Memoirs of a Sri Lankan American woman

A Vegetarian Thanksgiving -November 24, 2011

2011-12-07T17:48:00.000-08:00

I know this posting is late, but better late than never, as I am really eager to share how I spent my Thanksgiving Day. I have included many photos so please be sure to click on the photos to enlarge them further.

My Thanksgiving Day was centered around preparation of a Thanksgiving lunch for me myself and I. The rest of the family was visiting my brother in Arizona while I stayed back home to look after the cats and the house.

For the past few years I have prepared a meatless Thanksgiving without the ubiquitous turkey that Thanksgiving is known for, so far as to even be known as Turkey Day. This turkey less meal came about because my brother in Arizona is a complete vegetarian and he has succeeded in persuading me to save the life of a poor turkey by forgoing the traditional turkey on Thanksgiving. The choice to go without the turkey has been an easy one for me since on a day to day basis the meals in my home are mostly vegetarian, although I do eat non vegetarian meals sometimes when I eat outside the home. So, instead of the turkey the vegetarian/vegan alternative to turkey that I cooked was Tofurky. Tofurky is made of tofu and tasted really good, it had the texture of turkey and was stuffed like a real turkey with wild rice stuffing and served with vegetarian gravy. It is available in the United States in most health food stores in the refrigerated section and came in the box pictured below: I bought mine from Trader Joes but I found it to be available at Sprouts and Wholefoods as well.

My complete menu for Thanksgiving was Tofurky with Stuffing and Vegetarian Gravy, Roasted Brussel Sprouts and Roasted Winter Squash and Root vegetables followed by Pumpkin Pie for dessert.

Below are the fruits of my labor in pictures and words:

Tofurkey roast with Stuffing and Root vegetables-Red Onions,sweet potatoes,carrots, potatoes, butternut squash, parsnips, rutabaga and turnip-all ready for the oven. I basted the tofurkey and vegetables with olive oil. Dried Rosemary and black pepper has been added to the olive oil baste of the vegetables.

The finished Roast after approximately one hour 15 minutes in the oven is below:

I also made Roasted Brussel Sprouts, below are the brussel sprouts washed with the outer leaves removed and stalks trimmed.

Below are the brussel sprouts split in half and rubbed with olive oil and garlic and placed face down on a baking sheet lined with with greased aluminum foil all ready to go in the oven:

Here are the brussel sprouts and garlic after roasting in the oven, they come out brown and crispy.

Now that all the cooking was done I was carved the Tofurky to expose the delicious wild rice stuffing shown below:

The final product plated just before I was ready to dig in :) is below:

Last but not least is the pumpkin pie (below) which I reheated in the oven for dessert.I used a pre baked frozen pie that I had sitting in the freezer. I would recommend a Sara Lee brand frozen pie if you have to have a frozen pie. But the one in my freezer happened to be a Mrs. Smith pie which was okay as I am not that fussy.

I served the pie sliced with a topping of non fat whipped cream out of a can.

I would just like to add some final thoughts on the meal. I did not add any salt to the vegetables or the baste of the tofurky as the tofurky already had enough sodium in it. Hot buns/rolls could also be served as an accompaniment to the meal but I went without as the variety of root vegetables and vegetables was enough to fill me up.

The root vegetables turned out really great. I had never eaten roasted sweet potatoes, butternut squash ,parsnips, turnips or rutabaga but I wanted to use them as they are Winter vegetables and in season. They really turned out delicious roasted and are a good alternative to potatoes and have less carbs for those watching their diets.

I found that the brussel sprouts according to the recipe I followed came out too crispy for my liking , so next time I would prepare them a different way or just have steamed or microwaved green beans or broccoli instead of the brussel sprouts.Sparkling apple cider or white or red wine would be good as the beverage to accompany this meal but I had plain old water as I am watching my calories :)

Gal Bangalawa -1971-Part 1

2011-08-08T23:30:00.000-07:00

As you may recall from my blog posting in July 2009, I spent a year in 1971 with my parents at the famous Gal Bangalawa (Stone House) at Mahakande, Kandy. I was a small girl of only 4years at the time but I have many memories of the time we spent there. It was a carefree and happy period of my life. Overall most of the things I remember from that time are very pleasant. One unpleasant incident though that I still recall was when I fell down and hurt my knee on the gravel road leading back from a neighbor's house. I was wearing a red gingham dress and my knee was bleeding and I was crying.

I have put up a few pictures with this posting. Remember to double click on each picture to enlarge it.

Since we lived in the upstairs of this great big bungalow, my Father asked the University maintenance to add iron grills to all the windows for safety. I recall one day how our little black cat with the white nose, got stuck in the grills in the bedroom of my parents. Fortunately, my parents were able to get the cat freed. My Father was not keen on getting us a cat, as he thought that its fur might cause us allergies but after much pleadings he succumbed to our wishes.

The picture above shows me and my brother sitting on the steps of the front verandah of the bunglow.We are sitting with the two girls who were our household help. I am holding our black cat on my lap.

The picture above shows my brother on the verandah with a rattan basket full of vegetables.

For me and my brother who was three there were many things to explore in this house. The garden also was full of wonders. The immediate garden around the house had a lawn and on it there were certain weeds one of which had jagged leaves close to the ground and lavender flowers. I wish I knew what its name was. On the right side of the Bungalow, in the front garden I recall there was a little natural pond which was inhabited by tadpoles. Naturally, us kids found the tadpoles very fascinating and spent time observing them there and sometimes catching them in bottles when my cousins came to visit.

There were steps that led down from the garden onto the gravel road in front of the house which encircled a small hilly area of earth on which there were several anthills.We were told that cobra snakes inhabited the anthills where they probably went to eat the ants.

The pic below shows me standing there on the steps leading to the gravel road as a 4 year old. That is my Father's old car which he sold soon after. I am standing on the steps next to my cousin who is taller than me.

Beyond the gravel road was the main flower garden of the house which was quite large. At the time, there were many different varieties of flowers growing there and the garden was well maintained by the caretaker, Martin who lived in the separate caretakers quarters located adjacent to the bungalow. Some of the flowers I recall are pink antignon, barberton daisys and a small tree with white flowers with pinkish centers. There was also a working water fountain at the center of the garden. Sadly, on my last visit to the Bunglow in July 2009 I found that the plants in the garden had long since disappeared and it was neglected and overgrown with weeds.

In the photo on the left you can see my brother and I

having a shower from the tap (water faucet) in the flower garden next to a bed of barberton daisys. I am squatting on the ground.Indoris is the boy standing there in the sarong. Indoris who hailed from my Aunt's village was with our househeld to help out for a short period.

I have other incidents that I recall at Mahakande Bungalow that hold a special place in my memory and about which I will be writing in the future. The subjects will be:

Visits from Relatives:

We had several visitors while we lived at Mahakande.

Vesak

Cod liver oil and Food memories

Follow up to the Royal Wedding-William and Kate

2011-06-08T23:59:00.000-07:00

I did stay up as planned on April 29th,2011 early morning to watch the Royal Wedding of Prince William to Catherine Middleton. I started off watching the BBC broadcast and then switched to the CNN broadcast which was quite entertaining with it's panel of commentators including Pierce Morgan and Anderson Cooper.

Everyone in the bridal party looked so happy and were all smiles including Prince William, the bride Kate and Prince Harry the best man. I couldn't help but notice how handsome Prince Harry looked lol, with his ready smile. I think the fact that they were always smiling and so relaxed made them really appealing to all who watched the wedding.

Kate was a vision of loveliness and her bridal gown fit so perfectly her svelte figure and tiny waist. Kate's sister Pippa also looked ravishing in her figure hugging gown as maid of honor. Next thing you know the internet was all a buzz as to how to get the perfect behind like Pippa.

The kiss on the balcony was just perfect and they even gave a repeat kiss which was even more perfect. A second kiss on the balcony being never heard of in the history of just married Royals.

After the kiss I decided it was time for me to go to bed by that time it was about 7a.m. my time.

I bought three commemorative magazines from Ebay for posterity that detailed the Royal Wedding with many photos. The first one was from the UK and was a magazine insert issued with the Daily Mail newspaper. I was hoping it had the official group portraits of the Wedding but it turned out it only had pictures of the wedding ceremony. Then I found the second commemorative magazine which included the official group portraits issued by US Weekly in the supermarket. I searched on Ebay and found the same magazine on Ebay at a cheaper price so I bought it on Ebay. The third magazine which I also found at the Supermarket was issued by Time Life which included a section about the Windsors and the Middletons and about past weddings. When I saw these articles included with some historical old pictures I just had to have the magazine. So I searched once again on Ebay and I found the magazine on Ebay for a cheaper price and I bid and won it on Ebay.

Last news is that William and Kate, now the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge will be visiting Hollywood, California in early July 2011. Hopefully, I will get to see them in person :) if not I can watch them with the rest of you on celluloid.

Wedding of HRH Prince William to Kate Middleton

2011-04-09T18:14:00.000-07:00

The upcoming wedding of Prince William to Kate Middleton is something I'm looking forward to with excitement. I am planning to watch it live on CNN television early morning on Friday, April 29th when it airs on the west coast of the United States. Hopefully I can wakeup at that unearthly hour, but I'm going to record it in any case..

The Wedding of William and Kate brings back lovely memories of the magical wedding of Prince Wiliiam's parents, the then Lady Diana Spencer to Prince Charles back in the Summer of 1981. I was a school girl 14 years old at the time. We did not have live coverage of the wedding in Fiji where I lived , as TV had not come to Fiji as yet. Videos of the of the Royal wedding's coverage by Australian TV were soon available for people to rent from video stores. I remember first seeing the video recording of the wedding at a family friend's house. Later they showed it at our all girls school as well. The wedding was beautiful,exciting and happy.

Immeditately after the day of the wedding the local Fiji newspapers headlined the wedding on the front page with extra photos inside. The Australian Women's Weekly had a souvenir edition of the Royal Wedding with beautiful color pictures. The magazine was sold out in no time and I was not able to secure a copy, much to my disappointment. It was only a few years later when I went to Australia to study that I was able to purchase a used copy of that special souvenir edition.

Currently the TV stations are airing count down programs to the wedding of William and Kate. They range from how Kate met William to prior Royal weddings. It is a time of excitement and anticipation. What will Kate wear? How many bridesmaids will she have? What will the guests wear? What will Prince Harry say in his speech to his brother Prince William? What will Kate wear when she goes away? What will the bouquets look like? What will the cake look like?

I have not been a Royal follower since Princess Diana died but the Royal wedding is something special and it has brought my attention back to the British Royal family.

Mini skirts

2011-03-31T11:28:00.001-07:00

Guys and gals, what are your views on mini skirts? Do you think its decent for a woman over forty to wear one? :)

Aluth Avurudu-2011

2011-03-31T11:26:00.000-07:00

So how do you guys feel about Aluth Avurudu? Do you still follow the customs and traditions? Is it a special time for you?

Hey I'm still here, lurking!

2011-03-31T11:23:00.000-07:00

It's me again! I'm sorry haven't been able to update my blog. But I still love my blog. I am currently working on some postings! See you guys soon!

Dietary changes in 2010 and revived interest in Cooking

2011-01-30T02:28:00.000-08:00

During the latter part of the year 2010, I've done a lot of experimenting with new recipes and I've revived my interest in cooking again. The reason for this has been due to some health problems that I've had to deal with since April 2010. The doctor recommended that I should reduce my salt intake. I looked online for a diet that had reduced salt and found one from the Mayo Clinic.

Using the Mayo Clinic guidelines I have made some major dietary changes. These included eating less salt, drinking more water and no longer being able to eat bananas and oranges due to their high potassium content. I have also reduced my carbohydrate intake which for me has been mainly rice. I now eat rice and vegetables in equal portions and I measure my food at every meal. I have been eating parboiled rice and brown rice instead of white rice. I have found how to cook brown rice successfully in the rice cooker. I have also been trying to eat some fruit each day. These have included apples, canteloupe and honeydew melon. Ideally I am supposed to eat a cup of fruit at each meal , something that is hard to do as I have always been lazy about eating fruits.

I have also started eating raw foods from time to time. If I eat sandwiches I always use raw tomato, cucumber, bell peppers and red onion in my sandwiches. I also eat raw carrots. Sometimes its easier to just eat a sandwich than cook a curry! I have begun making fresh salads consisting of diced red onions, carrots,cucumber,green chillis and tomato seasoned with a little salt and pepper.

According to recommendations from the Mayo Clinic, the overall changes in my diet were to incorporate more vegetables, fruit, beans, lentils and nuts and reduce my rice/ carb intake. The diet is mainly vegetarian but fish was to be eaten about 4 times per week.

I actually began to use a cup to measure how much rice I ate and also how much vegetables I was eating. After making the changes to my diet it turned out that I was eating equal measures of rice and vegetables at each meal. I also increased the cups of water I was drinking per day and kept track of my meal times and how much fluids I was taking during the day. I have reduced my salt intake, I do not add more than a teaspoon of salt per pot of cooking. I have started squeezing fresh lime juice over each dish I make which makes up somewhat for the reduction in salt.This lead to many complaints from my Mother who said the food had no taste! But she also is now acknowledging that we had been eating too much salt in the past.

Within a month or so of my new diet I started losing weight.It was quite amazing over a period of 6months I lost a total of 19pounds! I can now say I know the secret to weight loss. I want to lose another 10 pounds and I think I can do that if I incorporate exercise such as walking into my daily regimen.

The Mayo Clinic had given sample meal plans and recipes for a heart healthy and reduced sodium diet. So I tried some of the recipes they had listed. Also at that time my Mother was away in Sri Lanka and I had to be responsible for all the cooking and packing my own lunches for work. A friend suggested I should try making my own sandwiches. So I went ahead and bought myself a ziploc container with compartments as a lunch box and took a ceramic bowl to work to heat up anything that needed heating like rice. In the past I had been putting plastic lunch boxes in the microwave to heat them. But I was now afraid of the plastics leaching into the food. I had never really experimented with making sandwiches. When I was a school girl my mother used to pack me sandwiches with jam and butter and later luncheon meats. However I no longer could use luncheon meats as I was watching my sodium. So instead I made healthy sandwiches such as tuna sandwich and Vege burger sandwiches. I had been taking the lazy way out by eating Vege delite sandwiches from Subway but that was costing me an arm and a leg each day.

For my own sandwiches I used a the same veges in the Subway Sandwiches: green capsicum, red onion, tomato, lettuce and cucumber. I used a non fat Mayonnaise for the sandwich as I was also watching calories. I should have included lettuce but I found it spoilt very quickly even when kept in the fridge so I omitted it from my sandwiches. I wanted to buy some cheese for the sandwiches that was both low in sodium and low in fat. I found a grated mozzarella cheese that was fat free however it had virtually no taste. The next best alternative was Swiss cheese which had 4g of cheese per slice and was low in sodium. In my new diet I was supposed to drink 3 cups of non fat milk or eat the dairy equivalent per day. I have been managing to drink about a cup of milk per day, better than nothing !

This diet also recommends eating fish 3 or 4 times per week, small fish like sardines are the best which I sometimes eat. I can no longer eat karawala (salted fish) due to its high sodium.

I also wanted to try making chicken salad sandwiches, so I bought chicken breast which I baked first in the oven and later made into chicken salad with mayonnaise and onion. For the bread I used a multi grain whole wheat bread.

This diet has also lead me to a love affair with beans and lentils. It has been exciting to cook a variety of beans/lentils such as kadala(garbanzo). black eyed beans, red kidney beans, whole green lentils and red lentils.I love my beans & lentils they have so much texture and taste wonderful as curries.

I have also rediscovered pasta and have started cooking it from time to time. I always cook whole wheat pasta and never add salt to the cooking pot. Almost all of my pasta sauces have been vegetarian.

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Below are some of the new recipes I have tried so far.The majority of the recipes have been from the internet sometimes with modifications to the recipes according to my taste.If I had the time I would have loved to photograph the dishes and to do a separate posting for each of them along with the full recipe.

Wholewheat pasta with asparagus

Oven roasted red potatoes with asparagus

LowFat_Spaghetti_Carbonara

Date_walnut_cake

Cucumber raita

Black eyed peas with mushrooms

Chole Chickpea (kadala) curry

Jamaican-rice-and-peas

Wonton Samosas

Cucumber-sandwiches

Egg and Cress Sandwich

Vegan Steamed Wontons with Tofu, Bean sprouts & Baby bokchoy

Blueberry Muffins from a Betty Crocker Cake Mix

Rajma (Red Kidney bean curry)

Red Split Lentils With Cabbage

Green lentils with spinach and ginger

Aloo Methi (Potatoes with Fenugreek leaves)

On my to do list for the future are more pasta and bean dishes. My goal is to use up all the beans that are stored away in the house.

How I learnt to cook

2010-11-23T16:00:00.000-08:00

When I was a student aged 12 in Class 7 back in 1979, we were sent for to a 'Technical school' the girls to learn cooking and house keeping and the boys to learn woodwork. The Class 8 Senior students also joined us for these classes and we all went to the 'Technical school' once a week in a bus. The school if I recall was located close to the Ocean in Laucala Bay, Suva, Fiji.

I always enjoyed the cooking lessons, it was fun to watch the teacher demonstrate the recipe and for each of us to make it at our own desks. We all had to wear an apron to the class. My mother made me a calico apron with heart shaped pockets made out of a red gingham fabric and matching frilled eding on the bib. I thought the apron was so pretty and liked to wear it. We all wrote down the recipes in our exercise books.

They also taught us how to clean up and do the washing. First, we had to fill a bowl with warm water and add detergent, then we soaked the dishes in the bowl and scrubbed them with a dishmop.After that we put the dishes on a dish rack and wiped them dry with a dishcloth.We were also taught how to scrub the table with a brush, soap and wipe it dry with a damp tea towel.

Some of the foods we cooked were chocolate biscuits, cassava cake, rice/potato cakes and Yorkshire tea cake. The rice/potato cakes was made out of cooked potato and rice to which was added shredded carrots and onions and shaped into patties which were pan fried. The variety of Yorkshire tea cake we made was kind of a shortbread with strawberry jam and shredded coconut as a filling.

This introduction into cooking at the 'Technical' whet my appetite for cooking and I soon began duplicating the recipes I had learnt at home and also trying out new recipes from cookbooks. My mother had bought a very nice British cookbook after arriving in Fiji with beautiful color pictures which I immeditately fell in love with. Some of my favorite foods that I tried out from it were Jam tarts, Asparagus Flan, Queen of puddings, Lemon Meringue pie and Custard Tarts.

After I moved to Australia in 1985 at the age of 18, I bought some small recipe books from the Thrift shop and became interested in and made main course items such as: Fried Liver and onions,, Grilled Lamb chops, Roast Beef, Roast potato with Yorkshire puddings and Horseraddish Sauce and Southern Fried Chicken.

In December 1985 I finished Year 12 and was awarded a T. E. (Tertiary Entrance ) score that enabled me to apply to Universities. I got many offers from out of State but I decided that Kedren Park Campus of the BCAE was best so I wouldn't have to relocate.

I began my 3 year degree towards a Bachelor of Business (Accounting) in 1986 at Kedren Park. I was still living with my mom and brothers and I didn't have to worry about housekeeping or cooking. In 1987 my mother decided to take my youngest brother and go back and join my father who was working in the Marshall Islands. Before she left she gave me a tips on how to cook and do the banking and groceries. It was pretty easy to cook rice in the rice cooker and some curries on the stove. In fact I have always found that rice and curry is the easiest food for me to cook. I always needed to refer to recipe books whenever I cooked any other kinds of foods.

I was nostalgic to try out some very traditional Sri Lankan recipes. My sources of recipes for Sri Lankan food that I had never cooked before were Charmaine Solomon's The Complete Asian Cook Book, Chandra Dissanayake's Ceylon Cookery and the Ceylon Daily News Cook book by Hilda Deutrom. All 3 books were owned by my mother, the Ceylon Daily News cook book being particularly ancient with a green cloth cover. I must mention here that Charmaine Solomon's cook book was a coffee table edition and had the most beautiful pictures that made you immediately want to try out the recipes.

Luckily, there were a lot of Vietnamese shops close to where we lived at Hill End, Brisbane. It was a walk of about 20 minutes down to West End which was a small shopping area. I could also take the bus, but I preferred to walk there. Coming back my load would be so heavy.

Most of the shops in West End were owned by the Greek community with a new influx of Vietnamese shop owners just coming in. The Greek owned vegetable shop had thampala (amaranth) leaves, which I used to buy. I loved my mallung (greens). At the Vietnemese shops I found kankung, brinjals, thampala (amaranth) and yams and I was able to cook those just like back in Sri Lanka. There was a travelling Sri Lankan salesman who used to come about once in 3mths in his van with Sri Lankan groceries. I always bought from him Sri Lankan spices, karawala ( dried fish), hal masso (sprats), canned foods such as kos ata (jack fruit seeds), breadfruit and delicacies like muscat.

For my main supermarket groceries I had to walk all the way to the end of West End to Jack the Slasher supermarket, I made the trip every two weeks. Amongst other things I would buy things like frozen meals of turkey and roast beef and apple pie. My day to day cooking was Sri Lankan food which I was good at doing. Now and then I would get a craving for Aussie food and when the craving hit I would get out the frozen dinners and savor them while watching tv.

I also used to buy frozen stewing hens at the supermarket. I liked to make chicken curry with the tough birds. Since the meat was so lean and muscular the meat was chewy but I preferred my chicken chewy rather than soft. However, my brother always complained about the meat being chewy.

I bought a whole box of groceries at Jack the Slasher and also a box of fruits and vegetables at the green grocer next door. Both places would deliver the groceries to my door, which made it very convenient.

SBS TV was a special TV channel in Australia that showed programmes from all over the world and in many languages with subtitles when needed. I was able to see a Sri Lankan Cookery programme conducted by Felicia Wakwella Sorenson brodcast from Hongkong. She made some of the staples of Sri Lankan cookery such as Chicken curry, prawn curry and Cabbage mallung. I was so happy to see Sri Lankan cooking on TV and wrote down all her recipes and tried them out with delicious results.

In addition to Sri Lankan cooking I also ventured into Indian cooking and my main source for my recipes was the cooking programme by Madhur Jaffrey running on SBS TV at the time. I used to record her programs on the VCR and then write down all the recipes I liked. But soon I bought her cookbook which was part of the TV series and it had the most delectable pictures to accompany her recipes. In no time at all I was making samosas with peas and potato, parathas, and lamb with turnips. I also bought Doris Ady's Asian cookery book. She was a lady of Sri Lankan origin who had immigrated to Australia.From her book I was able to make gulab jamun which was one of my favorite Indian sweets.

Living away from Sri Lanka since I was a young girl of ten, I was always nostalgic for things Sri Lankan and eating our familiar native foods was a nice way to constantly reconnect with the motherland.

The Passing of my Father

2010-10-08T05:40:00.000-07:00

(I wrote most of this blog posting in June 2009 after my father died. It is now October 2011, over two years since he passed away. The feelings of hopelessness have now gone away and I have now come to accept the fact that he is now gone.However, whenever I see something that reminds me of my father, like his books, his glasses or his belt, I feel a renowned feeling of sadness about his passing.I used to dream about him a lot in the first few months after he died, he was very much alive in those dreams.Then I used to wake up and I would realize that it was only a dream and that he was really gone. I still see him in my dreams sometimes and it's as if he was still alive.)

I have not thought about death so much in my whole life until during the past month we lost our father. Up until now I had never experienced the consequences of death so closely since nobody in my immediate family had passed on before.

My father's passing has had a profound impact on me. It has made me realize how final death is. How my father can never come back to us in this lifetime and we can never turn the clock back or do things a different way. Even in our next births even if we do meet we will be different people and this present life is gone forever. Somehow I can't seem to accept the fact that my father can no longer see us from where he is at now and that he will have no memory of us in his next birth. No matter how much we think of him he will not know how much we miss him and wish that we could turn back the clock. In a way it's good that he is free from the burden of worrying about how we are doing. It's only us that are left behind that are left to cope with the loss of losing a loved one.

Now with the loss of my father, I have come to realize how fragile human life is , it's like a candle flame that maybe extinguished at any moment. I have been searching for articles on how to cope with the loss of a parent and how to cope with death. In my search I found that the Buddha had asked his disciples how often one needs to contemplate dying. They had given various answers, the correct answer being that one needs to think about death on every inhalation and expiration. Only if the in breath comes in do we live, that's how close to death we all are. That is such a remarkable fact that we never think about. It makes sense now why the Anapanasati meditation (concentration on in and out breath) is the most basic meditation used by Buddhists.

While we are alive we never think about death, the mention of death instills fear in us so we avoid thinking about it as much as we can. But since death is an inevitable fact of life we need to contemplate our own impending demise and those of our loved ones and friends.

I see my self going back over the last time I saw my father and even back to the last month of his life. I have this nagging feeling of sadness and guilt within me, for not seeing that he was not well and under a lot of stress. I keep thinking what if I had paid more attention to his health would he still be alive today? I feel like I didn't do enough to help him during his last year in life. He worked so tirelessly this past year and that was because he wanted to pay back some loans that he had taken out from banks in Sri Lanka. If I had known that his health was at such a low state I would have tried to help him more..But for sure none of us had any clue including my father himself. I feel looking back that he was under a lot of stress but I was too tied up in my own problems to tell him to slow down and take things easier.He had just come back to Sri Lanka to take care of some family property matters there . And once he was back in the States his plan was to take it easier job wise. He did complain that he was having some body ailments in the past month but none of us in the family took it to be anything serious and neither did he. We suggested to him that he should see the doctor about it but he didn't think it was important enough to see the doctor about. My father was very independent and therefore he always saw the doctor on his own.So it never occurred to us to take him to the doctor.

When I think back upon how hard he had been working and the fact that we didn't realize it I feel very sad. If I was in a better place myself mentally perhaps I would have seen it, but I was far more worried about my self that I had no time to think about how my father was. I think that is our bad karma that we lost him so soon he was not yet seventy. I see his own brothers and sisters who are a lot older who are still alive and that makes me sad too, I feel he died too young. I feel somehow that he sacrificed his own life because he was so unselfish. He put his family welfare first and never gave much thought to checking up on his own health. I also feel like he didn't want to face the fact that those ailments he was experiencing in the last month were anything serious,

My father was such a devoted family man and he put the needs and wants of his family first before his own. Now that I am an adult myself and when I reflect on the last year of his life I can truly see this to be true. I feel that he must be born into a better life on those merits alone.

My father in Fiji- around 1980 (double click to enlarge photo)


My father (holding my brother) and me sitting at a fountain at UCLA, CA, USA- around 1969	(double click to enlarge photo)

My father while staying at a friend's house in Los Angeles, CA in 1974 when he was finishing his PhD at UCLA. (double click to enlarge photo)

What's been happening in my life while I've been away from my blog...

2010-09-29T19:33:00.000-07:00

It's good to be back at my blog. I have been caught up with life that I haven't had the time to sit down and pen my thoughts in my blog. But I don't want to give up on my blog. It is part of me, it is an outlet of expression and a source of satisfaction for me.

In the past few months, I had a work assignment of a few months duration. It has been good to get out of the house like normal people every day. I was back to the early morning rises, rushing to catch the Commuter Express which would take me to the bustling financial district of Downtown Los Angeles. I was always a few minutes late which meant that I had to run/walk/run in order to make sure to catch the Commuter Express bus which only came every half hour. Somehow I always managed to get to the bus stop before the bus arrived. It was partly thanks to my trusty old walking shoes and partly due to my determination to catch that bus.

The office was an exciting place mainly due to the people who worked there. The work in itself was not too difficult once I became familiar with my daily tasks. The duties of my job brought me in contact with every member of the department on a daily basis. There were certain people that I liked to see more than others. I looked forward for an excuse to talk to some people. Actually there was one person in particular that I liked to talk to. Incidentally he was a man, you could say he was my secret crush. I actually didn't notice him so much at first.

Then all of a sudden it hit me. It happened because one day he came over to my cubicle to ask me a question about work and then and he asked me where I was from. I said I'm from Sri Lanka and then we had a long chat about Sri Lanka, about it's languages, races and religion. He is East Asian and he said he was raised as a Christian but his ancestors had been Buddhist. As we talked I began to like him more and more and I hoped he liked me the same way.

Anyway to cut a long story short I used to see him now and then at various places at work i.e. in the lunch room, break room or at his desk for work related matters. Each time I saw him we used to talk, it was easy to talk to him as he was so outgoing. I am a shy person but with an outgoing person I find it easy to talk. Everytime we talked I kept wondering 'does he like me?'

There was no doubt that I liked him and I wanted him to like me as more than a friend. However, with him the reason that he talked to me was I think, due to his personality, he was a naturally friendly person and liked to talk. When I went to his desk to give him a document he used to greet me smilingly and ask how I was, how my work was , how my day was. Each time, I was very happy to talk to him, be in his company and share some conversation. I wanted to go upto his desk just to say hi but refrained from doing so as I didn't want people to think that I was just going there to talk to him.

Then finally I knew my time there was ending and in the final two weeks I used to go upto talk to him just for the sake of talking. I no longer cared what people thought as I would not be there much longer. I told him that I would be leaving and he began to discuss with me what my plans were next in my career path and give me some advise. I did invite him out for lunch just before I left and he took me to a nice restaurant, but he didn't try to learn more about me all he did was give me more advise on my next career move. During our prior conversations, he had asked me if I was single or married and I had told him I was single. He had also told me that he was single. I really wanted to ask him what type of woman he was looking for. But I felt awkward and afraid of what he might think if I asked him that question. Our lunch was so nice, it felt so special to share his company but the time was too short.

I have his contact number and email and he has mine. In fact we spoke once after I left as he wanted to see how I was doing. But, I feel he only likes me as a friend and he enjoyed our conversations but that was that. In anycase I am glad to have met him, I enjoyed our moments together as friends although I wished for more. I feel like I met a good person. When you meet good people that you like, it inspires you also to emulate them and try to improve your own life. He is a member of a strict Christian denomination whose Church he recommended that I attend not only for the religon but also for fellowship with good people. Although I am interested in learning about other faiths, at this stage in my life I have come to a point in my beliefs where I feel like I cannot abandon Buddhism for another faith.

I want to go and meet him again for a lunch in the future and I will try my best to ask him what he wants in his mate, so at least I have an idea whether or not I meet his ideal.

I'm sorry I have been away from my blog

2010-07-30T20:16:00.000-07:00

Hello, how is everyone out there? I am sorry I still haven't had the time to do a proper blog posting. I really hope to do a post during August. Hope everyone is well and happy!

I'm still here :) sorry, been to busy to blog

2010-05-23T23:45:00.000-07:00

I'm so sorry to have been away from posting anything to my blog in a while. I did have something almost ready, to find that I had forgotten to save the revised draft! So I need to go back and do it from scratch again!

I have been too busy to have had the time I needed to actually finish a draft for posting. As some of you may have noticed I don't post often. But when I do posting something , the posting tends to be quite long and involved and I do try to include pictures.

I hope to be back soon with something interesting, and hope my fellow bloggers are well and happy.

Dollhouse vignettes-1978 -1979

2010-03-25T04:34:00.000-07:00

As you know from my previous postings, dolls and dollhouses were part of my childhood interests.

I wanted to share some scenes that I created as a twelve year old, centered around my dolls and 'cupboard dollhouse'. My father helped me by capturing the following scenes in photos:

Christmas 1978 at Ken and Daisy's house.

This picture features the living room in my 'cupboard dollhouse'.

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Christmas Dinner 1978 at Ken and Daisy's house.

This picture features the kitchen in my 'cupboard dollhouse'.

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Ken & Daisy having a Picnic at Deuba Beach, Fiji-1979

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Ken & Daisy at Deuba Beach, Fiji-1979

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Ken enjoying the sun at Deuba Beach, Fiji-1979

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Daisy, Ken, Skipper & baby Alice with Snowy the dog-having a picnic-1979

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Daisy with baby Alice and Snowy the Dog- 1979

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My senior year at High School in Australia

2010-03-25T02:07:00.000-07:00

I moved to Brisbane, Australia, not long before my 18th birthday in 1995. My mother and my two younger brothers accompanied me there.

The night we arrived in Brisbane there was a mighty hail storm, which meant that our flight couldn't land in Brisbane. Instead the flight was diverted to Coolangatta.We were ferried by coach from Coolangatta to Brisbane Airport. A Sri Lankan family friend was at the airport to pick us up.My mom and brothers all had diarrhea at the airport on account of the lamb that they had eaten on the plane. Miraculously the lamb had no such ill effects on me. I don't recall whether I actually ate the lamb or not.

We stayed the next month at the home of another Sri Lankan family that we had previously met in Fiji, where they were working at the time. They were very hospitable and put us up at their place until my Mother enrolled my brother and I at the Brisbane State High school. We also found a flat/apartment about a mile from the school, in which to live.

This whole move to Australia had filled me with trepidation. I was worried whether I would have difficulty fitting into a Western culture. Fiji, where we had spent the last seven years was different from Sri Lanka, but it was a colonial, third world country that shared many similarities and all the people were brown skinned.I felt so self conscious about being a brown skinned girl in a white world.

Finally, school opened in February 1985 and I had enrolled in all my classes which were to be mainly Science and Maths subjects as well as English language and literature.The first day of school I felt very lonely. I met my classmates, the school was co-ed so there were boys as well. I felt even more self conscious having to face boys, my previous High School in Fiji had been all girls. Most of the students in my class were white Australian. There were a handful of minority students such as two Chinese, two Greek and one Turkish student. Our class teacher was Ms. Jenny Cranston. She was an attractive petite, young woman with shoulder length black hair and brown eyes. She had a strong Australian accent and the 2 subjects she taught us were English Language and Literature. I thought some of the boys in our class were cute but I was too shy to interact with them during the school year.

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My class picture-Year 12 taken at the school library.

I am seated 1st from the left in the front row. My cute Turkish classmate who liked me, is in the front row seated 3rd from the left.

On the first day, we were given our time table, we had to move each period to different labs or classrooms and take all our books with us. I met other students during my Maths 1 and Maths 2 classes. The other students were nice, I used to have lunch sometimes or spend the morning breaks with some of the girls in my classes. Being very shy I sometimes used to prefer to have lunch on my own. They had nice salad sandwiches and pikelets at the canteen which was run by the Mothers but I was too shy to ever go there. So my Mother used to pack me a sandwich and some fruit sitting on the grounds or steps somewhere.

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This picture was taken inside our flat/apartment. I am in the Brisbane State High School (BSHS )Summer uniform. My bag heavy with books is on the floor. Our neighbor's Siamese cat is asleep on the chair.

My best subjects turned out to be Biology and English language and Literature. I did not do too well in Chemistry, Physics or Maths 1 and Maths 11. I found that curriculum in Australia at Year 12 was more advanced than what I had experienced in the final year of High School-Form 6 back in Fiji. Even English was at a much higher standard, although I did do quite well in that subject in Brisbane. I felt that my English teacher was a little prejudiced in her assessment of me, maybe since I was not a native speaker of English she assessed me on a lower scale.

I was fortunate to have good teachers who knew their subject matter well. They were all interesting people, all quite different from each other. My Chemistry teacher was Mr. Hansen, he also knew my brother (who was in Year 11) and played softball during sports half. Mr Hansen was quite impressed with my brother's sprinting abilities. Mr Hansen always wore Bermuda shorts and kneee length socks which is an Aussie tradition.

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My brother and I in the BSHS Winter uniform.

My Physics teacher was a wiry, thirtish man with an Italian sounding name which I can't recall at the moment. He always wore jeans and a t-shirt with cap sleeves which gave him a casual air.His brown hair was longish and he also wore a beard to match. He was quite an attractive and outgoing and likeable man. However, in the 2nd Semester he left for Italy to pursue higher studies. During the 2nd Semester he was replaced by another teacher, Mr. Stevenson who was about the same age.

My Maths 1 teacher was a tall blonde lady with brown eyes, but her name elludes me. She was very good at the subject, but I didn't have much personal interaction with her to say anything about her personality.

For Maths 2 we studied BASIC the computer language in Semester 1. Our teacher was Mr. Brennan, a bespectacled man with dark hair. He was very outspoken and used to make comments about many things. He often used to talk about golfing in his spare time. There was a boy in the Math 11 class who always walked his girlfriend to class and they were always inseparable. Mr. Brennan noticed it and made a comment about "'John always being with his bird" or something to that effect. I found his outspokeness to be quite refreshing and amusing, unless it was directed at me. I remember I used to have Math 2 during the first period of the day in Semester 1 and very often I used to come late to class. Mr. Brennan used to give me a lecture saying something like "when you start working your boss won't like it if you go to work late like this". I always listened meekly whenever he said this and I remember one of the boys sitting nearby smiling in amusement.

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This picture is a paper cutting taken from the Brisbane Sunday Mail newspaper. It shows John, my Maths 2 classmate and his girlfriend at the annual School Formal Dance.

I did enjoy the two English subjects: Language as well as Literature. I still remember what we studied for Literature: Poetry such as the poets who wrote about the casualties of the First World War and also Robert Frost. We read plays in the form of Death of a Salesman and Mcbeth. We read novels including The Day of the Triffids, Grapes of Wrath, The Chosen and Pride and Prejudice. We also watched classic movies during English period such as 'Pride and Prejudice' and the movie 'Tess'. The school year had been split into two Semesters. Each semester we were assessed. We had to write a journal one semester as well as do Oral presentations per semester. I absolutely dreaded the Orals. The second semester I was invited by a group of 3 boys to join them in 3 short sketches. I was flattered that they asked me and gladly joined them. One skit involved us being on a spaceship, the other skit was Sherlock Holmes and I played Holmes' housekeeper. We wore costumes of sorts, and rehersed in the mornings before school. I thought I did a good job, but my teacher didn't think I did too well, I was disappointed in her assessment of my performance.

I found Biology to be an interesting subject as well. Our Biology teacher was Mr. Redhead and he had a regional British accent which I couldn't quite place. He went on long leave to UK during the middle of the year and we had a Chinese lady who took our classes while he was on vacation. I think she was Malaysian Chinese, she was a pretty nice lady. For Biology we had to conduct an experiment on our own during the first Semester. I had no idea what I was going to do for my experiment. Everyone else in the class seemed to have bright ideas, while I had none. So I was a bit worried and didn't start my experiment until about 2 months before the Semester ended. Finally, I decided to grow green beans in 3 types of soil in pots. My conclusion was to see which type of soil suited green beans the best. The beans grew quite well and I wrote up my conclusion and was really happy when I got good marks from Mr Redhead for my experiment.

They had various social events during the school year such as weekend 'Dances' and school night outings to see plays such as 'The Mikado'. Some of my friends in my classes asked me if I was coming to the Dances and I said no. I remember she said "Why don't you come, don't worry people will dance with you." Unfortunately my shyness prevented me from attending dances, although I did wish I had the courage to go. I didn't go to the ' Mikado' or the school ' Formal' which was the graduation dinner held at the end of the school year. The formal was a grand affair where you had to wear evening gowns and they had a formal meal. The menu was approved early in the school year. At that time I opted out from participating in choosing the menu. The Turkish guy in my class also opted out, because of me as he was definitely interested in me. He was always smiling at me and trying to catch my attention, whenever I happened to run into him between classes. I felt very embarrased and shy at this special attention.

One day I saw Ms. Cranston , our English teacher say to him "She's beautiful isn't she?" and he nodded assent. Towards the middle of the year both my Turkish classmate, and I were called to the Admin office during the Biology class. So we both went there and we had to answer some questions and after that we were free to return to our class. My classmate accompanied me back to our class and as we passed the courtyard, he asked me if I was going to go back to the class or not go back. I replied that I was going back, and he accompanied me back to class. Looking back I know that he wanted me to say I wasn't going back so he could sit and talk to me. I did wonder years later what would have happened if I did stay and sit out the class with him that day. As a matter of fact I did track him down about seven years later in 1992, I managed to find his address through Australia Post and I wrote to him. He wrote back, apparently he had married a girl he met in 1988 at the World Expo in Brisbane and they had a son and another baby was on the way.

A special Birthday and Dolls' Wedding

2010-03-25T01:07:00.000-07:00

As a twelve year old, I was very interested in playscale dolls and dollhouses. Playscale is defined as 1:6 scale (in playscale 1 inch represents 6inches in real life). Dollhouses are usually in a smaller scale defined as 1:12 scale (that is 1 inch represents 12 inches in real life). Dollhouses also called 'dolls houses' are mostly an adult hobby and the enthusiasts are usually women. Dollhouses in 1:12th scale are normally purchased as kits. The kits have to be assembled. After assembly the dollhouse is decorated and furnished and is a representation of real life on a smaller scale. Larger playscale (1:6) dollhouses are also available suited for play with Barbie dolls and are defined as toys for children.

As a young girl I did not actually own a Barbie doll, but I had other dolls such as Ken, Skipper and a baby doll all by Mattel and Daisy by Mary Quant. For my 12th birthday party I decided to combine my dolls' wedding with my birthday party. I invited my friends and they brought their dolls. My mother made shorteats and cake for my birthday and a special wedding cake for the dolls' wedding. My father was very obliging and took all the pictures of the wedding celebration and party.

Pictured on the left: Myself with friends at the Birthday/ Wedding celebration

Futhermore, my mother made the beautiful white wedding gown of georgette with lace tiers and the net veil that the bride, Daisy is wearing. She also stitched the black suit, shirt and bowtie that the groom, Ken is wearing. Daisy is holding a bouquet of a single magenta rose. The first bridesmaid is Ken's sister Skipper, and she is dressed in a magenta lace strapless gown and holding a white frangipani bouquet. The two little flowergirls are also dressed in magenta lace. The guests at the wedding are my friends' dolls. The wedding ceremony took place on my dressing table in my bedroom.

Below are all the beautiful pictures of the wedding of Ken and Daisy. Sorry that the pictures are a little faded due to the fact that they were taken back in 1979.

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Wedding Breakfast (note the Wedding cake on the little table)

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Wedding -Group photo

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Fiji Food Memories

2010-01-21T03:25:00.000-08:00

After my family moved to Fiji in 1977, we were introduced to many food preparations that I had never experienced before. Due to the ethnic diversity in Fiji there was a whole array of diverse dishes.

From the Fiji Indian community, there were the delicious Indian rotis (chapatis) which are the Indian flat breads, being the main food of the Indian community in Fiji. Rotis were made out of wholemeal flour known as 'Atta' also known as 'Sharps'. In Fiji they also used 'ghee' (clarified butter) in the preparation of roti. Thus the roti ended up rich but delicious. The Indian roti was quite different in texture to the pol roti we eat in Sri Lanka.

Everyone in Fiji loved roti, even the Fijians, although they did not make it themselves. We used to get invited often for dinner at a Sri Lankan family home and they always prepared Indian roti. The accompaniment was either curried fried canned corned beef or curried fried potatoes. It was quite delicious and it was not long before my Mother also learnt to make Indian roti. However, at that time our rotis never turned out soft like the Indians made them and I used to long for genuine Indian roti which we ocassionaly had if we got invited to an Indian home or bought it from a school Bazaar or restaurant. It was funny, when I travelled by bus to High School when I was older, I used to see some guys going to work carrying their roti packets in their pocket.

I was ten years old, I skipped a Grade and began school in Fiji at Class 5. My parents sent me to a Chinese Catholic school and I had one Indian classmate there. She always brought an Indian roti filled with curry and rolled up like a pancake and wrapped in newspaper. The way she ate it was to open out her roti taking her time to eat it the traditional way, breaking off pieces of roti and eating it with the enclosed curry. The curry was always a bright yellow color but smelled delicious. She also brought a crunchy corn cheese snack packet such as 'Twisties', 'Bongos' , 'Cheesums' or 'Fonzies' along with the roti. In contrast, my Mother gave me a boring sandwich for lunch or fried rice. While on the subject of school lunches, it reminds me of some of the other delicious lunches my classmates brought to school. I remember a boy named Peter used to bring roast chicken, smelt so good. Ingrid often brought roast beef sandwiches. Some kids brought sandwiches which had unsual fillings such as canned Heinz spaghetti with cheese sauce or baked beans. I later found out that both of those sandwiches were an Australian tradition.

Other interesting Indian foods were mango pickles, deep fried green peas, booja, sooji halwa and gulab jamun. The Indian mango pickles were called achchar. They were pickled in mustard oil and smelled and tasted wonderful. They were quite different to the Sri Lankan achcharu which has no oil in it. Indians also used to make a savory snack out of boiled green peas that were fried with spices and sold by pushcart vendors, kind of similar to 'kadala' that was sold by pushcart vendors in Sri Lanka. The Indians also ate dhal as a soup which was in contrast to the dhal (parippoo) curry which was a standard dish in Sri Lanka.

The Fijians, who are the indigenous people of Fiji, used to eat mainly boiled or baked rootcrops such as dalo (taro) which was a tuber with leaves similar to the 'alakola'. They also ate the leaves and a favorite way to cook it was make a packet of the dalo leaf with a filling of canned corned beef, onions and chillis. The packet was then boiled in coconut milk (cream). The creamy extract of the coconut flesh was called coconut cream in Fiji versus coconut milk as it is called in Sri Lanka. Other root crops eaten were yams and cassava. They also ate a lot of fish, pork, beef and chicken along with a rootcrop. The traditional way to cook the meats and fish was to cook it in an underground earth oven called a 'lovo'. They usually only cooked in the lovo for large gatherings called 'feasts' where the food wrapped in leaves would be cooked under hot stones for several hours. This gave them a tender taste with a smoky flavor which was quite delicious. Whenever schools had their annual bazaars I used to especially ask my Mother to bring us some lovo meals.

Western food found in Fiji seemed to be directly influenced by the cuisine of Australia and New Zealand. Some of the popular items were egg with steak and chips, fish and chips, rotisserie chicken, scones and cakes with cream.

The really good fish and chips that I have tasted were sold at the Cafe that was next to the Nabukalou Creek which ran past the store known as Morris Headstrom in the Suva city center. These chips were chunky and the moist white fleshed fish was covered in crisp batter. It was always served in a brown paper bag with Fijian chillis and wedges of lemon. Incidentally, those chillis looked like bigger versions of the Sri Lankan kochchi. That was the only variety of chilli available in Fiji and was a yellowish, reddish color. I was always homesick for the 'amu miris'(green chillis) found back in Sri Lanka. The taste of the 'Fijian' chilli just was not the same, it had too many seeds as well. At the same Cafe they used to sell whole rotisserie chickens which could be seen turning around in the oven. They smelt divine and tasted even better.

The cakes in Fiji were strange to my eyes. All the cakes were piped or iced with fresh cream. I think they were sponge cakes. Coming from Sri Lanka and being a kid I was expecting butter cream icing like back home. Fresh cream on a cake seemed strange to me and not as appealing. Although now I would love to eat a cake topped with cream. Scones also were foreign to me since we had never heard of them in Sri Lanka, but later while in Australia I did become a big fan.

Christmas Memories

2009-12-20T19:23:00.000-08:00

Although I am not Christian, I love Christmas. I have many memories from Christmases past. I have always loved the pageantry associated with Christmas from when I was a small child. It is a season of joy and celebration. A time for cooking and enjoying good food, community and decorating. The Christmas season encompasses all these plus it has such a magical air to it! I love the beauty of Christmas trees and decorations, sending and receiving Christmas cards, singing Christmas carols, Santa Claus, dressing up, giftgiving and parties. Of course not forgetting the most important reason of all being the religious significance of Christmas.

Going back to my childhood once again, my earliest memory of Christmas is when I was around 3 years old when we used to live in Los Angeles, California. I remember visiting my neighbor Heather, she used to live a few apartments down at the UCLA student Housing complex. She was about the same age as me. I have a vivid memory of her mother baking ginger bread cookies in the kitchen. Heather gave me a candy cane filled with chocolates. She was wearing a pretty green tartan dress with a pretty brooch of a miniature christmas tree studded with colored stones. I immediately fell in love with her brooch.

Later, we went to Heather's house for their Chrismas party. In the living room there was a huge decorated Christmas tree which was all lit up. Alll the kids were given gifts of little wristwatches.I have pictures of me at the party, unfortunately they are in my childhood album back in Kandy. I have to wait to post them to the blog at a later date.

We returned to Sri Lanka in December 1970 just before Christmas. We flew Pan Am and the inside of the aircraft was decorated for Christmas. On our meal tray there was a little snowman made of wood which I kept for the longest time. Our plane stopped for refuelling in Anchorage, Alaska, it was snowing, just perfect for the season!

In 1971 while we were living in the Gal Bungalawa (Stone Bungalow), Mahakande, our neighbors celebrated Christmas. They were known to my parents from their undergraduate days at the University of Peradeniya. Our neighbors also had just returned to Sri Lanka from postgraduate studies in England and the husband was on the Faculty at University of Peradeniya. While he was Buddhist, his wife was a Christian lady from Moratuwa. She was very nice, friendly and was an excellent cook. She was wonderful at baking cakes and all the Sri Lankan short eats such as patties, cutlets and rolls. According to my Mother, she herself learnt a lot about making short eats and cooking meats such as liver curry from our neighbor. That Christmas, they had the most wonderful Christmas tree with beautiful decorations brought from England plus twinkling electric lights. I remember some of the decorations were little christmas lanterns with a candle inside which I thought were gorgeous.

The next Christmas I remember is after we had moved to a 'C' bungalow within the main Campus of University of Peradeniya. At that time I was around six years old and our household helper Meenam revived my interst in Chrismas once again. Meenam was a young Tamil girl from a Tea Estate in Maskeliya. She spoke Sinhala quite well since the previous family that she worked for were also Sinhalese.That family was Catholic and they had two little girls. Meenam used to tell me stories about how they had celebrated Christmas. The father of the family had dressed up as Father Christmas ( Nattal Seeya) and had brought the girls presents and they had had a beautiful Christmas tree. After hearing that I wanted to have my own Christmas tree! So my father got me a Cypress branch and I was able to decorate a Christmas tree with home made decorations. My mother helped me to make the decorations, she drew a star on cardboard for the tree top and we decorated it with gold colored foil. We also used gold tinsel garlands. I don't remember specifically what the other decorations were but they were all cardboard cutouts covered with colored foil from chocolate wrappers. My brother and I were at Kandy Convent in Montessori at the time. Meenam used to wait for us till we finished. Coincidentally, it happened that while he waited for us, she saw the two girls (at whose home she worked previously) also at Kandy Convent.

In 1974 when I went onto Grade One we really got into the Christmas season at school. I remember we sang many Christmas carols. 'Kalakata pera e Bethleheme' was a Sinhala carol that we sang in the same tune as 'Mary's boychild Jesus Christ'. We also sang all the popular carols and Christmas songs in English such as 'Silent Night', 'Away in a Manger' and 'Santa Claus is coming to town'. Our Grade class teacher also decorated a cypress Christmas tree in our classroom. I loved the smell of the cypress. The deorations were not very sophisticated but it was lovely nonetheless.

As we prepared to close the term for the Christmas holidays, our class teacher who we called Bernie teacher told us we could send her a Christmas card if we liked. She wrote her address on the blackboard in English. We all copied it down, I wrote it at the back of my Maths book. Bernie teacher reviewed what I had written and made some minor corrections to the lettering. But she was quite impressed at how well I had copied the address in English, considering the fact that English was a second language at our school. If my memory serves me correctly, she took it to the front of the class and showed it to the other girls as an example of good writing. During the Christmas vacation I sent a Christmas card to Bernie Teacher. It was a wonderful surprise to receive a card back from her! It was a small handmade card made out of a beautiful textured cream colored card paper. She had pasted a picture of a pair of bells on the front and written inside the card in black stylised writing. I was so pleased to receive the card and thought it was so beautiful, it was very precious to me.

A few years after we had moved to Fiji, during Christmas 1978, I decided that my cupboard dollhouse deserved a proper Christmas celebration. Hence, I decorated a Christmas tree and fireplace with candles in the living room. All my dolls sat down to Christmas dinner replete with Christmas Cake in the ktchen. I was so excited about my mini Christmas scenery that I asked my father to take pictures of the scenes.

Below are the pictures :

Christmas in the dollhouse living room

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Christmas dinner in the dollhouse

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Around the same time, my mother was given a gift of a cookbook authored by Charmaine Solomon called 'The Asian Cookbook'. It was a huge book, a coffee table edition. It had beautiful full page photographs and she had devoted a whole chapter to her native Sri Lanka. In it was the receipe for 'Ceylon Christmas Cake'. For Christmas 1980 my mother tried out the receipe from her book. It was a knockout, that cake was the most delicious Christmas cake I had ever tasted! That began a tradition of baking Christmas cake in my family that lasted for over and beyond the next decade.

Around 1981 I visited my friend who lived in Fiji , their family was also from Sri Lanka. For Christmas she had a table top mini christmas tree decorated with colored baubels. Although the branches were made of plastic it looked wonderful. After seeing her tree I decided I had to get a plastic tree as well. So I went ahead and got the same kind of tree and decorated it with store bought decorations such as tinsel, colored bells and baubels.

In 1985 I moved onto Australia with my mother and brothers and I completed Year 12 of high school in Brisbane. As Christmas approached Christmas decorations were put out for sale. I spotted some reasonably priced packets of decorations at the Coles department store. They were made out of rigifoam and made in China. But they really looked nice. I bought some of those and also bought 'ribbony' Christmas baubles. Our father was working in Marshall Islands at the time. So for the long holidays in December we all joined him there. For Christmas I once again set up my mini platic tree and hung all the decorations I had bought. It was the most complete tree I had decorated to date. My mother made the Ceylon Christmas cake and my father decided it was excellent to distribute it to all his work associates. So my parents visited all of them and took them Christmas cake which they all loved.

My decorated Christmas Tree-December 1985

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Christmas Tree in front of City Hall, Brisbane, Queensland, Australia-December 1989

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At the end of 1989, I had finished university and I joined my parents and younger brother in the Marshall Islands. I bought another table top Christmas tree there. It was kind of pinus like and the branches looked like bottle brush.

After that I stopped decorating trees for a while. After I had come back to the US and lived there for a couple of years, one Winter I got the urge to decorate for Christmas once again. By then it was Christmas 2005. Every evening as I went home from work, I used to pass the '99 cent' store. There I saw these little Christmas trees which were real live pines. They had decorations on them as well and you could plant them after Christmas was over. So I decided to buy two of those. Then I searched the store for more decorations, I got tinsel, pointsettias, red bows and a red 'stocking'. I took them all home and decorated the fireplace with them. I also found a little Nativity Scene there which I placed on the mantle piece. I decided I needed more decorations so I went to 'Target' and got little glass baubels and a packet of assorted mini decorations to hang on the trees. My Christmas decorations were all up and finally I took pictures.

Below are the pictures I took. (Double click each picture for a closeup view)

Christmas 2005

Below are pictures of Christmas decorations at the 'Grove' shopping center in Los Angeles, California from Christmas 2008:

Notice Santa's Sleigh behind the giant Christmas tree.

(Double click each picture below for a closeup view)

Christmas tree closer view

Ginger bread house below

Christmas Tree at the '3rd St. Farmer's Market' next to 'The Grove ' shopping center.

This Christmas I won't be decorating , but I am planning to bake a scrumptious cake according to a Middle Eastern receipe. I will be using rulang (semolina) and cashews and orange juice in this cake. I'm actually supposed to use walnuts but I decided to make it Sri Lankan by adding cashews instead.

Halloween-updated with pics!

2009-11-23T11:38:00.000-08:00

Okay, I ended up doing nothing this past Halloween, having dressed up for the past four years in a row.

Since I might cause a stampede if I posted pics of me dressed up as an adult. I thought the next best alternative would be to post some pics of me dressed up as a clown when I was a young lady of almost four in Los Angeles, circa 1970!

Be sure to double click the pictures for a better view!

During October I had been getting emails about Halloween parties in Colombo from the "Sri Lankan Nightlife Group" on Facebook. Just curious are any of you members of that group?

I've never been to a Halloween party in Sri Lanka seems like now its becoming part of the Holidays in Sri Lanka. Have any of you had the experience of dressing up for Halloween in Sri Lanka? I looked at the participants on the "Sri Lankan Nightlife Group" on Facebook for the Halloween event, looks like there are a lot of people from International schools. Does this mean that most of the Halloween dressing up crowd is younger i.e. teenagers or twenties?

When I moved to the States I was fascinated by the dressing up aspect of Halloween. So for a couple of years I dressed up as another persona.It was pretty fun to become someone else for a night.Here in the US most of the costumes seem to emphasize sexiness for women.I was wondering if costumes are available in Sri Lanka or do people have to make them themselves?

Ok- I have reposted- My Garden- a Story told in Flowers

2009-11-23T01:56:00.002-08:00

Please take a look ! I have edited and reposted 'My Garden- a Story told in Flowers'.

It looks a lot better than when I originally posted it!

My sincere apologies-regarding My Garden posting

2009-11-22T23:30:00.001-08:00

I'm sorry for the state of my latest blog posting entitled 'My Garden- a story told in Flowers'.

I hit the publish key by mistake and it was published in an unedited state.

I am working on correcting it right now and hope to get the final version downloaded asap.

My garden- a story told in flowers

2009-11-22T12:15:00.001-08:00

Why I love Gardening
It is exciting to plant a rose cutting or sow some seeds in the ground and wait for them to take root and sprout leaves. It is even more exciting to see them bloom for the first time. Most locales in Sri Lanka are blessed with abundant rain which allows gardens to flourish in no time.

I have enjoyed taking a walk in the garden each morning or evening looking at the flowers, deheading the dead roses and flowering shrubs allowing them to grow new shoots and flower buds. It has given me so much satisfaction to enjoy the fruits of my labor.

A garden can be truly like an artist's canvas, where you are free to exercise your creativity.

Gardens promote peace and can be a great source of solace and stress relief. In my times of mental stress or turmoil, my garden has been something I have thrown myself heart and soul into and been rewarded in a positive way.

Note:

I have many pictures throughout this blog posting. Please double click on each picture to enlarge the picture for a better view.

Some views of my Garden after thinning and replanting - September 2009

My first experience with Gardening

My first experience with gardening that I can remember is when I planted a purple raja pohottu plant (globe amaranth) at our home at the University of Peradeniya, I was about six years old. The seeds I had obtained when we visited Sigiriya with a group of university students. My parents had been asked to chaperone a bus load of students from one of the girls' halls. It was magic to see how the seeds took root and emerged into a plant with blooms of its own.

Cottage style Gardening
I like to grow my garden in a cottage garden style. This means that my garden consists of a mixture of plants such as flowering vines, perennial flowering shrubs and roses, green leafy plants and flowering annuals. It creates an attractive but fuss free landscape of various shapes and colors.

My favorite plants tend to be those that have been part of the story of my life. Some of these flowers are what was in our garden when I was a child growing up in Kandy (University of Peradeniya), Sri Lanka. Other flowers are what I encountered at my grandparents house in Udubadana (close to Welimada).

When I visited my grandparents home as a child the flowers I recall were: roses, marigolds, jasmine, yesterday today tomorrow, dahlias and chrysanthemums. The climate at Udubadana was cooler than that of Kandy being at a higher elevation, and therefore was conducive to growing flowers such as roses.

Since we lived at the University quarters in Peradeniya our own home in Kandy had been rented out. It was not till 1996 that I finally had the chance to live there myself. My Mom had lived there before marriage and that was the house I was born in but we left when I was nine months old. During the time my Mother lived there, she had established a small garden. As a child I remember visiting the house on ocassion. On those visits I noticed that my Mom had grown lavender colored mini daisys and barbetons. However, with renovations of the original house in latter years the whole garden was destroyed.

On my most recent visit to Kandy in June 2009, I replanted the same lavender mini daisys and barbetons that my Mom had planted many years ago.

lavender mini daisys

Red barbeton flower

Red barbeton Barbeton plants in flower bed (bottom of picture)

Retablishing the garden in 1996

When we moved back to the house in 1996 I was eager to start a flower garden again. I began the garden with plant cuttings and seeds acquired from friends and relatives. The rest of my plants I acquired as small plants from nurseries. I made it a point then to bring back cuttings from my cousin's house at Udubadana of around five different varieties of roses.When we returned home I planted them straight in the ground (with another cousin's help) and they took root and grew into the bushes that they now are.

Roses from cousin
Below are roses that I grew from the cuttings from my cousin.

Magenta rose with an 'eye'

Magenta rose with an 'eye' -closeup view

Orange baby roses

Salmon pink baby roses. This rose has subsequently disappeared from my garden, having being overpowered by larger plants.

White baby rose with multi petals.

Why roses are my favorite flower

I would have to say that my most favorite type of flower is the rose. As a child living in Peradeniya in our garden there were roses which were of the 'common' variety. I for the most part prefer those common roses to the various bud roses that people grow. These common roses are quite hardy and only appear in a few basic colors like white, pink, maroon and magenta. I find that the smaller blooms of common roses have a beauty of their own. I do not like using pesticides or hormones which are essential for bud roses. If the insects come to eat my flowers I tolerate them or if I really need to I use soap water or spray them with water to stop them from attacking my blooms. I try my best to allow insects such as butterflies and bugs to enjoy the garden as much I do.

Below are the common roses I encountered during my childhood and which I now grow in my own garden.

Pink common rose

Pink multi petal common baby rose.

I was able to find this rose and plant it in my garden. However sadly it has since disappeared from my garden, a casualty of letting bigger plants grow unchecked. During my visit this year to Kandy I tried to find a plant or cutting of the same variety without success. I would love to have this rose back in my garden, it holds so much nostalgia for me.

Pink multi petal common baby rose

(close up view).

This is a Pink Common baby rose.

It was not around in Sri Lankan gardens when I was a kid. However, when I returned to Sri Lanka in 1996 I found it to be a commonly grown garden rose. It was so pretty that I made sure to incorporate it into my own garden.

As you might have noted from my earlier pictures in this blog posting, this variety of baby rose comes in dark orange and salmon pink as well. I got those colors from my cousin ( as you can see in the pictures above). However the pink is the most commonly found variety.

At the university house we lived in in the 1970’s there was an arch of climbing white roses that framed our doorway. In 1996 I obtained a cuttings of the same variety when I visited my cousins who lived at my Dad’s ancestral village of Udubadana and replanted the cuttings in our garden at Kandy.

climbing white roses

These magenta roses are multi petaled, and ramblers like the white roses above. I grew them from cuttings. I remember the roses that grew in my grandparents garden in Udubadana were similar except that the color was maroon.

Other common roses that I have planted in my garden are pictured below:

Light pink common rose

I obtained this planted from a nursery although it's commonly found in many Sri Lankan gardens.

Very light pink common rose- fades to a white color and has rectangular petals. I grew this from a cutting.

This is the same rose variety as it begins to fade to white.

Marigolds

I love marigolds as well, there are so many varieties. My favorites now are the bicolor dwarf varieties. I love the pungent smell of marigolds in addition to the variety of shapes and colors. As a child in Fiji I grew a big marigold plant in our back yard from which I would offer flowers before school each morning at the Buddha Shrine in our home.

These are regular size orange marigolds in my garden, they grow quite tall.

Yellow marigold

Dwarf bicolor marigold (click on pic for bigger view)

Fragrant Flowers

Other flowers I like and grow in my garden are fragrant flowers such as: jasmine (gata pichcha and saman pichcha), araliya, Hendrikka (4 o'clocks), dianthus(carnation) and ginger flower. Gata pichcha which is a jasmine that propagates as a runner was part of the hedge of the house we lived in at the Peradeniya University during the seventies. It had also been planted by my Mom's Grandma at our house in Kandy and continues to grow over forty years later. At the second home we lived in Fiji there were white ginger flowers that had the most beautiful smell. I had been looking all over to grow such a plant in Kandy and I finally found it in my Mom's Aunt's garden in June this year.

I'm sorry the picture below is very small. Click it to make it a bit bigger. This pic shows myself and my brother sitting next to the Gata pichcha (Jasmine) hedge that grew in the front garden of the Peradeniya University bungalow where we lived 1973-1975.

White Hendrikka (4 o'clocks)

This White Hendrikka plant was initially found at the bottom of the garden next to the well. It prompted me to go on a hunt for the other colors as well.

Yellow Hendrikka (4 o'clocks)

Bicolor-Yellow and Magenta Hendrikka (4 o'clocks)

Magenta Hendrikka (4 o'clocks)- has now disappeared from the garden but can be easily reestablished either using the tubers or black seeds.

dianthus(carnation) -Magenta/ White bicolor

Begonias and other Foliage plants

In addition to flowering plants, I also like plants with beautiful leaves such as begonias. I have finally realized that plants grow best in the ground rather than in pots, during my absence from our home in Sri Lanka , my cousins had taken many of my potted foliage plants and planted them in the ground where they had grown into hardy bushes. This time I was in Sri Lanka long enough to revamp the front garden and remove some of these bushes and basically to thin out the plants in the front garden where it looked somewhat neater.

This picture shows the garden initially in June 2009 in a ' jungle state'.

This second photo reflects the garden after I thinned out the plants, removing the leafy plants and leaving the flowering plants.

Grouping plants of same variety together

Finally, I grow any plant that catches my attention due to its beauty in shape and form. I like to grow different colors of the same variety of plants and group them together. I have done this with Pentas carnea which comes in various shades (white, lavender, red and pink) . I did the same type of grouping with Hendrikka (yellow, white, magenta, magenta/white bicolor and yellow/magenta bicolor) which is reflected in the pictures above.

Pentas carnea (white, lavender and red)

Pentas carnea - pink (click on pic to enlarge)

Pentas carnea-white

Grouping plants according to Sun, Shade and Moisture needs

Through experience and some times trial and error I have learnt what kind of sun exposure and moisture each plant needs and I have tried to position each plant in the best suited enviroment. For instance, I have planted and grouped foliage plants and certain flowering plants that prefer shade or partial shade in shady areas and annuals in sunny areas. I have found that roses do well either in full sun or partial shade. Ground orchids, impatiens, today tomorrow yesterday and a kind of bell shaped purple flower and another trumpet shaped red flower with both have fleshy leaves all are flowering plants that prefer shade or partial shade.

On the left are the foliage plants and begonias that I originally grew in pots. In my absence my cousins had planted them in the ground. Some of them survived and grew into hardy bushes and even completely taking over parts of the garden. So much so that I had to thin them out and replant them in other shady spots in the garden.

Below are foliage plants (e.g. begonias) that I replanted in the ground in shady areas:

This is Episcia cupreata it is a trailing plant that has a beautiful red or pink flower, it can also be grown in hanging pots. It has several different varieties, in the picture you can see that some have dark brownish green leaves and others have light green leaves. (click on the pic for a better view)

Impatiens flowers of various colors growing in a shady area. (click on picture for better view)

Yesterday today tomorrow grows better in partial shade.

Light purple ground orchids in partial shade. This is the most commonly found ground orchid color in Sri Lankan gardens. Also comes in white but is less common. The white variety and light purple grown side by side look perfect together.

Dark purple ground orchids in partial shade. This orchid was obtained from a nursery but is no longer in my garden.

This is the bell shaped light purple flower with large fleshy leaves that grows in shade. I don't know what its called.

These are bell shaped red flowers growing best in partial shade. I would be interested in knowing the name of these plants if any one knows.

They make perfect companions to 'Poondalu' (impatiens balsamina ) the purple color of which you can also catch a glimpse of in this picture.

Flowering Vines

I have included flowering vines in my garden as they add a romantic touch to the whole setting, especially if they are trained to climb an arch. At one time I had several arches in my garden with different vines growing on them. However, in my absence they had been removed as the birds built nests in the vines and the nests in turn attracted snakes.

This is the pink antignon vine in my garden. I also had the white variety, the contrast of the two varieties together is beautiful. Unfortunately, the white antignon has since died out being less hardy than the pink variety.

This vine is called bleeding heart (clerodendron thomsoniae).

Below are pictures of the arches that I had in my garden at one time along with various flowering vines which had been removed in my absence since they said they attracted snakes.

This light purple flowered vine is called thunbergia grandiflora. It also has a white flowered variety which is less robust. (click on picture to enlarge)

This vine with white flowers is one that I obtained from one of the flower fairs at the Vihara Maha Devi Park in Colombo.

These vines are katarolu -here you see the light purple variety. In the background you can see the buds of the bright blue katarolu (clitoria ternatea). There is also a white variety. They spread from seed so if you are not careful they will take over your whole garden.

The following three pictures show the arches that I had built in my garden to run my floral vines on. The arches have subsequently been removed.

Purple flowers

In keeping with the cottage garden style I have included flowers that are purple in color in my garden as shown below:

How was the Kottu blogger meetup?

2009-09-21T06:50:00.002-07:00

Hi Everyone,

I've been busy with 'real life' and away from my blog for a few weeks, hope to blog something before the month is up! Not that what I blog about is not real life :) Hope no bloggers take offense to that!

Just got the news that there was a Kottu blogger meetup? How did that go? Would love to know what happened!

Re:"added new pics to my posts!"-Links on my last posting now working!

2009-08-15T07:12:00.003-07:00

The links on my last posting called " added new pics to my posts!" were not working earlier.

Try them now they are working!

Added new pics to my posts!

2009-08-15T05:07:00.015-07:00

Just a note: I've added some pictures to some of my older postings. Unfortunately, I'm posting the pics a little late.

Please click on the links below for the pics, and also be sure to click on the pics themselves for a clearer view:

from USA to Sri Lanka-1970

my childhood in sri lanka in the seventies

my childhood attraction to miniatures

>my ninth birthday party also in sri lanka

>journey from kandy to a south pacific island

Welcome to Fiji - a different world

2009-08-14T04:12:00.014-07:00

Coming from Sri Lanka to Fiji in the mid seventies I found it was like a different world. There were many things that were new to me. Differences ran across the board from food, the house we lived in, roads, stores, school, clothes, language and the culture.

The first thing I noticed was the food. Our Dad was eagerly waiting to welcome us. He had stocked the fridge and kitchen full of goodies that were not available back in Sri Lanka at that time due to severe economic restrictions. Amongst the goodies that we now take for granted were, apples, oranges, Kraft cheddar cheese, Cabin crackers, Cadbury chocolate bars,Tang, sliced bread, instant Nescafe coffee, sliced ham, frankfurters,lamb, hotdog buns and ice cream.

The fruits were Australian, the apples were bright red and the huge oranges which were bright orange. Apples were non existant at that time in Sri Lanka. The closest I had had to an apple was something called 'pears' that was a kind of pear only found in Nuwara Eliya. Even the oranges were different to the local Sri Lankan oranges which only turned greenish yellow when ripe. They also had something called Tang which was the orange crystals that you dissolved to make a drink.

The cabin crackers came in a big square tin and were similar to cream crackers but were slightly sweet. The Cadbury chocolate was way creamier than the Kandos chocolate that seemed to be the only choice available in Sri Lanka back then. Tang was the orange crystal drink that you made with water. The sliced bread was cut into neat, even slices and so clean although rather soft. We were finally able to enjoy bread again after suffering the 'gullo (weevil) bread' of Sri Lanka. Nescafe coffee was also a pleasure to drink, the Sri Lankan coffee always had too many 'rodu' (bits of coffee grind) in it. Sliced ham, frankfurters and hotdogs were not available to us while we were back in Sri Lanka. We finally got the chance to enjoy ice cream everyday right at home. The ice cream was imported from New Zealand and was sold in plastic tubs. It came in many different flavors. Lamb chops were a common food item from New Zealand and oh so delicious although I have since given it up.

Journey from Kandy to a South Pacific Island

2009-08-14T03:10:00.015-07:00

Just a few months before my tenth birthday, my younger brother, myself and my Mom left Sri Lanka to join our Dad who had taken up a new job at a university in the Fiji Islands.We left Sri Lanka in December soon after we got our school holidays.

This picture in my school uniform was takenin 1976, for my new passport, a few months before we left Sri Lanka. However, my brother and I were allowed to travel on our Mom's passport as accompanying children. So we ended up not needing our own passports.

We flew out of Colombo's Katunayake Airport on Suisse Air. I used to dream about what it was like to fly on an aeroplane and now I was actually flying, I was very excited. On the same flight were a family whose Dad had also taught at University of Peradeniya and who were now migrating to Australia.

During the flight people around us were speaking in English. Until that time, my brother and I didn't get a chance to speak English. Although my Mom did read English books to us out loud .
So while my brother and I could understand the language we were reticent to speak it. So I listened attentively to the people talking around me including kids. What struck me was how the native speakers around us on the flight pronounced the words differently to how Sri Lankans spoke it. One word in particular was the word 'Air' as in Suisse Air.

Seated next to us on the flight was a young Sri Lankan lady who had a bad cold, however she had forgotten her handkerchief. So my Mom gave her some blue pin striped scrap material from a sailor dress that she had been sewing for me. This young woman was on her way to Melbourne to join her husband there.

On that flight from Colombo to Singapore they served us lobster for lunch which was quite a treat.I don't think you can get that kind of food in economy class any more. Since we were kids travelling, they gave my brother and I both coloring books and crayons as well as a book with scenery onto which you could transfer pictures of figures etc. The picture transfers could be rub bed off onto the scenes in the book.They also gave us little bars of Swiss chocolates and postcards.

At that time they were building a new terminal at the Singapore Aiport, so we were transported from the plane to the terminal by bus. While we were on the bus they made an announcement saying that someone had left their bag on the plane and even mentioned the passenger's name. It turned out later that it was one of our carry on bags. However, at the time my Mom did not pay any attention since the name they announced was her maiden name.Once we were in the terminal we discovered the bag was missing and contacted the airport staff. Then my Mom was given a pictorial list of bags and told to select our bag from it. To my amazement there was a bag that looked exactly like our missing bag. Since we correctly identified the missing bag they gave it back to us.

The next leg of our journey was a flight on CP Air (Canadian Pacific Air) from Singapore to Sydney, Australia. I remember they served us breakfast before we landed. I vaguely seem to recall marmalade and some sort of bread. After a short stopover we boarded our flight to Fiji which if I remember correctly was on Air Pacific and landed at Nadi, Fiji. From Nadi we had to take an internal flight of about 45 minutes duration, on a smaller Air Pacific plane to Suva. Suva was our final destination and is the the capital city of Fiji. At Nadi Airport we passed by a little snack shop. I remember they had cheese sandwiches and a spinning orange juice machine with an orange fixed at the top. This was a novelty to me coming from mid 70's Sri Lanka.

On board that flight my Mom was sitting next to a Tongan man wearing a mat with frizzy hair. Tonga was a smaller island nation neighboring Fiji and the national costume for men was a sulu (which was similar to a skirt) over which a woven pandanus mat was worn. The sulu was also the national costume in Fiji and was worn all over the South Pacific.

During the flight, my Mom had seen smoke rising from the ground and she was kind of concerned. She asked the Tongan man if they were from live volcanoes. To her relief he said, "No there are no volcanoes in Fiji". I seem to recall that the airhostesses had red hibiscus flowers stuck behind their ears. Maybe I'm confusing it with the Air Pacific brochures at the time which all had them with hibiscuses behind their ears. The flight was short so no meal was served, instead the air hostesses came around with baskets of wrapped sweets.

New Pictures: Gal Bangalawa /BDay Party

2009-07-28T08:09:00.006-07:00

Hello everyone!

Just wanted to let everyone know that I've posted some new pictures on my blogspot. To see the pictures please take a look at my postings on the " Gal Bangalawa (Stone Bungalow) at Mahakande " and " My ninth birthday party"

Day trip - Kandy to Colombo and English High Tea

2009-07-24T03:49:00.012-07:00

My Mother and I caught the inter-city train to Colombo from Peradeniya Junction early Wednesday morning at about 6.30am. It was the day of the latest partial solar eclipse. It was our first time riding in the observation car. We bought our tickets a few days in advance so we sat right at the rear end of the train facing the rear window. When we got on the train there was a lady sitting there, apparently her seat was the one behind us so she changed seats. I had expected there to be foreign tourists in the observation carriage but everyone was local. Most of them were sleeping, I guess they were used to riding in the observation car. We had a panoramic view from where we sat but the carriage was also a little warm from the sun against which we had to draw the curtains from time to time.

We arrived at Colombo Fort railway station at about 9.05am. Then we used the toilets after paying Rs 5, but the toilets were not clean. Since we were in a hurry we had to make do. After that we caught a bus to Kollupitiya and then another bus to UNDP office where we had to get a form signed. Coming out of the office we saw Shanti Vihar and decided to have lunch there although it was early. My Mother decided to order rice for both of us. Bad choice, I had wanted to order paratha or dosa, maybe next time! After that we walked a long way, then finally took a 3 wheeler to Liberty Plaza. We wondered around inside, there were the usual crowd including locals and foreign tourists. We bought a few articles of Sri Lanka made clothing which seemed reasonably priced. After leaving Liberty Plaza we went to a clothing shop close to Galle road and bought an Indian handloom sari for my Mother in a subdued earth color that she now prefers to wear.

By then it was time for my Mother's appointment at the US Embassy to collect her new US passport. Two weeks previously my Mother had submitted her application for a new passport. At that time I had to hang around sweating, waiting for her across the street in the blistering heat. This time my Mother had discovered that US nationals were allowed inside the Embassy. So I showed them my US passport and was allowed to accompany my Mother inside. Once there, she was promptly given her new passport and we were on our way.

We had one more stop to make before returning to Kandy. I had always wanted to try an English High Tea in Sri Lanka. I had heard that the Hilton High Teas were legendary. I called them up and I came to the conclusion that they were too pricey and I would be getting music and a vast assortment of food that went far beyond the authentic English High Tea experience that I was looking for. I had done some previous homework on a few other places serving High Tea and decided upon the Mt. Lavinia Hotel.

So we walked back to Kollupitiya Junction and caught a bus to Mount Lavinia. We told the bus conductor that we wanted to go to the Mt. Lavinia Hotel and aked him to tell us when we reached our stop. As we approached our stop, a lady sitting behind us was helpful enough to tell us that we should get off at the next stop and take a 3 wheeler from the main road. So we did as she had instructed us.

We arrived at the Mt. Lavinia Hotel around 3pm as they served their Bicentennial High Tea from 3.30pm until 6pm. It was served at the Terrace Restaurant of the Hotel which is located next to the Pool.

Each of us was presented with a three tiered serving tray filled with one each of the following items: scone with jam and clotted cream, finger sandwiches (cucumber, fish, cheese, asparagus) , chocolate eclair, curried fish tart, fruit tart, chocolate covered strawberry, chocolate cake and fruitcake. Of course, a pot of tea with cream and sugar was included. The price per head including taxes came out to Rs. 800. I was very happy with the tea and accompaniments which were pretty authentic. The location was ideal to enjoy a relaxing afternoon tea.We had a beautiful view of the ocean and we could see how the Colombo skyline curved down from Colombo Harbour all the way to Mt. Lavinia. Great location for people watching too, people were eating or just relaxing in the wood framed rattan chairs of the Terrace and others swimming or lazing about the pool. There was a mix of locals and tourists on the Terrace and in the pool and everyone seemed to be having fun. The charge for using the pool (according to the staff who served us) was Rs. 600 for the whole day and included towels, a beach chair and umbrella.

We spent about two hours enjoying our tea at the Terrace. Then it was time to return, so we caught a 3 wheeler back to the main road again and a bus back to Pettah which took us almost one hour. We immediately caught an intercity bus heading to Kandy which departed at about 6pm. Since we boarded the bus as it was about to leave we had to sit on the jump seats in the isle of the bus. The seats were fine except when we people at the back had to get off and we had to stand up and fold our seats back to let them get past. Fortunately, this didn't happen more than four times.We had encountered a lot of traffic and it took us an hour just to reach Kadawatha. After that the traffic lessened and the total journey from Pettah to Peradeniya (Kandy) turned out to be almost 3.5 hours.

Thanks for posting comments on my blog:)

2009-07-23T23:48:00.004-07:00

Hey Kaiser Kobayashi, Lazy Owl and everyone else who posted comments on my last posting,

I really appreciate your comments and it's encouraging to know that you are following my blog :)
It would be great too, if you mention your own blog name when you post comments so that I can go look at your blogs as well. If you want to keep your comments anonymous that's perfectly okay too :)

Kottu has an excellent bunch of blog writers, I feel privileged to be on here amongst them :) I feel kinda humbled when I read some of the brilliant writing on here!
Kudos to indi for creating Kottu!

Is anyone reading my blog?

2009-07-23T04:16:00.000-07:00

I haven't blogged for a few weeks, though I do keep checking my blog and email to see if anyone has posted any comments on my blog.

Makes me wonder if I'm getting any hits on my blog. It would be so nice to see that someone has actually read some of what I've written. Oh well Lol maybe one day :) In the meantime I'll just keep blogging for my own enjoyment, which is mainly what blogging for me is all about.

Gal Bangalawa (Stone Bungalow) at Mahakande

2009-07-01T02:04:00.053-07:00

The beautiful bungalow in the picture is the Gal Bungalawa (Stone Bungalow) where I lived as a four year old in 1971 with my parents and brother. It was part of the University of Peradeniya Academic Quarters and is located at Mahakande, Sri Lanka. This two storeyed Bungalow had at one time been a tea Planter's Bungalow. The exterior walls of which are studded with stone hence the name Gal Bangalawa (Stone Bungalow). It stands nestled at the foot of the Hantane mountains and at the time we lived there we had no idea of its history but we recently learnt that it had been built around 1939 by a Tea planter named Colonel Thomas Yates Wright. His wife had been the architect of the design of this beautiful historical building. I am sure it must have cost a fortune to build.

Colonel Yates had published a book called "Ceylon in my time 1889-1949" in 1951 and he makes reference to this house in his book.

Below is a picture from the book-Queen Elizabeth II-opening the Univ. of Peradeniya in 1954

The bungalow stands on a small hill and below the bungalow is a roundabout with a road which encircles the round about.

There were frangipani trees on either side of the steps that led up to the house from the roadway. Below the road was a large garden with beautiful flowering shrubs and a fountain. Off to one side of the road were huge shade bearing trees some of which were madatiya(which was a tree that used to shed red madatiya seeds). Under these trees was a headstone which was the memorial to one of the beloved dogs of Colonel and Mrs. Wright. At that time I had no idea that it belonged to a dog, I used to imagine that it belonged to a dead person and used to wonder who it might have been.

Our family was given the upper right wing of the bungalow(on the above picture that would be on the left side). And it's the upper bay-wing shown in the picture below (left).
The upper left wing (pictured below) was occupied by another family who became our close friends.

Pictured also is the green bathroom of the upper left wing.

The bottom floor was also divided into two separate wings and one family lived in each of those wings as well. The ground floor had a big verandah onto which all the ground floor rooms opened up.

This house made a huge impression on me even though I was just four years old at the time.The house was undoubtedly beautiful, had a lot of character and atmosphere.I still remember the musty smell in the house and how the ceilings often used to leak when it rained. There were also a lot of mouse droppings in corners and we had no choice but to set traps for the mice when we first arrived. At night if we left the windows open, small bats used to fly into the house.

Each wing had bay windows on the front of the house and there was a big bay window in the center frontage of the upper floor of the house. The bay windows all had roofs above them. The glass on the windows had iron grids on them to simulate leaded glass windows.

All the rooms on the upper floor had a fireplace, which we never actually used. I'm not sure if the original owners actually lit fires in those fireplaces. Each wing had one or two bathrooms each with tiled walls and floors. Below pictured is our bathroom on the upper right wing.

On the top floor the kitchen was located at the back of the house and had windows all around. On the floor of the kitchen was a wooden trap door which closed off the staircase which led down from the kitchen to the ground floor. The picture below shows the bedroom in which my brother and I used to sleep. The open doorway shows the kitchen. Our bedroom room was a small room and did not have any windows, but did have two doors on either side instead. At night our parents used to switch on a green night light for us so we wouldn't be afraid of the dark.

The bay windows in the middle of the upper floor had window seats all around. The floors of the house were beautiful too since they were all made of polished wood planks.

The entrance hallway of the house had a fireplace and the floor was wood parquet.From this hallway began a wooden staircase that led up from the ground floor to a landing and then the staircase continued to the upper floor from that landing. The walls against which the staircase stood were lined with wood panels.

On the left is a picture of the stairwell on the upper floor which opens out onto the living room.

Below (left) is the green latticed walkway which leads from the house to the garages.

Below (right) is a picture of the wood panelled study which is located on the ground floor- front right wing of the house.

Below is a picture of the garages of the house.

The Mahakande Bungalow was a magical place to live in for a child and I think my brother and I were very lucky that we had the chance to live there. I have more wonderful memories of it that I will leave to write about for another day.

My childhood Fashion Dolls and Dollhouse Furniture

2009-06-30T04:29:00.017-07:00

My interest in dollhouses continued onward from the age of seven. Just before I turned ten, my Dad got a job in the Pacific region as an academic in a university there. So my younger Brother, my Mom and I also joined my Dad in the Pacific. I missed Sri Lanka I felt sad to leave my friends and my familiar life there. The journey from Sri Lanka to the Pacific was a long one and that's a story I will write on another day.

When I reached this new country there were toys galore that we didn't have in Sri Lanka, not to mention groceries and other items. The main department store in the City center was called Morris Hedstrom and they had a toy department. Of course I was delighted to spend time there. They had various dollhouse furniture sets made of plastic that I bought from the toy department. These included a blue and white bathroom set and a pink floral bedroom set. These furniture sets seemed to be smaller than 12inch scale in size. I also bought a doll called Daisy by Mary Quant. She had curly blonde hair but she was smaller than playscale but bigger than a 12inch scale doll. Each time we visited the toy department I bought a new set of clothes for Daisy.

During that same year my Dad's boss the Professor who was Italian American moved in to the house next door with his wife who was also a Professor along with their son and daughter. I think we got hold of the Sears Catalogue through them. So from then on we used to get our own bi annual catalogs and I was especially interested in the toy catalogues. They had so many wonderful dollhouses, dollhouse furniture and dolls. I used to dream about owning some of the things in the catalogue. I did end up ordering a Ken doll, a Skipper doll (when you turned her arm she grew taller and acquired a bosom) and a playscale baby doll complete with a set of clothes, crib, bottle and high chair. I saw dollhouses and dollhouse furniture, pools and cars for fashion dolls in the Sears Catalogue but even then I was rather restrained in my spending habits and I think that's the reason I never persuaded my parents to order those items for me. So I used to just dream about owning those things but never did get them.

Miniature clay cooking pots

2009-06-29T04:55:00.006-07:00

When I was about six I used to go to Colombo from Peradeniya with my Dad to get my eyes checked at the Vision House in Colombo. Most times we caught the train to Colombo leaving in the morning and catching the train back in the afternoon. Sometimes, my Dad used to drive to Colombo in our light blue fiat car. One time my we stopped by Kalagedihena which is the stretch of road where they sell clay pottery and my Dad bought me my own set of earthenware mini cooking pots. On another trip he bought me another set of mini pots made of aluminium.

One of our household helpers at the time was a girl from a village in Hunnasgiriya. Sometimes when she cooked lunch I used to ask her to put a portion of the curry in one of my little pots and cook it with firewood in my little hearth which she had made out of clay for me.

Miniature Rice Field ( I was about six or seven)

2009-06-29T03:50:00.012-07:00

Hema, the girl who used to be our nanny and our cook had previously worked in Polonnaruwa transplanting rice and she used to talk about how hot it was there and how it was full of viper snakes (polonga). Hema's heels were permanently cracked from the time she spent at Polonnaruwa. The cracks in her heels were like deep crevices like nothing I had seen before!

After hearing Hema's experiences about planting rice, I got it into my head to grow my own little mini rice paddy field. Hema helped me to pick a spot next to the garden tap for my mini paddy field since rice needs water all the time to grow.

So Hema went ahead and dug up the ground next to the garden tap with the triangle shaped mini hoe that my Grandfather had given me. Then, she proceeded to add water and made the field muddy. After that, she built a low mud wall (bund) around the rectangle shaped rice field and filled the field up with water.

Now it was ready to be sown with paddy (rice) seeds. Hema used the little rice seeds that she had saved from each time she cooked rice and sprinkled them over the rice field. Whenever Hema cooked rice she used to pick through the rice to weed out any rice that was still in its husk and collect it in a little jar. A few days after sowing the rice seeds sprouted up into little seedlings. The trick was to keep the field filled with water while the rice seeds kept growing taller and taller. It took around six months for the rice seeds to grow tall and green and sprout their own rice kernals. Once the rice kernals turned golden they were ready to be harvested.

The harvest from my mini paddy field was very small. But nontheless it was all collected and dried and the husks removed by pounding in a motar. Later I cooked this rice in one of my little earthen ware pots, I had to add some of the kernals collected by Hema from the jar to make a potful.

From USA to Sri Lanka-1970

2009-06-26T04:39:00.019-07:00

My Father was an academic at the University of Peradeniya, Sri Lanka during the sixties and seventies. While my Mother was expecting me, their first child in the sixties, my Father proceeded on to the US to do his MA. When I was nine months old, my Mother and I joined my dad in the States. My younger brother was born in the States the following year.

Note: click on each picture for clearer view

In these two pictures: myself as a toddler in LA, California, 1967-1968.

In the two pics here: I was about 3yrs old in LA, California, 1970.

Just before I turned four our whole family returned to Sri Lanka where my Father resumed his work teaching at the University of Peradeniya.

Soon after we returned we stayed with my Mother's Uncle and Aunt and their large family of five girls and one son. They lived in my Mom's grandparent's ancestral home in a village close to Peradeniya. After a few weeks we moved (carrying our belongings in a lorry) to a house that we rented in Ampitiya which is a suburb of Kandy. I have some glimpses of memory of the time we spent there.

We had nice neighbors at Ampitiya, they had a son a little older than me. I remember visiting them one day dressed in a white/pink cotton dress and I was quite enchanted by their little chicken coop with hens that laid eggs. Our neighbors yard was full of tropical trees. At the time I couldn't speak Sinhala although I understood it (having just returned from the States), so they spoke with me in English. Something else that I remember from that house is how we used to keep the butter in a cut glass dish filled with salted water and a matching glass cover on top. I'm not sure if people still keep their butter this way but this memory fills me with nostalgia. We only stayed in the Ampitiya house for a few months before my Father was allotted University Quarters.

The first quarters that the University gave us were at the Gal Bangalawa (Stone Bungalow) at Mahakande.

Sinhala Avurudu (Sri Lankan New year) in Sri Lanka

2009-06-25T03:13:00.002-07:00

When I was a child, every Sinhala Avurudu (which fell during mid April) our whole family used to visit my Dad's ancestral home in Udubadana where my paternal grandparents lived. My Mom used to supervise the preparation of traditional sweetmeats for the Sinhala Avurudu which was the traditional new year period.One of her specialities was undu walalu (these were deep fried rings made out of ground undu gram) after frying and draining they were placed in a pot of kitul treacle to absorb the sweet treacle. The preparation was from scratch so the undu gram seeds had to be soaked overnight and ground into a paste and they were fermented by the time the batter was made incorporating rice flour. The thick batter was squeezed out into a pan of hot oil through a button hole which had been sewn into the middle of a tea cloth.

My mom's other speciality were little cakes which were baked in small tins with frilly edges. In the bakeries they were sold as 'ispongee cakes' but the variety that my mother made at home were far superior in taste. So my mom had a huge batch of undu walalu and ispongee cake made to take to our grandparents home each Avurudu Season.

Since we lived in Peradeniya (close to Kandy) and our grandparents lived in Udubadana further up in the mountains about 50 miles away we started our journey in the morning and reached Udubadana about 3hours later around noontime. The journey was all uphill through the hill country of Sri Lanka which was mostly full of tea plantations with some areas populated by pinus forests. Our Dad used to recall his childhood stories of his experiences growing up as we continued on our long journey in my Dad's light blue fiat car with a hood rack attached. Onetime my younger brother got motion sickness as my Dad negotiated the numerous elbow bends. So we used to always carry cream crackers on these journeys to conteract any motion sickness.

Sometimes there were little kids (possibly from the tea estates or farms) that used to run up from one bend to the next crying 'Nona , nona' begging for food or money. So we used to stop and give them some food or money. There were also kids along the wayside who used to sell the beautiful wildflowers that thrived in the cooler climes of the mountains.

My brother and I quickly learnt the names of the waterfalls and mountain passes that we encountered along the way, Ramboda Falls, Ramboda Pass.

My ninth Birthday party also in Sri Lanka

2009-06-25T01:23:00.007-07:00

My ninth birthday party was a grand affair, at least in my eyes. We invited some of my Grade 3 classmates from the Kandy Convent and other girls that were my playmates. At the time we lived in a 'B' Bungalow at the Peradeniya University Campus. It was quite a spacious bungalow style house with a huge garden as well. There was a round about in the front garden of the house with a round hedge in the middle of a patch of grass. A little tar sealed road encircled the mini roundabout. There were several varieties of cypress and pine trees that the previous occupants had planted in the front yard along the hedges. This bungalow was right next to the banks of the Mahaweli River and sometimes snakes used to crawl up the outside drains perhaps from the bamboo groves next to the river?

Our 3 older cousins (children of our oldest Uncle) came to help with the preparations for the birthday party. They helped make the numerous short eats ( Sri Lankan savories) for the party. We ordered two sets of bread loaves of from the bakery one was colored light blue and the other light pink. This was for the sandwiches. The sandwiches were well buttered and the fillings included boiled beetroot ,egg salad, and a spread made with canned fish. After the sandwiches were assembled the crusts were trimmed off and each sandwich was cut into four little triangles.

Also on the menu were fish and polos (young jackfruit) cutlets (deep fried balls coated with breadcrumbs. Other items were fish rolls (deep fried fish filled pancakes coated with breadrumbs) and fish patties( similar to samosa).

My Mom had been following some cake decorating classes on the weekends and for my birthday she made me a grand piano cake. She did not have the special tins for the cake so she had to bake two rectangular cakes and cut the shape of the piano with a paper template. The legs of the piano were made out of wood. As I recall we could not find any black food coloring so the key board had to be drawn by hand. The icing on the piano was either a light green or light blue and my mother decorated the piano with roses made out of icing. The cake was a butter cake and the icing on top was also butter icing as was in vogue at the time. That was my most favorite birthday cake, it's too bad that my Dad did not have the camera loaded at the time to take pictures.

I had a thoroughly enjoyable birthday with my friends and family and received many presents. I seem to recall that most of the presents were either dress materials and story books with beautiful pictures, so I had many dresses sewn in the following months. One of the materials was a cotton print of red hearts on a white background and this was made into an a line dress with little cape sleeves.

Celebrating my 6th Birthday Sri Lankan style

2009-06-24T23:26:00.001-07:00

My parents were busy preparing for my 6th Birthday. Both my Mom and Dad stayed up the night before icing the two ribbon cakes that I took the following morning to share with my Kindergarten mates at the Kandy Convent. The ribbon cake was in 3 layers pink, yellow and light blue if I remember correctly. The butter icing on top was also in pastel colors.

I wore a special silky maroon dress with a smocked bodice that my Mom had made for me. The sleeves were puffed. I remember how I went to the upstairs of the Kandy market to select the fabric for the dress.

My dad dropped me and my brother off at kindergarten along with the two cakes. All the children gathered round in a circle in the room which had an open wall which was covered by an iron grid. One of the cakes was placed in the middle of the circle and every one sang happy birthday to me. The teachers cut the cake into small pieces and shared it with all the children. However, I did note that the teacher did not cut the second cake and probably took the whole cake home!

Over the weekend, I had another party at home. Once again my Mom baked me another cake but it was not a ribbon cake this time. I much preferred the ribbon cake. To my party at home we invited our 3 cousins and uncle and aunt who lived in Kandy. I think we had kavum (oil cakes) but I don't remember what else we had that day.

My Childhood in Sri Lanka in the Seventies

2009-06-24T22:33:00.003-07:00

The Sirimavo Bandaranayake government imposed severe import restrictions during the early seventies in Sri Lanka. Thus, we had to forgo many items that people in the west took for granted. Amongst the goodies that my dad brought back from his visit to the US (where he went to finish off his PhD ) were wrigleys chewing gum, pony tail rings, plastic hair clips, a battery operated children's sewing machine, record player, a gold chain with a heart shape pink stone pendant and a lovely pink dress for me.

Looking back now it's interesting to remember the things that we had to go without during those days and sometimes we had to use food substitutes. There was a restrictions on small red onions, so we used the big bombay onions instead. Masoor dhal was in short supply so we used the bigger yellow lentils but they used to have weevils inside as vendors used to hoard a lot of supplies. I remember sometimes when biting into lentils if you got a bitter taste it meant that you had just bitten into a weevil! That wasn't as bad as the bakery bread, which was also baked from flour full of weevils ,worms and sometimes other insects. My brother and I used to take jam and butter/margarine sandwiches to school and it was no fun eating those sandwiches! School finished early I think it was around 1.30pm so we always came home and ate rice and curry for lunch.

I think my brother and I were lucky because our parents did not believe in spoiling us with cakes, soft drinks or biscuits. Our diet was a healthy rice and curry and bread. Cakes were only baked by my mother for birthdays and biscuits only served for guests. Maliban biscuits were the most widely available local brand of biscuit. The soft drink at the time was Elephant House and I remember one time my Mom bought us the one that was colored purple and we kept it in the fridge and drank it slowly. Short eats(savories) were only eaten if we happened to be shopping in Kandy town, then we'd have them at Elephant House along with tomato sauce. That was the only time we were required to use cutlery and it was rather awkward for me, as we normally ate at home with our fingers. Ice cream was a rare treat that we only had at Elephant House. A scoop of vanilla ice cream was presented in a silver bowl always with a wafer sticking out. There were also those booja packets that were available in the shops but our parents never bought them unless we went to see a movie. I think children nowadays are so spoilt and eat so much junk food, I am not at all sorry that these so called treats were a rarity during my own childhood. Chocolates were also a rare treat and I used to suck on a piece of chocolate until it melted away, so rare was it in our household. Due to sugar restrictions my mother decided to make date cake as a way to save on sugar. The date cake was very rich.At the time I did not particularly like it although as an adult my tastes have changed and I'm sure I'd appreciate it more now.

When I was in kindergarten at the Kandy Convent, I would have been around 6yrs old. What I remember is that they separated me from my brother and he went to a different class from me. I wished that we could be in the same class but I had no choice. There were two teachers in my kindy class a middle aged lady in Indian Sari and another younger lady dressed in Kandyan sari who was the assistant teacher. Myself and a few other kids were assigned to sit around the younger teacher. She was a very nice woman, I think she was a Catholic girl probably from Anuradhapura or some
other remote town.
Yours truly in the picture (bottom right) with
my kindergarten classmates at Kandy Convent in 1973. Click on the pic for a better view.

Everyday for lunch they used to deliver a delicious looking fish bun from the canteen for her lunch. I couldn't help watching her as she ate it and wondering what was inside the bun. She noticed me watching her eat the bun so one day she pinched off a small piece and gave it to me to eat! I remember another food incident, there was a little boy who was dressed in a silky pair of shorts and a matching silky shirt, one day at break time he opened a brown paper bag and took out two pieces of cake. One was chocolate cake with chocolate icing on top. The other was vanilla cake with white icing on top. My parents of course never sent cake for my lunch, so I watched how he eat it. He licked off the icing from both pieces of cake and put the cakes back in the bag. Even at that age I thought that was a waste of good cake!

My first Dollhouse

2009-06-24T22:04:00.004-07:00

My very first dollhouse was a glass cabinet which had its sliding glass door removed. I must have been around seven years old.The glass in the cabinet had to be removed because my younger brother had thrown his shoe at it in a fit of rage and broken the glass!

At around the same time in the early seventies, I saw this tiny little wooden dollhouse living room furniture set painted pink and decorated with a design of flowers. I think it was in 12inch scale, my parents bought it for me.

Even at that early age, I started making miniature objects from scratch, since miniatures were not readily available in Sri Lanka at the time and I guess they are not even available these days. I made my own miniature wall clock with pendulum with a little block of wood in imitation of those hanging on the walls of sri lankan households and chiming at every quarter hour. I also used a bigger block of wood to make a piano with a paper keyboard. I got the urge to make this piano because when I was in Grade 1 at Kandy Convent, we made a cardboard dollhouse for our classroom. One of the girls brought some cute dollhouse furniture for the dollhouse. From what I remember she brought a tiny piano and a cute carpet. How I wished I could be the owner of such lovely miniatures but I could only dream :) I'm guessing that these miniatures were purchased somewhere overseas like England.

My Dad went back to the US to finish his PhD around the same time, so when he came back he brought for me a dancing Dawn doll with long blonde hair and long eyelashes. She wore a short gold color halter dress and red high heeled shoes. She was the right scale for my dollhouse.

Why Blog?

2009-03-22T19:55:00.001-07:00

I think it's important to try and put in words why I started this blog. I have always wanted to write something formally about my life and memories and I think creating a blog is the perfect way. I have always fancied myself to be a good writer who knows if this is true or not (smile), it remains to be seen. I want this blog to be my means of expression and the way to record my life's memories and also possibly to write about things that are going on presently in my life. Initially I am writing for my own enjoyment and expression but I hope that it will also make enjoyable reading for other people as well.

My experiences with the English language have always been favorable. From primary school upto when I graduated high school English had always been one of my best subjects. The essays I wrote always got good marks from my teachers. From when I was ten years old until I graduated High School reading books was one of my main forms of entertainment. My parents helped to instill this love of reading in me and being of a quiet nature I think I was more conducive to reading as a child.

My parents returned with me and my brother from the United States back to Kandy, Sri Lanka when I was around four years old. From then on I stopped speaking English and reverted back to Sinhala as my mother tongue. Even though I stopped speaking English I could still understand it and we had English as a second language in primary school. My mother used to borrow English children's books for us from the British Council Library and the USIS in Kandy, Sri Lanka. We also used to buy Tintin comics and Lamb Chop comics every week. I think this helped to keep English alive in me until I was ten years old when I got the opportunity to start speaking English again.

I am very excited about blogging and now that I have started, the words just seem to flow and I can't seem to stop writing (smile). I actually initiated my blog in March 2009 and didn't publish anything that I had written on my blog. Then this June 2009 I had some life changing events happen in my life that once again prompted me to actually start writing again and publish some of the excerpts that I had written.

I feel like writing is a form of escapism from the real world. Therefore, I have to watch myself so that I don't get too carried away and neglect what needs to be done in the real world.

My childhood attraction to Miniatures

2009-03-22T18:17:00.009-07:00

My earliest memory of miniatures, is from when I was around three and a half years old, it's of these tiny mini green turtles which lived in the deepest green aquarium . The mini turtles were in the aquarium of my neighbor who was a girl of around six or seven.Sometimes I used to visit her at her apartment which was next to the UCLA housing building where we lived in Los Angeles. I remember I found it so amazing and fascinating to see these tiny living creatures swimming in their own little tiny green world. Along with the green mini turtles I also remember a little rubber bugs bunny that I had won in Las Vegas also when I was about three and a half years old. It was so cute, less than six inches tall. The girl who owned the turtles was a little bully and she took my bugs bunny away and I was so sad. I'm not sure why I didn't ask my parents to get it back for me though.

My other vivid memories of miniature fascination are from around six years of age onwards. Miniatures that fascinated me at that age ranged from the little flowers and green plants that grew in our garden to lady bird/bugs, mini rice fields, mini meals in mini pots and pans, to building my own mini neighborhood in clay in my backyard.

I remember when I was around six years old, how I was totally taken by the little plants that grew in the flowerbeds that ran around the front and on one side of our house. There were these little succulant plants that looked like some sort of miniature cactus. They were not really true cactus but could easily pass for cactus. I also remember we also used to have coleas growing there of the purple and yellow color and those had these tiny purple spikes of flowers growing out of them.

In the picture is myself with my younger brother and our Kitty in the front of our house with the garden that fascinated me so (circa 1974) . My front teeth are missing-click on the image for a closer view.

Our backyard was like a mini forest to me. It had some big trees such as mango, veralu (sri lankan olives), avacado and jackfruit. At the foot of the trees on the right side we used to have ala kola plants (a variety of taro plants which had huge leaves) they grew to about two feet tall. When it rained the raindrops used to get suspended on the leaves. To the left of the taro plants were a groundcover of tiny mukunuwenna leaves. The mukunuwenna leaves are very popular in Sri Lanka as a vegetable. This looked very much like a mini forest to me where the lady birds/bugs used to hide and appear sometimes to my delight.

Most of the lady bugs were the red variety with blackspots. However sometimes we used to visit my cousins who lived a few miles away at Lankatilleke where it was more rural. They used to have the most beautiful lady bugs in metallic colors mostly greenish gold. So my oldest cousin used to catch them for me and put them in a little pill bottle with a leaf inside and cover it with a piece of paper secured with a rubber band with holes punched in it so the lady bug could breathe. I was so happy with my treasure and took it home but unfortunately the lady bug always died in a few days and the mettalic color also tarnished once it died.