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.