12. The Balcony Chronicles
Retirement...
08.18.2021 - 08.18.2021 82 °F
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Chapter 12, August 18, 2021
This is a day of rest.
At 5:15, the group of “stray” dogs that patrol the Jetwing Blue beach and dining room found something disturbing and decided to let everyone know about it. The event, whatever it was, (hidden beneath the palms trees that sway in front of my balcony) was not short lived. Around 5:30, I gave up and got up to take a shower.
Problem was, no hot water. Cold water was plentiful but the hot side simply gurgled and spit. After a couple of minutes, it ran out of both. Deciding that I did not really need a shower, I opted for email, news from the internet, etc. Around 6:30, I called reception to inquire about the hot water issue. Language skills made it difficult but it was soon understood that something should be done. The restaurant opened at 7:00 and soon after that I had breakfast accepting scrambled eggs from the buffet when I should have known better and ordered an omelet or eggs over easy. Live and learn. The food here is marginal.
Back in my suite at 7:45, there was still no hot water. At 8:15 I decided to visit the front desk. A solution was arrived at whereby I would be escorted to an unoccupied room in a different part of the hotel where I could shower. The problem there was not a lack of hot water—there was plenty—but that the button you must push to divert water from the spicket to the shower head would not function. The end result was the same even though the cause was different: no shower.
Around 10:00, after having a wonderful phone conversation with B4 who is in Salt Lake City for meetings, a knock came on my door announcing that, if I would let the water run for a few minutes, I would most assuredly have plenty of hot water. At least, that is what I think I was told. True enough, a few minutes later the water was hot enough to shower and shave and I emerged refreshed; a new man.
Even better news arrived when, at 11:15, my phone rang telling me that my PCR test results had just been delivered by the lab courier if I wanted them. Delivered to my room, I am delighted with “Not Detected” as a result, signed, certified, barcoded and neatly folded, this critical document was placed with my passport to become a part of my required exit from Sri Lanka paperwork. Around the same time I received an email from Emirates Airlines telling me that my flight was available for check-in so I got that done as well.
Meanwhile, down on the beach, the hazmat team of sand sifters is working. You may recall that there was a few weeks back a maritime disaster/ship fire that resulted in beach pollution. Nothing is apparent to me but they are sifting away, suited up against an unseen enemy of what I understand to be plastic beads. By noon, they take a break beneath a thatched structure to offer shade.
I have clothes sorted for my final day and subsequent flights and airport layovers that don’t commence for 39 hours leaving me one thing to do: pick up my Kindle and begin a new read. It is breezy/windy and 84 degrees as I sit on my balcony seeing and listening to the Indian Ocean below. If one has a day and a half to waste, this is a good place to do it.
A murder of crows gives meaning to its name; I’d like to murder them all as they know not when to shut up. Why I thought of the word for a group of crows—a murder—made me wonder if there is a word for a group of leopards as there is for a group of lions: a pride. Turns out there is such a word: a leap. Those buffalo groups I saw: an obstinancy. Peacocks: a muster; monkeys are a tribe or troup; wild boars are a singular and a group of elephants, I learn, can be called either a herd or a parade. The latter is apt from my observations. I’m unable to think of anything else I saw in groups; of course I did not see a group of leopards as they are solitary creatures but it turns out there is a name for such an improbable bunch nonetheless.
Back to the crows. They never shut up drowning out even the pack of dogs earlier mentioned. But, after a time, they may become the same as the noise of a passing train to someone who lives adjacent to the track: unremarkable. You must get used to it. Except that you can tell that is yet to be true of me as I am pontificating here about these noisy, obnoxious, and aggressive birds. The good news is that my balcony, all the balconies for that matter, are draped with a screen of fine mesh and would be otherwise uninhabitable. Covered and deep, sheltered from both a passing downpour and from the sun with only the welcome breeze gaining entry. It is a fine place to waste a day.
