Saturday 14th May 2022

The monsoon continues with very little let up, so I jumped at the chance to pop into Maskeliya town today, with Ananda giving me a lift there in his van. I tore my jeans yesterday - a long tear in the thigh, just through the material wearing a bit thin I think, as I have worn them a lot since I bought them in Colombo during my last visit in 2019. I knew that I could easily get a tailor to fix them for me.

Ananda dropped me off at Mr. Babu the tailor - he knows him, as they were at school together - and he was surprised that I already knew him too, as I had chatted to him when I was in Maskeliya the other day. He was so friendly, chatting to me whilst he mended my jeans, and even getting me a cup of tea afterwards. I talked to him for a while, discovering that work was rather thin on the ground now.

He fixed my jeans and when I asked him how much I owed him, he said, 'How much do you want to pay?' Knowing prices well now, I offered to pay him 400LKR (about £1), but he insisted that was far too much, and he would only let me pay him 200LKR (about 50p), so I asked him to make me a couple of short-sleeved shirts, which will cost me 2,000LKR (around £5) each, and he was delighted with that!

Today's blog is a bit later than normal, as the monsoon rains have brought down a tree, which has fallen against some cables, causing the internet to be so slow that it is hardly worth bothering with. It seemed to speed up a bit today (Sunday), so I didn't have to wait nearly as long as I thought, as I had visions of being out of contact with the outside world until Tuesday - after this Vesak Poya holiday weekend!











Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Tuesday 4th March 2025

Image
I finally got to my last day here which started very early, as I was up at the crack of dawn to sort out a few things in the apartment, then get my last few bits of packing done. Razeena once again brought me breakfast, which was a great start to my day. After breakfast, I popped a present for Sandra in Ravi's office, just in case I didn't see her to say goodbye to her but then met her at the Junior School on my way back and said a fond farewell to her there. I left at 08:30, with Liyanage driving me to the airport - not that I was aware of that journey, because I had got up so early this morning that I nodded off for most of it. I hardly had to queue at all for either the security checks or for check-in, so I had quite a bit of time before my flight was due to take off at 12:50. I had a delicious, filled croissant for lunch, with a latte, then went to Gate 9, where I didn't have to wait too long before boarding the plane, which thankfully took off on time. It was an 11-hou...
Read more

Friday 1st November 2024

Image
There was no school again today, as the staff were out on a staff trip somewhere (not sure where they went), so we had breakfast a little later at 08:30, then did some washing before heading into school at 10:30 to do some planning and preparation for our Maths Staff Training session on differentiation, which is taking place after school on Monday. There are 53 staff coming we have been told - across Grades 1 to 5, so I think it will be pretty challenging for us! Having got as far as we could with the planning and preparation, we went shopping for some Maths resources Valerie needed to purchase, plus a little trip to Halal Bakers to buy some bread for breakfast tomorrow. The street shops are an amazing concoction of buildings with all kinds of trades going on within them, and on the extremely busy Kurunegala to Kandy road, so Valerie took some photographs of the local shops, which you will see below today. We got back to the apartment, and I got on with planning out the Maths Staff Tra...
Read more

Saturday 5th October 2024

Image
It's my fifth trip to Sri Lanka, but on this occasion I am at last joined by my wife, Valerie, and it will be lovely not to be on my own this time. We flew out of London Heathrow Airport one hour late at 22:30 UK time on Friday, and after a rather excruciating eleven hour flight, we eventually landed at Colombo Airport just after 13:30 Sri Lankan time on Saturday. I slept for a few hours on the journey, but Valerie struggled to get any sleep at all. Sandra Wanduragala met us at Colombo Airport, and we drove into Colombo for a couple of hours - meeting up with her daughter, Selena, at the Good Market, which we really enjoyed and would love to go back to. We then went back to Selena's home, where it was good to be able to freshen up a little bit, and enjoy a nice cup of tea, before our driver, Rohan drove us to Kurunegala, where we will be based for the next two months. Arriving in Kurunegala, we met up with my good friend Tharika and her daughter, Evinka, to have dinner at Sri B...
Read more