What a hell of a start to the new year. After having told my landlady that I would not accept her outrageous rent increase, finding a place to live for a few months and even starting to pack, she contacts me to reconsider. I told her that my final offer was Rs.32,000 and that she could take it or I would just continue with my move. She has taken it, so now I have a one year reprieve.
However, she has seriously pissed me off, so I am slowly going to start making other plans. The plantation is still an option, although now it seems that new year may have brought Jayanthi luck and there may be a buyer for the estate. If so, she intends taking the money and buying a house. In that event, I will go to live with her wherever that is going to be. Or the alternative is to look for something with a long term lease in Kandy or Colombo. Only time will tell.
Now I have to unpack what I have already packed. What a pain and all at the 11th hour. There are only 3 days left before the current lease expires. I will be demanding a new clause in the new lease agreement stipulating that either party has to give 3 months notice of extension or not or a rental increase. I have had enough of this bush league behaviour.
On another note, the other day, we went to Thalatuoya just to check on things. Good thing we did. We had started out with the intention of taking the bus. I hate the bus, but I thought it might be a good adventure. We made it as far as the bus stop, someplace I had never even walked to before, when my neighbour pulled up with our tuktuk man. So we negotiated a rate with Nissanka (the tuktuk guy) to take us to Thalatuoya. I avoided that bus bullet skillfully.
Good thing Nissanka was there, as we found 2 dead civets in one of the rooms of the main house. They had gotten in through the tiled roof and could not get out. They had killed each other; there was blood spattered all over the walls, and were happily decomposing. You can imagine the stench. Thankfully, Nissanka carted them out and then washed the room out for us. Then to top it all off, he would not even take money for it. What a good guy!
After the close encounter of the smelly civet kind, we went and bought some lovely vegetables in town and even picked up a huge yellow zucchini for Rs.90. That was a great deal as usually zucchini is Rs.200 a kilo. We even found bread fruit.
Then it was cooking for my friend Sylvia Spring's niece Bethany and her partner Richard who are on holiday from Toronto. We made bread fruit fritters again, and used half the zucchini to make Liz Forest's fabulous raw zucchini hummus. Thanks Liz. They came over for dinner. Very nice people and a good time was had by all.
So it is back to normal for a while until I find that ideal place to move to.
Looks like 2014 will be a roller coaster.
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