Hope you enjoyed my moving to Australia posts, cause just after posting those I moved back to Sri Lanka. I won’t get into “moving back to Sri Lanka” cause its pretty painful and I’m sure no one will want to read it.
Why move back? Well although its a bit crappy here most of the time its home, and with the end of the war one can hope again. Here are a few first impressions of Sri Lanka for someone returning after a few years.
Driving has got worse and kind of easier. Before there were only a few idiots who drive bad, now everyone does, so you go with the flow and try not to hit anything.
Everything is more expensive. The quality of products are lower. A bar of soap has been carved in so many creative ways now its about half the weight at the old price.
There seems to be a few new local products trying to fill in the gaps of more expensive imports so that’s kicked off a bit of business.
Everyone seems to be doing more business than going to a 9 to 5 job.
2009 has been a decent year. I’m still working so I survived the recession. I thought coming down in time for the holidays would be a great idea, but this season was a bit damp and low-key. Not my kind of Christmas.
Most of the time I feel very few reads this. Since I got down I’ve spoken to a few people and it seems a few more do. So I’ll try to post a bit more often even if its not too technical.
By the way if anyone is hiring Java people drop me a line I know a decent J2ME developer looking for work.
Went to a supermarket in the morning. There was a 3 kg rice purchase limit on each brand. My guess is its due to the distribution gap because of the new year holidays. Nothing is panic about.
Then again are we going to hit a rice shortage? I still have no idea but its a good time to look back at how we got here.
I’m no historian but I’ve heard my parents talk about bread queues and rice restrictions due to social and economic experiments conducted my previous administrations. Is this a result of another experiment gone wrong?
I know many guys around here that would rather drive a tuk than get down into a paddy field and grow rice.
I overheard an army guy in the early days of the ceasefire who had come home to help out on the fields. He is probably back on duty now.
Most of my family now are professionals or trying to be white collar workers. There are only 2 people in my family that farm. Should we go back to basics and start growing again?
Cause it doesn’t matter what you do or how much you make if there isn’t any food to buy.
Update: there seems to be a stand-off between a price fix by the gov and some traders. Don’t know more details yet. That means I have to check local news… yuk.
Sri Lanka EDITORIAL:: Rice crisis: Rise to the challenge!
I don’t know about you but I think supermarket cordials suck. First most brands start off with a decent mix then they slowly dilute it down until sales drop, then they come back thicker but at a higher cost.
I’ve tried almost all of them. MD Nelli and mixed fruit was great to start with but soon went down in taste and went up in price. KVC guava was and is still good, their mix fruit not so good.
There is a place affectionately named as The Jam Factory. Which is better than the official name of Fruits and Vegetables Private Limited. But their juices are good and almost half price of what you pay for a supermarket sucker.
The Jam Factory is down Buthgamuwa Road off Rajagiriya. You can turn in your washed jam and cordial bottles and I think they give you a discount. Very green of them.
Anyway that is my juicy tip for the day. 
The heat is creeping back up in Colombo after the rains. It would be nice to have an ice tea on a hot day like this. But wait, you can’t.
We produce tea right? How come we don’t have ice tea more freely available?
Cartons in a supermarket don’t count, it should be as easy as getting a soda. Can-it or setup drink dispensers. We are good at packaging and marketing such things.
There have been Chinese take out shops in my town for as long as I can remember. But none of them deliver. Few of the bigger joints like Chinese Dragon and Flower drum deliver but since they are a bit out of town it takes longer to deliver and they have some minimal amounts they will send.
So why don’t the little shops deliver? All it takes is a guy on a motorbike or 3 wheeler. If you can’t keep your own delivery guy just talk to a few guys in the local 3 wheeler stand and get it going.
In this age of copy paste business models you have to stay ahead of the other guy. Besides I really don’t want to drive up to the take out place today.
Update: Jade Maharagama delivers! 2839839
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