December 25, 2014

Non-stop rain.  More like the day Noah launched the ark than Christmas Day.

My veranda almost completely flooded.

However, the tree is safe and dry.

Since it is Christmas Day and everyone is just sitting around opening presents and eating, I thought I would take you on a opening tour of my now not so new place.  Here we go:

The veranda (not yet flooded) from the breakfast table.  Great hammock and exercise space.

My breakfast table

The view from my breakfast table

The view out my front windows

The alcove at the front

A perfect place for puppets to hang out

The dining room.  Lots of built in shelving

The living room.  French doors lead out to the veranda on the right

Opposite side of the living room.  Now you can see the veranda

Another side of the living room with the door to the office to the right

The entry way

The kitchen

The garden view from the kitchen window

More kitchen

And again

Entering the office, the day bed

The nerve centre

Here endeth today's tour.  More to come.  Have to hang my laundry now and put it under a fan or it will never dry.

Merry Christmas!

December 23, 2014

The party went well.  We were about 20.  The tree got mostly decorated.  I have to finish the last of it today.  Mostly thanks to Jez and Kaneeza's son Kian who is 5.  He did a great job.  Only one decoration broken in the process.

There was one scary moment during the prep when the gas cylinder ran out.  Sam, my tuktuk man, saved the day.  He came in the pouring rain and replaced the spent cylinder.   After that it was clear sailing.

The rain continues unabated.  One group set themselves up in a conversation circle around one of the drips on the veranda.  As everyone kept repeating, "Show me a house in Sri Lanka that doesn't leak."

It really felt like home having a tree decorating party again.  I have missed it the last 2 Christmases.  So blessed with my friends.

Here are a few pics:

The bar on the veranda being used as a bar again.

The veranda where the furniture had to be set up around the leaks.

The buffet

Dessert, tea and coffee

Veenitha cooking.  I couldn't have done it without her.  She also christened her bedroom as she stayed the night.  I am hoping she gets used to it and decides to move in.

December 21, 2014

Did all the final marketing for the party yesterday in the pissing rain.  I am starting to quack.  Then came home and finished the cooking.  Not very traditional fare, but hopefully it will be good:

hummus
tsatziki
baba ganoush
quacamole
olive tapanade
pita
naan
crackers
all manner of Kandyan short eats (savoury pastries)
3 kinds of fruit cake
local chocolates (we'll see what they are like.  I bought a packet of 5 Ferrero Rochet for a treat for me)
wine
juice

Everything but the juice (although I will make some watermelon juice myself) and the baked goods are made from scratch at home.  A bit of work but worth it in the end.

Am expecting about 25 people which is quite respectable.  Hopefully the rain will hold off at least for the hours of the party so we can use the veranda.

I got the tree up and tried the lights only to find they do not work no matter what I do.  I guess you can expect to get only one season out of them.  As Sri Lankans always remind you, anything Chinese is junk, and everything here is made in China.  Good thing I checked them as I will have time today to get a new set of lights and get them up.

After all that, I finally took a shower to wash the dirt and sweat of Kandy town off me and was having my lunch around 1700 when Sonali called to say she was dropping over.  She was followed quickly by Lalindra who was at loose ends as his wife was off at the British Council Christmas party which was a pirate theme.  He dd not want to dress up.  I can't blame him.  Pirates are OK for Halloween, or any other time of the year really, but not for Christmas.  I think the director of the British Council, who came up with the idea, is 10 years old.

After some wine and an overall assessment of the sorry state of the Sri Lankan economy and politics, we ended up at the Grand Kandyan (new garish Chinese brothel type hotel) for dinner.  We had phoned ahead to the manager hoping to get sushi.  He gave us the usual blah blah about being able to give us sushi but it would take a long time.  I don't even think the sushi chef was there.  In the end, we ended up having Thai food in the Indian restaurant.  The decor was a mix of early airport restaurant with Greek bas relief pictures and discount restaurant furniture.  The music was bad 70s pop played on an old stereo set up on a table and chairs off to one side.  All in keeping with the general lack of taste in the decor of the whole place.  However, the food was magnificent.  Turns out they have a chef from Thailand who we dragged out of the kitchen to compliment him.  A sweet diminutive Thai fellow.

The flavours were subtle and not over done.  Just excellent from the soup right through to the banana fritters at the end.  After soup, green papaya salad, 3 main dishes and dessert, we paid Rs.1100, about C$10 for our meal.  Definitely an experience we will repeat even if we have to shut our eyes to get through the lobby to get to the restaurant.

We got them to give us a look at one of the rooms after dinner.  More of the same, except this room was done in the garish Arabic style.  If they had any more gold paint or gold accents, I would have thought I was in Fort Knox.  It would be frightening to wake up to all that glare in the morning.

December 12, 2014

Dusted off my walking poles and used them for the first time since I got here; for walking that is.  I have been using the resistance bands for exercise all along.  Walking with them was great.  Kandy is very hilly.  In fact, it is almost impossible to find a level bit of road.  The poles really help propel you up the hills.

I also took the electric tricycle for a test run.  It works very well, but it scared the crap out of me.  As I said, Kandy is very hilly.  That makes it difficult to get the thing started.  Add to that the fact that the trike is cambered to make it easier to corner and you have a recipe for disaster.  It is slightly more stable than a two wheeler, but not enough for me.  It is still very tippy.  So I have decided not to buy it.  Between my lack of balance, the hills and the crazy drivers, I am sure to land in the hospital.  I think I will just use my walking poles instead.

Very nice Christmas book club this month.  We went to one of the member's homes and had a lovely potluck lunch and a secret Santa gift exchange.  In the end there was no secret about the Santa as either people guessed who had bought the present or people declared themselves.

We are in the midst of a presidential election.  The sitting president seemed to have no opposition until about 3 weeks ago when the General Secretary of his party as well as his health minister jumped ship along with some of his senior cabinet ministers.  Now we have a contest.  That is good news for a place that is now essentially a dictatorship.  The bad news is that the election will be violent.  It has already started and will get progressively worse until election day on January 8.

My visa hangs in limbo until after the election as most government workers and millions of treasury rupees are being diverted into the President's election campaign.  There is no effort to hide the fact that this is being done.  We live in a true banana republic.

Have decided to have a house warming/tree trimming party.  It is set for December 22.  If everyone were to show up, there would be over 50 people.  Luckily, a lot of people are away, so it should be a manageable crowd.

December 3, 2014

Life has gone back to much of its normal pace now that the cleaning is done.  Of course, there is the normal cleaning cycle, but that is maintenance and it is comparatively easy.  I have let my second maid go.  There was just not enough work.  There are a lot of pluses:

1.  I save money.
2.  Veenitha is much happier.  I think she thought that I thought that her work was inadequate or that I wanted to replace her.  On the day she came after I had let Rani go, she went through this place like a whirlwind.  Usually she is quite slow but not that day.
3.  We have been discovering that Rani didn't do much of a job in any event.  The servants' toilet was stinky.  Veenitha had to give it a good scrub and douse it with vinegar.  The knife handles were covered in mold because she had not washed them properly.
4.  Although I had agreed to pay her Rs.700 because she had to provide her own food, she would always sneak in something to eat from the fridge.
5.  She was really moody.
6.  She chewed paan, a combination of areca nut, betel leaf and lime.  It is a disgusting habit.  God only knows where she spat it out.

So we are much better off without her.

The rains have moved into a more regular monsoon like pattern.  Sun in the morning with heavy rain, lightning and thunder in the late afternoon and evening.  It remains cool which is great.

Here are a few pics I took while Sandy was still here. 

These are all of Embeke temple.  This started out as a Buddhist temple but is now dedicated to the 6 headed war god Kataragama.  There are quite a few temples dedicated to Kataragama throughout the country, the most famous being in the south where there is a huge festival drawing thousands of pilgrims every year.  The carvings are exquisite.  This is a very small temple, but one of the nicest I have seen.

This is the Seema Malaka in Beira Lake in Colombo.  The temple was designed by Geoffrey Bawa, Sri Lanka's premier architect.  This too is a small but exquisite temple.

Still nothing on the visa front.  I have adopted a whole new attitude about this.  Que sera sera.  Something will develop over the next couple of weeks.

Sonali surprised me with a lovely birthday party at Theva, a very nice restaurant in Hanthana.  Hanthana is in the hills to the north west of Kandy.  It used to be a tea plantation but is now mostly homes. 

I knew that she was planning to take me out to dinner and that Mike and Rushma wanted to join us, but in the end Amal came, the Kawasakis who rarely come out after dark and Zhara and her brother.  It was a great evening.  The food was very good.  The setting exceptional.  I got presents and a fabulous marzipan cake that I had had my eye on for a while.  All in all a very nice 62nd.