Welcome to the World Baby Ethan

Tusha and her beautiful Baby Ethen

A Healthy Fruit Salad is Just A Walk Away

Hy and I have discovered a place in which to have a healthy fruit salad.. made just a tad unhealthy with a dollop of vanilla ice-cream a healthy walk away from our respective offices. The only problem is that our ‘secret’ place seems to be no longer such a secret and getting a seat is becoming quite a feat!

Music

After I’ve discovered my new best friend gadget that I can’t live without – my ipod, music has assumed an even more important role in my every day. I listen to it on the bus, and it’s a bore-saver especially during road closures for the parliament where the lives of the general public come to a literal standstill for 30 – 40 minutes to make way for the parliamentarians to get to parliament. Instead of chaffing against the discomfort of sitting in a tin oven of a bus, I can switch on my ipod and listen to my choice of music.

The other good part of it is that I have got quite a good selection of music which I have now started copying onto CD’s in order to preserve the songs I like best.

So life is very melodious these days and I’m happy.

Cozy Lunches with Friends

I have been the happy participant of lunches with friends outside the office these past weeks and find them such a lovely way to catch up with old friends and keep in touch. I often notice that it is not always what you eat that just makes the day, but rather the company in which you eat it with. Though of course I must admit that good food just enhances the whole experience a whole lot more!

Once Upon a Time – Ekamath Eka Rataka

I was wondering whether I had watched the same movie that all the rave reviewers seem to have seen or whether they had been screened something special. I wonder this because I didn’t see anything to rave about in the movie. The story line itself is of course from a short story but I felt way too much emphasis was placed on the character played by Sanath Goonetilleke. I felt that the movie was made mainly to portray his acting capabilities rather than share the limelight with the other members of the cast. I’m sure the audience would have been happier to see more emphasis on the girl and boy romance (or whatever) as opposed to watch the painstaking, long, laborious and I have to say this, boring life of Sanath and while I’m on the subject was there a necessity to show such a lot of fat, hairy, ugly leg of Sanath constantly. I think the audience would have liked to see Nirosha and the guy (whatever his name is) more.

Also I think basic logic would tell anyone if the girl believed the guy was dead and then left him in her bed until she went to a party and came back in the night and all that blah blah that the body would not have remained warm and supple and that if he was indeed not dead, there would have been some breath??

So all in all, in my opinion, the movie was a dead bore. They should have shown more of the other characters and less of the utterly long and boring bits played by Sanath. Oh I would agree that he is a good actor, but did he need to keep himself in the limelight all the time just because he directed the movie??

Thosai for Lunch

Dinush, Rams, Shahim and I decided to have thosai for lunch today and had Jayaratne bring steaming hot thosais from Ambal’s Café down Bristol Street for us. Mmm they were perfectly delicious for such a cold day (or is it that our AC is on high as usual freezing all of us as usual?).

The Mystery of the Low Battery of a New Nokia Phone

Hyacinth had dropped her phone somewhere and was forced to buy a new one, so she came along the WTC where Softlogic has a phone booth. She bought quite a cute little, rather inexpensive Nokia phone, but found that the battery was dying in no time at all. I was quite surprised because my experience of the Nokia brand has been user-friendly and good indeed.

On investigation what do you think the culprit was?? The constant news alerts from Dialog!!!!! She was getting all kinds of sms’s every 3 – 4 minutes which made the screen light up, thereby draining the battery. The nice salesgirl at the counter de-activated the alerts (or whatever) and apparently the phone is behaving quite reasonably now.

DBU Celebration of the End of the War

The DBU had a celebration on the end of the war with the theme to foster one country one flag theme. Everyone came dressed to the theme in one of the national costumes where they proceeded to select the best Sinhala, Tamil, Muslim and Burgher costumes. Kismet played fabulously. We had a table ordered just for the few of us and I kind of felt like a one of the happy little boats bobbing amidst long steamers of tables of 20 or 30 people on either side of us. Tea lights added to the mystique and ambiance and the best of the foods of the four communities was on the menu for dinner.

A lovely evening of superb company, food, music and ambiance. Lots of notable personalities graced the occasion including the beautiful Angela, the witty Indu, beauty queens of yore, Shirlene, Jennifer Ingleton and many others. What a lovely, lovely evening it turned out to be, with everyone dancing their cares away in perfect amity.

Men!!

I was sitting in the bus last evening, placidly minding my own business, when I suddenly realized that someone was staring daggers at me. I was rather startled at the intensity of the stare and had a quick look at the guy doing so… he was a slim, dark, spiky haired, rather frightening looking individual, so I quickly looked away.

He walked towards me and my heart sank thinking that maybe he thought I had trod on his little toe, or murdered his dog or kidnapped his child or robbed his house and that he was going to enjoy killing me slowly… and then …………. he smiled! Yikes!! The man was hitting on me! If he expected me to smile back or even acknowledge him after scaring me half silly, he had another think coming didn’t he? Men!!!!!!

The Mummy

This weekend I met up with Hyacinth and Janani to see the movie ‘The Mummy – Tomb of the Dragon Emperor’ at the Majestic Cinema. The cinema was packed; I got quite a shock when I got there at around 1.00 p.m. to see the queue winding down from the fourth floor almost to the ground floor! Luckily Hyacinth had got the tickets early.

We enjoyed the movie tremendously… the good company added to the pleasure.

Janani’s comments about mushy mooshy stuff during a couple of screen kisses kept us in hysterics!

A lovely present

Just got a beautiful present…. I LOVE it. It’s a cookery book called ‘Spice It’ and has a whole load of delicious, seemingly easy to make recipes. Isn’t it the strangest thing that a little thing like a good book can give one so much pleasure? I can’t wait to try out a couple of the recipes on the weekend!

Isn't she gorgeous??

Tusha's and Ryan's Engagement

Tusha got engaged to Ryan on the 26^th of July 2008 at her residence in Dehiwela.

Rams has a great idea!

Rams came up with the fabulous idea of having masala thosai for lunch at a place she knew… so Friday afternoon found six of us making our way to Ambaal’s for an Indian lunch. Luckily for us it was a cool afternoon with no sun, so the walk was a pleasant one despite three of us girls teetering in our high heels!

The place was small, packed with office workers, most probably from Commercial Bank located right across from the café, and the food smelt absolutely delicious…. We had a nice meal of masala thosai, wadai and parata. The thosais were served so hot it burnt our fingers to touch them…. Enjoyed every morsel!! Super idea Rams! Unanimously decided to visit the again at least once in two weeks.

Uncle George does it again!

Well for the second time around Uncle George has done a Mr Bean.

On Saturday he goes into the bathroom to have his usual evening bath and comes out carrying a bucket holding his newly washed sarong and vest. As he passed me I got a lovely smell but didn’t think too much of it…. after all the man had just had a shower.

He went out onto the porch, spied the towel horse sitting there, and removed a dress that was on it, threw it onto the floor and proceeds to carefully lay out his sarong and vest.

Meanwhile Sunethra goes into the bathroom to have a wash and what does she see? An expensive new glycerin soap that we sparingly use only on our faces is down to tiny sliver. The idiot has used the entire cake of face soap to wash his blooming sarong… There was a cake of Palmolive soap available in the shower area if he absolutely had to use a bathing soap on his sarong, but no…. I guess he HAD to use the soft face soap left on the wash stand.

I could have killed him!!!

The earlier similar incident was when he insisted that he would clean an old bit of furniture for us.

After work when we got home, there sat the old chair… gleaming. Uncle George alias Mr Bean proudly showed it to us and after our glowing praise, asked us “what do you think made it gleam like that?’ Soap powder? Detergent? Dish-wash? We queried. No…. He says proudly “I used that big green bottle that is in the bathroom”. Oh NO!!!! That was the new bottle of shampoo I had got recently from abroad and he had used nearly half of it to clean that old chair!!!!!

A cooking spree!

Got into a mood on Sunday and went on a cooking ‘spree’. I made mashed potato, roast beef and tomato for lunch along with a side portion of macaroni and cheese. Felt that was not enough cooking for the day and made a love cake as well. Quite a ‘full’ Sunday it turned out to be!

American Idol 2008

What a show it was this year!!! David Archuleta was my favourite right from the start, so I was quite disappointed when David Cook won. I’m not too much of a fan of his type of Music …. Cook’s I mean. Absolutely loved little David’s crooning. I thought he had the total package… super voice, lovely music, sweet personality and cute too. Sayesha was also one of my favourites … what a melodious voice!

Strictly Come Dancing 2007

Borrowed the collection of videos from a friend and kind of binged on the long Wesak weekend watching the entire lot.

Loved every minute and was happy with the winner Aleysha and her partner Cutler cos’ she is the one we picked right from the start. I really like Bruce the presenter and his partner Tess. They are both so very sweet and full of smart repartee and humour.... no malice whatsoever either.

No news from me for ages?

Jay had sent me an email today reminding me that I have not updated my blogs in a long, long while. I logged on and had a look …….and Yes I have not written anything for absolutely ages. I’ve no excuses this year since I am no longer on the SLAAPS Committee. So thanks Jay, I’ve made a note to myself to write something at least every now and then.

A nice day with a horrid meal at the Intercontinental Hotel

Today was such a nice day. For starters I managed to get quite a bit of work done, and then around 10.00 in the morning Jehan called inviting me out to lunch. We met at the Galadari but decided to go to the Intercon instead since from past experience the Cafe Emerald the food has been pretty good.

It was lovely to see Jehan again. He had lost of bit of weight and quite proud of it too. He’d brought me presents from Kenya….. I can hardly wait to go home and open them up. I snuck a peek and there’s a gorgeous package of perfume though! The rest will HAVE to wait till later.

I must say I was deeply disappointed in the menu that was on for today’s lunch at the Emmerald Café. The spread was minimal, a couple of cheap salads, veges that I don’t normally eat ……there were no cold cuts, the soup was pumpkin and another of noodle… not as good as it looked unfortunately. EVERYTHING tasted so darned bland…. How disappointing! The meal for me was redeemed by the mashed potatoe and the cuttlefish.

The deserts on the other hand were as good as usual. There was a decent array of sweets including the hated bread pudding.

It was nice because we met up after such a long time, but the meal didn’t add anything at all to the occasion, though I suppose it DID give us something to grumble about. I certainly won’t be going back there anytime soon.