Photos at www.rtsla.photofreeway.com

No snakes since Saturday! Yeah!! Sri Lankan workmen never cease to amaze me. Our landlady is having some concrete work done on the road in front of her and our garage. The lead man asked if we had any Styrofoam so he could do his finish work! I guess I should be impressed that he can do finish work with scraps of Styrofoam but find it hard to believe that he has no tools to do the job. It speaks to two things: poverty and a can do attitude. There is balance in the universe. It looks very nice today. Last evening Mrs. Bakshi was ‘standing guard’ over the completed job to make sure no dogs, kids or cars messed up the finished job. Ron spied her and asked what she was doing. He and I went out and saw that the workmen had put a few bricks around the perimeter of the work to alert people that the concrete was fresh. It would not be visible once the sun set so Ron got some string, Mrs. Bakshi found some plastic pipe and I got some white plastic bags. Ron put the pipe into the holes in the bricks, strung string between pipes and I cut bags into ‘flags’ and tied them every few feet to alert drivers at night. It worked. Only one dog came along and messed up a small area. The rest is in perfect shape. The workmen repaired the ‘dog flaw’ this morning.

We have hot water as of today. Anton, the electrician was supposed to be back today to finish a job he started yesterday but was a no show. He broke a lampshade on the kitchen sconce. All the wall light fixtures have matching glass shades. Mrs. Bakshi told him he would have to replace it. So he went upstairs and took one off the third floor fixture. I think in his mind he has replaced it! I went to the shop where they were purchased and they don’t have any more. Welcome to Sri Lanka!

I don’t know if I mentioned it but Veena went to India for 10 days to a seminar or training in energy work (healing). She came home quite sick with a respiratory infection and is still not up and about. I have been so impressed with Mrs. Bakshi and how she has stepped in and supervised the many workers that have been in and out the past week or so. We have had the ‘plumber/concrete crew’, the metal guy who was building ladders for the rooftop, and the electrician. I don’t know how old she is but she has to be in her seventies as Veena is in her mid fifties.

Today I saw another very large lizard at the ditch at the end of our road. The ditch always has water in it but I’m not so sure of its origin. The lizard may have been a water monitor but was smaller than the original one I spied. This one was about 2.5 feet long.

Sunday we leave for Chilaw and on Wednesday we leave Chilaw for Anuradhapura, returning to Colombo on Friday, Feb 17th. I am pretty sure we will not have Internet access in Chilaw unless I go into town, which I am not planning on doing. The resort we stay in is lovely with a beach, the largest pool I have ever seen and birds everywhere. One of these days I should break down and get a swimsuit. So there won’t be any blogs that week more than likely.

We are eager to welcome our first overnight guests. Dick and Pat Parker, our younger son’s wife’s parents, will arrive Feb 18th at midnight Saturday morning and be with us until Tuesday when they head out to explore the island. They will return for another visit before heading to Japan and Maine. Dick is a professor at a Japanese university and Pat is retired. She spends her time between Japan and our grandkids in Maine. Let me (RB) say some of the same thing in Sinhale just so Ie can show off a little: “Mage puttage nonage amma and taatta nama Dick and Pat. Eyaa professor kenek.” This is all phonetic spelling because Sinhale uses a completely different alphabet, of which we know NOTHING!

Sunday we wanted to go out and be tourists but it turned out that since Saturday was a holiday, everything closed on Sunday! Yes, you heard me, that’s how they do it here. Any chance for another day off. Sri Lanka has more holidays than any other country in the world. So we gave up the idea of going to museums and galleries and went looking for the last of the needed living room furniture. We went to a town about 12 kilometers away where there is a lovely shop where we bought nightstands and a side peace for the living room earlier this year. We found two chairs we liked and got them. Then we saw a couch we really like much better than what we have already purchased. So now we are trying to sell our couch so we can buy the one we saw at Villa Saffron. So it goes.

That’s it for today from Paradise just north of the equator!