Day 104

100 days already! More than a quarter over?!! This is going so fast.

The past week has been nice. More fancy cooking at home. Last week's cuisine was Mexican. We made burritos with home made tortillas, soya mince and kidney bean chili, salsa, sour cream and salad. We also made cheese stuffed deep-fried jalapenos. What we used wasn't actually jalapenos, but it tasted really good. I spent a lot of that evening with my hands soaking in cold water because cleaning those chilies had really burned my skin.

Over the weekend, we went for a trip. Was pretty unplanned because we only decided to go late on Friday evening.

I've always loved road trips and this was a super fun one.

I managed to get the hang of the camera thankfully except for pictures in low light.

As usual, I have a lot of pictures and lots to write and this time had to split the post into 2 sections.

I managed to finish part one today.

Southern Escapades (part 1)

Day 96

I've been here more than 3 months! That went by pretty fast. 

In my research of desserts that don't need baking, I remembered that I had attempted a Banoffee pie a while ago in Bangalore. Despite it being a relatively easy recipe, it didn't come out perfectly then.

You can only judge a pie after it's been cut and a slice is taken out. This time the layers cut through perfectly and the consistency, flavours and textures were pretty much spot on. The only problem was that I didn't make enough.

I cannot remember the exact quantities I used to post the recipe here, but I am quite sure I will make this again.

The combination of biscuit, toffee, banana, chocolate and cream was absolutely yum! 
The rest of the weekend was a blur.

:)

Day 91

We have a new plan. Every week, one of our dinners is going to be a special one based on one specific different cuisine.

We did a Thai night a few weeks ago. Today we had a Japanese feast. 
I did lots of researching since I've never really attempted Japanese before. When I was in Bangalore in June, we had quite an authentic Japanese meal at Harima. I have since been inspired. Such an interesting cuisine. So many methods of preparation and yet their ingredients remain so distinct and fresh in each dish. Such strong flavours and enough substitutes to make vegetarian adaptations.

Nen found a Japanese store where she picked up wasabi, sesame seeds, seaweed and chopsticks. We may have lacked some other essential ingredients, but in general the meal came out really well. Next time, we'll add tofu to the menu.

We were quite pleased with how it turned out that we spent extra time in serving it up and taking pictures. I was a bit too tired to take out my camera, so relied on my cousin's phone picture for this post. Clockwise starting with the rice- sticky rice, oyster mushrooms in oyster sauce, bok choy with sesame seeds, tempura fried zucchini, sushi with dipping sauce and wasabi, fried eggplant and satay sauce.

We started watching a Japanese movie (I think it was a Chinese movie actually, but I wouldn't know the difference) to add to our Japanese evening, but it was so hard to pay attention with all our focus on the chopsticks and trying not to drop the sushi in the dipping sauce.

And if that wasn't enough, we had apple pie (bought, just in case you thought we had time to bake a pie too) and whipped cream for dessert.

I'm so stuffed and there's enough leftovers for lunch tomorrow. 

Next week is either Mexican or Burmese. :D

Day 90

Hello to routine- work, home, cooking, a movie maybe and bed.

I still have so many pending posts from my South Africa trip, but sadly haven't managed to finish any. Last week my laptop crashed. It's five years old and has been though a lot, so it's probably just old age, but I was determined to fix it. I went through website after website and read through too many laptop forums that went way over my head and I managed to get it to some form of working condition. Unfortunately my graphics is a bit conked and all attempts to save it have so far failed. All hope is not lost (yet).

I had to edit pictures blindly and then check them on my phone to make sure the quality was good. My laptop makes movie watching very vintage now.

I did manage to finish one post about driving though South African countryside- Yellow Buildings, Canyons and Macadamias

Today got to go on a site visit two hours away from here to Kitulgala. This little town set in a rainforest up in the hills is known for the sets of the 1957 movie The Bridge on the River Kwai. I remember watching this movie about 14 years ago with my Dad. 

We stopped for breakfast and lunch at the local rest house and had the most beautiful mealtime view. The river, the forests and the clouds moving over the mountains.

The site we visited was set alongside a waterfall of one of the tributaries of the main river. Each chalet was barely 15m from the edge of the water. The surroundings were very overgrown with ferns and moss of all types covering the forest floor. Rubber and teak trees formed a canopy over the site making the rain fall unevenly over us. 

Unfortunately this was a site visit trip and not a holiday. I would have loved to walk downstream or possibly jump in for a swim or even better- raft down. Kitulgala is known for white water rafting. Definitely cannot wait to do that while I am here. The setting was so perfect, it seemed almost a crime to have a steel/concrete roof over your head. A tent would be so much cooler.

The coolest thing I saw at the site was a really interesting mushroom- Phallus indusiatus or the stinkhorn or the fanciest of names- the orange veiled lady mushroom. At first I thought it was a mushroom growing through some plastic mesh and only when I looked closer did I realise that it was a part of the mushroom. Now I wish I had gotten close enough to smell it's distinct odour. It's not a very common species, but is known to grow on extremely wet forest floors.

They say you can't visit Kitulgala without taking at least one leech back with you (my boss's words) and I stuck to tradition and left the site with a little black bloodsucker on my leg. Thankfully I found him fast before it got fat and ugly. Blahh.

Day 81

The weekend came and went. It was another movie marathon weekend. My cousin and I are (over the course of the year) going to attempt covering as many as we can from the IMDB top 250 list. I mean a lot of them don't interest us at all, so we're likely to skip them, but lets see how far we go. This weekends list was  Immortals (slightly rubbish, but liked the 'renaissance painting' genre), Kiss Kiss Bang Bang (totally entertaining!), Pulp Fiction (didn't quite get why it was no.4 on the IMDB list, but I guess for 1994, Quentin Tarantino took commendable risk) and then off to the cinema to see The Wolverine which I enjoyed a lot more than I expected to. 

I've been missing baking this week. I went through so many of my old food pictures and blog posts. Came up with a list of non-oven desserts that are possible to make here. Chocolate and coffee mousse seemed like a good one to start with. I improvised a lot to the recipes I read and unfortunately it didn't set like I hoped, so froze it and had mousse ice-cream. I have now found a Julia Child mousse recipe which has the same ingredients, but different process and proportions which I will try out the next time I want to perfect this.

Day 75

In contrast to the last post- My package arrived, my phone works with the bent battery and some cellotape. All I need is a new memory card and the back panel. The last two days, I got the bus all the way back. Relief.

I thought receiving letters and postcards in the mail was exciting, but a package is a whole different level of excitement. My cousin sent me a package of goodies all the way from England. Little things all individually wrapped up in the package. It felt like Christmas. So glad the customs guy didn't open all the packages; would have totally spoiled it for me.

Did some more experimenting in the kitchen. Fried up some dambala (also known as winged bean) As the name suggests, just a bean with 4 wings. 

Also picked up one of the most interesting fruits I've seen- Dragon fruit. The exterior gives no clue what what it was inside. Kind of similar texture and taste to a kiwi.

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 70

I've been putting off updating this blog even though there have been things to write about.

It was Poya on Monday and we had a nice extended weekend. My first Bangalore visitor was here in Sri Lanka for a short visit and I got to take him around Colombo. Well, there isn't much to see in the city, but we walked around Beira Laka and then to the pretty Seema Malaka temple on the water. There was a long fancy perahera (Poya day procession) around the lake and through the city, stopping traffic everywhere. Lots of fancily dressed up people dancing, but was a bit lazy to take pictures. 

I took some pictures at the temple, but the lake was a horrible algae green and spoiled the look of the Buddha statues. So, black and white it is. We then went to the coast and did another walk from Dutch Hospital down the Galle Face along the beach. 

Dutch hospital is one of my favourite places in the city. It's an old Dutch hospital building which is converted into shops and restaurants. I love the courtyards and the ambience in the evenings. I was back there again Tuesday evening at the Heladiv Tea Club. I really enjoyed the chocolate fudge cake that I ate, but I think it was the dim lights against bright yellow walls, the old wooden window shutters and the concrete tables on the stone paving that  makes me love the place. Will take the camera along next time I visit.

The tropical monsoon weather has been particularly crazy the past few days. I got terribly drenched on my way home yesterday, despite having an umbrella. I was slightly tempted to ditch the umbrella and run through the puddles. But they might not have let me on the bus. Even this poor cow was trying to get out of the rain. :P

I did a bit more experimenting with food today. Made some Thai curry. My mum makes Thai at home and this was my first time trying it out. It didn't come out the same as hers. I lacked some ingredients, but still tastes pretty good.

The weekend is almost here. Woohoo! :D

Day 66

Perfect Sunday today.

It was almost midday when I woke up. We had pancakes for lunch with chocolate fudge sauce we made with melted chocolate, butter and milk. We watched movies back to back- The Aviator and Across the Universe and now I feel like I know Howard Hughes personally with all the side reading I did during the movie. It's been quite a movie marathon actually- we watched LA Confidential last night (we even had popcorn!).

Did some cooking and had an early dinner and then it's been music, editing pictures and writing the rest of the day.

I finished my blog post about my community service. Looking through all those pictures and writing about that week made me miss it so much. I met such wonderful people that week, including the beautiful children at the school.

The past week I found something that could possibly be what I'll be doing as soon as I finish with my year in Sri Lanka. I was searching for an Indian based organisation that did architecture based community service, but only found plenty options for ones outside the country. One of my architecture friends introduced me to EMI (Engineering Ministries International) which has a base in Delhi and sends volunteer architects for various design projects in the country. Exactly what I've been looking for as an in between job project. 

Read about my week at Leratong Early Learning Centre here--

New Family in Leratong

Day 64

It took me a while to count up to today. 

I made so many plans to post here regularly  I even wrote a few drafts on my iPod to post as soon as I was in range of a WiFi connection. But alas, things got busy in a good way and then I forgot all about the blog and when I did, I decided to just wait until I was back.

Anyway, it was such a super super trip. The journey back was exhausting. The lack of sleep during the congress and the annoying travel back from country to country, airport to airport- How sick I am of planes! finally got the better of me and I now have a bad cold and am still a bit sleep deprived. 

I went back to work yesterday. I was gone for two weeks, and clients have completely changed their minds about what they want. Sigh. Nothing new I guess.

The weekend is here and I even have Monday off. Almost went on a weekend trip, but I think what I need most right now is some rest. Also need time to sort through my pictures and finish off all the blog posts.

One done today--

One Random Day in Ethiopia