Obage SLT Durakatanata Pratichariyak No Mata

My phone line is down. I think the landlords didn’t pay the bill on time. It was acting funky before that, perhaps because I dropped the receiver on the floor several times, but now it’s really not working at all. When I pick it up I hear wistful elevator music and this gentle, liquid, soothing Sinhala voice telling me that my SLT (Sri Lanka Telecom) service is not available. She’s very kind about it, a little sad perhaps, and the recording is tinged with hope—someday your service will come!

But what a colossal pain in the ass! Now I have to revert to the old style of internet use—write everything on disk, schlep said disk to café, sit among tourists and high schoolers in airconditioned splendour (fresh Nescafe available) and use the “café@internet” hi(gher)-speed connection. Hm. Maybe this is a good thing. Maybe a paradigm shift is in order. It is cheaper, for sure, than doing this at home.

In any case, I wanted to call several of you this weekend but that wasn’t possible.