Pssst! Want to buy some fake sapphires?
The good old Republic of Sri Lanka is famous for some of the nicest precious stones in the world and as one might expect, most Sri Lankans seem to be obsessed with buying, selling, acquiring or mining; legally or illegally, mostly the latter.
Most refer to precious stones as Gems but quite often as Gem’s (sic), with a total disregard for the correct usage of the apostrophe.
Gem’s..er…i mean Gems… are rather nice, but they tend to bring out the baser instincts of Srilankan-kind.
I remember, in 1977, when I was working as a young Doctor in Badulla, someone found a precious stone at Ridipana Estate. Ridipana Estate was then a rather neglected tea plantation on the Badulla-mahiyangana Road.
As soon as word got around of this find, the normally-peaceful and charming denizens of Badulla, descended on Ridipana, uprooted tea bushes, staked out plots, hit each other on the heads with shovels,dug pits, got drunk and had knife-fights. See what I meant about baser instincts? The first casualty that I can remember from “The Great Ridipana Gem Rush of 77” was a guy who walked backwards and fell into the pit of his own making, drunk of course, fracturing his left tibia plus fibula. Compound, comminuted and rather nasty!
Then there was the guy who fell into a pit one dark night, drunk and whilst carrying a kerosene lamp. In the process he set fire to his only sarong which he unfortunately happened to be wearing at the time. Luckily, he just sustained first degree burns of his nether regions. Rather painful, but survivable. He couldn’t sit down for days! The hospital provided him with a new sarong, white and with the large indigo logo “Ghb…general Hospital Badulla”.
Meanwhile, back at the Ridipana Ranch,organised chaos reigned until the local Police decided to take an uncharacteristical professional interest in Law and Order, which was after about a lapse of two months.
Things then, predictably spiralled in a downward direction, totally and utterly out of control! **************** Following my recent return to the Pearl of bit.(warning! Lasers can blind you! So can Gems!)
It is quite simple to make an artificial ruby. All you need is fine Aluminium Oxide powder, aka Alumina, and an Oxy-acetylene flame and you are in business. The same applies to the manufacture of artificial sapphires.(in case you didn’t know what an oxy-acetylene flame is, just ask your local garage. They use it regularly for welding or rather, “waalding” as they call it.)
As far as Diamonds go, the techno to manufacture them has been around for at least 100 years, but the De Beers Consolidated Mines guys didn’t like it, and by general agreement with diamond producing countries, they suppressed the good news. BTW, De Beers control the diamond industry. My Gem’s…..gems which is Spanish for “Yes! Yes! Sir! We are ready to make sapphires and make a lot of money and buy lots of bottles of Pisco!”
Mi amigo Ignacio, or Ig as I call him, was recently persecuted and prosecuted because of his political views about money, but he is otherwise a clean-living, good, religious sort of chap with only one wife.
He has only just got out of prison! He had been found guilty of something called “embezzlement” which I believe is normal in Paraguay. Consolidated Gems of…