December 24, 2016

Time for a Christmas post.  Veenitha and I finished decorating everything yesterday.  No tree trimming party this year.  It will be replaced by a tree de-trimming party aka as New Year's Eve.  All in honour of my friends Grai and Wanetta coming from Canada.

Up until last week, we also had Christmas flowers.

Ginger flower

Verbina

With one lone Christmas card already starting to curl from the humidity.

This month's hair tattoo is not much different from last month's.  I think my hairdresser is running out of ideas.

Unusually, we also had a monkey attack last month.  I put out fruit for the birds and the monkeys suddenly discovered it.

The one that is eating won't let anyone else get near the food.

A much smaller monkey tried to take a drink from the bird bath by hanging off the edge.  The one eating gave it a big smack and sent it flying.

It is also vanilla bean season, so I went off with my friend Clare to the public market to get some fresh vanilla beans.  They were certainly available and I got some lovely ones, but the price had not come down despite the fact that this is the growing season.  Apparently, the growers sell the bulk of their crop to Elephant House which makes the most of the soft drinks, so there is very little left for the consumer public.  Oh well, at least I got some.  While Clare went off to the meat seller, I hung out with the spice seller.  Nice guy.

Here is the shop.  Nice variety and well displayed.

I have been very busy with my friend Lalindra setting up the School of English.  We have hired teachers and trained them, done the curriculum, set up the placement assessment testing which will take place next week and have registered 25 students.  Plus all the background work like employment contracts, job descriptions, service contracts, admission forms, accounts, etc., etc.  School children will form our core programme.  We have also been contacted by one of the big garment manufacturers to do training for their middle managers and have received the same request from the Ceylon Electricity Board in the Central Province.  So, I have been busy doing course outlines.

I have to admit that the core programme doesn't really turn me on.  I do not care for kids and I certainly won't be teaching them.  The corporate stuff, on the other hand, will really be fun and much more lucrative too.

My biggest challenge is restraining Lalindra who is so enthusiastic that he wants to say yes to everything.  I don't want to work that much, so I want to keep things small and manageable.  In the end, I think I will let him manage the core programme and I will do the corporate side.  Then we are both happy.

Lalindra conducting the teacher training

As usual, the critters have been busy.  Apart from the monkeys, I woke up this morning to a gigantic spider on the wall beside my bed.  S/he has gone to spider Nibbana.  Some things are beautiful and delightful.

This is a lovely moth that took up residence on my headboard.

Patches continues to delight.  She has taken to following me around like a dog.  I was up at my landlady's place the other day and she meowed and meowed until I told her where I was, whereupon, she promptly came upstairs.  Right how she is curled up in a ball on the carpet in my office.  We are both cold.  The weather is reported as 22° but I am sure it is colder.  It is sunny now, but first thing this morning, the fog was so thick I couldn't see across the paddy field.  I am wrapped up in a shawl while I type this.

Here she is using Sally Seal as a pillow

So a quiet Christmas Eve with only me and the cat and memories of Christmases past around the tree.  Tomorrow I am off to Clare and David Leask's for dinner which will be nice.  

SO MERRY CHRISTMAS TO ALL AND THE VERY BEST FOR 2017.

November 16, 2016

Today is my 64th birthday.  Just one more year before OAS.  Yahoo!

Just to fill in the blanks from the last month and a half.  Firstly, this month's hair tattoo.

The rains have finally come and broken the drought.  Just in time as we were suffering from water and power cuts.  The monsoon also means that vegetable and fruit prices are coming down.

Butternut squash, limes, tomatos, woodapple, pineapple, papaya, pollos (immature jackfruit), breadfruit

Salad greens and kang kong

Before the rains started, I was still swimming every day.  Now it is too rainy with lightning and thunder, plus the water is too cold.  Here are Sonali and I in Claire Hemachandra's pool.  Had a lovely afternoon and evening chatting and drinking wine.

The dogs can't decide if they want to come in

I have been working with a friend to set up an English language training school.  We have set up the curriculum, found a place to do the classes and are in the process of hiring teachers.  The location is literally 5 minutes walk from my house at a Buddhist temple just above my place.  We think it will take off in a big way.  Will keep us busy and make us a little money as well.

The other day I got up on my 55 year old desk chair that I did all my homework on to fix the curtain in my dressing room.  The old thing broke under me and I got badly bruised on my left side.  A couple of days later, my back went into spasm as well.  Thankfully, I have found a masseuse who has been coming every 2 weeks.  She did a lot to relieve it and Veenitha has been rubbing extra strength Tiger Balm on it so that things are back to normal now.

The smallest of the bruises on my left boob.

The chair broke very cleanly so that I was able to get my carpenter to come and repair it.  He did a good job, but gave me a stern warning to only sit in the chair, not climb up on it.

As usual, this time of year sees the beginning of the party season.  We started with a lovely party at Deanne's place, followed by a musical evening at the Assistant Indian High Commissioner's place to celebrate Diwali.  I even managed to wrap myself in a sari for the latter.

On November 10th there was a birthday party at the new food court at the Kandy City Centre.  On November 12, I had my birthday party celebrating my birthday and that of my friend Clare Leask.  This year's theme was Sweet 16s as we are both born on the 16th.  53 people in attendance.  Thankfully, the rain held off and it turned out to be one of my best parties ever.

Judith Smith, Sally Martin (another Scorpio born November 10), and me trying out some of the great food made by my friend Shanthi.  

Tania de Silva

Ayesha Wijeratne and her niece who is about to go off to Qatar to work for Qatar Air

Judith Smith, Sally Martin, Yvonne Cooper and Pauline Morley

Claire Hemachandra, me (I am now officially on a diet), and Phillppa Mediwake

The bow is honor of the Sweet 16s theme.

Despite having said no presents, I made out like a bandit on the present front, including a lovely bouquet of flowers from Ayesha and Ravana Wijeratne.

Veenitha keeping the flowers fresh.

Listening to the rain beat down on the new tin roof on my verandah.  When it pours, the roof roars to such an extent that you can't carry on a conversation.  I don't really mind though and usually the really severe downpours are very short lived.  Most of the leaking has stopped, but there is still seepage.  Some more small repairs and I should be waterproof.

October 2, 2016

Got the sad news yesterday that I will not be receiving a visit from my friend Sandy MacKenzie.  Will miss him, but hope he has a good time in Japan and Thailand.

My front yard continues to evolve.  I thought that I had the bank problem pegged with the rats, but wrongo rodent breath.  I was letting the cat out a couple of weeks ago around 1900.  As I turned to come back into the house, I saw something moving in the drainage ditch.  It stopped and hid under the door step.  I just caught sight of the back and the tail.  A HUGE f**ing bandicoot.  It was as big as a muskrat.  The tail alone was about 2 feet long and as thick as two of my fingers put together at the base.  I am in fear for my cat as the thing is almost bigger than she is.  However, after the spotting and I jumped up and down on the step to really freak it out, it seems to have disappeared.  Keeping my fingers crossed.

We had a beautiful vine growing on the wall between our house and the neighbour's garage.  It gives off lovely bunches of fuzzy tri-leaved white flowers and had lovely big fuzzy leaves.  It had spread over the roof of the garage where it was quite lovely.  The neighbour lady got it into her head that she should cut off the stuff growing on her garage roof.  She did.  Happily, she gave us the flowers she had cut down.

One vase for the kitchen 

The flowers up close

The vine

One vase for the entry hall

One bowl of flowers for the front room

Some for my bedroom along with a ginger flower

One flower

On Thursday, I came home after a long day of a movie at Deanne's, lunch at the Amaya Hill Hotel, picking up my printer, buying wine, going to the bank, picking up my new iPad, paying bills at Food City, picking up laundry at Mahaweli Reach Hotel (after waiting interminably), to find that the whole vine had fallen down.  The top had been so weakened by the part on the garage being cut, that the whole thing had collapsed.  Really stupid idea on the part of neighbour.  Not only is our wall now ugly, but all you see of her garage roof is the hideous asbestos.  Of course, it had to be cleaned up.  My landlady and I were angsting about how we were going to get that done.  Luckily, she managed to glom onto a workman I see around a lot to come and do it.

Jaywardene knee deep in vine

The wall looks really bad now the vine is gone.  The ivy will grow back rapidly though, and I have a lot more light in my kitchen.

I got tired of having to change the water in the vases for the flowers, so it put them dried into the hideous old aquarium in my verandah.

Can't really see it, but believe me it looks a lot better than before.

On that note, my verandah is finished.  Of course, it took longer than expected, but they did a great job.  My friend Jayanthi's husband, Anand acted as the contractor and was great.  Now instead of a leaking asbestos roof, I have a dry tin one.  We have had two good downpours to test it out and happily, no leaks.  Next Friday, October 7 will see the verandah inaugurated with a lunch.

Now all the hammocks are out

The dining area

The bar with my office behind it

The aquarium

My breakfast area

The Crested Serpent Eagle has made my mango tree a regular home.  I don't know if it is male or female, but in any event there is now a baby.  I can hear the parent(s) calling to the baby from the nest across the paddy field.  You may have to zoom in to see these pics, but it is worth it.

The snakes continue to invade.  Always a crate and a small one at that.  I did find out from Clare that there is a non-poisonous snake that looks exactly like a crate.  Who knows which one these are, but if they show up, they are dead.

This one was under the cabinet at the front entrance

Swimming is back on track after about a 10 day absence due to having to be home to oversee the verandah work.  This was the view a couple of days ago.

Fishing on the Mahaweli Ganga.  I wouldn't eat that fish if you paid me.  Apart from being a vegetarian, the river is far too polluted.

Went for the monthly fur/claw maintenance.  We really ventured out of the box on the hair tattoo this month.

What the hell.  It is only hair and will grow back.  This is the only tattoo I will get.

September 4, 2016

Seems that I have wrongfully accused the mongoose of digging up the bank.  Now it appears that it is a couple of common house rats.  They were digging in some dirt that they had already dislodged from the bank just beside the patio.  I could go right up close to them and they weren't even bothered.  Even when I put the cat right beside them, they just carried on as they were.  The darn cat didn't do anything either, even though the night before she killed one and brought it into the house to play with.  We got an old bucket and covered them and put baking soda on top of them and the soil.  By this morning the bucket was upset, the rats and the holes they dug were gone.  Just a pile of dirt.  Who knows where they went.  We put some bread and a banana salted with baking soda with them as well.  That was also gone.  Hopefully, they ate the baking soda and are now dead.

They look something like this.  Quite small.  Just a little bigger than mice.

They burrow and make a real mess.  

On a happier note, it seems to be glow worm season.  

Shine little glow-worm, glimmer, glimmer

Not so attractive in the light

I have also discovered some wonderful tomatoes that are called Goraka Takali.  Goraka is a sour spice similar to tamarind used in making curries.  

This is goraka when it is first picked from the tree.

It is then dried and becomes this black sticky substance.

Takali is the Sinhalese word for tomato.

Here are the tomatoes.  You can see why they call them goraka takali.  The ones that look like roma tomatoes are the regular ones that are not very good.  The tiny ones are cherry tomatoes that we grew ourselves from seed.  We are going to try growing the goraka takali as well.