The Kandy Visit

Greetings from Kandy, Sri Lanka! Where? It's in the interior of the country, used to be the old capitol when the country still had a king.

Let early Monday morning with an overly ambitious driver that got me here in what must have been record time. It was very neat to see the landscape change so much, especially to see the presence of mountains.

The company put me up in one of the older colonial era hotels here, The Hotel Suisse. The room is somewhat locked in the 70's, it even has an rotary dial phone!

I am working at a trade show of sorts. I was told 4 million people would pass through and judging by the crowds I certainly believe it. The line of people entering and leaving stretches for what seems like miles, although I'm sure it's not.

I am working the evening shift and after our first night we went to a hole in the wall restaurant for traditional Sri Lankan fair, egg hoppers, rotti and of course curry. It was SO spicy and good!
There was a TV in the corner and I saw people get up and pay attention to something being said on the TV. The general who was opposing the president in the recent election had been arrested.
I won't make any comments about that.

Today the driver took me to the Temple of the Sacred Tooth which is probably the most famous thing here in Kandy. Basically it is a huge temple that holds what is supposed to be a tooth of Buddah. You can read about it here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Temple_of_the_Tooth
it's a pretty big deal here as people from all over the world come to the temple for all sorts of things, mostly healing. There are Buddhist monks everywhere.

I'll post more about the visit soon. I have one more night here.

February - A Good Month

Besides the fact that there are only 28 days in the month it started off with a the Sri Lanka National Day on the 4th that I had off, worked 1/2 day Friday as usual and now the weekend starts.

Monday I get to go to Kandy which is in the interior of the country as part of a trade show that the company is taking part in. Usually this is not something that I would get to be involved in but the call went out for volunteers. We leave very early Monday morning and return Thursday. Looks like I'll get to stay at a nice place as well. Chris will join me.

We return Thursday and then I am taking that following Friday off and we have Monday off for Presidents Day. So we get in a mini-vacation. I think we are going to Hikkaduwa.

I'm on call for the entire month which isn't s bad, I just have to check my BlackBerry more often.

Book Corner - Finished Reading

Dark Horse by Tami Hoag
Paperback 592 pages
Detective thriller
Published 1 June 2004

It took me forever to finish reading this book! Part of me liked it, part of me didn't. Just when you get confused the author ties everything in. The end was pretty good and unexpected.
All in all, I'll have to say it's a good read.

Pretend Milk

Yum, powder milk, double yum, powdered skim milk!

Our milk choices are limited here. You don't exactly think of fields of grazing dairy cows when you think of Sri Lanka.

The supermarket sells long life milk that doesn't need to be refrigerated in one liter sizes, about 150 Rupees per box. It comes in all different varieties. It seems strange at first buying unrefrigerated milk, but it tastes the same.

They do sell what I guess is pasteurized milk, but it's a bit more expensive.

What is more popular here is powdered milk, big selection of it. I can make the same amount of milk for about 1/3 the price of the long life milk.

I didn't think I would like it, but I use it for cereal and drink it occasionally and overall it's not bad. There is a vanilla flavored powdered skim milk that we buy sometimes and mix in with the other powdered milk to add a hint of flavor.