Shandy's Blog

The title of this blog is nothing to do with Robert Heinlein's excellent book of the same name. No it is to do with me, an ex-pat and stranger and Sri Lanka, the strange land. I constantly get reminders that I cannot live my life as I did in the UK. This weekend the reminder was in the form of fear. For the first time since being in Sri Lanka, other than the odd driving experience,  I was afraid.

Last weekend I had borrowed a company car and we had gone up to Negombo. On Saturday we decided to explore the coast up to Puttalam. We drove across to the Kalpitiya peninsular and spent a happy hour or so observing some of the fabulous bird life up there. The road we were on ran out of tarmac and it was a case of weaving around the pot holes in the dirt track. I don't remember seeing another car from the time we entered the peninsular. As we were driving along, windows down so we could easily take pictures of the birds, a group of lads appeared on the road, dressed up with small branches with leaves attached to their clothing. There were about 20 of them, aged about 16 or so and they quickly gathered around the car wanting to know our names and wanting to shake hands. Although very friendly at first they then said they were collecting money and started to ask us for some and when it became obvious we wouldn't give them any one of the lads tried to snatch the keys out of the ignition. It was at that point I was suddenly afraid. We were probably the only white people within 20 miles, stuck out on a dirt track pretty much in the middle of nowhere, with a walk of probably 6 hours at least to the nearest town. Luckily I managed to stop him from getting the keys and we immediately pulled away. From the shouts as we pulled away I think some of the other guys were just as horrified as us at what he had tried to do.

Were they just having a laugh or were we in real danger? I'll never know. Either way I was pretty shaken, as was my wife, by the incident as I'd always found the Sri Lankan people to be pretty friendly up until that point. I don't think it will put us off exploring some of the remoter areas of this beautiful country but I shall be a lot more careful in future.

So we've been in Sri Lanka for almost 16 months now and yesterday was the first time I had heard about the Association Of British Residents In Sri Lanka. I think I need to have a quiet word with the person responsible for their marketing ;-)

They produce a rather impressive monthly magazine, which Paul Bishop kindly passed onto us - many thanks Paul :) I think we'll join and give it a whirl. It's a chance to meet some new people and get more involved in the community over here.

My Dell Inspiron 8500 laptop has given me the first problem since I inherited off my predecessor and work colleague, Grant Williams. Its a couple of years old now and up until now has proved to be a both reliable and impressive piece of kit. The problem occured on Tuesday evening. I had been using the laptop on the way home from work without a problem but after I switched it on in the apartment the LCD screen refused to display anything other than blotchy white, grey and black markings.

Needless to say it is out of warrenty and the Inspiron 8500 is not sold in Sri Lanka (nor SE Asia apparently). It is currently sitting at the local Dell dealers, Softlogic's, workshop, which fortunately is only a two minute walk from our apartnment. I've got to go back at 14:00 and get the verdict on it. They were talking about a 4 week wait if a new LCD screen was required!

Luckily plugging in an external monitor worked so at least I can copy off all that data that I never quite got around to backing up! My boss in the UK is currently trying to locate replacement laptop for me.

I didn't realise quite how much I relied on my laptop until now. I have effectively lost 25% of my working day as I can't use it in the car travelling to and from work. I spend almost 3 hours a day travelling and catch up on my emails, write up meeting notes etc. in that time.

Edit: There is a later, related post My Dell Inspiron 8500 Screen Is Dead Again.