Monster post

I swear I am going to start a new blog. Currently I have to go into a years-dead identity, linked to a now non-existent ISP, to log on. Because Google knows what my current identity is, it helpfully  logs me into that instead and refuses access to this. So I have to do it via an incognito window - cumbersome, but I can do it, so enough complaining.

I've been in Timor for a month and it has changed in some ways and remained very much the same in others. Despite the huge turnover in advisors and diplomats and aid workers, I'm pleased to keep running into old mates. Long term expat friends are also a pleasure plus I'm making new friends.

I have been as busy as a one-legged man in a bum kicking contest, trying to find accommodation, buy a car, learn Tetun and put in a decent week's work while learning the ropes. Also I have absolute nightmares with Google, IT and networks, so forgive the lack of communication until now.

The rains came today (it remains to see if they last). At 4 pm it felt like 45 degrees C, at 4:05 I was wondering if I was too late to build an ark. (And where would I get the animals, two by two? Dili's not London and it hasn't a zoo!) By 6 pm 2 inches of rain had fallen and the roads were largely dry. Muggy is too mild a term for how it feels, but the temperature has dropped to about 30 and the humidity can't be too much above 98%.

I'm working in a Ministry which at least for now shall go nameless, helping them strengthen their financial systems. I'm getting used to the pitying gazes when I say that, and the surprise when people realize that I'm not here for the cash, I think this can be done and I am the bloke to do it. Not the only one in the world, obviously, but uniquely qualified all the same. And I really have some great people to work with.

(As everyone knows, I don't discuss matters properly the business of the Timorese government, the Australian government or my employer here on my blog. Apart from anything else, it would a betrayal of confidence and totally unprofessional.)

I smile and say the greeting appropriate to the time of day to many people on the street (I walk nearly everywhere which is great for fitness but has led to a couple of bad sunburns). I get the occasional thousand-yard stare, but usually at least a smile and/or a verbal acknowledgement. Quite a few times young people (and I remind readers that the Timorese are rather beautiful, with the most stunning smiles) have walked along with me. I have spoken in my fairly stumbling Tetun, which their English generally puts to shame.

I have to admit, I was rather worried about the intentions of some of the young women, but it seems that they just wanted to talk to a friendly malae who was at least trying. I realise that very few foreigners do try. A couple of the young men did want to use me as a contact with the embassy to help them access the 'working in Australia' scheme, but I managed to persuade them that I was not in the embassy and had no influence on their selection processes. They gave up with reasonable grace, and as with everyone else, I thanked them for the Tetun lesson.

In talking in Tetun, direct questions are asked, although indirect replies often given. Questions not considered nosy when talking to someone for the first time include "Where are you going?", "Where are you [originally] from?", "How many children do you have?" and "How old are you?". The answer to this last question nearly always shocks them, in that I am so old (they wouldn't have guessed) and that I only have two children, none returned (i.e. died before the age of 2). I get my own share of shocks. One girl I was walking with turned out to be 22 (somewhat more then I had guessed although I had been misled because she was still at school) with two children.

Oddly, your name often is asked last, or not at all.

Tonight I am sitting in the restaurant in the place where I live. The food's not great. Apparently it used to be then both chefs left. I had fried eggs the other morning for breakfast. Possibly deep fried. The staff are friendly but need just about a .45 fired over their heads to get their attention. Like much of Timor, busy work plus a fair bit of wandering back and forth and taking mobile phone calls occupies them. This is not a slur, It is an indication that 400 years of occupation where initiative was punished takes its toll on even the proudest people. But it is something that can, in time, be adressed.

And that will be part of my job, in a country that has always known the stick and rarely the carrot.

Back on the ground again

Where has the time gone? Just Add Water and I have been rushing around like the proverbial headless chooks, particularly trying to arrange new accommodation. The market is very tight for reasonable apartments or villas. Between the two of us we've inspected well over twenty and the search continues. The thought of living in a hotel room for a year leaves us both fairly cold.

With the sacking and expulsion of a number of foreign legal advisors and judges (remember, my blog does not make political comments or judgements) I was rather selfishly hoping that some quality stuff would hit the market, but none of my contacts have come forward. At the moment we are paying $US3,200 per month for a 2 bedroom place overlooking a construction site with electricity, gas, laundry, cleaning, water rates and everything else NOT included. There is free internet but you are fortunate to download a single page in a night. Reminds me of internet speeds in 1990!

We're also looking for a car, although we might have a little more luck there. A soon-to-depart aid worker has a relatively good 4WD on offer. Cars in Timor keep their value, and so are relatively expensive but you get your money back in the end.

Less household, more Dili.

I've been on one Hash run (walk), walked the 11 km loop around the Christo Rei peninsula behind the huge statue of Christ, attended Rotary (funny how many of the Hash hoons are pillars of the Rotarian society) and covered a very conservative 50kms on foot in the last two weeks. Just Add Water has been doing well and will go on her first dive tomorrow. Somehow, don't ask me, last night she was complaining of cold feet (literally, not figuratively).

Dili has changed in some ways and not at all in others. I'll go into more detail later, but I'm warm and there's really nothing that compares with a G&T in the tropics. The Dili population, by and large are not as painfully thin as I remember them, but I'll be visiting the hospitals in the districts soon and I expect to see another story. Hunger is a major issue here.

The clever merchants of Dili have come up with a way to market jeans. Given that Timorese women are still very slender on the whole, they buy skinny leg mannequins, squeeze them into the jeans and just leave them unzipped at the front (no way that these jeans are going to fit a western model's figure!).

Packing Part 2

Our house used to resemble Aladdin's cave. Dirt on the floors, chests everywhere and loaded with treasures (if only you could find them). And don't even get me started on the storage warehouse called the garage that looked less like a place in which a car had ever been parked and more like Ground Zero in New York City. And enough spiders to make Shelob's lair look like a haven for arachnophobes.

We have cleaned, polished, tidied, gardened and most of all disposed of the accreta of several decades. Our neighbours unknowingly allowed us to fill up their bins on garbage night, and still it comes. We have not yet begun to pack. Just Add Water's passport has not been issued yet and I'm pretty irritated since we paid over $100 more than a week ago for priority processing.

Other things are progressing. I've signed my contract, we're flying out in less than two weeks. We don't know where we are staying, but that will sort itself out. I hear that One More Bar in Dili has closed, which is a pity as the proprietor not only ran a decent bar but was a qualified butcher and served up some pretty good tucker.

We're getting tradies in to fix everything we should have done long ago. Just Add Water is putting in a sterling effort and Three Strokes has been of assistance.

And of course we're leaving Canberra just as the weather starts to improve.

Packing - part 1 of many.

We are getting ready for the move, which is less than 3 weeks. It's been a salutatory lesson on how much you can get done if you have to, rather than if you vaguely want to. My study, a source of personal shame and disgrace, will be tidy and ready to vacuum today. Fidget's bedroom is already done. He saw it on Skype and was gobsmacked. For the first time I actually believe that we can do this. Things are moving quickly and stars are falling into alignment.

Even the weather is cooperating. It's spring in Canberra and it isn't pouring with rain and sleet.

We had a mild disaster last night when a shelf gave way and dropped onto my computer chair. It was about 100 kilos of shelf and papers. However, I was downstairs and it somehow missed everything of value, including my main computer. Just Add Water was terrified that I'd been injured, only to find me arriving and asking what the blazes was going on. Picked up all the mess and got ready to continue, but I decided it was bedtime.

There are going to be a few time consuming things, and the question will be whether to address the problem now or do a Pablo Picasso. Picasso was notorious for crating everything up when he moved house, and never uncrating, but simply accumulating more possessions. By nature, I am very minimalist (with a couple of exceptions, mainly T-shirts), but Just Add Water gets sentimentally attached, particularly to books. It's a question of approach - I ask "Will I ever read this again?", whereas she asks "Will I feel comfortable getting rid of this?".

We still have a long way to go, however, and the question of our trio of pets is very much unresolved.

Diak Malae rises again

It has been 5 years since I posted and much water has gone under the bridge since then.

I left my job in Dili and returned to my Department in Canberra. Leaving there, I went to AusAID, which became the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade. I left there, thinking to retire, but found that retirement was a gig that was too hard for me. I haven't had one of those for a long time.

Plus Fidget has announced his intention to pursue an education in Melbourne. Or Canada. Or anywhere that is (a) expensive and (b) far away from his loving parents.

Just Add Water has had no water added for quite some time, and I think a return to Dili and its diving may do her the world of good. It's possible she could write 'colour pieces' for the new Timor Tourism initiative.

We've got about three weeks to pack the house and get it presentable for letting and it's panic stations already. I'll post as I get time, but everyone I speak on the phone says I sound excited and happy (subtext: for the first time in ages).

I am looking forward to the Dili morning sky.

A Dili miscellany.

I haven’t written for a while, largely due to work pressures but also thanks to no large focus.


So I’ve assembled a few small things, a bunch of verbal gewgaws.


Some Tetum expressions: oin midar (“sweet face”) translates to “smile”. “La halimar” (“not playing”) translates as “seriously” in the sense of “very” e.g. tasi bo’ot la halimar means “seriously big waves”. Oi-oin (face-facing) means “a variety”. Manas (“hot”) is fun. Rai manas (“hot land”) actually refers to hot weather, but if you are suffering from hot weather, you cannot say “hau manas”. That is either ungrammatical, or slang for “I’m crazy”. You can say “nia manas” (s/he hot) and that translates out straight into our English idiom of “She’s hot!”. Isin rua (“two bodies”) means pregnant; it’s a useful phrase in my office.


The deer who graze by the shore have vanished. I hope Christmas in July did not feature venison. The tents for the night time barbequers also all vanished one night, although the people did not. The wood and bamboo scaffolding round the statue of Jesus is no longer there. Unfortunately, it didn’t vanish. It was simply untied and pushed down the slope.


I see so many things that take my fancy here, it really is a different place. Last weekend, I was just wandering and a family invited me to sit down and have a drink with them. I smiled and declined, as they were drinking Coke and Fanta. Asking for tea might have been too much and asking for water may have been unhealthy, so it was easier to pretend I had somewhere to be rather than refuse hospitality. Nevertheless, it made me feel good.


For those who don’t know, Just Add Water is now a Dive Master, to add to her impressive list of credentials. Solves the problem of answering: “And what do you do here?”, although what she is currently doing is learning Tetum, an activity for which she hasn’t had time to date.


The dry season has started. No, it hasn’t. Yes, it has. No, it hasn’t. Yes, for the moment, it has.
Except it rained last night.


Work progresses, and I’m going to leave that description right there.

Update from the trenches

I haven’t written for a while, and this one really is just an update for those who are interested in personal happenings. It will be of less interest to those who read for an understanding of Timor-Leste.

I spent two weeks in Canberra. Subjectively, they were two of the coldest weeks I have ever spent and my normal clothing amounted to 5 layers, including thermals. Fidget was running around in shorts, a t-shirt and a hoodie. The hoodie was a fashion statement, he wears one in subzero temperatures and +30 degree temperatures. Naturally, just as I was about to come home I started to acclimatise.

Work has been crazy in any number of senses. We are at a key period and tension is running high. Our national (i.e. Timorese) management team in the office have been promoted or reshuffled and all are new to their jobs, which does not help, so the international advisors are working as change managers, have higher support requirements being placed on them and also are still trying to deliver on the original aims set in a somewhat different environment.

Tempers are not in short supply, but good tempers are.

I’m fielding a few job offers (or at least inquiries as to my availability) at the moment, here and elsewhere. Just Add Water has noted that diving facilities will be a key criterion in determining acceptability – one of the options fares rather poorly in that regard. And Three Strokes would reverse-disinherit me if I tried to go somewhere a little dubious. Like Afghanistan, Iraq or Pakistan. So places like that aren’t on the list. Although I am told that the hazards are somewhat overstated.

The dry season has arrived at last. Only no-one has told the weather, so the rainfall this week has been torrential.

Just Add Water is still in Australia and will be for a few more days. She’ll be thoroughly dehydrated by the time she gets back. And she acclimatised to Canberra’s cold awfully quickly, so I suspect she’ll be suffering a bit when she gets back.

I’ll try to get out for more Timor colour, but I appear to be working 7 day, 90 hour weeks at the moment.