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.
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| Ginger flower |
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| Verbina |
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With one lone Christmas card already starting to curl from the humidity.
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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.
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| The one that is eating won't let anyone else get near the food. |
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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.
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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.
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Here is the shop. Nice variety and well displayed.
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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.
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Lalindra conducting the teacher training
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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.
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| 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.
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| 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.
