Welcome

It's been quite the past two weeks. As I write this issue of the newsletter, I've grown two new arms, lost the muscle mass in my right foot, and have something that I can only describe as "a growth" near my right ear. It whispers to me at night, but that's neither here nor there. Nevertheless, I persevere, and bring you this week's topic.

Outward Bound

As an immigrant child, the dynamics between parents and kids is a decades-long process. Immigrant parents take years and years and years to open up to their kids. I'm at a point in my life where my parents are feel comfortable opening up with me about a lot of things, which has been a great boon with regards to learning about, well, everything that came before me.

I was originally going to write about another topic for this issue, but decided today's topic might be a better fit for this week (you'll still get the other topic next time). Anyway, if you don't know already, I'm of Sri Lankan descent, Sri Lankan Tamil, to be specific. Born here in Toronto, but both parents are from Sri Lanka. The other day I joked with some friends that the two most definining characteristics of Sri Lanka (at least from a Western POV) are the invasions (throw a pin in the general Western European part of a map and odds are it'll land on a country that colonized Sri Lanka) and the Civil War.

The war's one of those things that I still have a weird relationship with; my parents (understandably) rarely ever talked about it growing up, yet I have cousins who are the same age as me who've spent almost half their life living through that same war. A lot of war talk in the house centers more around how it affected our family (and more specifically, my parents' families) rather than the causes of the war itself, which y'know, is fair.

The reason why I bring this all up is because while me and the family were eating dinner today (Wednesday May 5th, for those of you wondering how close to a deadline I start working), a news story came up in a local Tamil news station about Sri Lankan expatriates returning to Sri Lanka. There was one gentleman in particular who'd left Sri Lanka to go to Germany in 1980, and returned in 2015. The dates stuck out to me, because the war didn't officially start until 1983. While yes, the rising tensions had been there for decades, the narrative in my mind growing up was that the vast majority of the Sri Lankan diaspora in the world to this day was as a result of the mass emigration during the war. So I figured "why not", and asked my parents about what it was like to leave Sri Lanka prior to the war.

First and foremost, I should admit: I'm an idiot! But can you blame me? So much of my family's history, specifically as it pertains to Sri Lankan sociopolitics, has been a total mystery to me until a couple of years ago. There were choice bits of info I knew, like some family members going to Dubai for work, and others hop-skipping around the world before settling into their current locations, but I never really questioned the why of it all. Why did my dad come to Canada, while his sister went to Germany? Why don't I have many family members in the United States? Okay, the second question I didn't really care as much about, but moving on.

Airfare in the 80s was cheap, according to my parents. The average ticket from Sri Lanka to Germany in 1980 only cost 10,000 SLR (Sri Lankan Rupees), which, according to a quick search and conversion, was only ~$100 CAD at the time. So people would just leave because they felt like it. It wasn't common, but it happened. Even during the war, plane tickets to Europe were cheap enough that people would find themselves going to Italy, France, Switzerland, and yes, Germany, and settle down there. From there, they'd also move West into countries like Norway, the Netherlands, and London (which I'll get into later).

The other way Sri Lankans would leave Sri Lanka prior to the 80s, and more specifically, back when it was called Ceylon (hopefully you can see where I'm going with this), was a nice, fun, harmless little thing called Colonialism. This would be for a variety of reasons, but civil servitude found (sigh) Ceylonese Tamils going to countries like Malaysia and Singapore, establishing their presence there. On the topic of labour, a lot of Sri Lankans nowadays travel to the Middle East for work, mainly doing labour jobs and otherwise "unskilled" (hate to use that term) jobs.

I've gone this long without mentioning India because there isn't really much to say there? India is only ~20 km away from where my mom grew up in Sri Lanka. My mom speaks about India like its walking across the street to the neighbour's house, so it's pretty self-explanatory as things go. "Ding dong, hey, it's the Tamil Kings, just wanted to check in for a bit" (a few centuries). The war happened, a lot of Tamil people went to southern India as refugees, mainly to the state of Tamil Nadu.

But yes, back to Great Britain, a wonderful place, according to a recent poll of Jenkem huffers. Unlike other Sri Lankan diasporic communities, the British Sri Lankan diaspora is a tad different (and no, I don't mean the abnormal Geiger counter readings around the ones who've had the misfortune of shaking hands with Boris Johnson). Even before they ended up wrecking the country beyond repair (stop me if you've heard that one before), the United Kingdom was usually the place where educated Sri Lankans would go for education. This resulted in Sri Lankans of a certain pedigree immigrating to the country to work white-collar jobs. As I mentioned above, not all Sri Lankans came into the country this way, but the ratio at which they came in for one reason versus the other skews heavily towards the education route.

Sri Lankans also headed to the United States, a country known for its incredibly welcoming immigration policy, for similar reasons. I don't have many family members in the United States, but the ones that do live there happen to be academics, engineers, and doctors (the Big 3 of Immigrant DnD classes). Funny enough, I didn't know about the astoundingly large Sri Lankan population in Staten Island, which apparently is one of the largest Sri Lankan communities in the world outside of Sri Lanka itself?

As the conversation was dwindling down, I asked my dad the hot-seat question: "Why Canada?" He thought about it for a brief moment, then replied, "I dunno, I just ended up here". My dad immigrated in 1991, at the age of 24. O Canada, indeed.

What I've been:

Working On

I'm in what one might call "A Weird Fucking Period, Dude", but I've still got stuff in the works at a variety of sites, hopefully coming out in the near future. I took a short break from writing mid-last week to read for pleasure, and it really sunk in just how much I was reading for the sake of writing vs reading for my own pleasure. Luckily, with shifting plans, I've afforded some time to re-evaluate and sort out what fits in the "entertainment" vs. "work" categories respectively. Not to sound like your local soundcloud rapper, but big things are coming soon!

Putting Out

Nothing I wrote came out this week. However, I did work on the header (read: changed colours, names, and picture) for this week's Fun-Size Round-Table at Gatecrashers, and I hosted last week's edition too, so here they both are:

• The one I hosted
• The other one

Reading

• Ping Pong Vol. 2 (Matsumoto): I finally managed to sit down and actually finish the series, and wow, what a finale. I don't think I mentioned this in my blurb about the first volume, but goddamn, does Matsumoto know how to switch up his style from panel to panel. The way it shifts both in the level of detail and the coarseness of the lines varies wildly, especially during those match scenes. The first volume really encompassed the build-up to the tournament finale at the midway point of the series, but this volume stripped off all the layers until that final match. No thoughts, no decisive moves, just two players at the top of their game, playing ping pong. The line about it not mattering who to cheer for/cheering no matter who gets a point stuck with me. In the end, it wasn't about who won; it was about the game they played.
• Eve #1 (LaValle, Mi-Gyeong, Peer): I only found out about this series a week before it hit shelves. I'd already known LaValle from his name being thrown around the lit. scene occasionally, and him recently being announced as a future writer for Marvel's X-line, but I didn't know that he'd already had a bit of comics writing experience already. I've yet to read his other book for Boom! Studios, Destroyer, but I really enjoyed Eve's first issue. It's a very specific kind of post-apocalyptic tale that feels like a warning to adults 40+, and a salve for the younger generations.

Watching

• Kamen Rider OOO: Finished the series. It was great! The homoerotic subtext between Eiji and Ankh is the strongest element of the show. Why yes, this is a Yasuko Kobayashi-written season!
• Kaizoku Sentai Gokaiger: One of my favourite Super Sentai shows. For an anniversary season, it does a great job at being accessible content-wise. I didn't know that the large influx of Sentai alumni in the season was as a result of the 2011 Japan floods leading to a rallying cry to cheer up childrens' spirits. In seeing the call, and also finding out about the season's anniversary theme, several alumni wanted to pitch in and lift spirits, leading to a large chunk of the season being rewritten to account for all the new cameos.
• Kamen Rider Ryuki: Finished the series. It was great! The homoerotic subtext between Shinji and Ren is the strongest element of the show. Why yes, this is a Yasuko Kobayashi-written season!
• Invincible: Now that the season's done, let me just say: wow. Hearing JK Simmons perform the classic "500 years" line had me shook. It's interesting that they left the season off at the point they did, but it does open up the potential for a nice bountiful amount of seasons.

Listening to

• Love Foolosophy - Jamiroquai
• Miss the Rage (feat. Playboi Carti) - Trippie Redd
• Understood - Mick Jenkins
• Crazy Crazy (feat. Charlie XCX & Kyary Pamyu) - Yasutaka Nakata

Afterword

Please just ask me some questions and submit them here, so I can supplement my lack of content with an ongoing Q&A section. Next time, I'll be talking about an interesting comparison between two creator dynamics, and hopefully not start writing it two days before the newsletter goes live, but until then, have yourselves a great weekend.