Oh my, how did it get to be December? We have received several emails telling us how cold it is in Portland. Just so you know, we are sweating every day here-literally! My good friend Gary Perry asked me when it cooled off here. Never! We are 6 degrees north of the equator. Apparently, this is the coolest it gets and trust me, this ain’t cool. I hear April and May are almost unbearable in Colombo. Fortunately, Ron earns a R&R then so we will have two weeks away. We are thinking New Zealand might be nice but haven’t researched it yet. If he is really smart he will schedule a work trip to Kandy or Nuwara Elyia once we return from the R&R. Both are in the interior and at higher attitudes and considerably cooler. Traditionally, many people from Colombo escape to these cities in April and May to get away from the heat.

Yesterday I was at a grocery store and at one point at check out I realized three women were working at my register. Go figure. I think I told you it took five men to process the sale of a coffee maker.

We had a water dispenser delivered yesterday. You can’t drink the tap water in Colombo so I was buying gallons at the store. This is will far superior as they deliver two five gallon bottles every Monday. Because you can’t drink the tap water, cooking can get rather bothersome, where you rinse the veggies in the tap water, then rinse the tap water off with the bottled water.

About the only things left to do on the house are the screens and the other shower doors. We still have some furniture shopping to do. We need a second bed (ours is due next week or the one after), more sheets, more living room furniture-two side chairs. Ron is considering selling our coffee table that he is not wild about. If that happens then we will be in the market for a coffee table.

Yesterday I tried out a housekeeper who came to us via the Asia Foundation. She works for the director of Ron’s program and although she’s not noted for great cleaning skills, she is supposed to be a good cook, good at ironing and very honest, which is worth a lot in these parts. Every time we have workmen here, Veena’s mom tells me to lock up anything of value. Well so far we are missing our very nice pair of surgical scissors and a tape measure.

Have I mentioned the smells of Colombo? Ah, the nasty stench of rotting garbage. They have a real problem with waste management here. It is not unusual for people to dump their plastic bags of garbage on the side of the road. Even in the nice neighborhoods. We have trash pick up on Saturdays (Veena says sometimes). When you go to the fresh markets, the waste is heaped into a giant dumpster. With the heat here, it doesn’t take long to develop a really fine stink! Then there is the un-refrigerated meat section of the markets. I can’t go near them due to the smell. I am developing my capacity for holding my breath here. On the up side, I eat fresh mangoes daily. Bananas ripe on the stalk.

Yesterday I witnessed how the street sweepers operate. The street sweepers are men and women to sweep by hand and put the refuse in a cart they push down the street. A big truck comes by, they take out a tarp, dump the cart contents onto the tarp and then they lift the tarp into the back of the truck. Everything here (almost) is manual, labor intensive and not particularly efficient but then again I’m comparing it to the USA. I guess this way, you can keep the unemployment rate down to 10%.