them at least once before that faithful day comes to pass. Midtown was always a pretty tight club; always there for each other in sickness and health, in happiness and sorrow so this trip was gonna make us a whole lot closer.

This trip finally happened on my birthday – tear rolls down cheek

ORGANIZING

Finally! Four years after joining the club, we’ve got a trip and this trip be tripping yo! Ashfaaq chaired it and from the start it was a wackadoodle roller coaster ride.

We spent almost four club meetings debating on where we could go and there was talk about making sure everyone could go, especially the girls who’d have to be back by dark (let’s just assume they run on solar energy).

We settled on going to Bolgoda. Confused?  I was too, at the time. I packed up some stuff for a day’s worth of a stay.

THE DAY BEFORE

Salman called me around six in the evening before asking me if I am ready to go. 

“Yes, I can come to Bolgoda directly, since I am in Katubedda or I can come from a common meet up point” I said, and that was just for the heck of it, because when it comes to trips half the fun is in the journey and not the destination.

If you travel on your own and meet the rest of the guys at the trip destination, you will hear stories of things they did on the way like ‘knocking down a lamp post’,  ‘stealing a traffic cone’, ‘free food’, ‘sudden road side marriages’…  you’d rather be part of those stories than listen to them, trust me on this one!

So Rule #1 for trips: always travel together, even if you’re close to the trip destination.  All these side stories distracted me from the main one.

Salman tells me, “Miyuru the plan has totally changed-  oh you’re not on whats-app? We are going to Negombo. Can you meet us at Boralesgamuwa?”

The plan’s changed, lets go to Negombo then! So I repacked for Negombo that night and set an alarm for 6 instead of 8 as original planned.

Rule #2: be informed of changes, for e.g. be available on whats app. Hmm… I need to buy a new phone.

Another side note: Rtr. Thiru Cummaran was a rebel that day. He came to the venue directly and was late. He broke rule #1.

THE TRAVEL

I went to Boralesgamuwa and awaited the transport with my President Mal. Damn- that bus! It was humongous, it was a high rise bus with a inbuilt bathroom! All thanks to Amana Travels and Tours which by the way is owned by our very own Secretary/ President elect Salman Nizam.

You see, we’re 37 years of history in so we’ve got some pretty good success stories along the way. I guess Salman, Zayan, Muji and Rtn. Hussain are just a few that come to my head when writing this down so yes, Salman owns a school and now has extended into the travels and tourism industry.

It was a pretty sweet ride to go in, looking down on those pedestrians and other cars and even buses. My inner voice screamed “Ha! Peasants! We’ve got a high rise bus!”.

Have you see the top of a bus? It’s not pretty.

 Azmin & Muji got picked up next, followed by Insaf & Ashfaaq, Malesha, Zaid, Shihan, Afzal, Shakeel, Manaz, Baasith and Zayan and Nuzhath roughly that order.

On the way we stopped for some snacks at a small kopi kadde.

THE SPOT
Leena Lagoon.. Oh my God! What a view and a very spacious bungalow. We got to run around it, (not bad for 17 people) There were three rooms (which we were hardly in, because we were too busy having fun).

It had an open kitchen with a microwave, fridge and water filter, kitchen and a barbecue grill (too bad we didn’t stay the night)

The main bedroom where we had charades and truth or dare was the most easy place to get caught in hide and seek. This was inside one of the largest rooms; the middle bed is constructed out of concrete, and has a comfy mattress on top, (very cost effective I guess, mobility? not so much, tsunami proof? I guess)

ACTIVITIES

Zayan is a self trained magician; practicing for 6 years now and almost as good as Hannibal (Amma’s brother in law). He demonstrated to Azmin, some pretty complex card tricks which left her mouth and I have photo to prove it.

I was pretty amazed when Zayan threw a card pack at a window glass and the card she had in her mind was stuck to the glass while the rest fell to the floor.  At first she thought it was stuck because of gum or water, but the card appeared to be BEHIND the glass.

We had a swimming relay race, I had a cramp, my team lost! I realised I am 24 and cramps are gifts my age gives me, what more can I say?

The girls decided they were better off watching us, so we swam around splashing them from time to time.

There was a cool ballad dance, the photos of it will soon be on this page… or maybe not. I won a few rounds of Omi, the trick is to pull out all the trumps (that’s right Donald we’re coming for you) and then start playing the low cards then the high cards, or something like that.. 

This was followed by a game called ‘The Seeker’ that was very confusing, and Insaf cheated! a lot! There were two teams had to tag people and put them in a prison back at home base but when it started people were just running about like crazy fools. Ah good times, good times.

Then we went back to the classics with Hide’n Seek. Pretty childish game, don’t you think? A very challenging game if you ask me, and also a very fun game after all… it’s a very good game to play if you want to find out who you’d want by your side in a hostage situation.

We hide inside pantry cupboards, on the roof, in a tree, camouflaged on a bed with bags and stuff, in cloth cupboards and hung on the window rails with the drapes, behind bushes.

Needless to say all of those places were useless, because I listed them down. If it was a good hiding place it wouldn’t be on this list, because I wouldn’t have known about it to write about them. Welcome to the twilight paradox zone.

Charades was super fun especially when it was Ashfaaq’s turn with Armageddon, if there was unlimited time, he’d still keep us trying to guess what it was. At one point he just gave up- we were clearly nowhere near his superior intellect.

TRUTH OR DARE: This was fun, I tell you especially since we knew each other so well. We didn’t want to waste a question which could have gotten to know but some other mean, the top five crushes in Rotaract was embarrassing, for all of us, we’re not going to list them down here.

I think truth or dare showed us how close we are as a family.

MY BIRTHDAY

“Someone threw someone’s bag in to the pool” said Salman while coming in rushing “Green?!” I asked. “Yes” He responded.

My bag! which had my purse, my money and my change of clothes.

I went out to look for my bag, and the pool was empty… and along came a surprise cake to celebrate my birthday.

It was so cool, I was 24 and surrounded by people that love and cared for me, hopefully these people will be there the rest of my life, but I am glad that they’re here with me in the here and now.

FOOD

The food was late, but super good. There was way too much food for all of us, shihan and the gang sat on the floor and started on the other midtown tradition.

MIDTOWN TRADITIONS | SAVAN

If you ever came to one of our District Ifthars you’d know about this one a little. It’s the savan style eating we have at midtown, everyone gathers around and eats from the same plate, but we don’t limit this to ifthars we do it all the time, and I think it’s a midtown trait, a pretty cool one. I’ve never eaten like that before joining midtown, but I love it.

DINNER

We had dinner on the way home when we left the place around 5:30, it was at a hotel and most of us had hoppers when Muji brought up an interesting topic on rhinos mostly because he didn’t want Azmin talking about magic tricks anymore and it did inspire me to read more on the topic afterwards.

CRITICAL EVALUATION

There was a number of important things we could improve on: I think punctuality was not that high on the list for once, because they were all on time, I mean.. we were only 15 minutes behind schedule at the beginningbut by the time we reached the place it was all in place.

Big buses are awesome really there are super cool, no I critically saying, it’s awesome and spacious, a place for you’re bag and you, as long as the bus is free get big buses, 2.5 km per liter is a bit scary though.

Spontaneous fun: I think the whole reason it was fun today was because there was little planning involved. If it was a planned outing it would have never happened, so midtown is dynamic! let’s go with that.

Not everyone will come so don’t plan for it, the truth is that not everyone came on this trip, and if we had postponed it to another day to accommodate them.. another lot would have dropped out. The best thing is to go with the numbers you have, which is exactly what Mal & Ashfaaq did. There’ll be other trips and the rest can always come for those!

EPILOGUE

Everyone got off the bus closest to their house. I fell asleep and by the time I woke up everyone was gone except me, Mal, Muji and Azmin. I got out last and went home in a tuk like a lone ranger’s exit at the end of of a movie.

My legs hurt from the cramp, I was black from the sun, tongue burnt from the spicy rice… but would I change any aspect of this day?Absolutely not, it was awesome.