July 5, 2006
Um. Really, now I'm Home Again
So, after a long delay in putting something on my blog - I write only to dramatically announce that as of now, this blog is suspended. Mainly because I am not in Timor. I am in America.
Shortly after returning to East Timor, I left (on my birthday none the less) because of the situation. If you don't know what I am talking about, Google News on Timor. Right. That's about all I have to say.
Posted by storbert at 3:32 PM | Comments (1)
May 21, 2006
Home Again
Coming back from three weeks vacation means a whole heap of worries about re-culture shock. Especially when coming in from two fabulous weeks in Bali. But, to keep pace with the dismal update rate that I have on this blog (less than one entry a month?! what is this?), I have many things to say, no real time to write an actual blog entry, and no photos!
But Timor, thanks to goodness, is slowly returning to normal. For those who don't know what happened, right before I left (28 April) some rioting broke out in Dili outside the government's offices. The fear, building on the trauma this country has been through, promted a mass exodus into the hills for many Dili residents. Coming back, shops are open again, and though we have eliminated any resemblence to traffic jams in the streets, it is possible to find a taxi. Though they have jacked up the rates again (urg ... more walking for me!). The land is drying out ... while I was gone the seasons did, without a doubt, really change, and my home street is dry and dusty. It's a huge improvement from the pig-wallowing mud-hole that it normally is.
The only thing that spolied my happy return was the cheerful greeting of my landlord who tells me, "You've gotten fat!" to which I did my best to re-muster my cultural sensitivity, and wincingly smile, "Thanks."
Posted by storbert at 8:03 PM | Comments (2)
February 9, 2006
Nasty Critter
Geckoes are usually small, rather cute creatures that live above your bed and break the silence of the night with an occasional cute chirrup that the Timorese call "teki" (which, for your cultural information, also refers to a young unmarried girl). But sometimes those tekis get big, and then they are called 'toke' and make this deep throated croak that sound rather manly ... hence the reference to 'toke' as an unmarried man. Sounds cute, right? And then I saw one ... (this thing is about a foot long).
Ugh! Not cute!
Posted by storbert at 1:44 AM | Comments (2)
January 22, 2006
New Year Tidings
I am back from Hawaii - I am back from another trip to Aileu, and I am healthy. If that makes no sense, it's okay because I haven't written anything in a while and so it's really just random. So - I went to meet up with the whole family in Hawaii over vacation. In a word: fabulous. I was more than a little sick for much of the time, but no worries, I am better now, thanks to the help of a very intelligent Australian doctor in Timor. I am also back from Aileu, where I went last week and had another fabulous time, despite the fact that it rained, a lot, nearly every day. I guess that's what you expect from the rainy season.
So I do know I should write more, but I have no time now and I shouldn't be in the office anyways on a Sunday - so here is a random photo from our guesthouse in Aileu. And happy new years to everyone and happy winter holidays of whatever sort were celebrated.
Posted by storbert at 4:40 AM | Comments (0)
October 15, 2005
Vacation Plans, Baby
I have been bad about updating the blog â€" mostly because I don't have any really good stories to relate. I got burned last weekend and have been peeling and cursing myself ever since (and I am definitely NOT taking any pictures of that). I also (drumroll, everyone) booked a ticket to THAILAND. Yes, that's right folks, little old me is going to Thailand, and it is going to rule. I'm going to visit Tess (who also has her own blog) eat some really good food, and try not to cause any international incidents. Anyways â€" I'm off to a little enclave of East Timor, located (ironically enough) in Indonesian West Timor for five days, but should come back a sane person with many amazing photos.
Peace.
Posted by storbert at 8:45 PM | Comments (1)
October 1, 2005
This Entry has No Subject
Last night, Kim, the one-woman finance wonder, left us at the office. Her parting was indeed tragic, and I felt it exceedingly â€" as it is incredible to have someone who makes it her job to make everyone else's job easier. I'm praying she decides to come back. This of course, just had to come at the end of a week running against the clock of a not-so-happy nose [more specifically, a sinus infection and splitting sinus headache]. I have little to say, other than that antibiotics are still one of mankind's best inventions. And when walking places in blistering hot sun, I would recommend having a personal soundtrack of the Doves.
Other random stories: the lady at my favorite local hole-in-the-wall restaurant finally asked my name. I was so touched I almost hugged her, and then I remembered I am an American. Her name is Nelsin, and she seems quite contented that 'Mana Bo'ot' now has become 'Mana Salee'. I think this must be classified by some anthropologist somewhere as a right of passage. And if it isn't, then I need to file a complaint somewhere. Its damn cool.
Posted by storbert at 12:21 AM | Comments (1)
August 19, 2005
The Drums of Timor
Nightlife here in Timor can get a bit ... repetitive. Not that I'm complaining, for I am quite grateful that there is such a thing as a nightlife at all. But last night, that all changed with one of the craziest displays of absolute fun I have ever seen, ever, anywhere. Ever seen Stomp? Yeah, this was better. Set out in a back lot of a construction site overshadowed by metal scaffolding and surrounded by trailers, fifty people managed to create music out of just about any material possible that could emit a sound: tires, empty petrol jugs, metal wiring, large overturned vats â€" you name it they had made an instrument out of it. There (before the place turned into a quasi-rave house), out in the open air the group just played drum with the most complex and interchanging rhythms you could imagine. This continued for over an hour, I'm sure, and I wish it hadn't ended. What an experience. I shall never complain about mundane-ness ever again.
Posted by storbert at 10:56 PM | Comments (0)
August 14, 2005
Back from Baucau
I'm back from a weekend in Baucau, and I'm afraid to report I only took one decent photo - and it's of a boat. Seems like I need to be making better use of that camera for sure. But it was a much-needed break. Sometimes the capital can become wearing - as beatiful as it can be - and a little peace and quiet is the best gift in the world. Now I'm going to go and sleep it off ;).
Ironically, however, I didn't see any nasty bugs at all while living in the little grass huts by the beach -- but the minute I get back home, what do I find in my room but a huge flying cockroach. So, I pull out my handy extra-large bottle of RID and chase the thing around the room. Finally spray it with enough toxin that I'm SURE it's going to die, but it manages to scuttle under my bureau. So, just as I'm about to muscle my bureau out of the way so I can make sure it's dead . . . (it's about 11 at night) . . . our power dies. So I'm sitting in the dark with a probably-dead massive bug. I just went to sleep. I think this is the truest sign that I'm becoming used to this place.
Posted by storbert at 7:51 PM | Comments (0)
August 9, 2005
Klutz Central
Fell on my face running. That's about all the updates I have lately. And really, it was just on my hands and knees. Oh, and if anyone reads this who is planning to come to Timor, bring band-aids. Here they are about a dollar apiece (not kidding). I've using a makeshift bandage of gauze pads and athletic tape to try and keep a large-ish cut on my hand relatively clean. And antibiotic ointment is the best thing ever invented.
It was definitely one of the lowest moment I've had here, however, when after I'd fallen (bloody and obviously in pain), the first person to come up to me was a kid who couldn't have been older than 12 carrying tangerines, and all he said to me was, 'Tangerines, Mises?' I have to say that I was close to crying â€" not because I was in that much pain, because it wasn't that bad really, but because it was suddenly very clear to me just how much of a foreigner I really am to some people. Ah well, no great experience is without it's moments of sheer and utter disappointment. We all just have to get up (in my case literally), clean up, and move on.
Posted by storbert at 12:38 AM | Comments (0)
August 5, 2005
Sira hasai hau-nia photo
My newest update is actually an old story â€" as it happened over a few weeks ago â€" but I never got around to writing it down. It has to do with photos, and finally understanding what it's like to be on the other end of the viewfinder. See, I love taking photos, but I hate being in them. There are so many things in Timor that are either shocking or beautiful, and usually these images are found right next to each other. Hence, a camera can be a valuable asset. I also thought that it would be okay to take pictures of people â€" I always ask, and people love seeing the digital image of themselves on the back of the camera. But one day, little unsuspecting me found that I too, could be an object worthy of photographing.
My favorite restaurant here is called FM41 â€" it stands for 4 feto, 1 mane, as the owner has five children: four girls and one boy. It's a hole in the wall, almost literally, with red-checkered plastic tables and food that stands out in the open, accompanied by iced tea with an overdose of sugar on the bottom of your cup. On the other hand, you get excellent Indonesian fried food with rich curries and lots of vegetables (essential eating for a woman who still hasn't figured out how to cook at home), for a little over a buck. I love the place.
I sometimes go there my coworkers, but sometimes I just dart over to shovel food in my mouth and then run back to work. They've gotten used to the big, white foreigner who prances around in white linen and still, for the life of me, can't understand the price of my meal in Indonesian numbers. But a couple weeks ago, the strangest thing happened: I got photographed. Sitting alone, shoveling food, I noticed one of the kitchen staff standing across the room pointing a camera in my direction. 'Strange,' I thought, 'But whatever,' and continued shoveling. He left, I ate, all was good. Then, my mysterious photographer returned this time with a friend who held the camera, and proceeded to stand next to me, smiling hugely at the camera. I suddenly had great sympathy for movie stars and the annoyances of the paparazzi. I'm no movie star â€" I'm a girl who wants to eat friend egg and jackfruit. But, considering I was, after all, in my favorite restaurant and I try to be as friendly as possible to my quirky waiters, I smiled hugely at the camera too and thought, 'Oh hell, I just hope I never see this.'
Paying for my meal (what did it cost? Satu dollar something cents? Huh?) I asked the nice lady who always jokes around with me and compliments my Tetun why the guy had taken my photo. She smiled, shyly and said in the most distinct Tetun phrase, 'Nia gosta ita boot.' [He likes you]
. . . we have a word for this in American. It's called, 'Messed.' Trying to pretend like that didn't faze me; I asked what he was going to do with it. She smiled again and pointed at the wall next to me. 'We're going to put it there,' she said. At this point, daunted with the prospect of facing my own idiotic grin on the walls of my favorite restaurant for the next year, I drew the line. The conversation there on out was not exactly coherent, but I did manage to negotiate that the photo be kept in the back room until I leave the country. I guess I should be grateful for small victories.
So there it is. My story of photos. That's all folks, cause I'm going to the beach! Woohooo for Saturday!
Posted by storbert at 11:44 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
August 3, 2005
Oho Manu
I'm still on the story kick. So here's the story about animals. I wish there were more of a story about animals instead of me just wondering how I was ever a vegetarian. If you are a vegetarian, stop reading here. You will hate me otherwise. Actually, screw that. Read and hate me.
Anyone who thinks that life is anything other than Darwinism is a complete twat. This world is all against all, people, and never forget it. Animals are the perfect example of this fact. The chickens of this country (manu) are trying to slowly kill me through sleep deprivation. They don't realize that DARKNESS = SLEEP. I feel like giving them a thorough lesson about this fact. I friggen show 'em darkness. I feel like being the night-time vigilante that stalks the most obnoxious of obnoxious chickens with a .22 at four in the morning. I'd wear black and a bloody (lit.) chicken feather in my hat and stalk the brainless bastards. I'd then leave the precisely assassinated corpses on the porches of their owners, for them to enjoy in whatever way they see fit, I don't care as long as the thing meets his maker and attempts to give a plausible explanation about why it is necessary to turn every living creature's sleep around it into a living, waking nightmare.
Someone told me that I would get used to the things within a week. L-I-A-R. Let's just say that I am getting remarkably fit because there is nothing to do at 5 in the morning but go running on the beach and try to forget the misery of massive sleep deprivation. I also have rediscovered my carnivore instinct. I will, I promise myself, personally eat through timor's entire chicken population. I will drive prices so high for chicken meat that even the skinniest-necked thing will be slaughtered in greed.
Dogs, I can't strike such vengeance. They too are responsible for my anguished coffee-filled mornings, but they look so pathetic and scrawny in the morning that I can't bring myself to imagine eating them.
Pigs . . . ahh pigs. Pork can be gross, inherently at times. Fat lines dripping off of pink-slug-like strings. I shudder, but I eat it. The animals are mean and territorial. They think my road is theirs. I mean, it's not really mine, in fact I am quite a stranger and eternally an outsider on it â€" but WHY can a pig chase me off my own lane. Well, if it's like the 300-pound gorilla. These things are so massive they can do whatever they want. Include scare the bejinkens out of me when walking home after dark. I don't understand why this wasn't taught in philosophy class â€" it's essential to living: when faced with an angry pig, do not think, run!
Deer. Actually, the deer aren't so bad. They're kind of funny, really. They have to be tied up because unlike every other mentally incapacitated animal inhabiting my neighborhood, if you let them loose they would actually bolt. Come to think of it, so would I, but that's another story. I don't like eating venison anyways, so no biggie. On with the run-down.
Goats. I don't eat goats either, but the things are actually the best entertainment this country has to offer. They also have the most remarkably expressive eyes I have seen in eons. I could almost imagine the kids to be, actual, well, kids. That aside, this big, black billy goat in our front yard eats everything. Shoes, bark, plastic. I wish I had a digestive system as stable as this guy's. If only he'd eat all the insects.
Actually, come to think of it â€" never mind. Animals aren't that bad. CHICKENS ARE EVIL. This is the moral of my story. Eat more chicken.
Posted by storbert at 3:33 AM | Comments (1)
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)
June 20, 2005
The Real Malae Bulak
I'm lost for words. I know it's been a day when I'm lost for words. Actually, it's been more that a day. I wanted an adventure, and I'm getting it. I know I might read these words a few months from now and think that I'm crazy, and I probably am. There's probably nothing wrong with that now too â€" but as of right now I love this country, I love it and I admire it and I know I don't belong here. With the strongest emotion I've had in a long time I'm grateful that the Timorese are letting me live here â€" with my arrogant dress, strange mannerisms, horrible language skills, and outlandish height. A friend once told me that one day I would travel to a country and it would change my life. I don't know the course of my life or where it is taking me, but I have a strong feeling that he was dead right. I'm almost choked up when writing this, I don't know how to explain it. I like stories, not emotions, and I'm not sure how to describe it. So if anyone is reading this I'm stopping now for your benefit so you don't have to suffer through my exhaustive melodrama of conscience.
Today was far from perfect, and some of what I have seen is not something to love. It had at least two firsts: and for me they were most notable because they are so strikingly opposite. Today, a small girl said to me passing on the street, "Hello Misus!" for the first time â€" and then later on the beach a group of young men who I was photographing were yelling, "Photo, Mister!" I'm guessing this haircut of mine isn't doing me any favors in identifying my gender.
I have been hiking through the mountains with a bunch of Aussies that call themselves Hash House Harriers or something like that [I've never been good with names]. They apparently are drinkers with a running problem. I've been to a pool in an island oasis of calm in this sometimes chaotic world I now live in, with three Timorese children who could steal even my ice-hard heart. I've been running in the early morning sun when the land is still cool and the light shines with glory (and no fear of sunburn).
But in these worlds of fun and pleasure, there are always reminders of the two-tired economy we live in. The 'Hashers' are boat-loads of fun, but at the restaurant where the bunch retired to after singing songs children would walk around selling CDs and bracelets. The owner (a nice man as far as I could tell) threw one out by his ear. I guess I understand â€" he is after all running a business, and restaurants are hard to keep profitable â€" but I still felt a twang. He was just a kid, skinny, walking among the beer-bellied and jovial (tipsy?) lot of us trying to make a buck or two. I wasn't sure who should have been thrown out by their ears. In our little pool-ed oasis, kids stood on the barbed wire fence surrounding the place and stared at the malae women parading around with their ample flesh in bikinis, munching on fried shrimp and cocktails. True, at heart it was leering, and rather crude â€" but it was also a wall with barbed wire that non-malae kids 8 and younger, despite an obvious affinity for pools, would never be allowed to cross. And worst of all â€" I went running in the early morning sun. I went running because I want to stay in shape, because I want a skinny little butt like everyone around me (because I'm jetlagged and there's nothing better to do in the morning . . .) â€" whatever the reason I'm well aware that running is the greatest luxury of all. I'm not running anywhere, I'm not running for any real reason â€" I'm running because I'm a yuppie and because I have so much food I have to run some of it off or else become a little butterball. A kid in the road who I passed while running started laughing, and then mock-ran with me for a couple of meters before saying something to everyone and laughing hard. I laughed too â€" because I knew he was dead right. Crazy foreigner indeed. I am welcomed to Timor, and I'm dammed lucky for it.
Posted by storbert at 3:45 AM | Comments (0)
June 19, 2005
Guilty as Sin
I've been here only a day and a bit and already the guilt is starting to kick in full-force. In Bali I knew there was poverty â€" behind the glitzy hotels, just down the block you'd find the vendors selling jacked-priced goods in front of paint-shedding buildings of pink and grey. Walk two minutes from the Ritz Carlton and you will find trash heals on the corner with ridiculously skinny chickens pecking out an existence from the refuse. Squatted in the opposite corner is a group of three children playing with some kind of round rocks, who pause to stare at the big white girl as I walk by.
Yet, even in this I remained aloof. When a vendor tried to fleece me for a sari on a street corner, and then grabbed my arm when I walked out to stop me from leaving his store â€" my rage flared and I turned to stare at him, silently, thinking â€" 'How dare you!?' For the rest of my walk I looked with anger at those aggressive hawkers who called me 'Miss' and followed me down the street with some good to sell. I thought: "What? Do they think I'm made out of gold?"
Dili is different. The poverty is not different, I think, it's just more apparent. In Bali I could choose to ignore it. But here, from the clothes and jewelry I wear, to my prancing around in my pressed white pants, I must look like I'm flaunting wealth. No, I am not rich â€" but neither am I poor â€" and what I once took for granted I now realize is the equivalent of materialistic Eden.
Back in Bali there were two sketchy men who really pissed me off. The first just suggestively leered, "Hey pretty lady, wanna do something?" Horrified I walked faster. The second one asked 'Hey beautiful. Eat me." For a second I was confused, wondering if Balinese culture had forms of cannibalism that I wasn't aware of, but then just assuming it was another crude sexual advance. It was only today I started thinking that he meant it in the same way Americans mean it: he hated me. I realized I can't blame him one bit.
Posted by storbert at 9:44 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
June 18, 2005
Welcome to Dili
It's what everyone has said to me the minute I stepped off the plane. I've had a few who say it with real, genuine smiles suggesting that I really am welcome to Dili â€" and a few with wry smiles as if they have a secret about this place I'm going to be clued in on in a few months and then I'd wish I wasn't so welcome to Dili. I wonder how I'm going to say it in a few months time.
It's not even 12 hours since I stepped on the plane from Bali â€" and I feel like I've lived a weeks worth in that time. I can say this: everyone I've met here is damn awesome, and that's saying something coming from me. But more to the point, the past hours have been jam-packed with sensory over-load. I've been, "Up to Jesus," or to the world's second largest Christ statue (I believe it's called Rae Christo), and it is one of the most awe-inspiring views I have seen in a long while. It was a lovely end to a crazy day. I've met tons of people who all seem, well, awe-inspiring too, but for the life of me I can remember only a few names, mainly my bosses, and am going to have to be the village idiot for the next couple weeks asking people to tell me who they are again because my memory is apparently seriously lacking. I've eaten grilled chicken on a beach with the soft wind blowing over the darkened horizon of a lovely seascape, with scrawny cats meowing at my feet and fur-patched dogs with huge eyes wandering around staring at my feast.
Speaking of dogs, I have also seen one of the strangest sights â€" and if you should fall into the category of polite company I would stop reading here. Sitting on the back porch of the office, drinking a nice cup of tea â€" I noticed that two dogs, were, shall we say, 'stuck' together, and by 'stuck' I will self-censor and avoid the graphic description of just what parts were stuck together and leave that to your imagination. Trying to have a normal conversation with those two hopping around in the background was comical to say the least.
I am now typing in my room on borrowed time. I plugged in my power surge protector only to find it's the one device I own not compatible to 220V, and that dear device, which I have carried with me for over four years of brutal college life, is now fried like an egg on the Dili pavement. So I'm writing in a hotel room, a borrowed room, on borrowed battery time, graced with the presence of my friend, nicknamed "Freaky Gecko," or Mr. FG who, after running all over my walls on my entrance, has hidden in a corner and (if amphibinaly possible) is more scared about my presence in the room than I am.
Welcome to Dili indeed. My borrowed time is up, and I'm going to jet-lagged sleep â€" and perhaps tomorrow will bring more strange stories but until then â€" goodnight.
Posted by storbert at 5:43 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack