Sri Lanka It's Happening

May 9, 2008

What rotten luck; a bomb has gone off in Ampara Killing 7 people. One of our beloved ministers Ferial Ashraff (who became a minister because her husband had a bit of rotten luck) had passed thatway minutes earlier.

May 7, 2008

If Zimbabwe has galloping inflation our could at least be called cantering inflation. Our beloved minister of finance president Gotabaya Mahinda and Mr 10% are hell bent on making sure of overtaking Zimbabwe.

They have reached their first milestone - a new record figure of 30% inflation. That means unless an employee get's at an annual increment of at least 45% he is not growing at the job. The sad truth is that most companies only give out about 15-25% as increments. Worse still most companies don't have performance based evaluations so even high performers don't really get increments that will allow them to keep up with the rising prices.

The very rich don't have it any easier. Bank interest rates on deposits is as low as 15% so the real value of your money declines by 15% each year. In the past many people have tried putting their money in foreign currency accounts. They have been hit hard by the dollar's constant decline. Only the Euro seems to be moving upwards, but the central bank is doing it's damnedest to keep the exchange rate artificially low.

You could try investing in the stock market but the dividend yield is pathetic and the indices have been steadily declining since the date of the last presidential election.

You could try putting your money into real estate except that for the first time in 15 years land prices in and around Colombo have declined. You could put your money into a new business venture but right now people don't have money for anything but essential items so you are unlikely to succeed.

Of course you could start a business selling essential items like rice, but then the government will introduce a price control to make sure that all your accumulated profits are wiped off in a day.

May 5, 2008

Well the house building project finally looks like it's about to come to an end. Before moving into a new house, it's traditional to boil a pot of milk at an auspicious time.

I don't have even a single supertitious bone in me and believe auspicious times are just bull water but unfortunately my wife doesn't quite agree so we laid a foundation stone at an auspicious time and the door frames were also put in place at an auspicious time. Now the milk boiling ceremony will be on Friday at 6:03 in the morning. Ouch.

May 3, 2008

Construction work on my new house started more than an year ago. Like most projects, it's long past the deadline (several deadlines in fact) and the cost has far exceeded original expectations (as a result of which, I am in debt).

Much of the delay is due to lack of project management. It's not enough that I understand it, the guys doing the work need to understand it too. It's too costly to engage the biggest and the best construction firms for projects of this size. And the small companies are hugely lacking in project management, but when you look at some of the large civil engineering work in Sri Lanka it's damn hard to tell the difference between the small companies and the big companies.

Alcoholism plays a huge part in the delays of many construction projects here. I just heard the sad news that the senior most mason to have worked on my house has just died - cause of death a liver that has been seriously effected by alcohol.

At the end of the day most construction workers toss back a glass or two, some toss back several. You cannot blame them either. They are mostly from remote villages and living in Colombo away from their families is probably stressfully. Work sites rarely contain anything to keep them entertained in the evening. So they make a beeline for the closest bar, the next morning they are too hungover to start work and they make mistakes. The mistakes are usually trivial but they add up.

May 1, 2008

The minister of goons was involved in an accident but unfortunately he didn't suffer serious injury. Only his small toe was slightly damaged. Two of his companions suffered worse. One died and the other was more seriously injured.

The president immidiately rushed a helicopter to the site to airlift the mervyn the bashful to Colombo. HIs goon who was the other person injured wasn't included.

The helicopter belonged to the ministry of defense. It should have been used to rush injured soldiers from the battle front to the hospitals in Colombo. instead they are left to die.