A new record has been set for delays in updating this blog. Almost 6 months. I have a good excuse as I was packing and moving and then unpacking.
As I wrote in my last post, I had to move after 11 years in the same place. In fact, in the end, it was 11 years to the day when I finally moved out. I looked at 31 places before I settled on the house I am in now. That was at the end of July which would have given me only a few days to finish packing and move. I asked for an extension to August 31 which I was granted.
My previous landlady owed me in excess of LKR.1M. That proved a trial to extract. Some of it was the damage deposit. Some the fixtures and furniture that her son wanted me to leave behind. Some of it was improvements that I had made on her behalf. After much struggle and threats to take them to court, they coughed up LKR.1M. It was much needed as moving is an expensive business.
More about the move and the new place later. Now, to catch up with daily events.
Mahjong continued apace even during the packing and moving. We missed one day before the move and two after. Not bad really. Our teacher Jerry was visiting from Australia so she managed to join us for a couple of games at both places.
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| At the old place. From left to right: Jerry, Deanne, Me, Judith, Lesley and Viv. Viv has been a new addition for about 6 months. Judith has since dropped out and been replaced by Corrie. We need a new picture of the current group. |
We have been playing twice a week for some time now. Thursday was kept a secret from Judith as she was driving all of us a little crazy. We were all relieved when she voluntarily dropped out. She is a severe alcoholic which when mixed with he anti-depressants makes for a bad combination. She has attacked a number of her "close friends" viciously, creating a toxic environment whenever she is around. Best avoided.
Deanne said that she would take a break from mahjong as well as the driveway and stairs at my new place are a bit challenging for her. In the end, her driver, Amila (a very good guy), told her that she should continue as it is good for her brain. Thankfully, she listened to him and is still with us.
I continued to do French with my friend Amra. She sat the French exam and managed to get a high enough score to boost her points for her application for permanent residence in Canada. So things have morphed from French classes into friendship and now helping her and her husband complete their PR application. It has gone in, so now we are waiting for Canada to issue the PR visa. Fingers crossed.
The Democratic Socialist Sewing Club of Sri Lanka also continues. We are down to 3 members now. Christine dropped out due to health issues. Marianne was keeping her oar in with the original Stitch and Bitch. Corrie, Viv and Marianne wanted to keep the Democratic Socialist a secret from Lillian, one of the founding members of Stitch and Bitch. However, Pamela, a British woman who recently arrived from India and joined the Democratic Socialist, let the cat out of the bag. That caused Marianne grief as Lillian is one of her oldest friends. In the end, Marianne decided to stick with Stitch and Bitch only. No doubt, some pressure was applied. It is like being in high school again. Pamela has gone back to Kerala to close up her house there before she moves here permanently. Upon her return, we will be up to 4 members.
One of the things worrying me with the pending move was the dog, Honey. Thankfully, we found her a new home at the beginning of July. I had it in my mind that the log jam with finding a new place would break as soon as I dealt with the Honey situation. And so it was. I found my new place about 10 days later.
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Honey in her new home.
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Deanne threw one of her soirées. Very nice as usual. Had a chance to see Douglas whose return from Australia had been delayed by almost 6 months due to a fall. He broke his hip and was a long time recovering. He was using a cane, but in good shape considering he was 83 at the time. He has since moved to Australia permanently to live out his remaining years.
Book Club also continues. On one occasion when I really needed the time to pack, I dragged myself to the meeting to find I was the only attendee. The next time that I had to send out the notice because Yvonne was away in Kenya, I ended up cancelling it as only Deanne had responded. Naturally, the minute I cancelled, people came out of the woodwork saying they were planning on attending. No answer, no meeting. Otherwise, it has been going fairly smoothly.
Amra celebrated her 33rd birthday at the Earl's Regent Hotel. It was a nice party. She organized it really well with games and a high tea.
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I love the pillars that hold up the porte-cachère at the Earl's Regent
 | | Amra with her cake and beautiful flowers. |
 | | The cake was lovely. |
 | | Amra and her husband Farees. |
 | | Amra and Me. |
 | | The ladies. |
I finally have a full set of teeth. 2 more implants went in at the beginning of November. Hopefully nothing more will go wrong in my mouth. Even with the inexpensive dental care here, I have spent a fortune.
Lesley's husband, Ralph celebrated his 73rd birthday on July 23. He is 4 months older than me. He has been receiving very invasive cancer treatment. We were all very happy to be able to celebrate another birthday with him.
 | | Cutting his cakes. |
 | | As always, the event was held at the Kandy Sports Club. It is the local rugby club and field. Ralph is a stalwart rugby fan. |
 | | Lesley after being fed cake. It is a Sri Lankan custom for the celebrant and his spouse to feed each other the first pieces of cake. |
August was taken up with packing, meeting with my new landlords to finalize the lease agreement (I have a 5 year lease with a clause saying they will favourably consider another 5 years. I am not leaving this place until I am in a box.), agreeing on the work to be done at the new house and meeting with the tradesmen to get the work set up and done. All this was interrupted by the Kawasaki's joint birthday dharna. I vowed that I would not attend another feeding of monks and endless chanting so I showed up at 1300 having thankfully missed all that Buddhist hoohah. My friend Amal was in attendance so I managed to catch up with him.
Another welcome interruption was high tea with Devika at the Grand Serendib hotel. A nice little hotel close to Kandy town. The buffet tea was fairly extensive if you were a carnivore. I had a lot of cheese sandwiches.
Moving day started on August 30 and ended on September 1 at 0200. I had 49 boxes, 8 separate pieces of art and all the furniture. Huge move and very stressful, but overall it went well.
I slept in the new house on the night of August 31 and every night since.
It took me 2 months to pack and about the same length of time to get settled into the inside of the new place. The outside kitchen for my housekeepers is still not fully finished. The door is the last thing to be completed. Otherwise, they could move in there but for the monkeys. You can't have an open room with them around. On my 3rd day here, just after setting up my book case, a couple of big monkeys got in. They threw the books all over the place and peed on the floor. Since then, I have lost 2 sets of earrings and a necklace. They partly chewed up one of my binocular cases which they threw up on the roof. Thankfully, one of my neighbours spotted the case and the binos from their house across the street.
Here are a series of video clips of the new digs. I couldn't get it all uploaded as one file. After having said that I did not want a steep driveway nor stairs nor the red cliffs of Dover close to the building, I have ended up with all of it. You have to compromise. The plus is that I am the first occupant of a brand new house. My landlords have built it to a high standard so very little maintenance is needed. The other big plus is that the landlords are very nice people.
The sunset from by bedroom window.
I hope you made it this far. There are a few things yet to do like the leaky fish pond that has to be emptied and resealed, the water storage tank that overflowed for the second time last night and paint touch up from the all the moving bumps. All in good time.
Went for breakfast at the Grand Kandyan after a long time. Very good as always although the price has crept up again.
Amra and Farees took me for lunch a couple of times. Once at the new Cinnamon Kandy Mist and a second time at Los Amigos Locos. The Kandy Mist was just OK. Los Amigos Locos was very good. They were impressed enough to want to go back.
With the onset of November, the party season begins. There are a lot os Scorpios with birthdays bunched up together. Deanne kicks things off with her usual party on November 9. She is 86 now and still in great shape.
 | | Always a lovely spread at Deanne's |
 | | Cutting her cake. The cake beside was for Malcolm who shares a birthday with Deanne. He has recently had a knee replacement so his cake had a knee with stitches on top. A bit gross really. The woman to the left of Deanne is Arlene Kelaart who moved back to the UK some years ago. She is recently widowed and has come back to Sri Lanka to try to sell their house which has been languishing for years. |
Next came my birthday/house warming. My 73rd. Can't really believe it. A nice time. Despite my saying that I wanted no gifts except plants for landscaping, I got quite a haul. My friend Janie who was happily here again from the UK for my birthday, brought me a pair of scissors from her Canadian visit. So happy to have decent scissors. The ones you get here are maddeningly useless.
Waiting to light the cake. Beautiful cake provided by Amra.
Everyone clustered for singing Happy Birthday, but really to get a piece of cake. The balls on the table are some lovely locally made shortbread.
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Viv taking pics with my phone. In the background Amra talking with Ianthi. They work together teaching English, but this was the first time they have met in the flesh.
On the left, Amra's husband, Farees. On the right Janie of scissor fame and Perumal, my landlord.
The woman on the far right is Maria, a friend of Simon and Pauline visiting from Leeds. The three of them stayed over the previous weekend. Poor Maria was relegated to the day-bed in the upper lounge. I don't think she slept very well.
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dressed to kill in yellow.
A better look at Amra. Ralph leaning on the pillar. I had not expected him to come as he is feeling poorly after all his cancer treatments. Very glad he made it.
Lesley and Pauline between Amra and Maria. Pauline too is still undergoing cancer treatment. She lost all her hair which is now growing back nicely.
I kinda like this picture. Usually I want to delete any pics of me.
The cake lit. Ralph is gaunt. His hair is only now growing back. He had a nice full head of white hair before. Now there is serious recession in the front.
A view of the living room in use.
I think Simon is leading the charge with Happy Birthday.
Kumi in the background. She and her husband David have also moved back to the UK. He is much older than her and is now virtually bed bound. A condition that we all blame Kumi for as she has essentially abandoned him to take care of their grandchild. She too is back to try to sell their home here.
With Shiromi's granddaughter.
Can't stay off the phone.
On the far left Malcolm and his new knee.
Just in case you didn't get enough.
Some sad news. My long time friend Blake Lawson died alone in his house in Qualicum. His housekeeper found him a couple of days after he passed. He was a quirky but well meaning guy. Another one gone.
The lovely obit written by our friend Pamela. Brings tears to my eyes.
No garden to show you yet, but a couple of things that may be of interest. First, the Colombo Lotus Tower. This is a the tallest free standing structure in South Asia standing at 365 metres. Built in 2012, it looks like a big penis in the daylight.
Quite beautiful at night.
The other interesting thing is the birth of a baby star tortoise at Simon and Pauline's.
Closing as always with my cats. As you know, I had 4 that had lived with me and numerous interlopers.
First there was Buddy Boy.
Here he is with Nangi. He is the ginger and white.
Buddy had been very sick for a number of months 2 years ago. He recovered from the main respiratory illness but was left with an ulcer in his mouth that wouldn't heal. The nature of his saliva also changed making it viscous so that when he cleaned himself he was left covered with slime. I had to feed him soft food for about a year. He got tired of the soft food and went back to his kibble. Despite being a slime ball, he was very affectionate and seemed happy. He always wandered, spending a lot of time with Nangi across the street. He started spending more and more time away from the house coming only to have breakfast with Tiullia until about 2 months before I moved when neither of us had seen him. I believe that he took himself off to die. Very sad. He was my buddy for 7 years.
Nangi was born a the old place along with her brother Putha.
Nangi
Nangi had always been very distant. Almost from her birth she started going to the house kitty corner from us. She would come back frequently but seemed to like it over there. About 6 months before I moved she came less and less frequently. I was convinced that someone else was feeding her as when she did come she was in fine fettle. When it came time to move, I decided to leave her at the old place. She was obviously being cared for by someone and Tiullia asked that she stay as she would deal with the rats. Fine.
Tiullia's granddaughter, Maryam had moved into the flat at the house that Nangi frequented 3 months before. She loves cats and, in fact, I had made her my beneficiary with the proviso that she take care of my cats when I died. I asked her to keep her eye on Nangi after I moved. She got in touch 2 weeks after the move saying that Nangi seemed distressed and missing me. I went back and retrieved Nangi and brought her to the new place. She was transported in a proper cat carrier. We did not go back directly. I needed to do some shopping so we went around a bit and then took the very circuitous route to the new house.
She seemed to settle in fine, even snuggling with me on my bed. So it went for 5 days. Then on the 6th morning I got a call from Tiullia saying that Nangi had shown up at the old place on the veranda roof where she liked to hang out. How she found her way back, I don't know. Clever girl. So she is still there. Tiullia keeps an eye on her and feeds her and she is happy. She has found a friend who apparently looks a lot like Buddy with whom she was very close.
Then there is Putha, Nangi's brother, both of whom were born on the day-bed in my office at the old place.
My sweet boy in my old bedroom
Sleeping on the chair on the upper veranda at the new place.
Putha moved along with Chewy to the new house. He adjusted well and was his usual affectionate self with me and a great friend and playmate with Chewy. After 2 weeks at the new place, he disappeared. I was desperate. He came back after 5 days. Everything was good but after another few days, he disappeared again and has not come back for 2 months now. He was not the brightest of cats so I think he went exploring and couldn't find his way back. I had hoped that he had gone back to our old place, but no sign of him. He was not near as clever as his sister.
So I am down to one cat, Chewy. She is sitting in my lap as I write this.
She loves to lie or sit on the roof peak in front of my bedroom. There were also a pair of magpie robins that were nesting in the downspout at the edge of this roof that she was very interested in. Their nest was washed out by the rain 5 times. They kept rebuilding until at last they gave up.
Chewy snuggling with Putha before his disappearance. She missed him for a few days after he left.
Sitting in my bedroom window. She loves that place. She can come and go to the outside via that bit of roof.
I have two brass geckos that I bought in Singapore years ago when I lived there. They now sit on the window sill in the kitchen. They are so lifelike that Chewy is trying to play with them.
Of course, I have a variety of itinerant cats coming in to eat and pee and sometimes poop.
- Bad Cat-A ginger male who was not quite right. He kept coming in and peeing and doing diarrhea all over the place. I was really concerned about him and in the end decided to relocate him to some jungly place. He was remarkably easy to catch. I just put out the cat carrier with some food in it and in he went. Rizvi took him away and released him near the Kandy Private Hospital which is not that far away. I was certain that he would come back despite the fact that he clearly did not belong to anyone. Luckily, he has stayed where he was released. Rizvi has checked on him a couple of times. There is a guest house there that is glad to have him as he will hunt the rats so they are feeding him and he is happy there.
- Puthwo-another unfixed male whose full name is Putha Two, shortened to Puthwo. He obviously looks a lot like Putha. To such an extent that when I saw him from my office window the other day, I was convinced that Putha had come back. His is cute and I thought friendly. However, he has viciously attacked Chewy twice now. Once he frightened her so much that she hid in my bedroom for an entire 24 hours. He is now cata non grata. Here he is peaking in my bedroom window.
- Chewtwo-whose full name is Chewy Two shortened to Chewtwo. I am not sure of the gender but I think he is another unfixed male. He looks almost exactly like Chewy only bigger. He comes rarely.
- Noisy-another unfixed full ginger male. He comes a lot and talks all the time with a very loud meow, hence the name. Quite friendly but pees all over the place.
- Pirate-an unfixed male, mostly white with some black and grey patches. One black patch over one eye giving him his name. He is the tamest of the outside cats. He does not run away when he sees me. He also pees and when he comes he empties all three cat bowls before he leaves. Needless to say, he is in very good shape.
All these cats with the exception of Bad Cat clearly belong to some household, but in typical Sri Lankan style, they do not fix their male cats. In fact, some vets won't neuter male animals.
