October 11, 2024

My landlady's daughter Yazmin phones up one day to say that she would like to come round for a chat.  I say OK and we set a date for a few days later.  I say I hope it is not too serious.  She says that it is serious.  Then I have visions of something really bad:  my landlady is dying, they are about to evict me, etc., etc.

On the appointed day, she arrives, albeit about 2 hours later than she says.  This is typical.  It seems that the problem is with the ownership of the house.  Property issues are rife in Sri Lanka.  There is a spotty land title system plus families divide property amongst themselves without any legal registration.  In this case, the conventional wisdom for years has been that Yazmin was given the upstairs where Tula lives and the three brothers owned the part I rent in equal proportion.  Furthermore, Tula had a life interest.

When Rohan was here, he and Yazmin decided that they needed to see the deed.  They asked Shiranti (the widow of the eldest son) who apparently has possession of the deed.  She kept dodging them so they finally asked Tula.  She directed them to a pile of papers where they did find a copy of the deed.  It turns out that the upstairs does indeed belong to Yazmin but that the downstairs is not divided in equal proportions.  The eldest son, now his widow, have a half interest and the other two brothers have 1/4 each and most importantly, Tula has no life interest.

Now, Tula is in no danger because Yazmin will never kick her Mother out, but the lease I have with Tula is technically not valid because she has no legal standing on the deed.  Yazmin was just warning me because they don't know what Shiranti might do.  They think she might want to sell.  I tried to explain that that was next to impossible for a number of reasons:

1. She owns 1/2 of 1/2 of a house.  She can't sell her portion unless the two brothers also agree.
2. It is unlikely that anyone will buy only the downstairs of a house.  They will want the entire thing.
3. Even though the lease with Tula is technically not valid, if I decided to challenge any breaking of the lease, I could get any number of witnesses to testify that it was entered into in good faith by both parties as everyone thought that Tula had a life interest.  Even if that argument didn't work, the matter would be tied up in the courts for at least a decade.

The brothers have approached Shiranti with a view to buying her out.  She has asked for LKR.6M.  That is not unreasonable.  LKR.12M (C$55,000) for the downstairs and the annex is cheap.  Now they are trying to raise the money to pay her off.

At first, I was a bit shaken.  But after thinking about it, I feel quite secure.  However, it has spurred me to start looking for something else as I would likely want to move when Tula dies.  Plus, I don't want to negotiate the outside steps when I am 80.  

Risvi, my part-time houseman also acts as a house broker, so I have him on the lookout for a place that meets my needs at the right rent.  We have to find someone who doesn't care about the money and just wants someone who will look after their property.  I am hoping for a swimming pool as well, at last.  We will see.

Mahjong continues unabated as do breakfasts at the Grand Kandyan.  A new addition is a breakfast buffet at the Radisson (formerly OZO) where we have our film club.  When OZO first opened, we used to go for the breakfast buffet that was excellent and cheap.  After some time, the quality of the food started to deteriorate and price went up, so we stopped going.  Now that Radisson has taken over, they have gone back to a good selection, espresso is included and Film Club members get a 10% discount, making it the same price as the Grand Kandyan.  We went for breakfast one day and it was good.  Only problem was, the espresso was so good that I had 4 cups and was buzzed for 2 days.  We have decided to alternate between the two locations.

Ken Kawasaki celebrated his 78th birthday and as is his wont they had a darna for their religious students.  I attended but found myself increasingly sickened by the monks.  There is always the thing about whether or not the nuns can sit at the same table.  Then there is the sermonizing and the endless chanting.  I am so sick of these people who get such reverence and contribute nothing to society.  Anyway, I bit my tongue and got through it.  Visakha's birthday is on September 15.  They decided to do another darna on September 28.  I found an excuse not to attend that one as I don't think I can stomach another one.

The ritual of serving the clerics is another thing I can't stomach.  Do they have a piano tied to their legs that they can't serve themselves?

Visakha.  She has had a variety of ailments for the last year.  That day, she had a bad cold complicated by shingles.

The buffet table is always well stocked.  I made my spinach pie that Visakha really loves.

The "altar' with the gifts for the monks in the front.

Don't think that this dislike of clerics and the organized religions they represent is directed only at Buddhists.  I was sent to a Catholic boarding school when I was 6.  Even then, I was suspicious of the whole religious charade.  As I grow older, I see the ridiculous nature of the myths and rituals that surround all organized religions for the scams they are.  

As Visakha's birthday is on September 15, I went to help them make sandwiches for their monthly high tea donation to the Cancer Home.  September 15 was also my Father's birthday so it was a good way to remember him as well.  It also mitigated my not going to the darna on September 28.

I mentioned previously the problems I had after the sale of HSBC to RBC.  I thought that was all behind me, but alas no.  I was forced to liquidate my stock holdings as my investment account had been restricted due to my residing in Sri Lanka.  Don't ask me why.  When the price was right, I sold the shares and then made arrangements to have the money transferred into a RRIF on the banking side.  The is seemingly simple exercise required 3 more e-mails to the CEO and countless emails to my branch.  The transfer has finally been effected but I still have no answer about my withholding tax.  RBC sucks!

I think I mentioned that my front windows needed repair as they had been partially eaten away by termites.  Upon further examination, we discovered that the entire thing was compromised and needed to be replaced.  Yazmin had said that they would do it, but because of the dispute over the deed, they have stopped doing anything at all.  Finally, she said that if I wanted to front the money to do the work, I could take it off future rent payments.  So we began.

The rot.

It turned out there was a wire connecting the outside lights to the switch by the front door running along the rotted frame, so then it was time to call the electrician.

The louvers at the top were rotten as well.  That had to be replaced by a mesh so for 3 days, the security grill was hanging loose.  Luckily nothing happened.  Anyone could have walked right in.

The plug between the windows had to be removed as well.  Useless really, so no loss.

As they were removing the frame, the plaster on the outside fell off, so now it was time for a concrete man.  Luckily Risvi had an excellent guy who did all the concrete and plaster work.  He worked like a Westerner, staying until 1900 one night.  Very unlike most Sri Lankan workmen.

More plaster work.

The bottom part of the frame was just dust.

More outside plaster falling off.

The concrete man at work.

The steel fabricator at work.  The entire frame was replaced with steel except the bottom which is now concrete.  The louvers have been replaced with mesh.

The finished product from the inside.  Way more light since the wooden louvers are gone.

From the outside.  I never closed the windows anyway, so now they are all gone.  

Only problem now is that because the agave had to be cut back in order to repair the outside wall and because they were trampled, the remaining leaves are directing the rain water through the open space.  We will have to trim them some more and repaint the wall.  Never ending.  

You can see the leaves acting a troughs to the inside.

A bit of a mess, but it can be dealt with.

When all was said and done, it cost me LKR.120,000 (C$550).  An expenditure I wan not counting on. It required 4 specialists:  the steel fabricator, the plasterer, the electrician, and the painter and clean up man.  Consequently I had to delay my next dental implant.  That has now been done however.  The post is in so I am just waiting for it to set and then the crown can be put on.

After installing my dental implant, my dentist prescribed some heavy duty pain killers, antibiotics, anti inflammtories, etc.  We stopped on a well equipped pharmacy on the way home.  The pharmacy was staffed by 2 teenage girls and a young woman.  The two girls took the note and started pulling boxes off shelves.  They brought the boxes over whereupon I asked them if they were qualified pharmacists.  Of course not.  Then I asked the young woman.  No again.  I said I wanted to see the pharmacist.  They went into the back and after 5 minutes they came out with a young man.  Again, I asked if he was a qualified pharmacist.  No!  Apparently, the pharmacist had gone into town which was at least 30 minutes away.  So there was an entire pharmacy stocked with god only knows what; opiates and other serious pain killers completely open and unsupervised.  What a country!  I took my chit and went to another place.  

I attended Film Club after a bit of an absence.  The only reason I went was because my friend Yvonne Cooper who recently lost her husband George wanted to dip her toe back into the social pool and needed support.  She stayed with me for 2 nights and we went to see the film and have lunch.  

My pedicurist recommended some unusual fruit to me, so I had my veggie guy get some for me.

In the foreground in the bowl are black velvet tamarind.  Beside the watermelon is gallugooda

The tamarind you make into a juice that quite nice but a real faff due to having the peel each tiny fruit.  The gallugooda is like rambutan or even cacao pulp inside.  There is very little pulp around the seed so again it was only good for juice.  You would need an awful lot more than I had to get anything of substance.

We also did a lot of vine stripping in the downstairs garden in the process of which I discovered scarlet ivy gourd growing.

The fruit

I asked the so called gardener if the fruit was edible and he said no.  When I looked it up on the web, it said that it was like a cucumber and could be eaten.  I made Risvi retrieve the vines that had been put in the compost to harvest the fruit.  Here it is.

I pickled it like a gherkin.  It tasted terrible.  Bitter.  Turns out it is used as a medicine.  Mostly the leaves that are said to help with diabetes and high blood pressure.  Mind you, everything in Sri Lanka is apparently good for those purposes.

We had notice that there was going to be a 65 hour water cut due to having to clean our the Polgolla dam that is used as a municipal water reservoir.  The Mahaweli River, the longest in Sri Lanka is damed in a number of places either for power or water.  Mahaweli means Big Sand and so the dams get filled up with sandy silt.  They have to be cleaned every couple of years.  We have a water tank, but just to be safe, we filled up pots and a large garbage can.  In the end, we didn't lose water at all.  The pressure dropped, but it kept coming.  Luckily, as areas around us did have their water cut.  We used all the spare water to water the garden.

We have had incredible sunsets of late along with some very heavy rain.  I have been trying to take photos of them with my crappy phone camera.  Here are a couple.  Unfortunately the camera does not do them justice, but you get the idea.  Sometimes the sky is so red that house is pink.

Closing as always with my cats.  Here are Chewy and Putha sleeping together in my lap.  They are great pals.  A couple of days ago, Chewy disappeared for the day.  I was frantic.  She finally breezed in around 0400 like nothing was wrong.