St Anthony’s Feast

Now it just seems to be part of our family tradition to go to St Anthony’s Kochchikade each 13^th of June and make an occasion out of it.

We were sorry that Uncle George had to go to Kandy for a funeral and missed it – I don’t think he’s ever joined us. So it was just us and as usual we met up for lunch and then made our way to the Church before the roads closed.

The Church was teeming with people. We made our way through to the pews and knelt to pray and then to sat back to absorb the powerful atmosphere that is so prevalent at St Anthony’s. My eyes roamed over the Alter and sanctuary beautifully decorated in white flowers and greenery while the rest of the church was brightened up with tinsel and streamers of red and gold. Thousands of people waited patiently in long, long queues to kiss the relics and statues while others made their way on their knees down the isle of the church making their petitions. I never cease to be moved by the simple faith of our people along with the utter desperation and even tears that could be seen on many a face. It makes me feel grateful for everything that God has given us.

After sitting there for as long as we desired, we made our way around the church, lit our candles, got our blessings from the Priest there, collected some holy water and squeezed out of the church.

The streets were lined with ammes with lots of sweetmeats which looked so tempting – Sunethra always wants to buy some, and I always manage to persuade her otherwise – those flies !!!

The roads take on a carnival atmosphere, and we walked through just looking at the people and things laid out. There were little clay playthings bringing back memories of my childhood, there were handbags, fruit, wadai, earrings and chains and soft toys a whole lot of everything spilled out on the pavements with voices competing with each other to sell their wares. I just love the hustle and bustle and the good natured revelry that takes place on those roads.

We had our look and even managed to get onto a bus before the roads closed for the evening procession which takes place so late in the evening that we had to give it a miss this time.

Golden Gleam 2007

Wow!!! Lucky Me! I was invited to the dance of St Peter’s College. My favourite band, Misty was playing and the theme looked Hawaain. I fished out my black and gold dress to go with the theme Golden Gleam and off we went to the Colombo Hilton.

We were greeted at the entrance by girls dressed in keeping with the theme and the ladies were welcomed with a fragrant garland of araliya flowers. I thought that added a lovely touch. The hall was decorated with huge palm trees while on each table stood half a kurumba made into a candle which burned steadily throughout the night.

There was a HUGE crowd. The old boys of St Peters had turned up in full force in support of their college. One choice table was reserved for Priests from the college I presumed. How sweet and thoughtful.

The large floor was always filled with dancers and unlike the last dance at the Galadari, the floor didn’t open up. And the food was amazing. Hilton had a good spread to tempt the palates of anyone, whether their fancy was continental, Sri Lankan, vegetarian or whatever. I noticed that the prawn counter was kept continuously busy, as was the hopper stall. The breakfast buffet was good too.

I enjoyed the dance very much. Misty as always played excellently. The second band Cosmic Rays was not too bad, though they did seem to favour a lot of baila even after an exhausted bunch dancers staggered off the floor huffing and puffing after their exertions on the dance floor! Clifford Richards was the compere again as always (in my opinion) talking too much.

They had a fabulous array of prizes for both the entrance draw and the raffle ticket draw. And 10 bottles of liquor for table draws. The raffle tickets had to be bought by the book though… no buying a couple of tickets priced at 100/- each. One sweet gent next to me was rather high, and told the girls who came around with the ticket books, that the college was smart in getting beautiful girls to sell the tickets, but that he couldn’t spend a whole 1000/- cos he had never ever won a single thing in his entire life!

The entrance ticket draw had two air tickets while the raffle draw had four air tickets and guess what?? Dorian won a prize (8^th? I think) AND the fourth prize – an air ticket to Madras. Wasn’t he the happy lucky one!

My Experience with Abans

Just over a month ago our TV decided to konk off on us right at the most ‘crucial time’ of American Idol and Survivor, two of our favourite programmes. Many a discussion took place as to whether to give it to our neighbourhood TV repairman or whether we should haul it off to Abans Repairs located all the way in Wellawatte.

We decided in favour of Abans.

On making inquiries I was pleasantly surprised when Abans suggested that I hand over my TV to the nearest Abans showroom in Rajagiriya and that they will send it on for repair. That seemed like a good omen. So on the 15^th of May, we toddled off with our TV and gave it to Rajagiriya. A few days later when I called them, they airily told me they had already delivered it to their repair shop.

Wow! What excellent service I thought… and gave it a couple more days and called the repair shop directly. They asked me for a job number – job number??? I thought blankly – I don’t recall any job number. A panic stricken call to Rajagiriya reveled that the TV MAY not after all gone to the repair center yet.

Of course! I THOUGHT it was too good to be true. Anyway the next day I got the job number and was told the repair would take two weeks.

After my former experience and poor Chandana’s recent experience with them, I resolved to give them a call every single day to see how things are ‘progressing’.

Well, it’s been more than a month already and I’ve spoken probably to everyone who works there. They efficiently take down the job number, call me by name and then say that the repair is not done yet and that they will call me back….. Only one guy ever called back to tell me it would be done on Saturday….. a couple of Saturdays ago… but we are still TV’less.

American Idol was won by Jordon Sparks who we were routing for anyway, and we’ve no idea what happened to Survivor… and still we don’t have our TV back…. Boo hoo.

Just yesterday I tried calling a Director from Abans and was very rudely and successfully barred by his dragon of a secretary.

I did however manage to get through to a manager yesterday, who asked me to call today that he will let me know what the situation is. I’ve been unsuccessful in getting through to him – maybe he’s out? I’ve even gotten hold of his mobile number….. still no response. Why am I not surprised???

Unfortunately, most of our household appliances have been bought from Abans…. What a pity - to my way of thinking… their service stinks!!!!

A Petal Pink Bedroom

The last weekend was a long one since Thursday was Poya. So Sue and I decided to take the Friday off too and paint our bedroom. It was coming to a point where the room was so messy that there was just a pathway from the door to the beds and that’s it.….. if a stranger ventured in and fainted through sheer shock, the person would never be heard of again cos he/she would be buried under a deluge of possessions!

Anyway, we knew we’d need the four days (I exaggerate not).

§ One day to clear the room and mess up the rest of the house with our things,

§ Another day to actually get the room painted. We used our genius in this area and roped in Uncle George to help (well…. Ummm.. I mean to actually do the painting). There was no fear of losing him under anything now since the room was cleared.

§ Finally the last two days to put the stuff back.

At the start, things went better than expected. We cleared the room in record time and by 3.00 p.m. on day one Uncle George was on the ladder painting the ceiling a pure white. Then we hit the snag… ever since we shifted into this place, we’ve always wanted to paint our room a girly pink. The original colour many hundreds of years ago was blue and despite many tries with pinky sounding names they turned out to be white. The last try was Rose White – and yes of course, it was white!

This time we bravely bought Petal Pink. Yes, you probably guessed right! It was very nearly white too! Many long discussions were held whether to sally forth and buy a violent pink (with Uncle George grumbling vociferously about the wasting of time) and finally decided it would be too long a process and batted ….. I mean… painted on.

The room looked marvelous when it was done, especially after the floor was polished too! I almost felt sad to put the things back.

The next two days proved a lot of hard work putting all the things back (hopefully not where we found them).

Was it worth all the effort? Oh yessssss… a definite YES!!!