Marie Barone, the typical Sri Lankan mother-in-law?

I know this is trivial compared to what is happening in Sri Lanka.Sometimes you gotta enjoy small things in life.
"Everybody Loves Raymond" ends today.
Here is what the Salon critic Heather Havrilesky has to say about it.
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Nobody I know will be mourning the passing of "Everybody Loves Raymond" since, for years, everybody I've talked to thinks that "Everybody Loves Raymond" sucks. Here's the thing, though: None of them had ever watched it, or if they did, they flipped by, saw an ugly couch and some older people, and figured it was just another outdated, painfully dorky sitcom gleefully consumed by the masses.
I'm a fan of the show (and -- full disclosure -- contributed to an authorized book about it before I joined Salon). I consider it one of the best classic sitcoms on TV, and one of the darkest, populated by characters who, due to their very natures, absolutely torture each other. When they're not manipulating, wheedling, lying, teasing, undermining or openly criticizing, they're sitting on the couch facing the television, trying like hell to turn down the volume on the absurdly myopic humans around them. In other words, they're just like family.
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As a dorky Sri Lankan ,what I immediately noticed was it's Sri Lankan connection.It mentioned Sri Lanka twice as I can remember.(Debra's parents had once been to Sri Lanka on vaction and describe it when they visit.I'm not sure about the other one but I think it might be Ray in a later episode who says something about Sri Lanka) .That could be the second highest mention of a foreign country in the show, after Italy. Mind you ,this was way before tsunami.At the time nobody has heard about the country.

Here comes the bomb.
Heather Havrilesky interviewed Phil Rosenthal for the Salon article.one of the Q&A goes like this.
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Q:"Raymond" is pretty subtle and its pace is very patient, particularly compared to the breakneck speed of most sitcoms, where everyone's stepping on each other's bad punch lines. All of this makes the characters feel much more like real people.
A:Well, that's the best compliment we could get. The show plays in like 171 countries. We get letters from Sri Lanka: "That's my mother."

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Looks like somebody over there has an obsession with Sri Lanka ! ;-))