Shandy's Blog

Well tonight was a very, very sad night. We said goodbye to a couple of our best friends in Sri Lanka, Pete (The Pie Man) & Carol Abrahams. Carol had been working over here for over 8 years for a company called SR Gents but had been made redundant a couple of months ago and last night they returned to the UK. Last night we managed to get to their goodbye party (one of at least 4 I heard about) at the Cricket Club Cafe (CCC) for an hour or so (I have been a bit unwell for the last couple of days). They had been regulars since the CCC opened 7 years ago and the CCC paid for the finger buffet and the first round of everybody's drinks who turned up for their farewell party!

Tonight we had a smashing evening with Pete, Carol & P.S. Arora, an airline pilot for Sri Lanka airlines who lives in the flat below them. Just a bottle of red label, a chinese takeway and good conversation with friends. We had only just dropped in to relieve them of the contents of their fridge ;-) HP Sauce is worth its weight in gold over here! I now wish we had popped around more often to see Pete and Carol whilst they were here but, like them, we thought they would be here forever! Another of life's mistakes we will put down to experience :( Anyway, I hope, and actually believe, we will keep in contact with them when they go back to the UK.

Some of Pete's tales of his (and Carols's) experiences over here are the stuff of legends (and at least an autobiography). Hint, hint Pete :-) Anyway, evenings like this are happen seldom in a lifetime and we'll look forward to our next meeting - Pete has been invited to act as chef at the Hilton in Colombo for a forthcoming English food experience in September! Can't wait :-D

I've just started reading, Visual Basic .NET Class Design Handbook as recommended by Rock aka Arnaldo Sandoval, who very kindly sent met over a copy from Australia. I had a number of .NET books I purchased a couple of years ago but sadly, due to weight restraints, I had to leave them in the UK when I came out to Sri Lanka. If there is a bookshop in Sri Lanka with a good choice of .NET books I have yet to find it. I did manage to get hold of a copy of Murach’s Beginning Visual Basic .NET over here, but as the title suggests it is a beginners book and I found I have now reached the stage I need something a bit more advanced. Suffice to say Visual Basic .NET Class Design Handbook seems to fit the bill :)

Anyway, as usual, I digress. I mentioned the Visual Basic .NET Class Design Handbook because whilst reading it I noticed alack of consistency with the .NET framework and imparticularly the double object. It has some excellently named methods like IsPositiveInfinity & IsNegativeInfinity. I like those. I know, or at least can guess, pretty much by looking at the name what they do. However the ISNan method left me completely in the dark by simply looking at the name. It actually stands for is not a number. Quite why the method was not simply called IsNotANumber will probably forever remain a mystery to me. Why use complete words for some methods and not for others? No doubt when I come to look at the ISNAN method again in a few months I will have completely forgotten about what it means and have to look it up!

We use Microsoft Exchange Server as our corporate email server and when I am at home I generally use the Microsoft Outlook Web Access (OWA) Client to keep up to date with my emails. A while back I found I that I had lost the ability to reply to emails via OWA. It was one of those annoying problems that I never quite got around to solving - until today that is.

The symtoms were simply that when I tried to Reply, Reply To All or Forward an email the email window simply closed down. The solution was to change the following setting in the Control Panel, Internet Options, Security, Custom Level, Use Popup Blocker from Enable to Disable. I can only assume that somewhere along the line a critical update or maybe XP SP2 enabled this setting. Anyway, my life has now been made considerably easier again with this simple change :)

This is my second day off sick in a row. I appear to have picked up a head cold. Yes, that's right, in a country where the temperature probably rarely dips below 25 degrees except in the hill country. So I have a sore throat, sneezing fits and plenty of practice throwing tissues into the bin.

I've found that in the 15 months I have been in Sri Lanka I have probably had more time off sick than in my previous 15 years working! Generally I used to have a day off sick a year (or about 3 days in a block every 3 years when I get the 'flu) but here I'm getting ill almost every month. Top of the illnesses is, probably unsuprisingly, food poisoning, but I think the long hours, travelling, and climate all play a part, possibly along with the fact I'm no spring chicken any more ;-)

So the last two days I have spent almost 12 hours a day sleeping. As I have web based email access I can keep in touch with work. The goods news is that I can solve any simple problems from home; the bad news is that I now know I have a few urgent problems I can't solve from home and so I am going to have to try and go in tomorrow:( Anyway spending a couple of days at home has enabled me to spend a bit of time addressing some non-urgent problems that have been bugging me for a while (but more of those in later blog posts). I can also spend a couple of hours catching up on posts to my blog :-D

One major advantage of living in Sri Lanka is at least when I am feeling ill I can sit out on our balcony in temperatures of 30+ degrees and not spend my time shivering in bed like I do in the UK! I was also able to get a Japenese takeaway for lunch. It was the only food I could think of that included soup and food that was easy to swallow with a sore throat (sushi and rice). I use doctors as a last resort. I am allergic to penecillian and so have to be careful what medication I take. For colds, flu etc. I resort to Lemsips (we have a stash we brought over from the UK) but that's about it. So I've avoided calling the doctor out so far as the tea I'm drinking seems to be doing the trick - I'm on my third pot today.