June 29, 2015

Have had an eventful few days.  Friday was another dane (alms giving) at the Kawasakis.  I made a fancy spinach filled cross between a pizza and a calzone.  Almost everyone asked for seconds.  A big success.  I will make it again.  The biggest thing was discovering that my microwave also doubles as a very good convection oven.  So baking and roasting, here I come.

Veenitha and Lalindra came to the dane as well.  I am getting less restrained at holding my tongue at these things.  You can hardly call this Buddhism.  The monks won't sit with the nuns, plus the nuns kowtow in front of the monks just like anyone else.  The whole habit is abhorrent let alone for other people who are also ordained.  Then there were 4 novice monks present and one of the Burmese monks wouldn't sit with them to eat.  Then you are supposed to serve the monks first.  Bugger that.  I started to serve the nuns at the same time.

I may not know much about Buddhism, but I am sure that the Buddha did not preach inequality nor did he use loud speakers.

Saturday morning I went to Kandy town and did my banking and then a big shop.  It is high fruit season, so I really stocked up.  A veritable cornucopia.  Plus the fridge has eggplant, cauliflower, banana pepper, green chili, banana flower, cucumber, mushrooms, buffalo curd and papaya.

From top down on left:  polos (immature jak fruit), sour sop, limes, tomatoes.  From left to right on right:  banana, rambutan, avocado, butternut squash, pineapple.

Saturday night, it was a modern dance recital at the Hindu Cultural Centre.  I had never been there before.  It is a great venue.  The dance was very modern.  Sort of a fusion of Kandyan, bharatanatya, yoga, and a lot of windmill arms.  The dancers were very skilled especially the 5 professionals, but the production was amateur hour.  Plus the founder and artistic director yapped a bunch at the beginning and again in the middle.  Give a Sri Lankan a microphone, and you can't shut him up.  In any event, it was something worth supporting as we get so little in the way of cultural events here.

The other pleasing feature was that the Central Province Governor was there.  She sat in the front row, but otherwise she was unassuming and just watched the show.  The former Governor who is one of the stupidest people I have ever met would never have done that.  There would have been a huge entourage of aides and bodyguards and he would have hogged the mike for ages.  This woman was there with one other person, quietly watching the performance like everyone else.  A real credit to her office.  Unfortunately, there were very few everybody elses.  The hall was more than half empty.

After the show, 9 of us went to the Chinese place for dinner.  The food was good as usual.  Malcolm and Judith got in a bit of an argument about Discovery Club.  Discovery has been going about 30 years.  It meets the last Sunday of the month.  They go to places of interest and then have beer and lunch afterwards.  Malcolm was complaining that they eat too late.  Apparently, he is a severe diabetic and starts to feel woozy if he does not eat on time.  My question is why doesn't he carry food with him when he is that severe.

Because it was so late at night, I went home with Deanne and Judith to their end of town and stayed with Deanne for the night.  She is very gracious and I had a great night's sleep.  Here is her house:

The great room which is about 60 feet long, the entire length of the house.  Very tastefully decorated with lots of lovely things.

The real highlight is her garden.  It is beautifully planted with many flowering plants.  Many different varieties of hibiscus, etc.

A lovely birdbath with a lotus pond beyond

Some lovely ornamental pots throughout

Stunning view of a range of hills

After breakfast on Sunday, it was off to Discovery Club for my first outing with them.  There were about 15 of us from all over:  Canada (me), Germany, Switzerland, Sri Lanka, UK, Holland, India.  We went to the home of an eminent anthropologist, Anthony Walker.  He has devoted his life to studying the Lahu people of Thailand and the Toda of India.  The house is chock-a-block of artifacts from Thailand, Burma, Cambodia, Ethiopia, Tonga, Solomon Islands, Fiji, Vanuatu, Papua New Guinea, Indonesia, China, and more.  He studied at Oxford and went on to teach around the world.  His library is probably around 2,000 volumes and is priceless in my view.

He and his wife came to Sri Lanka in 2012.  They have totally renovated their house, put in a swimming pool and have managed to display one of the largest private collections I have ever seen.  It is like a museum.  The tour was fascinating.  Anthony remembers every piece, when and where he acquired them and their significance.  After all that with all these people invading their home, they served us snacks and lunch.  It was a great day topped off by a lift home from my friends Marlise and Jayantha, no need for a tuktuk.

Everything was fine when I got home, but no sign of Patches.  I had asked my landlady to keep an eye out for her, which she clearly had done, as there was a tub of milk at my front door, but no cat.  I called and called, to no avail.  Finally, this morning at 0530, she came meowing at the back door to be let in.  I was annoyed to be woken up, but relieved to see her.

June 19, 2015

Another day without water.  Luckily, I had finished doing a wash before they cut it off.  It is annoying.  Plus, we have a 400 gallon water tank on the roof, but something is amok with pipes, so only my landlord's flat gets tank water.  The only place that gets an over abundance of water at times like these is the veranda.  Typical that you don't get water where you need it, but get it where you don't.

Went over to a friend's place for the first time the other day to set things up for film club this coming Monday.  In one of those small world stories, they are renting the house that is at the front of the flat I rented when I first came to Kandy.  The house was under construction at that time.  In the end, I walked 5km. up and down to their place in the scorching heat.  My right foot has only just recovered from one of my metacarpal nerves being pinched from the impact on the blazing cement.

Patches is becoming more and more affectionate.  I have removed the large mosquito net that covered my bedroom.  It wasn't working for some reason and every morning I was waking up with blood all over my sheets where I had rolled over a mosquito that had just bitten me.  My friends the Kawasakis recommended a liquid mosquito repellent that works like aromatherapy oil, being dispersed by heat.  I got one of the little machines and haven't looked back.  Hardly any mosquitoes now.  Plus, Patches can come and snuggle with me on the bed.  Here she is doing just that.

Her other thing is lying in the flower boxes.  Here she is being a flower girl.

It is bread fruit season, called dell in Sinhala.  Here is Veenitha helping me prepare dell cutlets.

Still no word on the visa front.  Will start chasing it down next week.

June 9, 2015

Managed to start a fire in my toaster oven last night trying to bake a paratha rather than frying it.  Thankfully, nothing really bad happened except the inside of the toaster oven was really black and sooty.  A solution of vinegar, water and baking soda with a little elbow grease did the trick and now it is almost as good as new.

Also avoided a crown on my root canaled wisdom tooth.  My dentist is going to monitor it, but it seems stable with the filling he put in.  Let's hope.

Not much news apart from this.  My visa application has gone into Immigration, but no news yet.  My cold is gone and I am going to go swimming for the first time in over a month today.

Life is good.