Well, here I am in Sri Lanka. I have not slept in 36 hours and feel like a piece of shit.
The flights were not bad, but I barely made my connecting flight in Hong Kong, so, of course, my bags did not make it. I am hoping for them to arrive tomorrow.
Add to that the fact that no-one was there to meet me at the airport. I had to spend a lot of time working out my luggage, then try to find my ride, which did not exist. Finally, I took a taxi and checked into the Ramada downtown. I was so over tired that I could not sleep. So I started to find out what had happened with my ride and my intended stay. It turns out the my friend Nirmala has had a recurrence of her cancer and has been deathly ill for over a month now. Today, after a lot of phoning around, I discovered all this news and finally came to Nirmala's house only to find it filthy dirty. I was going to move over to a clean hostel hotel, but Nirmala's secretary has mobilized the troops and there is a cleaning crew in here.
I have not even been in the country 24 hours and all my old friends are fully mobilized. My friend Jayanthi came to collect me from the hotel and brought me to Nirmala's. My former landlady has been beating the bushes all day and may have found an apartment for me to rent. In the meantime, I will be staying here because they have said that if I stay, they can bring Nirmala home. Needless to say, I am willing to put up with almost anything in order to help her out.
I am now linked up to the internet by a thing called a dongle. It is just a USB stick, but I love the name. I have a cell phone number which has been ringing non-stop. I am taking Nirmala's 200+ year old house and modernizing it. I even bought a power bar so I could plug all my electronics in.
It took from 10AM to 3:30PM to get here, get the dongle, buy the power bar, change money, do a grocery shop and activate the dongle. Now all I want to do is go to bed and my room is full of workers. Oh well, lessons in patience.
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