May 18, 2016

For those of you who may be worried about my safety because of the landslides near Kandy, I want to assure you that I am fine.  There have landslides all over Kandy, albeit small ones.  One is quite near my house, but there doesn't appear to be any danger in my immediate vicinity.  The river is also high due to the heavy rains, but they have been opening the dam which is about 3 km. down river from me, so we are OK here.

The rain let up today so that I was able to go swimming this morning.  The pool is a lot cooler and much better for getting some speed up.  It did rain a bit while I was in the pool, but then stopped and we had sun for most of the day.  There was a brief downpour about 1600 and nothing since.

After a search of almost 4 years, I have finally found some non-iodised sea salt.  My friend Annette who makes cheese just down the road from me gets it in 50 kg. lots, so I can get small amounts that I need from her.  When she went to get her supply this time, they washed and dried the salt right in front of her.  Can't ask for any better than that.

May 16, 2016

Half way through my birth year.  Only 1 1/2 years left before OAS!

We are fully into the southwest monsoon.  It started slowly right after Sinhala and Tamil new year with brief showers every few days, then came the thunderstorms.  I had 4 lightening strikes in the paddy field in front of my house.  This is surprising since the house is relatively low and the paddy field is lower yet, right at river level.  There must be something metallic discarded in the field.  With the lightening came rain every afternoon starting sooner and sooner in the day.  Now, since Saturday night, the rain has been continuous and often heavy.  No swimming this morning.  Too wet and cool plus I don't want to take a chance that lightning will start up again.

Finally got around to making the green hot sauce from scotch bonnet peppers.  These are some of the hottest in the world.  Just the smallest amount on your finger just about blows your head off.  This will last a long time.  Even the left over pulp is potent.

The bounty of our work

Went to OZO for breakfast the other day.  They have jacked up the price and the quality is going down fast.  This will now be a much rarer occurrence than before.  Walked into town around Kandy lake afterwards.  This is the first time I have ever walked around the lake.  They have built a cobble stone walkway which is quite nice.  Saw some marvels on the way.  Water monitors.

About 5 feet head to tail tip.  Smallish one really.

This one's head looks a lot like the floating leaves around it.

My apple earbuds bit the dust after almost 10 years of use.  The headphones still work, but the remote mic and controls went.  The Apple franchise store sells Skullcandy products.  They seem to get a good rating, so I will give them a try.

The man came the other day to cut down two big bunches of tambili.  A much younger guy than the usual one and remarkably, he came with an assistant.

Up a tree

The rains have brought the ants indoors, so I have been over busy with ant killing.  Since my bathroom has an outside wall as well a door to the back porch, I always have a lot of ants trying to nest in the door frames and other dark places.  Here is the result of my current campaign.

The ball in the middle is a bit of white cotton batten.  I make a solution of sugar water with borax.  They come for the sugar and carry the borax back to the nest to poison the rest of the army, especially the queen. 

This was Saturday.  By today, Monday, they are almost all gone to ant heaven.

Saturday morning, Tania, Mike and I went out to a piece of land in Getambe to see if it would be suitable for a cooperative garden.  Not!  It is quite a walk in from the vehicle access road to a very jungly area crawling with leeches and swarming with mosquitos.  Happily, I had brought my gum boots which were much needed and a great protection from the leeches.  A few mosquitos did get me, but they really like Tania, so they went more for her.

Saturday afternoon was the playing of the annual Bradby Shield event.  Commonly known as "The Bradby", this is the blue ribbon of Sri Lanka's school rugby union season. It is played annually between two schools and traditional rivals Royal College, Colombo, and Trinity College, Kandy.  These schools are the most prestigious in Sri Lanka making the event a really big deal.  The game is played at the big international cricket stadium in Pellekelle rather than the regular rugby stadium in Kandy.  This year's game was a draw allowing Royal to keep the shield first for 6 months as they were the last to hold it.  

Rather handsome, really

After the game, there are a bunch of parties.  I went to the one at the Old Trinitian's Sports Club.  My friend Yoshita is a member.  We had a good time right up to the time around 11pm when the hoards of young male smokers started pouring in.  Since the game was a draw, the groups was somewhat subdued.  I would like to have stayed longer to do some dancing, but the band took a really long break and they were smoking inside the building where the dance floor was as well.  So we left around 2330.  I was coughing by about 0500 and continued after I got up.  Oh well, it was fun while it lasted.  I can add another very Kandian experience to my list.

May 5, 2016

I did not realise that I have not posted anything for over a month.  What with swimming most mornings now, it is difficult to find the time.  I used to do my posting before breakfast, but now that time slot is filled with swimming, so I have to reorganise my day.

Some friends from Holland brought me some silicone bakeware, so I have been baking like a demon. The ready made baked goods here are terrible even though the ingredients are very good.  It is just the combination of the ingredients that is bad.  I have been baking so much that my power bill has gone up by over LKR.1000 which is a lot.  I really need to get a gas oven.  Here are some of my successes:

Scones made the traditional round loaf way with raisins.

Scone covered with some nice strawberry jam.  The next step is to make my own clotted cream, or to get my friend Annette to get a cream separator so I can get some from her.

One pan cinni buns made in my new silicone cake pan.  This recipe calls for way too much butter.  When I make it again, I will be cutting the butter and the sugar by more than half.

The other thing that I am getting sick of paying for is tobasco sauce, so I have started to make my own hot sauce as well.  The first batch was made from dried red chilis and turned out quite well.  Using chilis, vinegar and salt makes it easy, economical and easy to control the taste.  I am in the process of brewing some green hot sauce from green habanero peppers at the moment.  Now that will be a real hottttttttt sauce.  My next sauce project will be HP Sauce.  Another favourite that costs the earth but is quite easy to make.  After that comes worcestershire sauce.

Veenitha squeezing the sauce out of the seeds and skins.  Nothing goes to waste.  The seeds and skins make great topping for pizza.

Here is our output.  The little bottle of tabasco costs LKR.400, about C$4.  For about C$2, we got all you see here.

The weather has broken somewhat in that we have been getting some rain at least two or three times a week.  Mostly thunder storms.  The other day, a fork of lightning hit in the paddy field right in front of the house.  The thunder clap scared the shit out of me.  Funnily enough, it did not trip the power breaker.  Sometime later, the power breaker did trip even though there was no evidence of lightning.  No making any sense of Sri Lankan power.

The cat got caught in the downpour and came in like a drowned rat.  Most unusual for her.  She usually has places she can slink through without getting wet.  She has been hanging close anyway, but even more so now.

Sleeping in my arms in bed.

A group of us made a lunch trip to Ena da Silva's craft centre in Matale.  Ena was responsible for the establishment of the modern batik cottage industry in Sri Lanka.  She established a big craft centre in Matale, where she also lived in the latter part of her life.  There were batik, embroidery, and brass workshops during her lifetime, putting out a wide variety of product.  Since her death in 2015, things have gone decidedly downhill.  There are only 2 workshops left with very few people working in them.  Even the product they have for sale is in very short supply and ridiculously expensive.  Many of the women have either established their own businesses or have gone to work for Baba Batiks which is on the main road just before the turn off to Ena's.

The whole operation was shoddy and dirty.  If the lunch had not been prearranged, we would probably have walked out.  The food was traditional Sri Lankan rice and curry and was tasty.  Although there was an overhead  fan where the food was set up (no fan where we were eating though, and it was stinking hot), they refused to turn it on, so an old lady stood fanning the flies off the food with a tiny hand fan.  I do not recommend the place.

This is the entry to Baba Batiks.  They have preserved the frangipani in the hall.  The place is spotless and very well supplied with clothing as well as table linens and decorative pieces.  The only problem is that it is 3 to 4 times more expensive than elsewhere.  I guess they figure the tourists don't know the difference.

The owners live next door to the shop in a lovely old walawa.  We had a brief chat with lady who says they have done nothing to the building but maintain it well for the over 100 years of its life.  They have obviously redone the gardens fairly recently.  Just goes to show what can be done with some care and attention.

On the way home, we stopped at the Noritake factory shop in Matale.  They have an impressive selection of patterns as well as seconds.  Needless to say, I don't need any more china except for a few of pieces of my Portmeirion that have broken over the years.  I only got some tiny bowls for serving salt and pepper at the dinner table.  It was tempting though.

We got everything prepared for a lovely Sri Lankan lunch for the Dutch visitors, but in the end, they stood me up.  Ava, Veenitha and I had the nice food with lots left over.  Their loss was our gain.

In between the usual cooking and house cleaning, I have been organising my 2TBs of movies and tv shows.  It has taken a long time to get them sorted in some kind of order, but it has given me an opportunity to weed out what I no longer wanted and to start downloading what I am missing and/or the new seasons that are coming out.  Never short of entertainment.  Between the videos and the books, I am never bored.

Just as I was wavering about going to the dentist to have my thrice-yearly cleaning, one of my wisdom teeth broke.  That tooth has broken before, and I suspect that it is in fact the filling that has fallen out.  So it is off to the dentist tomorrow to get it repaired and to have the cleaning done at last.