Nuwara Eliya

Day 4: April 15, 2004

7:15 PM - Another busy day starts. Prepared ourselves for the breakfast scheduled at 8 PM. I could not call home. I sent a SMS message home with one of my colleague�s cell phone. He is also refraining from calling from the cell, which would incur almost similar charges (International roaming). Telephone charge here is enormous. Minimum payment is SLR 750 ($8). Our training session went from 8:30 for the whole day. The last session was a group discussion and we finished the session at 6:45 with vote of thanks to our bosses who organized this useful training cum orientation session in this beautiful offsite location. Photo session followed and everybody was joyous to complete the successful training-cum-conference.

7:00 PM - We gathered at the hotel lawn for an informal get together and had some soft drinks. Momentous were exchanged. Then we went for dinner at the nearby Indian hotel. I ate one chicken tonduri & Nun. The chicken leg was enormous, almost like a leg of turkey. It must have been a rooster. Then we headed for a walk in the hilly road. But the road was busy as usual. The notable thing is that the number of costly cars plying along the streets. There are Mercedes, BMW, Audi, High range SUVs etc. driven by the Sri Lankans. No wonder they have a high per capita GDP ($850) among the South Asian Countries. So we came back to the hotel and went to the supper club. The club had a pub, restaurant & live music. We sat in the wide lobby and listened to the music. The local singers played our requested songs of eagles, Elton John etc. It was a very nice ambience, soothing. We gossiped for a while and when the music stopped, went to our room. I then practiced sometimes on the software we were trained.

Tomorrow at 9 we are going to Colombo.