{"id":559,"date":"2010-11-29T16:52:56","date_gmt":"2010-11-29T16:52:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sandbox2.learnerinformatics.com\/?p=559"},"modified":"2010-11-29T21:40:24","modified_gmt":"2010-11-29T21:40:24","slug":"colombo-swimming-club-sri-lanka","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/sandbox2.learnerinformatics.com\/?p=559","title":{"rendered":"Colombo Swimming Club &#8211; Sri Lanka"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/sandbox2.learnerinformatics.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/11\/colomboswimmingclub.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" class=\"alignleft size-medium wp-image-567\" title=\"colomboswimmingclubboard\" src=\"http:\/\/sandbox2.learnerinformatics.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/11\/colomboswimmingclub-e1291047962345-225x300.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"225\" height=\"300\" srcset=\"http:\/\/sandbox2.learnerinformatics.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/11\/colomboswimmingclub-e1291047962345-225x300.jpg 225w, http:\/\/sandbox2.learnerinformatics.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/11\/colomboswimmingclub-e1291047962345.jpg 480w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 225px) 100vw, 225px\" \/><\/a>On my final day in Sri Lanka I stayed at the Colombo Swimming Club hotel and availed of their wonderful outdoor pool. Olympic gold medalist David Wilkie learned to swim in this pool. But I suppose of more significance was the fact that scientist, science fiction writer and Sri Lankabhimanya, Sir Arthur C. Clarke CBE FRAS swam laps of this pool on a daily basis during the second half of his life. Apparently he called this pool his &#8220;million dollar pool&#8221; and according to the hotel website he used the daily swim as a meditation that spawned the plots and characters for his fictional work.<\/p>\n<p>Arthur C Clarke died in Colombo in March 2008 he had lived here since 1956. He obviously grew to love the country&#8230;&#8230;.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>&#8220;<em>The island of Ceylon is a small universe; it contains as many variations of culture, scenery, and climate as some countries a dozen times its size. What you get from it depends on what you bring; if you never stray from your hotel bar or the dusty streets of westernized Colombo, you could perish of fulminating boredom in a week, and it would serve you right. But if you are interested in people, history, nature, and art &#8211; the things that really matter &#8211; you may find, as I have, that a lifetime is not enough.&#8221; (Clarke in The View from Serendip, 1977)<span style=\"font-size: x-small;\"> <\/span><\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>On my final day in Sri Lanka I stayed at the Colombo Swimming Club hotel and availed of their wonderful outdoor pool. Olympic gold medalist David Wilkie learned to swim in this pool. But I suppose of more significance was the fact that scientist, science fiction writer and Sri Lankabhimanya, Sir Arthur C. Clarke CBE [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[3,5,6],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/sandbox2.learnerinformatics.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/559"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/sandbox2.learnerinformatics.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/sandbox2.learnerinformatics.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sandbox2.learnerinformatics.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sandbox2.learnerinformatics.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=559"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"http:\/\/sandbox2.learnerinformatics.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/559\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":595,"href":"http:\/\/sandbox2.learnerinformatics.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/559\/revisions\/595"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/sandbox2.learnerinformatics.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=559"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sandbox2.learnerinformatics.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=559"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sandbox2.learnerinformatics.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=559"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}