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Only a day or two left. Dying to see the grandchildren again. Very pleased with my new camera with its 12x zoom. Wondered about taking close ups of people on the beach, putting them on the Internet and seeing how many votes for Wally or Poser each got. Thought better of it. If I got caught the contents of my camera could be a bit compromising :-).
Just sitting on the beach minding our own business you would not think that we would get involved in high drama would you? Don’t kid yourself, this is Sri Lanka. Firstly the waiter who told us he earns 4000 rupees a month and is desperately short of money for his family, asks me how much my phone cost. It is a second hand Sendo and I told him I paid about 5000 rupees for it. He wants to buy it off me. I tell him I need it to get home, but I will try and get him one when I get back. Then a policeman turns up and gets all the staff together. We are told afterwards that they have been caught selling beer without a licence. Ouch! The owner has to pay 10,000 rupees and our hapless waiter, who served the beer to us and other guests, must spend a day in jail in two month’s time. Presumably now the poor fellow also has a criminal record. They are lucky I suppose because up the coast the fine is 75,000 rupees. We notice that beer (and other alcohol) does not actually appear on the menu. Presumably the other establishments along the beach who don’t have licences (that’s all but 2) have been fined too. I don’t imagine that going to prison in Sri Lanka is very nice, even school teachers are allowed to use the cane at will, with no come-back. Eat your hearts out English school teachers who think that the kid from 5A could benefit from a short sharp shock.
We confirmed our flight and booked a posh hotel in Colombo for our last two night’s stay, just to see how the other half lives. Our current room is 1,300 rupees a night, the Colombo hotel is 7,700 rupees. It had better be good!
Later in the evening it seemed to be back to b.a.u. if you get my drift. Call me an old cynic but I thought that I could catch the faintest whiff of WD40 in the air. After all, things may not be as dire as I had thought. When the British gave Sri Lanka independence they instigated democracy, but did they define what democracy was? Can you play chess without a queen? Nothing is as it seems and I have yet to fathom it all.
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