It has been an eventful month and a half. The last of the furniture was moved on September 4. No problems there. The lorry driver was great and everything was moved without damage except for a small ding on the housing of my washing machine. No biggy.
The last fond memory of the papaya tree before it had to be cut down. At least it yielded one piece of fruit. It was tasty.
On September 7, it was the hand off of the keys to my bitch face landlady. After giving me grief for moving the appointment up from 0900 to 1000, they showed up at 1100. They came with 8 people including her ill behaved children. Thank god I had Amal there. I did not bother to introduce him, so they had no idea who he was. He is 6' tall which is very tall for a Sri Lankan and has very fair skin. Consequently, most Sri Lankans think he is a foreigner. He said nothing. Just sat watching them.
Bitch face starting checking every light bulb and light switch. The place was spotless, however, she started picking out things that had preexisted my tenancy. They were also making comments to each other in Sinhala. Finally, Amal got on the phone to call his driver down from the car. They could not park at the house as the road was being repaired. He talked to him in Sinhala, of course. The crowd almost fainted when he did that, as it became clear that he had understood everything they had been saying.
The driver came down and good thing too as he lent numbers to my side and he is a bit of a tough looking guy so he helped keep them in line. At one point, the husband said that the downstairs bathroom was filthy. Amal jumped on him saying he wished his bathrooms were that filthy.
All together the whole thing took over an hour for them to check everything. At one point, I went back to lock a door when bitch face told me to just leave it open. I told her that I was locking every door and not giving her any keys until my damage deposit has been returned in full. That really set her off. She started saying that they were not like that. They were Sinhalese, etc., etc. I just looked at her and said nothing.
There was one moment of terror when the pressure pump would not come on as I had not used it for a few days. Finally, I reset it and it came on, so everything was OK. She gave me my full damage deposit back. I took the money, gave her the keys and turned my back and left without a further word. Amal said he had never seen anything like it. It felt like a mill stone had been lifted from my neck.
Then the fun began at the new place. It was filthy dirty. It took Veenitha and I two days to just clean the windows in my bathroom. The windows in my bedroom took 3 days. The frames were a dark grey. I thought they might have be painted, but after scrubbing like a drudge, it turns out the frames are white.
Of course, there have been the usual line up for so called tradesmen. So far, I have been a carpenter, electrician, plumber, gardener, roofer, gas installer, concrete person, and general contractor. Basically, you can't leave these guys unsupervised for 5 minutes.
I thought I would be moved in by tomorrow, but no such luck. Now the toilet in my bathroom is not operational and the guy can't come to fix it until Wednesday. The flush mechanism is leaking because the gasket is buggered, the toilet is not bolted to the floor, so when you sit on it, you think it will slide out from under you, and the bolts connecting the cistern to the bowl are leaking. Of course, Julia the plumber had to figure all this out herself.
Some progress has been made, however. The kitchen, office, living room, my bedroom and closet area, my bathroom, the drivers toilet, and the washing machine have all been set up. Next comes the dining room and then the guest bedroom and bathroom. My friend Sandy Mackenzie is arriving on November 5, so I have to have his living quarters ready by then.
Meanwhile at Sonali's, I have been there on my own with the servants as she has been off working. I come back exhausted from a day cleaning my place to her place where I have to sort out the servants and the dogs. We have had two snake incidents. Both times vipers. There are a lot of frogs around because of the rains and the snakes love to eat them.
The only critter sighting at my new place, which is called Green Fields Villa, has been a lovely female cat that I have named Patches. I was hoping to entice her in, but I think she lives somewhere else and just comes to mooch food. Plus, she was over the other day so I gave her a bowl of milk only to find out later from Veenitha that she got into the driver's toilet and pooped there. I had the door to the toilet fixed so it would close, and now Patches gets patted, but nothing else.
I will go and get a cat from Sonali's uncle's dog and cat rescue. At least there I am doing something charitable.
I hope to be moved in by Saturday this week. Now that I am back on line, I will keep the blogs more regular.
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