Sinhalese Names, English and Bobbleheads

I have had the worst time trying to remember my Sri Lankan coworkers names, for that matter trying to pronounce their names has become a chore. It's not like Uruguay where everyone pretty much had a name that could matched up to your usual Bible names but here it's a different story.

To make matters that much more confusing for me is that I am coming from a place where letter pronunciation is different, "j's", "g's" all of that. I have to get all of that out of my head when I see a name and remember the "j's" are J's and the "g's" are G's etc.

The good thing about being here in Sri Lanka is that it was a former British colony and just about everyone speaks some level English. Now whether or not you will understand them or they you is a different story.

One more odd thing they do here is how they acknowledge something, they "wag" their head from side to side, it looks close to shaking their heads NO, but they're not. Think bobblehead. It can be a little confusing when you see it and think is this guy saying yes or no?

Holiday

Nice long 3 day weekend. I have most of the boxes emptied, most, not all. Have a handful of round-tuit projects to conquer.

The kitchen has been the real problem area. There's a good amount of cabinets, but they are either to high and they are very deep. Pretty much anything in the top cabinets are out of mind. For that matter anything I put in the back of cabinet is hard to reach. This will be a ongoing puzzle to solve.

I told my housekeeper Friday that she didn't have to come to work today and that I would still pay her. I forgot that it didn't necessarily mean that the guy across from me told her the same thing and chances are he didn't. I just figured it's my day off I didn't want her here cleaning and such. Well sure enough I see her in the foyer because she went to work to her other part time job at at the apartment across from me.

Less blogging more projects!

The TV Dilemna

I was on a mission to setup our 32" television and hook it up the the satellite cable here and see if I could view any channels. See our television purchaed in the U.S.A. is of the NTSC format and here in Sri Lanka the television and DVD format is PAL. I believe NTSC format is only for North America, well lets go to Wikipedia and find out:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NTSC (Korea, Taiwan and Japan as well)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PAL (Pretty much everywhere else!)

This is why we purchased a dual format (NTSC/PAL) DVD player, only to find out Uruguay had its own version of PAL (PAL-N).

Our entertainment center is not large enough to accommodate a 32" television so I had to sit it on top. I threaded a coax cable through the one of the back panels and down to the VCR (Where the satellite cable is connected). I thought this should be easy, unplug one cable and replace with another only to find out that even the PAL television cables were different:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_video_connectors (Look at first picture).

It might be a moot point anyway as I might not be able to view any channels. I know in Uruguay when we used DirectTV we were able to watch satellite channels and no local channels, was hoping for the same here.

My next mission is to see if I can buy a PAL to NTSC converter connector, we'll see!

The Scam

This happened to me the first weekend I got here and I was both to embarrassed and to proud to mention it, but if it prevents one person from falling prey to this then I've done my job.

I was going to have lunch at the Galle face hotel (Yes the same place that made me sick) and was walking in that direction when a friendly man started up a conversation with me.

He said that he has seen me at the Cinnamon Grand hotel but I told him I wasn't staying there, but maybe he had seen me because I visit the food court attached to the hotel. He said that he was on his way to the Elephant Festival, it only happens once a year and everyone was going. He asked if I wanted to go and I thought why not.

He waved for a nearby taxi and we were on the way. Friendly banter the entire way and we ended up at the Buddhist temple, where there is an elephant, but hardly a festivals worth and there was hardly anyone there. My first question, where are the elephants and he talked his way out of that with the present elephant. Next question, lack of people which he explained that people come, pray and leave.

We left and went back and when I asked how much I owed the driver the driver said 1800 Rupees. I haven't paid 1800 Rupees for anything yet. 500 Rupee's will get you to the farthest point in Colombo via tuk tuk. I knew that I had been scammed, I'm sure the driver and tour guide split the fee.

I had a tuk tuk driver take me around today and he treated me to lunch when he told me about the "Elephant festival" scam, even describing where they prey on victims, on the way to Galle Face Hotel.

He also told me that there is in fact an Elephant Festival in Colombo, just not on the day I got scammed! Also they usually try for a larger amount of money, sometimes as much as 20,000 Rupees, if the victim will pay.

http://www.asiarooms.com/travel-guide/sri-lanka/colombo/festivals-and-events-in-colombo/navam-perahera-festival-in-colombo.html