The power has gone off about 18 times today.

No kidding.

There is not enough power coming to the town of Batti overall and I’m sure the influx of westerners in the last few years (with our air conditioners, tvs and fridges) hasn’t helped.

Usually between 6 and 9 pm we can’t run a/c units, fridges, or more than a few lights and fans. There’s enough power for a computer, or a tv, or a few lights or a light and a fan. We’ve come to expect power outages daily now but this is ridiculous. It’s like someone is standing at the master switch for the whole town turning it off and on at will, just for laughs.

We have a generator at the office and it gets turned off and on about 5 times a day. Sometimes it’ll be on for most of the day, sometimes it’ll be on for 5 minutes. It’s quite a procedure. We all shut down our computers, turn off our printers, the fridge and water cooler and all the fans, then we turn off the master switch, turn on the plug in for the generator and fire it up. So…if it’s only for a few minutes, you can see we could easily spend our whole day turning things off and on. Needless to say, sometime we just sit in the dark for a few minutes.

Other weird things about power; each light is operated by its own switch and the plug ins have on-off switches on them as well. From where I’m sitting, I can see 25 light switches. There are 10 lights in my living room and (apparently) another 15 around the outside of the house! I’m so glad I’m not an electrician! When my parents were here, they made a map for me of all the switches. It’s been very helpful; I always check it closely before turning on or off switches. I never just flip every single one in the room looking for one bloody light. Nor do I sometimes blind myself in the middle of the night looking for the fan switch after the a/c has cut out…again.

I’ve included a photo of the light and fan switches in a conference room in a hotel. Can you imagine trying to get just the right ambiance in this place??

Also, the plug ins are often round holes about pencil sized. And some plugs have only two round pegs rather than the three that all plug ins have. So, to get past this “safety feature” we usually stick a pencil in the third hole, (the ground) so we can get the plug in. That off switch comes in handy sometimes.

Who wants to venture a guess how many times Scott has electrocuted himself in one day? I’ll offer prizes!

Trishaws…

This is a trishaw. Otherwise known as a Tuk-Tuk or a three wheeler. Other than being incredibly polluting, they are pretty cool. It’s amazing how fast they zip in and out of traffic in a beautiful but death defying dance. Riding in one is like being on an amusement park ride. And they are everywhere. We can hardly walk down the street without one passing us and asking if we need a ride. “Yes, yes Madam, come.” Sometimes they’ll be three or four in a row that will stop and ask us. And I think…I said no to the first three, are you just trying to wear down my will, like eventually I'll say, you know I didn’t think I wanted a ride but now that I’ve been offered one 18 times, I realize I really do!

You always need to ask the price first and have an idea of what’s a good price for where you are headed, and also have small bills with you. It doesn't do much good to barter the guy down from 100 to 70 Rps and then hand him 1000! Mostly they’ll try to scam us, and I don’t mind paying a little bit more than the locals, but sometimes it’s a bit ridiculous. A really good way to get the price down is to say “no thanks, we’ll just walk”. Then they usually drive beside you yelling out lower and lower prices. This is great if you want to ride, but not so great if you really do want to walk!

One of the towns we drive through on the way from Batti to Colombo has a really interesting trishaw trend going on. They all have sayings written on them. Mostly really weird stuff that cracks me up. It’s now my favourite part of the drive. The town is Kanduruwela and it’s near Polonorruwa. (I just put the names in so you’d have something fun to try to say. If you know any Sri Lankans and you want to make them laugh, just pronounce the town names for them! It gets them everytime.)

At first I though that maybe one trishaw guy started it and the others thought it was a good idea so they all put their own saying up, but I see the same strange sayings on three or four different ones so I think they must buy the whole saying from the "Trishaw saying shop".

So here’s the list, in some sort of order. Maybe from sensical to non, or just from my least favourite to my most favourite…(Sorry I couldn’t narrow it down to ten.)

12. Sorry

11. I am waiting for you

10. I wish you a happy day

9. I can’t forget you

8. Well come all of You

7. Life is a challenge

6. Why don’t you love me?

5. Try to Love Honestly

4. Don’t be Honest so much

3. I live for you

2. Life is worth living

1. I respect my parents

And with special mention as my very favourite…


I am Very Silent Man.

Now who wouldn’t want to ride in a trishaw with a very silent man?

I miss cute puppies

Usually at this time of year, I’m out in the mountains on the first trips of the seasons, spotting for wildlife. The first bears of the season, wondering if the Grizzlies are hanging around Lake Louise yet, looking for the ubiquitous sheep on hwy 11 and those crazy mule deers with the giant ears at the Kootenay Plains. I miss that.

Though on the other hand I get to see pretty interesting animal sightings here. In the last few days on my way to work, I’ve seen several cows eating garbage, some baby goats (which are very cute), some adult goats fighting and some (different) adult goats mating, thousands and thousands of crows, and hundreds of really gross dogs. Between my house and the office in Batticaloa, there are this group of dogs with the saddest, most disgusting looking puppies ever. They’re so skinny and flea bitten and mangy, all their hair is falling out, and they look so sad. They almost look sad enough for me to pick them up but I really, really don’t want some canine disease so I hold back. I look forward to the day when I can pet strange dogs on the street again and when I don’t have to watch cows eating garbage…or watch goats mating for that matter.

On being involved...

Scott and I are still in Colombo. It looks like we won't be moving back to the east coast any time soon, and maybe not even before the end of our contract. Scott has been promoted to deputy country director and is doing a great job filling the gaps and starting the help shape the vision for next year. You know how he loves shaping the vision. I'm technically still Base Manager and trying to help out two offices but finding it a bit difficult to be fully involved in either place. I'm good at thinking about one place at a time, and not so good at multi-locational multi-tasking!

Being in Colombo is so different than being in Batti. Out in Batti, people are simpler and friendlier and we can be more involved and feel more connected. That's where the projects are happening, that's where the majority of our staff is and where the action is. Those of you who know me well know that I like to be where the action is, I'm not very good at being a behind the scenes kind of person and I just feel much less "connected". I put that in quotes because it can be so overused and cliched lately, but for lack of a better word, that's how I feel.

So...here's my word of encouragement for you and for me. No matter where you are and what surrounds you, life is more fulfilling, engaging and definitely more fun, if you are connected and involved. That's going to be my goal now, to see if I can find a way to get more connected in the city, and not just busy for the sake of being busy. I'll let you know how it goes, and you can all think of creative and funny stories to email me about how being connected is better than being a drifter. But they have to be creative and funny, to make up for this post which was neither!

Cheers
Alanna

Vesak Poya and other things.

So we are still in Colombo, mostly. SP decided (through our Country Director, Regional Director and Safety and Security officer) that a full time move back to Batti would not be wise at this time. So we are taking on a few extra responsibilities to keep us busy in Colombo and traveling back and forth to spend as much time in Batti as we can. Right now it looks like it’ll be approximately 3-4 days every other week. So it’s a lot of traveling but we’re glad to get out there when we can. Plus Scott gets to catch up on lots of extra sleep as he exercises his most incredible gift…the ability to sleep anywhere.

Last week was vesak poya. Poya means full moon and Buddhist celebrate every one. I think this is a very cool tradition, I like the idea of celebrating the rhythms of nature…it also means we get a day off at least once a month. Except for when poya days fall on weekends, you don’t get an alternate day. And unfortunately for us, the next two months will see poya day fall on a Saturday or Sunday! oh well.

Vesak Poya marks the birth, attainment of enlightenment and the death of the Buddha so for Buddhist it’s like Christmas, Easter and I don’t know…the Ascension (?) all in one. It’s very important for them and the whole city shuts down to celebrate. (I’m sure most of the country does too but certainly Colombo does.) There are thousands upon thousands of Buddhist flags hung in the city and they build incredibly ornate, huge lanterns constructed and lit up. They also hang smaller ones everywhere, but the big ones are the most amazing. Some of them move and all of them take days to set up. We walked down one of the main lantern streets several days in a row. (We’ve just joined a gym and it’s on that street, as is the Canadian High Commission which we visited for the first time last week, and they told us that since living in Batti would be against their advice, if anything bad happened they wouldn’t rescue us…ahhh I feel so loved and cared for.)

Anyway…enough of the tangents…we got to see them constructing the lanterns for a few days in a row. Each lantern had a team of 5-6 guys working on it for at least 3 days. We walked the street again at night when everything was lit up.

Back to the gym for a minute, those of you who know me well will probably find this a surprise, but I love going to the gym!! I’m sure it’s because it’s air conditioned and also because sweating is not only permitted by expected. I just can’t get motivated to exercise outside in 40 degree whether when everyone else is walking around like they don’t know it’s bloody hot out and I’m the only one with little rivers of sweat dripping off my finger tips! I’ve never spent so much time inside in my life as this year. It’s starting to get to me a little, especially now that we are in Colombo, at least in Batti we can sit on our roof top and enjoy the evening breezes and the view of the lagoon. This gym is in an old mansion, so all the equipment is distributed among a bunch of different rooms but the thing I love the most about this gym is the lockers. Or more specifically, the numbering system. I have no idea why but the numbers on the lockers are completely random

and…

they are all in quotation marks. “001” “77” “546” “745”

Strange.