OK. I got an e-mail from my friend Clare asking how I am doing and basically saying I am useless at blogging. She is right, and it has spurred me to action.
I did start writing something on May 26:
Today is Poya, full moon day, which is a holiday every month. Yesterday was Vesak, Buddha's birthday, yet another holiday. All these holidays are a bit of a pain, although Vesak is also known as the festival of light. Every street of Kandy is decorated with lights, lanterns, oil lamps. It is quite beautiful. Even the smallest streets, like mine, are decorated with Buddhist flags, lanterns, flickering lights, hundreds of small oil lamps. Really lovely.
I haven't been blogging for a while as I have been having a huge problem with Sri Lanka Telecom. ADSL usage here is limited and SLT claimed that I has gone over my limit by May 11. It took me 12 days to sort out the problem. I only managed to get something done by threatening to make it my life's work to see that the Regional Manager was fired from his job. What a bunch of incompetent assholes.
Other than that battle, things are going ahead as normal. I have most of my furniture now and have found a good person to do the upholstering. Now the problem is finding the fabric. The search continues.
Tomorrow, the garden room should be completed. It has been painted white, getting rid of the hideous green. Now it will be floored with rough cut local granite. It should look good. I am including pictures of me buying the granite. They lay out the exact area right there, partially on the road. They were so far out on the road that the police came by. I am sure that if I had not been a foreigner they would have been in trouble.
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| Typical Sri Lankan work. 4 guys with only 1 working. |
The hammock chair if finished. Now I need cushions for it. I won't be making another one. It was a lot of work and in the end, I only have room for one anyway.
I have set up and used my exercise area. Great view and a good use for my veranda that is fully covered.
I do have some excuse for not blogging more often in that my power has been out. Finally, I got fed up and called the Ceylon Electricity Board, an organization just as bad as Sri Lanka Telecom. I had to get on to the General Manager to get anywhere. I figured it out that in the 5 months I have lived here, I have not gone 3 days in a row without a power cut. The longest was 27 hours which turned out to be my house alone, not even the street. Now I have the number of the Area Engineer responsible for my area. His life has been a misery as every time there is a power cut, I call him. He claims they do not have enough capacity and that a new line is going in on June 21 that will solve the problem. We will see.
In addition, electricity rates have gone up by 40% overnight. I think it will start a revolution. Animosity between the Sinhala, Tamil, and Muslim communities is growing. This is a typical reaction to corruption and unequal treatment by the government. People tend to turn on each other. Add to that the rate hike in a basic utility and you have the makings of real trouble.
My friend Devaraj is so worried that he is trying to set up a forum for discussing non-violent reform. He has asked me to prepare a conceptual framework to begin the dialogue. I have started the research. This is not unlike some work I did in the mid-eighties before I came to Sri Lanka the first time. It is amazing, however, how the field of peace and non-violence has grown since then.
I am writing this from my office which is set up at long last. It is so nice to be able to sit and write at a proper desk. My things are due to arrive from Canada as well on June 24. No idea how long it will take to get them through Customs and to Kandy, but hopefully I will have them by the end of the month.
I was searching for someone to do the Customs clearance and shipping for me, so I called my old landlord from my previous Sri Lankan life. He refers me to Yvonne in a very business like way, as if he only knows the person through business. Turns out it is his eldest daughter, who I know very well. She helped me kill my first cockroach in Colombo. She has grown into a lovely, self-assured woman. She came up to Kandy a few days ago to collect my passport and the other documents and we had a nice visit and re-acquaintance. She told me that I reminded her of my Mother. It made me feel older than I usually do. Must be the grey hair.
We are fully in the monsoon now. It is low cloud and full-on rain as I write this at 0730. At least it is cool and I don't have to water the garden every day. I even has a quilt on my bed.
Apart from that, I have no furniture again as everything has been taken away to be upholstered. So it is one dining chair that I have in my office, the hammock chair which is outside, or my bed. I can also sit on the exercise bike but only for about 30 minutes, otherwise, I get numb crotch.
I think the monsoon also brings on the fireflies and bats. Every night I have at least one firefly in my bedroom. It is amazing how much light they throw off. Here is a picture of a dead one with its lights still on.
Plus the jack fruit is in season, so the bats are using my front veranda as a dining table. Every morning I wake up to jack seeds and bat shit all over the veranda. Oh well, the bats have to live too. I am just glad I don't see them feeding as they are as big as crows.
So there you have an update. I will try to more regular about blogging so that Clare does not have to write and give me hell.
