Day 170

This is quite shameful. I had decided to post many times, but kept putting it off.

Days and weeks have gone into an interesting cycle. 

Days when I get a bus immediately in the morning and manage to catch the evening bus too and it's empty and the driver is super fast. Other days when the morning bus comes half an hour late and drives so slow that the trees have grown an extra ring and days that I miss the bus in the evening too. 

Days when things are a bit relaxed at work and I get to catch up on new music and have time to read. Other days when there are busy crazy deadlines and hours of extra work late into the night (and early into the morning once too).

Days when we cook up a storm at home- desserts and juices and multiple course meals and other evenings when we feel so blah and drag ourselves into the kitchen half asleep.

Some days I have the energy to read, to catch up on my online courses and to be productive and many days I scroll up and down my Facebook news feed all evening. 

And yet in all routine and mundane weeks of hot sultry afternoons and rainy nights, I still love it here. There are still so many exciting things in the middle of blah days. Here are some I can remember from the past 3 weeks.

- This morning I saw a snake in my loooong wait at the bus stop. It slithered into the gutter just a few feet away. Happened too fast for my brain to tell me to be scared.  

- Two weeks ago did a measured drawing in an old building and in the middle of our snooping and scavenging through the massive house, we found some old black and white pictures. 

- We went for the production of 'Jesus Christ Superstar' Was so awesome. Such great singers and a pretty solid show.

- The weekend following that, we did a musical marathon that continued into the week. Watched Evita, Rent, Mama Mia, Fiddler on the Roof, Moulin Rouge, Chitty Chitty Bang Bang and Annie. Had my fill of singing. Was great!

- I always look forward to weekends. Now a days they are extra special because of the Christmas programme practices. Choir and the play and lots of music in general. 

:)

November is going to be a busy month. I have trips being planned and friends visiting and beaches to look forward to. Cannot wait. 

Day 71

Today has been a bit of an adventure.

I got a note telling me that I have a package at the post office. Was quite curious (read nervous) considering no one has my address except the Sri Lankan immigration.

Got to the post office only to find out that I have a letter to say that there is a dutiable package waiting for me at the main post office. I feel like I'm on some treasure hunt. It better be worth all this hassle. If the person who has sent me a parcel is reading this, please tell me what it is. It'll make filling out those forms a lot easier. My boss said he's not coming with me to pick it up in case it is drugs. :P

The whole day was nice as usual. Working in my cool office while listening to Radiohead and David Grey and eating yummy Thai for lunch. 

I got a bit carried away at work (sometimes that happens) and forgot to leave on time. The buses are quite infrequent from where I work because it is pretty much in the middle of nowhere. After 5:30 in the evening, the buses come every 45 minutes! When I finally got on, the driver decided that he wants to drive home instead of the assigned route.

I jumped off in the middle of nowhere to walk to the next stop on the parallel road. I was fortunate enough to overhear 2 other equally annoyed passengers walking behind me who I assumed were deciding to take an auto rickshaw home (I assumed anyway, don't know any Sinhalese to know for sure). They seemed like decent, non-creepy people, so I jumped in with them. 

I was quite content that I managed to save the money (rickshaws are pretty over priced. Much worse than Bangalore) and happily jumped off and didn't realise that I dropped my phone on the road till after I got home.

I really didn't expect to get it back, but searched the cracks in the road and the gutters nonetheless. Some shady guys watching us search finally handed it over. Battery is mangled and pretty much lifeless. Probably the effects of being run over and in a puddle. The phone is battered and bruised and minus a memory card. But I think it'll live with a new battery and some cellotape.

Phones and me have never gotten along. Sigh. 

Proof of damage. 

Day 7

The last three days have been pretty good. 

I've been enjoying my desk at office even more. I braved the buses here and realised they weren't half as bad as the Bangalore buses. The route I go, is out of the city, so the buses are pretty much empty. The buses are smaller here, and yet still have difficulty turning around the bends of the narrow roads. At some of the turns, the conductor gets out and has to stop the traffic to let the bus do it's big maneuver. 

Here's the road (more like a path) that I walk down to get to work. So quaint. And I only realised on day 2 that there is a tree growing through my office.

Movies come out quite a bit later than everywhere else. We went to watch a movie that wasn't even showing in Bangalore anymore when I left. The cinema we went to was quite primitive too. The hall wouldn't have seated more than 100 and the air conditioning was competing with the Arctic. I sort of missed the Vicco adverts from Inox, though. Enjoyed the movie nonetheless.

I've been diving headfirst into work and yet my timings are hard to believe. Which architect works 9-5!?! The stars used to be out when I left office in Bangalore. But the work is great fun. Had my first client meeting today and then got to attend a really good seminar this evening. Got to see the large Colombo architecture community (which probably included some of the architects who I sent my portfolio to and didn't hire me! hehe)

Anyway, so I've only been here a week and have a trip planned for this weekend. We leave tomorrow morning for Nuwara Eliya. It's Sri Lanka's hill station. The pictures online resemble the tea estates in Munnar. 

Write up on that (and better pictures) coming soon as well as my experiences of Vesak- the Buddhist lantern festival. 

Day 2

My first Sabbath this year in Colombo was quite nice. I visited Bethel church last year and was lucky to visit on their 90th anniversary celebrations.

The congregation was a lot smaller today than it was on that day. The service was nice and finished much earlier than Cunningham church in Bangalore. I didn't even start feeling hungry during the sermon like I usually do. The many greetings I got changed from 'How long are you visiting for?' to 'Oh, we'll be seeing a lot more of you.' 

The city centre is quite lovely. Again, I have to mention the lack of garbage. I could walk barefoot if I had to! Another thing that I was pleasantly surprisingly to see was the use of a zebra crossing. People actually use the crossing and traffic actually stopped and let people cross! 

The evening brought with it lots of introductions, new Sri Lankan food and hours of entertainment. (I should correct that to evening, night and the following morning actually). The rule was 'no sleeping'. I paid the consequence with three painted toenails. Luckily I woke before the toothpaste attack.

Here's a picture of the church from last year. Love the lights.