December 31, 2013

Last day of 2013.  I am looking forward to 2014 with a vengeance.

The big news is that I have to move.  My lease is up on January 7.  One year in this house is gone already.  I have been paying Rs.30,000 rent.  I contacted my landlords to ask for the lease to be extended for another year, and they informed me that they were willing, but for Rs.40,000.  I was shocked.  I have maintained the house as if it were my own, spending Rs.300,000 of my own money on improvements.  I got back to them saying I would not stay unless the rent stayed as it was.  After a week, they responded with Rs.36,000.  I responded with Rs.32,000 against my better judgment, but I thought I could buy some time while I sorted things out.  They came back saying they were not interested in negotiating and it was Rs.36,000 or nothing.  So it is nothing.

All this back and forth would have left me with only one week to pack up and move, which I pointed out to them.  Now I have until January 31 to make the move. 

My friends have been great.  I will be moving in with Sonali.  She has a spare room with bath in a large house quite close to where I am now further up the river.  Jayanthi has said I can store my furniture at her estate in Thalatuoya and Jez has mobilized his entire team to help with the move.  I will be removing all the electrical enhancements I have made; 6 ceiling fans, 14 plug points, a geyser, etc., etc.

I gave all my boxes to Sonali when my stuff arrived from Canada.  Luckily she has kept them, so between them and what I can pick up from the big grocery stores, I should be fine.  The Kawasakis are providing the packing paper.  Veenitha is here to help me pack and so is Jayanthi.

But the big news is that Jayanthi, maybe her husband (that is another story), and I will be moving into her estate at Thalatuoya.  It is 12km. from Kandy sitting on 9 acres of timber and mixed crop; coconut, jack, teak, aloe, pepper, coffee.  The house is 100 years old and needs work, but we will get it done in the next few months.  There is ample room even to expand the house and it needs new bathrooms.  There is a servants house and 2 other houses that can be rented out or made use of in some other way.  The place is paradise.  There is even a perfect spot for a swimming pool.  The best news of all is that I don't have to pay rent.  I have offered to pay the utilities, but I will be saving a pack of money, will have great company and will be able to set up some kind of income generating business.

The village is lovely and when you have to go to Kandy, there is a good road which only takes about 20 minutes by tuktuk.  Luckily my car has not sold, as we will need one there, so the Universe has conspired again to make things as they should be.

My dream before I left Canada was to live on a plantation, and I had been hoping that Jayanthi's estate would be suitable.  My dream is coming true.

Ain't life a kick in the pants.

Hooray, 2014!

December 27, 2013

Christmas is over.  This week has gone by do quickly I can hardly believe it.  The lunch on Christmas Eve went very well.  Here is the table laid for Christmas lunch.

Perfect Christmas flowers from the garden

Jayanthi has arrived from Colombo on Christmas Eve and will stay for 2 or 3 weeks.  It is not only Christmas but kolom season again.  Here is Jayanthi doing the kolom.  It turned out beautifully.

We are back to fighting the bandicoots.  Now one is digging up the back yard.  So I had to pull up a cement flagstone and some interlocking bricks.  There is some water erosion along with the bandicoot tunnel, so it ate up a lot of sand.  I managed to crush my pinky finger while replacing the flagstone.

Christmas Day we went to Gunfire to celebrate Manil's 84th birthday.  I hope I look that good at her age.  She looked like a movie star.  Shanti prepared a sumptuous tea for about a dozen guests.  So we gave her a good party even though Amal is away.  There was a man named Mohan at the birthday party who is the chairman for the committee that is building a new cancer hospital in Kandy.  I am off to meet with him today to see if can be of some help with the marketing and fund raising.  They have to raise US$4.5 million for the building.  

Another of the guests at the tea party was Indira, who heads up the veterinary department at Peradeniya University where my little Dharma died.  She had not heard about Dharma's death.  Yesterday she called me to say she had spoken to the pathologist who conducted the post mortem on Dharma.  Apparently she died as a result of severe diarrhea which caused her intestine to collapse into itself like an internal telescope.  Poor little thing!  It was very nice of Indira to look into it.

My morning exercise routine continues to be rewarded.  The other day it was a black headed oriole and two beautiful green parakeets with bright red beaks.    Of course, the babblers, magpies, mynas, morning doves and pigeons continue to sing and flit around.  A squirrel seems to building a nest in one of my gutters, not a good thing, but he came to the roof edge and gave me an impertinent look the other morning before hurrying off to finish his business.

This morning's flowers were a perfect match to the kolom making Buddha very happy.  Jayanthi and Veenitha gave a little worship  to add to the happiness.

We spent last night playing gin rummy which is something I have not done in a very long time.  It was a fun way to pass the time and just chat.  Breakfast this morning was rava dosa, one of my favourites along green coconut chutney. 

So now I am off to meet with Mohan and do the weekly grocery shopping.  I hope everyone has a very happy new year and a healthy and prosperous 2014.

December 23, 2013

We are already for Christmas here.  Veenitha and I have been cooking all morning.  Everything is ready except for the bobbotie which will be prepared tomorrow morning along with the rice.  Menu for lunch with the Kawasakis and Jayanthi who is happily coming up from Colombo is:

Devilled Jack Seeds

Cape Verde Vegetable Soup

Paneer Bobbotie

Rice

Okra Curry

Banana Chutney

Fried Salt and Pepper Plantain

Dessert is a Kawasaki Surprise

Arpico very efficiently and uncharacteristically delivered a replacement tree the other day which promptly went up.  Christmas at Riverside Gardens:

Not bad for a $25 tree.  The last one, I bought in Singapore for $300.  This is just as good.

Bootee is up but did not make it for St. Nicholas Day on December 6.  Oh well, no parents to fill it with candy anymore anyway.

Even the Buddha can enjoy Christmas. 

Everything is decorated.  All my parents old glass decorations even found a place.

Father Christmas among the puppets.  He especially likes Stanley.  (Sorry Terry.  Look away.)

The weather is clear and sunny.  It will be a hot and eclectic Christmas.   I will especially miss my friends the Sines with whom I have spent the last many Christmases along with my good friend Joan Shoults.  I will be thinking of all of you and missing Pamela's mac and cheese. 

No matter who your god is, we can all agree that what we all want at this time of year is 

PEACE ON EARTH

 

December 20, 2013

Yesterday's exercise reward was the black headed oriole and some kind of a green parrot or parakeet.

Here are some of the birds I have seen so far.

Kingfisher

Black headed oriole

Yellow billed babbler or seven sisters

Got a Christmas tree yesterday only to find when I opened it that it had been opened before and the wrong feet had been put in.  So now I am waiting for Arpico to deliver a replacement.  Darned if I am going all the way across town to exchange it.  I did get a cool set of lights that you can control to flash at different speeds.

December 16, 2013

Went for dinner last night at the Queen's Hotel.  Just as it sounds, it is an old colonial job in the heart of Kandy town.  Food was not bad, but they had a roving band in the dining room named Los Lankados.  They were playing those old Harry Belafonte island numbers and that old 60s saw Sukiyaki.  Just like stepping into another age.

Came home to be greeted by a bat that I promptly shooed away thinking that would solve my bat problem for the night.  Wrongo bat breath!  There had been three of them last night and something like monkeys eating the jack seeds that the bats leave behind.  The moth balls obviously aren't working.  I will have to look for Mylar balloons when I am in Colombo.

This morning's exercise reward was a visit from 3 of the 7 sisters.  They came right up and landed on the bike.  I wonder where the other 4 were?

December 14, 2013

After the deluge, bandicoots.  Look it up on the net.  They are like large mother fucking rats.  I first saw their scat but didn't know what was doing it.  Then after 3 days, I found a huge hole had been dug in my upper garden right along the fence line.  I filled the hole in just to have it redug the next night.  Veenitha identified it as a bandicoot.  At first she thought it is was porcupine, which I have seen in the neighbourhood, but there was no damage to any vegetation which is the surest sign of porcupine, so it is the big MFing rats.  Oh joy!

Yesterday it was all out war.  We filled in the hole putting moth balls down it first and then sprinkled the area with moth balls.  No bandicoot signs this morning.  The same is not true for the bats however.  They continue to come and feast on their jack fruit.  I took down the Mylar decorations as they were not working and were ugly.  I put up paper bags with moth balls in them.  This is supposed to work, but no luck.  The bats I don't mind so much.  It is a pain to have to clean up every morning, but as least they bring jack seeds that make a great devilled snack.

My early morning exercise routine has been rewarded with some lovely bird sightings.  Kingfisher, honey birds, two lovely little coconut green birds, seven sisters, mynas, egrets flying down the river, morning doves, and a sweet small crested couple that always stay together and preen each other.  The squirrels also put on quite a show in the morning.  Yesterday I saw one running down the spine of a coconut frond.  Never missed a step and stayed perfectly straight on the spine going a hundred miles an hour.

These days it has been quite foggy in the mornings.  This often means a stinking hot day when the fog burns off.  Not complaining, but it was sure hot taking down those decorations yesterday.  I have even got over some of my fear of heights, having made it up to the fifth rung of the ladder to do what was needed.  Who needs handymen?  I am a handy woman.

Here is a typical morning from the bike.

Went over to my friends the Kawasakis yesterday.  They have moved into their new house which is quite close to where my flat used to be and very close to Sonali's.  Great place.  Perfect for their needs and a huge garden.  Sometimes when bad things happen, good things come out of them.  That certainly is the case with them.  Good karma for good Buddhists.

December 7, 2013

I am surprised about how saddened I am by Nelson Mandela's death.  I never thought about him much when he was alive, but somehow now that he is gone there is a large hole in humanity.

December 4, 2013

Haven't posted in a few days as I have been on flood control.  We are into another rainy season.  Don't ask me which one.  I have given up trying to figure how the weather works around here.  Like the rest of world, it has become erratic.  Now I just get up on the morning and look out the window.  Then I know the weather.

In any event, there was a huge rain the other night.  I was sleeping contentedly thinking that all my roof leaks were fixed.  I love the sound of the rain on the roof.  When I got up in the morning and came downstairs, I discovered that half the living room had been flooded.  Carpets, nick-knacks, the lot. 

To make a long story short, I spent the day mopping and sweeping water out of the house.  By the afternoon, it had started to rain again and the water was cascading in through the roof of the garden room which is open.  It turns out that one of the down pipes had come loose and instead of carrying the water away, it was being dumped into the house.  When it rains here, it buckets, so I was catching and emptying the water from a large washing basin every 5 minutes.

Needless to say, I was desperate.  I called Ranjith, my all rounder, who said he would come the next day.  Not good enough when everything is floating.  I regrettably yelled at him and said he had to come right then because of the flood.  He said he would come.  An hour later, I called to see where he was.  Turns out he was in Annaradapura which is about 3 hours away.  Why he said he would come is beyond me.

In my desperation, I called my neighbour who came over right away and fixed the thing in the downpour.  I had visions of him slipping and falling off the roof, but thankfully nothing happened except the water stopped.  Bless my neighbour's heart, he phoned yesterday saying that tomorrow he would come over and fix the thing properly.  He was apologetic that he could not make it over earlier.  Imagine that.  He is doing me a favour and is apologizing that he can't do it sooner.  Amazing!

Apart from that, I have decided to change my daily routine.  I had been exercising after breakfast which very often meant that I found an excuse not to exercise.  Now, I am getting up, doing my exercise, having a shower and then carrying on with the rest of my day.  It turns out that riding the bike early in the morning like this is much more interesting.  All the birds and the squirrels are out and about, it is much cooler and it is fun to watch the fog on the hill opposite either sit there or be burned off by the rising sun.  All in all a better way to go.

It has taken 3 days to dry my carpets out.  Finally they are dry, so I am off to put them back down and put the living room back in place.

November 27, 2013

My maid is always bringing me flowers, so I have taken to flower arranging.  It is fun and creative.  Here are a few examples:

All locally grown and picked by Veenitha except the gerberas that I got for my birthday

This one we gave to the Buddha as worship.  He likes white, especially jasmine which this looks like but has no smell

I have seeded some marigolds and will get some of the cuttings for the orange flower awswell

I had been complaining that you can't really get cut flowers here, but who needs them.

November 25, 2013

One month until Christmas. 

Had three lovely mongoose in my garden yesterday.  A mommy and two pups.  They came right up on the veranda, which is where I spotted them.  They tried to climb one of the cedars and then the mango tree.  I bet they were looking for birds' nests.  Not very good climbers though.  No chance to take a picture as I did not want to scare them.  I am most glad to see them as they keep the snakes away.

It has been raining again.  At least it keeps the garden watered.

I discovered a new mosquito repellent.  It is called Sambrani.  You take a small aluminum burner that looks like a shallow bowl with a long handle, burn something in it like wood chips or coconut shell, burn it down to embers, then add camphor and Sambrani which is like a powdered incense.  It smells great.  You smudge the house and outside as well.  It does not kill the mosquitoes, but it makes them sluggish.  The indoor ones are really easy to kill and the outdoor ones are too drugged to come inside.  Plus it doesn't make you sick like all those other things like spray, coils and mats.  Nothing like low tech.

November 17, 2013

Had a great birthday yesterday.  Started out the morning with Mike arriving an hour early for breakfast.  He brought all the fixins for a fruit pancake.  Lots of good coffee went down.  His two girlfriends joined us around 10 so we had brunch.  He decorated the place with balloons plus I scored two pairs of earrings.

Then it was on to get ready for the party.  Jez had said he was going to arrive early with firewood for the oven.  Of course, early to a Sri Lankan means right on time.  Surprisingly, my neighbours showed up 15 minutes ahead of schedule.  They are very nice people as well. 

Anura, the man neighbour never seems to work and I have always wondered what he does.  Turns out he is in the army and was injured during the last campaigns of the war.  He is on a full pay disability pension until 2023 at which time he will retire.  No wonder he doesn't work.  Anyway, his wife is very nice although he speaks almost no English.  She brought me a lovely present of two necklaces and a necklace and earring set.

Apart from them and the "early" Jez, everyone showed up hours late and some did not come at all.  Mike and the girl friends ended up coming back.  They had tickets for a dance and originally said they could not come.  For some reason, they came back so that was great.  In any event, there ended up being 15 of us, so it was a good crowd.  The pizza oven was in full action and the pizzas were great.  The Kitchenaid pizza dough recipe is foolproof.  Thank you Tom Lamond for that.  The sauce I made was perfect and Jez's cheese was out of this world.

Sunali gave me a beautiful antique incense burner.  Now I will just have to get some incense.  Amal brought a bottle of vodka, so I finally had a good martini.  Yvonne brought the cake from Colombo which was delicious.  Veenitha was here all day yesterday and stayed the night.  I did not go up to bed until 1230.  Even before that I was insisting that Veenitha go to bed as she has been working hard all night.  She insisted that she had to wash every dish and sweep and mop the pantry and kitchen floors before she went to sleep.  What a godsend!

Here is the oven in full burn:

There are still a few kinks to be worked out before I can go commercial.  I think I will be able to be operational by the new year.

November 9, 2013

My brick oven is ready and is just drying.  Monday, I will give it a fire up.  Looking forward to making some gourmet pizzas.  Here are some pics of the progress of building.

Had a marvellous experience last night.  Sunali has a friend that is in the fishing industry here.  He was up in Kandy on a bit of a break, so he invited us out to supper at the Victoria Golf Club where he was staying at a friend's villa.  We were picked up by his driver in some huge black Toyota in which we were chauffeured to the golf club.  The villa was spectacular.  4 bedrooms each with own bath.  Huge Jacuzzi and pool.  Commercial kitchen.  The works.  I guess that is now enough as they are building on a huge master suite.

We started out by the Jacuzzi where there was a wonderful breeze and no mosquitoes.  Had a lovely Australian red wine and then they started bringing out the sashimi.  It was a tuna fished in the Indian Ocean, caught yesterday morning.  It is similar in appearance to Ahi.  This stuff was as fresh as could be, never frozen and fabulously prepared by a chef who was on hand to prepare our dinner.  The sashimi came out on platters over dry ice.  Quite a sight.  It was never ending.  I don't think I have ever eaten so much tuna sashimi in my life.  Fabulous creamy taste.

That was followed by dinner, which for me was sear fish.  I have not eaten seafood for quite a while, as I won't buy it inland in Kandy.  This was brought up from Colombo in our host's car that day.  Dessert was curd and treacle followed by a wonderful espresso and cognac.

Add to that the fact that we had the chef and 3 other servers looking after our every whim the whole night.  There were more staff than us, as we were only 3.  Our host was very interesting and the conversation was animated.  I did not get home until 0230.  They chauffeured us back to Kandy and we were presented with 4 tins of fish, mackerel and tuna packed in brine.  Impossible to find here in any store.  What a lucky duck I am to have been part of that.  Like an early birthday present.

November 5, 2013

I had my first personal encounter with a doctor yesterday.  I have had an ear ache for about a month now.  I can't find ear candles here, so I tried coconut oil and a little water, but it didn't help.  So I decided I had better go to see a Ear, Nose, Throat quack.  Amal gave a name of a guy that works out of one of the private hospitals. 

I had seen signs for channelling centres.  I thought that it was odd that there were so many places offering either energy channelling or communion with the dead.  It turns out that these are places where medical specialists see patients.  Mind you, the way some doctors operate, it may as well be communion with the dead.  There is one at the hospital where this guy works. 

Every time I drove by one of these places it was like a zoo.  Hundreds of people milling around.  Plus I had heard from Amal that they are miserable.  You have to get a number, as they do not take appointments.  You have to show up early in the morning if you want to get a low number, etc., etc.

I decided that this was B.S.  I called the hospital like any normal human being would.  They confirmed that they do not take appointments but that they do give numbers over the phone.  They said I had to call back after 0600 the next morning.  Needless to say, I became indignant and asked why I couldn't get a number when I was on the phone with them right then.  The woman gave a little laugh and promptly took my name and gave me number 1.  Obviously, you can do it this way, but no-one in this country protests when people treat them like fools.

I showed up a half hour before the doctor was due in.  They gave me his room number which I promptly occupied as I had the first number.  I spent a pleasant 50 minutes waiting in there away from the madding crowd that was amassing outside.  Of course, the doctor was 20 minutes late.  Have you ever know one that is on time?  They are only one notch up the food chain from pond scum after all.  He had a look at me, told me what was wrong, which I suspected already, gave me a prescription to soften up the ear wax and will vacuum out the offending particle tomorrow.  All this, including the prescription cost me about $10.

The time spent in his room was interesting.  There was a ledge below the window that was littered with used needles.  Thank god he showed up with his own speculum.   No telling how clean that was either but at least it wasn't sitting in that filthy room.

All in all, not too bad an experience.  I am learning that you only have to demand what you want and most of the time you can get it.

November 2, 2013

Not much to report.  Missing my Dharma.

The resident chameleon made another appearance.  He is very handsome.

Went over to Sunali's for lunch the other day.  These are her babies. 

The big boy is Rama.  The little insecure one with the toy always in her mouth is Sita.

Vying for Mommy's attention

The frame for my brick oven has arrived along with the bricks.  Now we just have to put it together.  I will take pics of the work in progress.  I am hoping within the next couple of days.  I want to have a pizza party for my birthday and launch my new venture.  Nothing like starting something new when you are 61.

October 26, 2013

Sad news.  My little Dharma died at 1930 on October 25.  She had been sick after all the ant spraying, as had I.  I had thought that if I was as sick as I was, what could it be doing to her little body.  She was sick for a couple of days and then seemed to be alright.  Last Sunday night, she caught and ate a cockroach.  After that she was very listless and was eating little or nothing.  On Tuesday night I took her to the emergency at the veterinary hospital.  They couldn't do much as they don't have any real facilities at night.  They prescribed some drugs which I bought and tried to give her without much success.  By Thursday, she was really bad, so I took her back to the hospital.  She was severely dehydrated and had some compacted feces in her intestine.  They hydrated her and when I spoke with them last night at 1830, the doctor said they had given her an enema and that she had passed a little stool.  I thought we were out of the woods.  This morning I got a call saying they had given her a scan and had found hair balls in her GI tract. She then went into distress and they had to put her into the ICU.  She died at 1930.

She had such a short little life.  I miss her very much.  She was a lovely affectionate cat.  In my heart of hearts, I knew she would not live long as she had been so near death when I found her.  But I didn't expect her to go so quickly.  We only had 10 months together.

This is where she spent her last days at home with her friend Tina Tranchela. 

Thankfully, my friend Yvonne is with me from Colombo.  She was supposed to go back today, but she has delayed until tomorrow so that she could spend this sad day with me.  Good to have friends. 

We went out to the Mahaweli Reach Hotel to meet Sunali to get me out the house.  When I am here, I see Dharma around every corner.  I had a stiff vodka martini and feel a little better.  The sadness will come and go in waves.

October 20, 2013

This is what I found on the path beside my carport yesterday.  Are there any critters that I won't meet here?

Thankfully dead scorpion

October 16, 2013

Handy was here today to weed and clean up the garden.  After he was done, it was so nice that a chameleon  decided to sun himself.  He is very handsome. 

He really blends well with the bamboo.  That must be where he prefers to live.

October 15, 2013

Finally have something of interest to report.  Last Friday, HSBC hosted a dance recital and dinner for their Premier customers.  Amal is one and was kind enough to pass on the invitation.  His Mother, Manil, Shanti, Sunali and I represented him.  The featured group were the Chitrasena Dancers.  Amal had told me that they are the Bolshoi of Sri Lanka.  He was not kidding.  They were fantastic.  Their dancing was phenomenal even down to their eye movements.  The prima ballerina was an inspiration.  I came home and the next day started back on a regular exercise program.

The whole party was great.  Free booze and food that went on the whole night.  A band after dinner for dancing and a box of chocolates for everyone on the way out.  I don't know of banks in Canada that show their appreciation that way.  Mind you, HSBC can afford it.  The new CEO was there, and Irishman, saying that HSBC is the most profitable private bank in Sri Lanka.

The next night I was invited to go to Oktoberfest at one of the big hotels, but I didn't feel like spending the night with a bunch of drunken Sri Lanken men.  Very few people here know how to drink socially.  They drink to get drunk.  Not fun.

On Sunday, I went to my friend Mike's for a coffee party.  He had received some coffee from Belize and wanted to share it.  The coffee was great.  I took my espresso maker and had a very fine mellow cup of coffee.  I also took guacamole and Mike made apple fritters.  Plus the company was good, so all in all a good time.

Today I am off the the dentist.  I can't believe that 6 months has already gone by.  Almost one year since I came here.  Then over to Sunali's for dinner. 

Here is my latest work of art.

This is what I see when I sit at my pantry table for when I am taking meals on my own.  Got tired of looking at a blank wall.

Off to water the plants.  It has been stinking hot these days so the plants need lots of water.  My bougainvillea are finally blooming.  I had been giving them too much water.  Now with watering just once a week, they are bringing lovely blossoms.

October 9, 2013

Finally did something really exciting on Sunday last.  At this time of the year, there are elephant gatherings at watering holes all over the island.  No-one knows why they gather, but they come by the hundreds.  On Sunday, Amal organized a trip to Minneriya National Park to see the gathering there.  It was spectacular.  Beautiful cloudless day.  Our friend Gamini, who really organized the thing, estimated that we saw 175 elephants, including 2 big males in musth.  

When in musth, the males secrete a fluid from glands at the temple, about half way between the eye and ear.  You can smell it a mile away.  When they get to the herd which consists only of females and immature males, they go around sniffing all the adults to see if they are ready to mate.  We named them gynecologists.

The tanks at Minneriya are large and man made.  They serve as watering holes for elephants, jackals, water buffalo, monkeys, and lots of birds, all of which we saw.  We saw large brown pelicans, stilts, black headed stilts, rooks, cranes, and the most beautiful green bee eater.

Here are some pics.

Monkeys

A lone adolescent tusker

Green bee eater

Stilts

Black headed stilts

The smallest baby we saw

Spectacular sunset

The only fly in the ointment was when I got home, I couldn't find my phone.  Panic stations.  You have no idea how much you rely on your phone until you don't have it.  I don't even have a land line.  Thank god for Skype.  I called Amal on Skype and thankfully he found the phone on the seat of the car.  The next day, I Skyped my tuktuk man and went over to retrieve it.

I also went to pick up a package from the Kandy Central Post Office.  Apart from the fact that I showed up during the lunch hour when they are closed, it was quite an OK experience.  They still scribble everything in ledgers using carbon paper, but overall, it was pretty quick.

Continuing on with my arts phase, I did some Warli Art on the wall at the end of my car port.  Warli Art is a primitive art form that I think is quite decorative and easy to do.