The Martin's Blog

Tom – Each morning I take my digital camera hooked in a belt around my waist as we do our beach walk.  There is something new to take a picture of EVERYDAY!  I like to take pictures of people who are physically active.  The first picture today was that of a soccer player stretching before his jog on the beach.  It turned out he was a regional player and the brother of our police detective!  The second picture is of a hostel (we think) where every morning someone waves to us while cooking or brushing his teeth.  The third picture is that of two young men who were training to do the physical tests that are necessary to become a policeman.  

 Helen – This  morning I was scared by a 4-5 foot brown garden snake.  It was sunning itself by the outside shower stall.  There are some pretty big bushes there to privatize the shower area from the neighbors and I think he lives in there.  The storm had brought some of the branches down over the walkway.  Thank heavens I didn’t walk that way because I would have walked right over it.  This is all part of the food chain here, the snake goes into the pond to eat the frogs, remember the one that jumped on Tom’s back?  The owner cut those bushes back over the weekend. 

When Tom came home from the office we went into town to buy another cell phone.  Since we disconnected the first stolen phone (and left the second stolen phone working just in case) he was able to reinstate the same phone number on this phone.  I am going to summarize the phone development here even though it didn’t really finish until Monday night.  We recharged the phone but still were not able to use it until Saturday night when we tried calling the kids.  Sunday evening the police investigator came over to our house to give us an update on our case.  They wanted to send an officer to Colombo to check with the four major mobile cell phone companies to see if our phones were sold and then reactivated with another company.  I guess this is usually what happens.  He also had received a court order to have our cell company release our bill to see if anyone had used our phone.  This way we would not have to wait till the end of the month when the billings were mailed.  The police officer said he was not able to send this man now because he would have to requisition the order and that would take several weeks.  He thought of giving the money out of his pocket (?) but decided that wasn’t really a good idea so he asked us for the money.  He said he really wanted to help us get this resolved as quickly as possible (I guess it made the papers and his name was mentioned!!).  We figured that it would cost about $10 for the 8 hour round trip bus ride, the Tuk-Tuk transportation in the city and lunch.  It would easily be a 12 hour day so we gave him the money – and a few coconuts as a bonus.