Day 13 - Jay, his sisters, and I were out after breakfast today. First, we stopped at a travel agent. Following our purchase, we took another PickMe car to an optometrist. Both sisters needed some glasses adjusted and I assumed that glasses would be cheaper in Sri Lanka. Of course, designer frames are frivolously expensive considering there's about $2 of plastic and metal in a pair. I steered the sales lady towards the cabinet with the off-brand sets. Unfortunately, they were still not cheap enough for my taste! I could spend nearly as much on progressive lenses with the extra darkening here as I would in Canada. My current pair of glasses were bought in Malaysia at about half as much. I'll wait until we go there in February.
His sisters returned home, but Jay and I got another ride to the Sri Lankan authorized Nikon repair location. Well, not directly for we got off at the lab on Galle Road. That meant taking a small tuk-tuk to get over to the sales and repair office on Flowers Rd. My P900s zoom lens started making a hell of a racket. In fact, I'm sure it'd scare not only animals but any people of which I was trying to get a closeup. A technician verified it was a wheel assembly in the lens. The cost for the necessary part and a total maintenance cleaning was nearly US $100. Hey, I've got it and money is meant to be spread around, I guess. I'll pick up the repaired camera tomorrow.
We found ourselves fairly near Beira Lake, which is central Columbo. So, we walked to the new Colombo City Center Mall and the associated new building in the area.
Today was pretty normal traffic, so returning the 10 kilometers to our part of Nugegoda took around a half-hour. His sisters had done a little grocery shopping and got back first. They made us lunch. I'm trying so hard to eat carefully here but food is such a part of this culture ....