We have an internet connection at home!!

Well it only took three months of daily phone calls, but we have a connection!!

Slower than our ADSL, but faster than a 4.8K connection through dial up!!

Marc had mentioned that over 500 images was too much to go through on my Flickr site, you can always view the sets instead, they're at http://www.flickr.com/photos/robmctavish/sets/

These are a small collection of the images to give you a flavour of Sri Lanka :-) Rob

Russell Crowe and the phone incident...

I’ve never been a huge fan of Russell Crowe as a person and his last outburst where he threw the phone kind of sealed the deal for me. However recently I’ve had urge to rip phones off walls and throw them at people too. Trying to do business with the telecom companies here is an absolute nightmare. Dealing with getting our HUGELY overpriced connection to the office was bad enough but now getting a connection to the house has caused even more grey hair. It’s tough because you’re dealing with one person and they work for a monopoly so there is nothing you can do but grin and bare it. I’ve been waiting for my internet connection since June and the last few weeks I’ve been promised every day, yes yes yes sir, it is coming today, we had a small technical problem but it is taken care of now, today for sure, I promise… let me call you back in half an hour sir…. I’m now calling him from a different number every hour as he has call display and doesn’t answer my calls. Talk about frustration

More from the Kandy Perahera

DSC05178
Originally uploaded by Rob@SFU.

Hi Cara, I saw your comment, and yes, those are large fish hooks in the mans back. These people would then pull the people holding the ropes and stretch the ir skin. I wonder if it is the same people each night for the ten nights of the fesitvals!

Trip to Kandy for the Perahera

DSC05187
Originally uploaded by Rob@SFU.

Trip to Kandy…

Well Cher has written a lengthy description of our trip to Kandy so I won’t repeat too much of what she has said, even though I haven’t yet read it (she’s typing away in bed beside me). I took a lot of photos but from our vantage point it was difficult as the flash was too weak and the darn elephants wouldn't stand still long enough for a long exposure photo - even when they did stop they would sway to the music, quite the dancers but I wouldn't want them to step on my feet! And since I can’t talk about work at all (a few people have noted that I don’t mention work in my blog, sorry, my contract states that I can’t discuss work at all for a year or something – strange, mind you what I’d love to say…. Contact me privately and maybe I can talk a bit about it, very interesting to say the least.

Things are getting back to normal in Colombo, not that there was much changed after last Fridays LTTE killing spree, 12 people were killed in all that night in Colombo supposedly by the LTTE. The papers are full of stories about the LTTE killing guards and sentries and being caught all over the country from Kandy and Jaffna to Colombo. Apparently they are filming various houses and military installations, IMHO they are just stirring the crap. If they were really going to do anything would they stand there with a video camera? Two things are in the paper almost every day, people being “hacked to death” and grenades being either found or thrown into crowds or at police and soldiers. I have to wonder where all these grenades come from, have you ever heard of a grenade being found in Canada?! Mind you, when I was on my leadership course in ’93 we got our flack vests for the live fire exercise and found 3 or 4 grenades in the pockets. It was funny because we kept filling the amnesty boxes across from our barracks and would call Range Control to come empty the box after every field exercise. When we found the grenades we put them in the box and then called them and watched from the window as they opened the box and were a tad surprised by what they found!!

It was a quiet weekend, Cher and I did some errands on Saturday and then had a quiet evening at home. Sunday we went for a brutal workout with our new personal trainer Suranga. He abused us both for two hours, all for 6$... We came back and recovered for the remainder of the day!! I’ve put some of the weight back on that I lost when I was really ill in May. I’m still down between 16 and 18 pounds though, sorry mom!! :-)

Tonight we are going for dinner with Laura at the Cricket Club, should be nice. She’s enjoying being free this weekend after being locked in her house all last weekend! She leaves for Canada soon and we’ll miss her :-( When she gets back we’re hoping to travel with her as she wants to see more of the country, like us.

I should run, talk to you all soon, don’t hesitate to write comments to the blog, I sometimes wonder if anyone reads this… Sorry for the long length…

Rob going to pick up Cher

Rob going to pick up Cher
Originally uploaded by Rob@SFU.

As you're likely aware Cher has arrived!! Yay!! This was me with our GREAT driver Ravi leaving at about midnight to go and get Cher. Ravi brought the Land Rover which is really nice and fun to drive in, almost as good as a tank (I'd love to have one of those here!!!). Cher has a blog as well and is a much better writer than I am so check out her blog!! It's at: http://cherinsrilanka.blogspot.com

Cher giving out candy

Cher giving out candy
Originally uploaded by Rob@SFU.

Well, it has been a while since I wrote, my apologies. I've been getting ready for Cher to arrive and have been busy with work...

Interesting times here. As you're likely aware the foreign minister was assasinated on Friday night. Cher and I took of right after work to visit a resort south of town about 45K. We woke up early as Cher had only been in the country a day and was a bit jetlagged. I was flipping through the channels looking for news in English when I saw the news footage of what turned out to be the assasination. I recognized the house they were showing as it was on the street I run down each evening and was also the house next to where Laura had just moved into... I found the BBC and heard the "Top Story" of what had happened and promptly called and woke up Laura - for some reason she thought I was joking, not sure why, I'm the most serious person I know... Anyway, it was a sad event but I couldn;t help but chuckle at the situation Laura was in - sorry Laura!!

Here is how I relayed it to Shaheen...

There were actually 12 assassinations on Friday night, but of course the one is getting all the media attention. There is a bit of a funny story here though, if one can find humor in such a tragedy. Friday morning our regular driver Ravi had to take another group down south so we had a replacement driver, Gamini, the father of our office assistant. We always cringe a little when we get Gamini as he can’t handle the clutch that well. Laura refers to driving with him as “Mr. Toads Wild Ride” from Disneyland, however I feel a lot safer on any carnival ride than I do with Gamini behind the wheel! Anyway, on the way to pick me up (first) the van broke down, putting Gamini about half an hour behind as he had to return to the office to get another vehicle. I was waiting outside my apartment waiting and eventually he showed up and we left to pick up Laura who happens to live two doors down from the foreign minister. Typically she walks up to the front of the foreign ministers house to wait for us as it is easier for the van to not have to turn around on a dead-end lane. So Friday morning we are half an hour behind and when we arrive she is surrounded by police and soldiers and is in the act of explaining why she is there hanging out. We sort of laugh at the situation and leave, only to hear that later that evening the guy is assassinated! I was down south at a resort with Cher and turned on the news. It was in Sinhala but I recognized the house and when I turned to the BBC we heard the news. We weren’t sure what a state of emergency was but learned that it meant nothing to us in the south. We later heard from Charles that it was situation fairy normal in Colombo too, just lots of checkpoints and searches. 2 people were assassinated behind my apartment as well and I’m trying to figure out who they were and why they were killed. What scares us a bit is that it is reminiscent of 1983 and there is a lot of propaganda on the streets in the way of huge posters saying that the LTTE needs to be crushed etc.. I also heard a news story stating that the assassinations may have been carried out or supported by the military, this scares me even more than the LTTE as it would mean a coup may be in the works. We’re all safe and things are quiet at work.

My trip to Hikkaduwa

Not exactly Bo Derek
Originally uploaded by Rob@SFU.

I had a good weekend away, very relaxing and enjoyable. I went with Laura to a town called Hikkaduwa down south near Galle. We stayed at a resort that was sort of like a Club Med minus a few stars. It was a large hotel with about 160 rooms and a spa. You could do the whole inclusive package or variations of that, we did the B&B option but ended up eating all but one meal at the hotel anyway. Just before sunset Laura went up the beach to watch the sunset and came back to tell me that she thought there were sharks in the water. I headed down to the beach and since there is only one real way to tell I nicked my toe with a pin and stepped into the water – just kidding mere  I saw the fins and they didn’t look right and the shadow were the wrong shape. I realized they were very large turtles! So we went swimming with them for a while and that was real fun. We were going to head down to the city of Galle on the Sunday to look around that town and also to have a better chance at getting a seat but the lounge chair had a good grip on us and we stayed at the hotel. Rather than getting onto an already full train and standing for two hours we decided to try the bus system. The first bus that stopped pulled Laura on and was shoving her back into the crowd as I jumped on. I saw the look of horror on her face and made the driver stop to let us off, no way I was standing on a bus for three hours!! So we waited until a quieter bus came along and got seats. It was a great ride until about ¾ the way along the driver pulled over and the conductor kid got off with a hose in his hand and a container of fluid…. He had to bleed the brakes and do something under the bus, then of course the driver needed to test the brakes at various speeds… it made for an interesting few minutes. On a side note that relates in a way…on Friday our driver had to go do a job in the interior so we were given another driver. Now you may recall we sort of fired the other temporary driver we had last time Ravi needed a day off so we were hesitant to see who we got. We ended up with the father of our young office person (she reported to the manager we got rid of so she’s more than a secretary but not really the manager either….). Well poor Gamini was injured in an LTTE blast and has a damaged left leg which makes using a clutch rather hard, almost impossible I would have to say. So the ride was described by Laura as “Mr. Toads Wild Ride”, and wild it was!! Nice nice man, he should stick with the automatic vehicles though… Back to the bus ride… It was actually quite comfortable and it dropped us off right at the end of our street so it was a 7 minute walk home and didn’t cost a dime. The three hour ride cost us each 90 cents. Train fares went up yesterday without any warning and people are irate, they fares are going up by 50%! Our trip down south cost 64 cents for the train fare, 6 cents for the bus from home to the train station (door to door), then we split a three wheeler from the train station to the hotel 25 cents each, the hotel room was rather expensive and cost us 24$ including breakfast. We at out for lunch and dinner at 7$ each and bought a few bottles of water for 20 cents each. I also had a cool drink at the pool for a dollar. All told the whole weekend cost less than $40 and most of that was the hotel. There are rooms that range from 5$ and up in Hikkaduwa and I might try a place that’s a little cheaper next time. You can always pay about 3$ to use the pools of the big resorts too so that’s an option…