Today, while taking a morning stroll along the lakeside in Kandy, Sue and I were approached by a German tourist. “Excuse me. I have a recommendation for you. You must go and see the British Garrison Cemetery. It is not far and the light right now is fantastic.” He seemed very moved and to have need to share what he had seen, so we thanked him and followed his directions. We took a path uphill, not far from the Temple of the Tooth and found the cemetery in a secluded spot behind a set of wrought iron gates. It comprises one or two acres and looks like an idealised version of an English country churchyard. The graves and paths are immaculately maintained and the only other people there were two workers armed with brooms and wheelbarrows. Although near the centre of this crowded and noisy city it’s a peaceful spot on a hillside surrounded by woodland. On the slope above, the white dome of a Buddhist temple can be seen. From time to time the silence is broken by the cry ...

This is a photo of Sue and Jenifer, one of the teachers she works with.  It's a great picture of her I think and quite special when you know the circumstances in which it was taken. The photographer is a little lad with learning difficulties.  He's in a regular class where the other children look out for him, but where he doesn't make much conventional progress.  One day Sue gave him her camera and the affinity between him and the device was instinctual and immediate.  He took several photos of Sue and the teachers, each time waiting with intense concentration until the right moment to depress the button. Most of the time, I guess, we try to take photos that are a window on the world, in which the subjects are not too self-conscious of the person with the lens.  But all too often we end up recording dull and stilted poses for posterity.  In this picture something quite different is going on.  The subjects are very aware that a photograph is bein...

"They all look the same to me."  How many times have I heard that remark spoken by a racist or xenophobe?  So often it is used to imply that an ethnic group are somehow less individual, less important and somehow less human than the speaker and their chosen audience.  And yet, I have to admit to a practical cognitive difficulty.  When I first arrived in Sarawak I felt myself to be in a sea of Chinese and asian faces and I found it very hard to tell people apart.  To a degree people did "look the same to me".  When I started teaching I used name labels for the first three weeks even in classes of three or four students to be sure I didn't make a mistake.  After this initial period I was still paranoid about getting a name wrong and left little notes to myself in the files for some classes like "'X' has glasses" to make sure I didn't confuse her with 'Y'. Then the strangest thing happened.  A phenomena familiar I'm sure to ...