malae bulak

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 – 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 – 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 – 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 – 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 – I think a person can only change so much in short amounts of time. I’m back to old habits – 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 – 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!