At last all the photos from our trip to Sigiriya have been posted as of 5/18/06
At the end of our lane, there is a small construction project. The ditch has water running through it from at least three sources. Someone at the city has decided to upgrade the ditch so for the last while about five or six men have dug out the ditch, laid concrete half pipes on the floor of the ditch and now are building an elaborate wall in the ditch. Unfortunately, someone forgot to engage an engineer in this process so only two of the three sources of water have been dealt with in an effective fashion. We can hardly wait to see how the third source will be incorporated into the project. We keep wondering if it will just be ignored. I forgot to say, for this entire project the men are mixing concrete on the ground and using one gallon buckets to carry the concrete to the worksite. The ditch is about 50 feet long and maybe two feet deep.
Today I spied the postman for the first time. Mail is delivered on a bicycle. I was walking to the veggie market when I saw him. I walked up to him and soon discovered he spoke no English so I went back to the house and waited for him. He has been depositing our mail in the box for newspapers that is not all that secure and definitely not water tight. We have a slot in the garage door that has been provided for mail. So using sign language I showed him where I wanted him to deposit our mail from now on. Keep your fingers crossed. What knocked my socks off was he would ring the bell of any home that didn’t have a mailbox. If no one came to the door, he put the mail back in the bungee cord that held the mail to the bicycle and continued down the street. This is so inefficient but so very Sri Lankan.
When we arrived we decided that we did not need to open a checking account here. We could pay our bills back home on line and use our ATM cards for cash. We have very few bills here (water, electricity, drinking water delivery, telephone and cable TV) and I pay those in cash in person. After a month or two here, our credit card company started charging us 3% on any international charges and this was a steep sum, particularly when we were furnishing the house. One month our fees were almost $200. So we decided we would open an account here to get a domestic credit card. That took numerous trips to the bank, a long wait for our deposits to clear, etc. When our cards didn’t arrive, we visited the bank only to discover they had denied our request because we didn’t have a secured account here. Gee, how come they didn’t tell us that before we applied and how come nobody bothered to notify us when our application was rejected?
When we things like the above three incidents happen here we sometimes make some disparaging remarks about SL. Well just to keep us humble and to remind us that SL does not have a corner on the stupid market our bank in Vancouver has totally screwed up. Ron called our bank (WAMU) to ask them to send his new ATM/debit card early since mail is sometimes taking six weeks to get to us here. He was concerned that his current ATM would expire before the new one arrived and he would not be able to access his account. All this was carefully explained to the customer service rep on the phone. The card never arrived so Ron phoned again. I must say here how grateful we are for Skype, an Internet phone service that costs seven cents a minute. It turns out they had sent the card to our Vancouver address and ATM/debit cards are not forwarded. So it was sent back to the bank and cancelled. Ron again explained our situation and again requested a card be sent directly here, not to our Vancouver address. We were in Nuwara Eliya when his current card was rejected by the restaurant the night we were treating his staff to dinner. HA! Fortunately I had the cash on me to cover the charges. Next morning when he tried to pay the hotel bill, he had the same problem. When we got back to Colombo he called his bank. It turned out they had cancelled his card because they had sent the new card and had assumed he had possession of it so they cancelled the old card. Another phone call to the bank, again he explained his problem and was told the bank would send the card two day express mail No card showed up after 10 days (we were traveling part of that time). He called again and was told they did not have the two digit country code so ‘could not send his card in a two day express mail’. One wonders why someone with a brain didn’t look up the code the same way we did, on the Internet. So the bank called our Vancouver number to tell us they needed the code before they could send the card. Brilliant. To add to the stupidity after these calls, the bank managed to send my card to the Vancouver address also. But they can’t send a new one here until the one they sent to Vancouver shows up. Fortunately my card hasn’t expired or we would be up a creek without a paddle. This has gone on since May 3rd and still no card after 5 phone calls and a whole lot of frustration so last night we stayed up to midnight drafting a stinging letter to the CEO and COO. It turned out there was no way to effectively send the letter electronically since they have a 3000 character limitation and oddly enough ask for a detailed description of the problem. Ron went to the web site and found an email address for investor relations that didn’t have any restrictions on size of the email. We then went to bed. At three o’clock a.m. he got a call from WAMU asking for our address that was in the letter we sent and has to be in our account history with the five phone calls that have been made. We also woke up this morning with two emails of apology, one of which asked for the address of where to send the card. You can only imagine Ron’s response to that email. As I said, SL doesn’t have a corner on the stupid market.
Lots of travel on the horizon
We take off tomorrow for a short trip up the coast to Chilaw. Here we always stay at a lovely resort on the lagoon next to the beach. Last time we were there I befriended a woman who had asked me to photograph her school-aged girls. Since then she has come to Colombo about four times and always calls me when she is in town. We have tried to get together but either her husband has been too busy to bring her here or I have been doing something like teaching my class that has prevented us from getting together. I will call her tonight to see if I can see her while we are in Chilaw. We will return on Friday.
On Sunday Ron will go to Anuradhapura and return on Monday night then Wednesday we are off to India to see Raju, the man who came to Vancouver to do a professional exchange with Ron. Now Ron is going to India to complete this program, never knowing when this was proposed two years ago that we would be right next-door. We will be gone eight days, spending most of the time with Raju and his family in Navsari, a small town in Gujarat, north western India. We will spend two days in Ahmadabad, the capital before returning home. Then on June 10th we will return to India for a fourth time to be with Ron’s boss from DC who is doing some work in Tamil Nadu, south India. We will be there for four days. Around July 20th we are off to Thailand to see our dear friend Nattawan who is building a home in Phetchaburi, about two hours south of Bangkok. We will be there for a long weekend. Our time here will fly by with this much travel. We are maximizing our time here in order to see as much as we can.
I need to post this, as the computer needs to go in for a check up today.
Tata for now.