Fahim has a nasty habit of ignoring me when I wake him up in the morning. He rolls over, falls asleep again, and I have to keep disturbing him, because, of course, I’m still awake. Today, I set the alarm for even earlier because, Fahim claims, if I wake him up at 5:45 am and then again at 6 am, he’ll get out of bed on his own. Yeah, right. I still had to pound on him to wake him up – again – at 6:10 and 6:15.
He takes my laptop with him to work today so he can download my email for me and update my blog. I like this arrangement. Unfortunately, it also means that I’m sans laptop for several hours. If I was coordinated, I’d figure out in advance what files I want and copy them to his laptop, which I can and do use while he’s gone. Unfortunately, thus far, I haven’t been this coordinated.
So I watch a dvd on his laptop instead and do a couple of loads of laundry as well.
For lunch, I need to cook up some kakari (either way I spell it, I’m likely to be wrong), which is either a squash or a cucumber, depending on who you talk to. Fahim keeps calling it a squash, but when I chopped it open, it reminded me very much of a cucumber.
I wasn’t at all sure how to cook it or eat it, so I asked Fahim, and he said it’s cooked. So, today we had a kakari curry.
Kakari Curry
Kakari, seeds removed, about 1 cup (the thing Fahim called a squash, but I think is a cucumber)
2 small tomatoes, chopped.
2 Bombay onions, chopped.
2 capsicum, chopped
2 green chillies, chopped
1 tsp curry powder
1/2 teaspoon chili powder
1 tsp salt
Toss it all in a frypan, hot, with about 2 tablespoons of coconut oil in the bottom. Add about a half cup of water. Cook until done. Yeah, downright cheeky, ain’t it? Cook until done. Yup.
And we had Coconut Fish Curry again.
Thalapath Coconut Curry
thalapath, four servings worth.
1 tomato, chopped
1 Bombay onion, chopped
1 1/2 teaspoons curry powder
1/2 cup of coconut milk
Toss the fish into frying pan, in which 2 tablespoons of coconut oil have been heated. Cook until done on one side, turn over, add everything else, let simmer. Takes about 10 to 15 minutes to cook. You want it to have the sauce – very nice.
And this was served on, you guessed it, red (pink) rice.
All said, it was pretty good.
We didn’t eat until after 2 pm because that’s when Fahim got back from Mosque.
And for dessert, we had Thala guli – it’s a roll consisting of sesame seeds and jaggery, and reminded me of halvah. With halvah, it’s crushed sesame seeds and honey or sugar. With Thala Guli, the sesame seeds are whole.
Jaggery, however, requires a whole other explanation. Jaggery is the sap from a coconut flower that’s been tapped. The sap, if fermented, makes toddy. If fermented further, it becomes arrak. Somewhere in the fermentation process, they make vinegar out of it. If the sap is concentrated, it becomes treacle, which is sweet. If the concentrate is solidified, it becomes jaggery.
The Thala Guli came wrapped like Christmas crackers in individual sheets of paper, fifteen to a package. 
Fahim isn’t going back to work for the rest of the afternoon. His boss isn’t at work today anyway, so why not? Sheesh, why could I never get a job like his in Canada?
Have I told you about his job?
Apparently, this is fairly normal for Sri Lanka. He goes to work for a fairly standard something around 40 hours a week – 8 hours a day for Monday through Friday. I ask him when he comes home for lunch and again at the end of the day how was work. A lot of days, he spends the entire day coding, that is, writing programs. Not for his employer, no sirree. Programs either for himself, freeware from his site, or for consulting work for clients. Or he’ll be downloading software. Or writing his blog. Or. . . But work for his employer? Hardly.
When I was still in Canada, we’d chat anywhere from 2 to 8 hours a day – usually while he was at work – on his employers dime.
Like I said, why couldn’t I get a job like this?
