February 12, 2018

Never too old for new experiences.  Two such to report this month:

First off, I became a cat grandmother for the first time.  My Baby had her babies.  So here a lot of pix to bore all those who have no interest whatever in cats.

Beginning with the lead up; getting to know her soon after she found me.

After I enticed her beyond the food dishes inside, she proved to be a real snuggler.

Here is a panorama of all three lying on the bed with me.  Good thing I have a king sized bed.

You can she is quite pregnant here and yet there was almost a month left to go.

Magical green eyes

So finally, here they are.  Two tiny kittens.  Apart from a little fluid, the birth was very clean.  Baby had everybody cleaned up and happy by the time I found them around 3:00AM on February 1

Now they are almost 2 weeks old.  They have opened their eyes, but only 2 days ago and have doubled in size.  So far no-one has volunteered to take them.  I will put out an appeal on Facebook when they are a little bigger.  Baby is a good mama.  She is behind locked doors in her confinement, as they used to say.  For the first week, she would stand over them an hiss every time I went into the room.  Now she will leave them for about an hour at a time.  Good thing I have a place to keep them as the male cats are not be trusted around kittens.

The second new experience was attending a rugby game.  I may have attended one once before about 50 years ago, but I really can't remember.  There is a rugby stadium quite close to my house and my friend Yoshitha invited me to attend the final for the Dialog Rugby Tournament.   Dialog is the largest communications company in Sri Lanka.  I have all my mobile and broadband services through them.  They also provide land lines and cable TV.  One of the best run companies in Sri Lanka.

Rugby is big in Kandy.  Almost as big as cricket.  The final was between the Kandy Sports Club and Havelock (a club from Colombo).

Kandy Sports Club

Havelock

Havelock

Before the game.  No national anthem, just a few dignitaries shaking hands with the players and the officials.

As you can see, the stadium is not large, but the turf was in great shape and as it has been quite of dry of late, stayed that way.  Purchasing the ticket, which was only LKR.600 (great entertainment for less than C$5), was a bit of an experience.  The ticket booth is behind a concrete wall that has tiny openings in it like holes for gun emplacements.  You sneak your money through the hole and they give you the ticket.  If Yoshitha had not been with me, I would have had no idea.

The seating on our side was reasonably comfortable with plastic bucket chairs.  The stands on the other side and the ends are just concrete tiers.  We were seated just behind the VIP section where our friend Duwi was hobnobbing with the VIPs.  Great luck for us as they got food packets which she happily shared.

Duwi, a gregarious woman who lives in LA but is about to spend half the year back in Sri Lanka

I was seated with Yoshitha, Duwi's father and cousin.  Luckily, the Duwi clan was quite familiar with the rules, so they soon set me straight.  The first half was dominated by Kandy.  They choked in the second half with Havelock coming on strong so that the final score was 30-28 for Kandy.  One of the Kandy players was retiring and scored a spectacular goal, so the crowd was well pleased.

The efficiency with which they set up the apparatus for the after game presentations was beyond belief.  Something I had never seen before in Sri Lanka.

The initial post game melee.  The men in white shirts and police formed a security ring around the players and their families.

Soon, all this and more was set up and the show went on.

All in all, a fun thing to do.  Would be happy to do it again next year.

On the school front, I closed the School of English last week.  Not enough registrants to make the effort worthwhile.  Of course, now I have parents ringing up saying they desperately want to bring their kids and how they can get 15 new students, etc.  My concession is to have one 2 hour class once a week at my house with no more than 10 students.  We start this Wednesday with almost a full complement.  I am off to get white boards tomorrow.  I will teach with one assistant.

My adult classes are going apace.  My seamstress and a friend also want to learn conversational English, so I may put together another adult class for that.

The venue for my class with the Electricity Board, Generation Division.  Wonderful garden with this huge bougainvillea dominating.

My OAS has kicked in so now I feel as rich as Croesus.  The additional income and additional cats prompted me to look for another maid who could either live in or take the days that Veenitha cannot come.  No luck so far.  No mean task to find another wonder like Veenitha.  The search continues.

I was able to buy Veenitha a pressure cooker and myself a Sumeet blender with my retro pension money.  The Sumeet is made in India and is the closest thing to a Vitamix you can get here.  I am blending up a storm with it.

Closing as always with my beasts.  Buddy and Aya have been fighting with the orange cat who sneaks in to eat.  I have named him Tambi as he is orange (tambili in Sinhala, the color of King Coconut).  Tambi does not initiate the battles.  The other day, I found Buddy leaping on him with all fours.  Consequently, Aya disappeared for 24 hours and came home with two huge gashes on his now slightly depleted belly.  Buddy has a big bite on one of his legs and has been limping between sleeping spots as he recovers.  Small wonder I need another maid.  All these cats make for a lot of work.

Aya in recovery

Brotherly napping