Resourcefulness.

Episode 1 – Honestly!

Hunting for accommodation, one of the young women who served at the bar had several times offered to show me a place, only to not show up each time. I vowed this one would be the last time, having begun to believe that the place didn’t actually exist. Maybe she’d been promising it in a kind of Melanesian way. If I thought that I had a chance at something, whether or not it was the case, then that would make me happier temporarily, which had to be a good thing. As per usual, she didn’t show. I gave up and went around the corner, near to where I normally have breakfast and waited in a department store for the owner who also let out properties.

Unbeknownst to me she had arrived a few minutes after I left, late but actually coming. She already knew where I had breakfast (had a waitress friend there) and rushed around the corner to see if I was there. She missed me by 2 perhaps minutes as I fruitlessly hung around the back of the nearby store, out of sight and view of the street, waiting for the owner. Eventually I got in a taxi and went to the department store owner’s property to look at it. The barmaid and I must have crossed paths quite a few times.

My work phone went off. I had owned it almost two days, just about no-one knew its number and I didn’t recognise the caller. It was her. She’d convinced the cleaner to let her come into my room while he was cleaning it – everyone knew about my househunting – saw the packaging of the phone and read the number on the side. Her phone had been stolen a week earlier so she borrowed the bar manager's phone and called me.

I gave her points for trying hard and went back to look at her house.

Episode 2 Dis-Honestly!

I was at a dance and someone asked to borrow my phone, as hers was out of charge. “Out of credit”, I thought, but lent her my phone. A day later I started getting missed calls from a number I didn’t know. It was the young lady from the dance, who had used my phone to call her own phone and discover and save my number. She’d ring once and then hang up, hoping that I would call back on my dime. Which I did, once. Surely I remembered her, and wanted to take her out?

Her calls have since gone unanswered. 10 points for cleverness, 5 points for humour in the situation, 0 for integrity and -10 for ever wanting to lay eyes on her again.

Accommodation blues

By and large, accommodation is not easy here. Big companies like Patrick/Toll apparently have their own compounds as well as long term contracts on houses. The Oz embassy has a huge compound on the beach front. Most hotels have their long term options booked long term. Love the business model, hate its personal implications. Quite a few of the hotels were put up when the initial UN intervention happened. They are converted shipping containers, no joke. Even some of them have no vacancies. For quite a while there was a floating hotel as well. I think it sailed away last year to a more troublesome trouble spot when it looked like the UN was reducing its presence here and accommodation would be less profitable.

I’ve been spending some time looking for alternate accommodation. I’m quite OK where I am, but I’m mortally certain Just Add Water does not want to live in a sports bar. It’s just the way she is. She would be happy except that she doesn’t like loud noise. Or sports. Or bars. Last night ‘Jim Ligament’, my travel agent, decided he was li'l Axel Rose, Deep Purple and Screamin' Jay Hawkins rolled into one package. At about 10 pm and 120 decibels. And I admit that I’ve never heard an amateur scream as tunefully as he did. But I was glad Just Add Water missed the fun. I was discussing biz with Fully Loaded, but I eventually gave up.

Even so, anyone coming to Dili should give my present digs a try. The owner is great and bends over backwards to try and meet all reasonable requests. Some people have literally been living there for years. Contact details available.

But life keeps giving. I was all out of leads at 7 am and by 8 am had followed up a promising but futile lead. Its night, I’m waiting on one phone call tonight and an email lead tomorrow, as well as having put out a plea on the hash network (for which I will be assuredly punished, but possibly rewarded as well).

I was told, I don’t know if it’s true, that my extremely senior local boss at work moved out of his own house to rent it to someone like me! It was a deal that worked for everyone, but it speaks volumes. Cross your fingers for us.

I work in a palace

The Palacio do Governu is a literal palace, white walls, columns and arches, tiled floors and modern furniture. And I work in it. It’s a far cry from Honiara’s asbestos hut with the bodgy aircon, toilets in another building etc. I’m told Budget Directorate has only just moved in, and that accommodation used to be less salubrious, but I don’t really care. It’s lovely.

It isn’t Canberra, of course. The grounds are littered with prefab ‘kobe houses’ (pronounced almost like cubby houses, and sharing some of that atmosphere), the IT infrastructure is unreliable at best and the wood pattern lino, laid in the last month or two, is already lifting. It’s still lovely as far as I’m concerned.

For a variety of technical reasons, the cleaners couldn’t get to the windows in Honiara, and they had 2 years worth of grime obscuring the outside. There are guards all over the place, but they seem pretty relaxed and they carry nightsticks, not AK-47s. They apparently sometimes give you a bit of grief if you don’t have a pass, but that didn’t happen to me, and now my pass has been issued.

The Palacio fronts the Ocean and is really worth a photo or two. I guess I should get a camera if I’m going to take this seriously. For now though, you’ll have to deal with word pictures.

Start up enterprise

My first day in the office was, like all first days, a bit of a mixed bag. Along with all the things I did expect, there were also those I didn’t, such as where were my passport photos for ID cards (hadn’t been asked), my passport to get a telephone (hadn’t thought of that) and my computer (they were supposed to provide one but the new ones will probably be here in September. Maybe.)

The tour of Dili confirmed some impressions – it will be a lot easier to buy most things that we found hard to get in the Solomons, fresh milk is unavailable, and you don’t drink the water, but you don’t have to. The ups and downs continued that day and into the next. Up: Fully Loaded, my co-worker is a lot of fun and sharp. Down: my UPS, carefully packed was somehow smashed by Air North – a couple of hundred bucks and 8 kg of baggage and excess baggage fees shot. Up: At least I can get a replacement here. Down: Things move as slowly as one might expect. Up: I should have a kitchenette apartment in a couple of days – hooray!

I'm here!

So I’ve landed in Dili and so far it’s gone well. All my bags arrived! The customs guy eventually conceded that maybe I didn’t need to pay duty on a 3 year old coffee machine or a 3 year old printer. And no, I didn’t have the purchase invoices. The guys from the Department picked me up and brought me to my digs where there was no one in the office, it being Sunday. They nevertheless got the key and we moved in.

They had taken off before I realised that there was no kitchenette and the room was pretty sparsely furnished. Not what I had paid for, and not very like the photos. Later things got better. I spent of lot of time walking around the local area and bought a little fruit (bananas! bush limes!) and just taking in the sights without trying to form too many impressions. There’s more variation in skin colour than I expected although less than the Solomons, and some of the people have that same elegant posture that I missed while back in Australia.

I met quite a few people, including several Dili hash regulars such as Footrot and Wal, a newbie named Whip Me, Beat Me who had singularly managed to attend his first Hash, get named and be awarded PoTW all on the same run, a couple of construction workers who talked fishin’, fightin’ and other stuff involving the letter f, some fairly inebriated but very pleasant folks celebrating a significant birthday, and the owner of the establishment, Gil. Gil blamed my accommodation on the travel agent, who is currently in Bali and can’t be contacted. In other unpleasant news the internet was slow (no surprise) and not free (as promised by the same travel agent).

And tomorrow, I start the new job. I’m unwilling to really unpack as I might be moving rooms. If I’m lucky.