sri lanka, the first installation

The last couple of days before holiday oozed by like racing sea slugs. I didn't sleep on the 20th, except for a 1&1/2hr nap before dawn. I managed a 1 1/2 hr nap in the afternoon of the 21st as well. It served only to remind my body that it was very tired and that I'd been drinking while packing.

A group of us went to the airport by speedboat (rented) for dinner and drinks. We shared four bottles of wine, finished in the bar and most were generally well schnockered. I met a Kenyan who kissed me goodnight as he ran for his boat.

Departures:
I curled up around my guitar and on my backpack. Sleep sped into my face only to slam to a stop as my flight boarded. I swayed and kept trying to clear the impact of the sleep from my face by using one hand as a windshield wiper over my eyes. Somehow I managed to board the plane.

Isle seat. Horrid. I slept anyway. Flight of a mere hour and twenty minutes. I woke to see everyone had finished a breakfast. Jealousy was followed by observation of distance to cart, calculation of time to request fulfillment, eating and landing...decision to sleep.

Landing. Everyone else on the whole plane was in transit. No line for immigration. I staggered there, still attempting to clear the fog a bit by holding my hand over my eyes, then sweeping it down. I had to walk slowly. No boarding card...fill out. So difficult. What was my name? What were the numbers on my passport? Flight? Somehow I managed. Time was running out before collapse. The man at the counter asked me how many days I was staying. "Twelve."
"How many DAYS?"
"Twelve"
"How many DAYS?"
"Twelve"
"How many DAYS?"
"TWELVE."
"Five?"
"No, TWELVE."
"Five?"
"ONE, TWO, T-W-E-L-V-E!"
"Twelve?"
"Yes."
Stamp.
Stagger, stagger.
Banks, change. Stagger.
I sat down. Out came the Lonely Planet. I exited customs and such. A man offered a taxi. I said yes. He said ?1500? I said ?1000.? He said ?1300.? I said ?1000 or I take the bus.? He countered with 1100 and I said fine. I was in no shape to negotiate a bus now. Two sleepless nights and the remnants of 12 hours of slow drinking combined with the impact of the car wrecked sleep that had hit my face from behind as it slammed to stop...

The taxi was a van driven by a fresh-faced young driver with a nice name beginning with ?A? and with lots of soft sounds in the middle. We began. My slow death by lack of sleep screamed to a halt as I was sleeplessly clutching the cushions of my seatbelt-less ride imagining so many impacts as we raced in and out of traffic, stopping only at the last moment before inevitable crash, darting to the other side of the road to go around and racing to get back before the oncoming traffic hit us. It was a hurtling van of terror. Luckily, I noticed that the front seat had a seatbelt and asked if I could sit there. He assented, and stopped to let me change.

The hotel was dreadful. The man in the office wore only a towel wrapped around him and then tied in such a way that suggested a huge (and long) phallic knot coming from his center. They tried to charge me for 2 nights because of my early arrival. I said no flat out. They argued that that was their policy. Their woman who took the reservation however, had said nothing. I said that I could quite easily solve this by going to another hotel. I wasn?t responsible for what their staff didn?t say. He agreed to my paying for one night.

I slept. I could still sleep. My phone isn?t working.

Later that day??
A block from the entrance to my street was a magical sign, ?phone repairs?. I went in. He took apart my phone and asked if I had gotten it wet? ?Why??, I asked, thinking of the many showers and times I?d dropped it in puddles in the rain. He showed me the rust. Yeah, a few times. He offered to repair it for 2500 rupees. I said no, it?s a cheap phone. He tried to tell me that here, my phone was 16,000 rupees. I just raised my eyebrows, looked at him for a minute in calm disbelief and said, ?I paid $20, new.? He looked a little bit disbelieving and repeated it. Eyebrows still raised, I affirmed with a calm nod and another, ?$20?. He looked bummed. Then he dropped the price of repairs to 1500. ?Last price, madam.? I asked him what he would do, got a satisfactory step-by-step of a ?total service? and agreed. I?m to pick it up later.

The next two hours were happily spent in a real bookstore. I blew $25 on English books for classes. This was followed by 2 more hours of browsing in an actual mall. I bought 6 DVD'S, one of which was a 3-in-1.

Exhaustion still looms. I?ve also become aware that with only patches of sleep, I?ve only actually eaten 4 cheese sticks lately and that was about 20 hours ago. These were preceded by 8 sushi rolls and 12 Pringles potato chips some 6 hours before, and 6 pieces of sushi some 20 hours before that. Fortunately the calories from the 12 hours of alcohol before my plane seem to have filled the blank spaces.