Wednesday, July 12, 2006

Happy Anniversary!!!

Just wanted to wish a very Happy Anniversary to Amma & Thatha... 35 years, and still going strong.


Also, a special thank you to both of them for actually spending this special day apart, just so Thatha can help M & I to move into their house here in Colombo!!!

Thank you both, and hope you have a good celebration when Thatha gets back to Geneva!

Friday, July 07, 2006

weekend in the hill country...

Just got back from a weekend break to Nuwara Eliya (also known as the little England of Sri Lanka). It took us 6 hours to get there, on some pretty bad roads for the last two hour stretch, I was grateful it was dark, so we couldn't see how steep the slopes were on the sides of the roads. We stayed at a real Tea Factory, that has been converted to a hotel, which looks on majestically to rolling hills of tea-plantations. It was quite quaint, and the whole of Nuwara Eliya really brings home the influence and impact of the Raj! There's the Nuwara Eliya Golf Club, which has a public footpath running through it, which means that you often get some nutter running through the footpath and getting walloped on the head with a golf ball! M & B spent the morning golfing, or attempting to golf...I think they played 9 holes... while I enjoyed the view and listened to my iPod...
We then drove through the town, which was swarming with bus-loads of day-trippers from Colombo, all buying the brightly coloured monkey-caps and sweaters that were on sale on the road-side (it was seriously not monkey-cap weather, rather more like a pleasant English summers day... but I guess the locals find it cold...).
We had high-tea in the afternoon back at our hotel, since (luckily) none of us were appropriately dressed for the very posh, very Colonial Hill Club which is a members only establishment, where gentlemen are expected to wear dinner jackets and there is even a separate gentleman's only bar... the Orange Pekoe tea was excellent, although the food took a good hour to get to us, and was a far cry from cucumber sandwiches or indeed Sri Lankan short-eats, and poor Bush had to wait an hour for his Fanta... even though we asked about 3 times...
Anyway, the return journey back was far more pleasant, and shorter by a couple of hours since we left late morning and made it in good time to Colombo...
I think Nuwara Eliya is a perfect weekend or mid-week break from Colombo, for a spot of golf, some great tea, as well as to experience the high old days of the Raj ;-)...
Pictures to follow (when I bother to upload them)

Thursday, July 06, 2006

resident status...

It's very easy to visit Sri Lanka since they issue 30 day visit visa's to almost all nationality passport holders, so as my first month was coming to an end, I had to get my resident's permit. It took us (I say us, when actually it was poor M who did 99% of it) a total of 4 trips, each of which took several hours, to see first the CONTROLLER of Immigration & Emigration, then his deputy, where we had to wait outside her cubicle for about an hour while people with badges calmly pushed into her room ahead of us. When we finally got to see her, she was unable to grant my visa as we didn't have all the documentation. The next two trips frustrated M no end, as he went on his own, only to be told that the computers were closed (err... then why can't they switch them back on???), anyway, I now have a 2 year resident's permit to live in Sri Lanka, and this was when we had used our contacts to go to the top guy to start off with, gawd knows how the common people cope ;-).

queue jumping...

having lived in England for at least the last 18 years at a stretch, I guess I've become kind of accustomed to queuing. Brits love to queue, just look at Wimbledon ;-), where I can proudly say, I too queued in my youth and got into watch some amazing matches. But coming from a country that loves queuing, one of my pet peeves is queue jumping... I really have a problem with that. Queue jumpers annoy me to no end...so its been a bit of a challenge adjusting to the way things work here in Colombo, (and before all the Lankans start biting my head off, yes I am sure its pretty much the same in my country of birth: INDIA...). People push-in everywhere, and the thing is that no one seems to mind, whether its the driving, where people cut each other off from the left/right/centre anywhere really, or if you're in some simple queue at a store or anywhere...

Anyway, I decided if I couldn't beat them, I'd definitely have to join them, so here I am jumping queues at any opportunity I can find!