Today I was out shopping and stopped by the nursery for some compost. They were having a ‘grand opening’ for a new enterprise-fresh cut flowers. I was thrilled as I have not been able to find any flower shops that were convenient to where we live. I bought a bouquet of alstromeeria and five stems of flowers that looked like alliums and were huge. I was given some filler flowers for arranging. It came to a grand total of 55 cents! Guess where I will be going from now on? I love having fresh flowers in the house and as lovely as our gardens are, there are only one of two plants that were conducive to cutting.

I gave up trying to find western clothes here. Some of my clothes are starting to wear out as I can only wear them once and they have to be washed. At home, I can often wear items at least twice before washing them. But as you all know from reading the blog, I sweat a lot here so frequent washing is a necessity. Consequently clothes wear out sooner. I am sure line drying in the sun is hard on the clothes also. So today I got two Punjab saris. They are the type with pants and a long blouse /short dress. I also found a blouse and two pair of pants in lightweight cotton. I think I am set for a while. When my silk sari is ready I will put it on as soon as I have a lesson on how to do that and I’ll have Ron take photos for show and tell on our photo site.

We leave very early in the morning for Chennai (Madras), which is on the SE coast of India. It’s a short flight, one hour and 20 minutes. We will have the whole day free as Jon, Ron’s boss doesn’t get in until late at night. I think I will sign Mr. B up for a much-needed massage to de-stress him. Then on Sunday Ron and Jon will be working and I will be exploring and goofing off as usual. It’s a tough job but I thoroughly enjoy scoping out new places, checking out the arts and crafts of the region. It is amazing all the crafts that come out of Kasmir, given that they are war torn with Pakistan and India fighting over a disputed area.

Speaking of war torn, Sri Lankan (SL) the cease-fire monitoring talks in Oslo are not going well. All due to egos I might add. Apparently the LTTE will not sit at the table with the low-level representatives that SL sent to Oslo. Give me a break. Do you want to make progress or have a pissing match?????? Guess that’s a rhetorical question isn’t it? Killings continue in the north and east. The government would have us believe it is all the LTTE but not so. The LTTE, the break away faction called the Karuna and the government are all guilty of breaking the cease-fire and of killing solders and civilians. There was lots of other bad news today in the paper. There is a rail strike that has stranded lots of folks. Remember most people here do not own a car so they use buses and trains to travel around the island. And there is a fuel crisis. Apparently the government is guilty of non-payment of fuel subsidies and the oil companies cannot afford to import any more oil consequently. Sometimes you just can’t believe what goes on here.

One bank saga continues. Apparently after telling us they can’t send PIN numbers out of the country, they are sending me mine with my new card. I have my fingers crossed. So they sent Ron’s PIM to a friend in Vancouver who is to email us the number once it arrives. So far it has been 37 days since Ron has been able to access his cash. He is pissed. That’s one thing I would really like to get resolved so he can relax about it. We have started the process of opening a US checking account with an international bank, HSBC. However that is easier said than done. So far I have made three trips to get all the needed paper work from our local branch. Two of the three trips took over an hour each to find the forms on the bank’s internal website and get them printed. After filling the forms out, we must go back to the local branch to show passports and sign in front of a bank employee. That will be next week due to our travel schedule. Then it takes 4-6 weeks to open the account. And you thought government was slow. So that’s what is happening in the tropics today where the men are gorgeous, the weather is sultry and the Bergman’s are having an adventure,