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July 28, 2005
Pics!
Unfortunately in my haste to try and feel at home in my new . . . well . . . home, I have stopped carrying around my camera. Thus, I only have limited pictures to post online for people to see. But here are a few I took earlier and never got around to doing anything with them:
--Kids on Dili Beach: Saw me with a camera and went nuts wanting to see photos. I didn't speak much Tetun then, but I got a couple printed and have tried to find the family ever since. No such luck --
--Kids on a post outside a malae club. They wandered around up there, in and out of a barbed wire fence! Scared me to death. So glad I'm not a mom.--
--A meat market in Lospaolos. Yes, that is the head of an oxen. Mmm.--
Posted by storbert at 7:06 PM | Comments (1)
July 27, 2005
Ahi han hau-nia quartu
I have reached a turning point in my blog writing. I could say that this is some sort of introspective breakthrough, or perhaps that I've actually developed a life, but both of these statements would be false. On the contrary, I have developed a keen awareness of my idiocy. Therefore, henceforth, so on and so forth, WHATEVER, I am going to try and be less of a reflective freak and tell more stories. This past Monday night tells me that such a goal should be easy.
See, I almost burned my house down on Monday night. In a fit of divine retribution reminiscent of scenes from a bad horror movie, I leave my room (newly painted, much slaved-over room that requires a different, and much less interesting story) to get a cold cheese sandwich (mmm, dinner) and return to watch my curtains, chair and Dad's stolen button-down (sorry about that, Dad) go up in flames. Yes, IN FLAMES.
Ok, I guess I need to give a bit of a backstory here. Dili is a city that doesn't quite run well enough to have constant electricity. Thus, the more remote parts, and the part where the less affluent live, aka where I live, are usually without power for at least some portion of the day. If ema boot (lit. big people) have their power go out they complain to their friends in political power and the power gets, ahem, rerouted. Trust me, this is as good as it gets here. Anyways, our neighborhood has the unfortunate timeslot of 7-9 pm . . .as in the time when I am actually home and wanting a bit of R&R and maybe a hot cheese sandwich instead of a cold one . . . and thus I have begun the laborious task of finding candleholders in this massive city. When I say they are hard to come by, I am only half-lying. I could easily find ones in pastel flower-shapes, but so far my standards haven't sunk quite that low yet. So, having created a nice array of candles, I come home one night to no power, light my candles as normal, and wander to my lovely cheese sandwich.
. . . and return to flames. Well, more specifically my house-mate noticed the flames and gave an admirable shriek. I put out the fire. Everything went back to normal but my nerves. Those went back to normal after I ejected from the house (and an ashy/soaked room) to hang in the local Australian ex-pat bar and did my personal fire-control with a beer and a scotch.
Now I wish I could say the story ended there. I wish it did, and it would have except for the most enormous bug I have ever seen, which happened to be a massive flying cockroach, that decided that after a house burned it was a perfect time to check out our bathroom. But whatever. Life sucked anyways, so I wasn't really all that surprised.
So, that's the story. I'm going to stop now without analysis, because really I don't give a damn anymore. Psychoanalysis is worthless here. I'm a freak anyways so it wouldn't really be worth a damn anyways. Well, I hope someone reads this and gets a kick out of it. I sure did (a beer and scotch later). Perhaps you will take pity on me. If you do, send me a decent scotch. That's harder to find here than a normal-looking candleholder.
Posted by storbert at 7:15 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
July 24, 2005
The Post to Appologize for Not Posting
It's been such a damn long time since I have written anything down it's hard to know where to begin. I mean, I started this blog with such lofty goals, and since then have failed, utterly, to live up to them. I could blame it on the fact that I now work a real job, but that would seem silly. After all I started my first blog when I was working a real job. I could say that it's because I have nothing to report â€" but that would be a flat-out lie. So I'll finally admit that bring my computer home and tapping away for people half-way around the world, who probably don't read this anyways, was rather low on my priority list.
Timor-Leste, my new home, is far more exciting than any sort of dreams of writing that I could pretend to aspire to.
I've been here a month and things still seem new. Speaking to cab drivers in a language I am only barely picking up is fricken awesome. Everyone here is so kind with my painful mangling of words and sentences. Watching the cockfight 20 m from my house cracks the hell out of me, even though I know that it's going to be there every weekend for as long as I live in this house â€" with all the men who start at the only women, and only malae, walking down the street to the cock fighting stadium. Coming home from work today, a boy was carrying a dead dog, by its hind legs, obviously planning to skin the skinny thing and make it dinner.
But all of this is the normal things that I could describe. What I am truly, utterly amazed at here, more than all of it â€" is me. I think the real reason that anyone from an advanced, stylized, controlled and commercial society comes to a county like this one is to see what it is our head does with the daily challenges to the life we knew as normal. I, for one, could never have guessed the thoughts and feelings I would have sitting in front of the computer this night and pondering my own existence.
I have no books besides a second hand copy of a John Grisham novel I found at Xanana's reading room. I don't want TV, or even that many movies besides the overabundance of pirated CDs sold on every street corner. Running has become my solace. Mornings are the time where time is actually mine â€" not my taxi driver's, or my jobs. Not my neighbors who watch me in my house and ask me where I go at night. Not the waiter who wanders slowly between his two cousins to talk before bringing me my cold food. Morning runs take me away from the damn screeching chickens that don't care if I still have an hour to sleep. Morning runs I go as fast or slow as I want. No one notices, though many people may watch me go, but I'm just another crazy malae on the road in the morning, running for no reason and not to get anywhere â€" but running just because I like running. I'm running just because I can.
Yet, considering how much I have just written about the amazing things â€" I think a person can only change so much in short amounts of time. I'm back to old habits â€" hiding from the world when it seems a bit like sensory overload and stress by working long, unnecessary hours on my computer. Hence, over the next few weeks you are likely to see my sad attempts at webdesign. Now, I've already been through two for this site â€" one would wonder why I need another. Truth is, I don't. But I feel like the one I have has nothing to do with Timor-Leste, so I'm going to try and update it with the limited amount of material I have already collected around here.
Well, here's to boredom, of sorts!
Posted by storbert at 1:18 AM | Comments (1)