Ambassador and Mrs. Tisa Wijeratne of Sri Lanka hosted a farewell reception for Ambassador and Mrs. Dusan Bella of the Slovak Republic at their residence in Pyeongchang-dong, Seoul on June 26, 2014.
Attending the dinner, besides Ambassadors Wijeratne and Bell with their spouses, were and Ambassador Mrs. Dato Haji Harun Ismail of Brunei Darussalam (dean of the Diplomatic Corps in Korea), Ambassador and Mrs. Md. Enamul Kabir of Bangladesh, Ambassador Francois Bontemps of Belgium and Publisher-Chairman Lee Kyung-sik of The Korea Post.
It was home-cooked traditional Sri Lankan food with excellent wine and Sri Lankan tea after the meal.
Ambassador Wijeratne of Sri Lanka spoke to the guests on how wonderful Ambassador Bella had been as a fellow ambassador and expressed his reluctance to part with him.
Similar remarks were made by Ambassador Harun Ismail of Brunei Darussalam (dean of the Diplomatic Corps in Korea) who wished the outgoing Slovak ambassador and madam good luck and every success in his future.
Conversation among the guests was lively and at one point Ambassador Wijeratne was found to be able to speak the Japanese language and he spoke in Japanese with Publisher-Chairman Lee of The Korea Post and soon it was joined by Mrs. Harun Ismail, spouse of the ambassador of Brunei Darussalam who also was able to speak the Japanese language.
One of the highlights of the dinner was the beautiful Sri Lankan Saree of gold and brown in color running some six meters in length and over a meter in width, which Mrs. Bella wore wrapping it around her waist with one end draped over her should except the midriff where she wore a blouse.
After the party, all participants showed the Sri Lanka Saree holding along the top edge of the beautiful drape.
For the guests who were not familiar with the Sri Lankan Saree, it was an occasion of a great learning as they had never imagined the drape to run that long when not worn.
A World Cup match between Korea and Belgium had been scheduled in the morning in Brazil at 5 a.m. and naturally the question was which wide would win. Ambassador Bontemps of Belgium attending the dinner said that it did not matter to him which side would win because his family would have one side winning because he was married to a Korean lady.
Mrs. Eugenia Bellova, wife of the ambassador of the Slovak Republic, who was a doctor of medicine by profession, said that she had learned Oriental medicine while in Korea and had a good mind to spread it to Europe from the Slovak Republic.
Publisher-Chairman Lee Kyung-sik of The Korea Post agreed to introduce her to a famous Oriental (Korean) medicine doctor, Director Seo Hyo-seok of PyungKang Oriental Medical Clinic in Seocho-dong, Seoul across the Diplomatic Center building that housed the Embassy of the Republic of Uzbekistan. Director Seo had been planning to increase the number of his PyungKang Oriental clinics to Europe as Korean medicine was getting more and more popular in Europe and other parts of the world. Presently, Dr. Seo said that he has Oriental clinics in 30 different countries of the world.
