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The Friendly Sri Lankans

2017-09-23

何冠賢

HO Koon Yin

招商局集團

China Merchants Group

可倫坡

Colombo

 

 

 

Our destination, Sri Lanka, is not a popular place to work or travel, and my friends do not even know where it is. However, after this truly memorable internship, my fellow interns and I have all love this place very much indeed. If I have to highlight the best side of Sri Lanka, I would undoubtedly say the friendliness of Sri Lankans.

 

The company’s reception lady, Dulani, said it is a Sri Lankan spirit to be friendly and kind to those who visits the country. Before we did not know much about her, she was already very pleasant to us, always smiled to us and showed great personality. One day, we had lunch together in the canteen and this was when our friendship really started. Since then, we always had lunch together in the canteen. Ranging from local culture, our university life, to her personal experience, we talked about everything possible. It is just too easy to be friends with Sri Lankans. You can sense the true heart of her in the conversations. On our last day, she even prepared a few presents for each of us and it has really surprised us a lot. We were really lucky to have made this amazing friend.

 

Another friend we met was Kushan from the operations department. He invited us to his home at weekend and showed us around his hometown. Kushan lives in the legislative capital of Sri Lanka, Sri Jayawardenepura Kotte. It is a pleasant small town that is very different from Colombo, the administrative capital, which is a busy metropolis. At first, Kushan welcomed us at his home and his parents organized a breakfast party for us. Afterwards, we went to the Wetland Park to see some natural sceneries in the region. And then we went back to Kushan’s place to have lunch. Although it was just a very short trip, we truly felt the virtue of Sri Lankans. I cannot say everyone in Sri Lanka is pleasant and true as there might still be some exceptional cases, but I must say that they, deep in their heart and culture, are all friendly and welcoming.

 

Apart from Dulani and Kushan, we met a lot of friends in the company. All of them were extremely friendly even though we had just met them for a few days. At our last day, many of them prepared presents for us. We were extremely surprised and felt very sorry for not preparing anything for them. What we could do was to thank them once again and keep our friendship with the social media.

 

Sri Lankans welcome you when you come, and miss you when you go.