Little Miss Moi

Life in Timor-Leste

Category Archives: Me


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My ranty pants are on…

Get some fucking PERSPECTIVE Australia.

Consider these things that happen in countries around the world:

  • People die for the right to vote
  • People walk for two or three days in order to reach a polling booth
  • People die while they are voting
  • People vote even though they know that the results will be tampered with and the same old dictator will retain power
  • People get killed in countries where they have no say over who rules them
  • People get tortured to admit who they voted for and then get killed by mercenaries or militia.

Then we have Australia:

  • You whinge about compulsory voting so loudly one would think you were being tortured
  • You will walk or drive for two or three minutes to reach a polling booth
  • You buy sausage sizzle and lattes while you’re voting
  • Your election results are scrutineered and recounted and you’re 99.999999999 per cent sure the results are not tampered with
  • You get harrassed by people running things called ‘exit polls’ to admit who you voted for
  • You have every say over who runs the country, and if you don’t like it, there’s nothing stopping you from running.

So let’s just reflect for a minute… How fucking lucky are we?  We get to VOTE. In a proper, non-corrupt DEMOCRACY.

Oh except you wouldn’t think that any of you realised how fucking LUCKY you are by the flurry of complaints that emerged yesterday when the PM announced that the 2013 election would be on Saturday 14 September. Yom Kippur. Many tweets ensued. News websites went mad. Interesting course for the story to take indeed.

But what REALLY got me was when someone tweeted that the PM, who has recently become A Friend Of The Bloggers, should know better than to schedule an election on the same day as one of the (mildly sycophantic, potentially cliquey?) blogger seminars that occur on a regular basis.

(I am not naming as I like the tweeter and she also claimed that her tweet was said in jest. But still, it was out there and demonstrated the tone of many tweets floating around yesterday.)

My initial reaction: WTAFF? Who cares if you’re at a conference in Melbourne or Sydney or wherever it happens to be held? If you can take the time to register for a seminar and book flights and a hotel, you can take the time organise a postal/absentee vote. You’ve got eight months to organise it.

Yes, that’s right. If the date of the election – EIGHT MONTHS FROM NOW – is that much of an issue, then that’s the beauty of living in a democracy isn’t it? You can vote the government out. You can tweet out your frustrations. You can write letters to your local member and letters to the local paper. You can organise a rally for god’s sake, just to let people know how upset you are. And you can do so in the knowledge that no one will shoot you. Shoo you, maybe, but not shoot.

I live in Timor at the moment. What people went through here in order to merely register to vote in the UN sanctioned referrendum for autonomy vs independence, and what they subsequently went through when Indonesia withdrew from the country (google Scorched Earth if you’re not sure) has given me perspective.

I lived in Ukraine for almost three years. In that time, government was only formed for maybe ten months because of corruption, outside intervention in politics, and an inability for form sufficient coalitions. Since I’ve left, the former Prime Minister has been jailed – supposedly for decisions she made when she was in government, but more likely because some very rich and powerful people don’t like her.

Do you all realise how lucky you are? DO YOU REALLY? Who cares if you HAVE to vote? I’ve voted in about seven different cities in my life and walked to the polling booth every time. I’ve never waited longer than five minutes to vote. I can wait longer for a coffee on a Saturday morning than it takes to vote.

It’s so ironic that in Australia we still joke about whinging poms, when honestly and truly I think Australians have a bloody good go at whinging too (myself included, ref. this entire post).

I don’t know what to leave you with, but here’s a thought – turn on SBS news at 6.30pm or, for those with Foxtel/Austar, switch on Al Jazeera anytime and you’ll see the horrible things that happen in the rest of the world and compulsory voting on a holy day when a bloggers conference is scheduled, in a country that will let you boot out the government if it really offends you that much, will be the least of your worries.

PS I am a Catholic and it would not bother me in the slightest to vote on Good Friday. Or Christmas. Because I feel privileged to have the right to vote.

This post was inspired by the first paragraph of this article by John Birmingham. I haven’t gotten around to reading the whole thing yet.


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Bits and pieces

In the past month or so since I last posted, one major thing has happened – our landlord organised for an internet upgrade and instead of download speeds of 92kbps, I now have speeds of 200kbps! Oh har har you say, paltry! Yes, it’s paltry, but it’s the difference between gnashing my teeth at the computer screen for hours on end while a page doesn’t load. Instead, all I have to do is get up and brew a cup of tea while I’m waiting for a webpage to load. A vast improvement indeed.

I have also set up a Facebook page, just for fun, you know. The URL is http://www.facebook.com/Brooke.LittleMissMoi so feel free to pop by and like me. There you will see my witty updates throughout the day (or week). I have also installed a box in the sidebar but I don’t know if it works, as my internet doesn’t quite have enough juice to load it within a reasonable time.

That’s about it for the moment. Hopefully the improved internet will make a difference to my blogging capabilities.


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An expat week

Last week was what I’ll just call an ‘expat’ week.

It’s the kind of week I had semi-frequently in Ukraine and I’ve certainly expected them here too. After a month in the country, I closed up shop. Went all introverted and emo, and just shut myself off from the world as much as possible.

I’m not sure what triggered it in this case, but it could have just been the fact that it’s been a month and perhaps subconsciously I was like, “OK, time for a breather”. I don’t know.

Unfortunately, it’s harder to deal with this semi-depressed / culture shock / homesick state when you have two children. And a nanny who is here daily and thus a witness to my self-indulgent behaviour.

In Ukraine, the Mr always knew when I was on a downer because he would come home at 9pm and I would be on the couch with empty chip and chocolate packets next to me, under a doona, watching reruns of ‘Location, Location, Location’ while it snowed outside, and there would be no dinner cooked. And I would usually burst into tears when I saw him and cry about how someone was mean to me in a store, bumped me in the street, couldn’t understand what I needed at the bank, or mocked my Russian pronunciation at the markets.

Here, I don’t have those excuses. Firstly, the path I tread in Dili is very much geared towards English or Portuguese speaking expats (or both). It’s been a UN post for 10 years now, it’s a small city with a small population and the UN contract here has been extensive, so the effects of outsiders on the country seem to be very far reaching. There are still small misunderstandings, but nothing major like our phone or power being cut (as happened in Ukraine a few times because I didn’t understand how to pay the bill).

Still, it’s a different country and it takes energy when out and about because things are still foreign – even just figuring out what to cook with the ingredients that can (and can’t) be found here is a bit confounding at times. Not to mention the fact that I don’t have an oven or a grill.

So last week I retreated into myself a bit. I watched a lot of movies and TV, read a few books and a few fanfics, spent way too much time daydreaming and being all round self pitying. I fell off the radar, so to speak. This is a new week though, so I shall embrace it and rouse myself from my reverie.

Have a great week!


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Making musical memories – a manifesto

If I like I song, I will listen to it over and over and over again.

Music can evoke such strong memories in me that I am instantly transported back to the place that I listened to the song most on repeat.

So, for example, when at the tender age of 14 I travelled to the UK with my mum to visit my sister (the first to leave the nest), the Christmas single was ‘Stay Another Day’ by East 17, who I absolutely adored at the time (and I even saw Brian from East 17 looking like a right chav while shopping in Heal & Co. on Tottenham Court Road – OMG the FEELS I tell you).

That same trip was also punctuated by frequent trips into every single HMV that I passed on the isle of Britain in a desperate search for the ‘Last of the Mohicans’ soundtrack, which I had taken quite a shining to. (Or it was Daniel Day-Lewis who I took a shining to – yes, yes I think it was. And I died with jealousy when big sis came home and said that she’d run into him on the street and gotten his autograph! Ack!)

Not only that, but mum, sis and I embarked on a whirlwind tour of England and Scotland, and in preparation for the trip my sister made a mix tape – which subsequently was the only CD we had in our possession for the next week. Songs such as ‘Don’t Cry for Me Argentina’, ‘Miss Chatelaine’ by K.D. Lang and some Pogues I’m sure, I just can’t remember which one. Not to mention this awesome track – ‘Here to There’ by Michael Nyman, from The Piano soundtrack – which I can remember listening to while laying on the couch in my sister’s cosy and quite posh little flat in Fulham at 4am when I woke up with jetlag.

On a trip to Thailand and Laos in 2004 we purchased a few CDs and as a result the theme song for the trip was ‘Jacqueline’ by Franz Ferdinand. I still remember the first listen, laying on a bed in a relatively cheap bungalow up the hill on Koh Phi Phi, watching geckos run across the ceiling. Ah memories.

When I moved to Ukraine in 2006, the theme song for those early months was ‘Yankee Bayonet (I will be home then)’ by The Decemberists. It was a nice moody track that got me through the first few months of isolation in a new city in a new country halfway across the world. At minus twenty degrees.

A couple of weeks before we were due to leave Darwin, I was driving up to Spotlight to buy some fabric for my stash (a whole other story) when a song came on the radio – 105.7 ABC Darwin – that was just such an amazing song that I had to sit in the car after I reached the carpark and continue to listen to it. It was ‘Even Though I’m a Woman’ by Seeker Lover Keeper. And in lieu of having a theme song since our arrival in Dili, I’m still obsessing over this one.

There are so many songs in my life I associate with different times and places, that I couldn’t mention them all here. Although when I was drafting this post, I tried, trust me. In the end, I delved into my iTunes library and got lost for half the day, hence why I’m publishing this post a day after I actually wrote it.

And after the retrospective, I think I want to go buy some new tunes to make some new music memories.

Oh and PS – I still use the word ‘Walkman’.


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Last night a DVD got to me…

Tropics living isn’t really for me.

After three and a half years, I’m now used to it and I appreciate the fact that I don’t have to switch up the kids’ wardrobes throughout the year, and that it’s never too cold for them to play outside.

When I was younger I used to dream about the day that I could move to London and live there, working in a museum or university as an anthropologist (trust me, this is when I was MUCH younger!), walking out of my workplace at the end of each day rugged up in a coat and scarf, sky overcast, a bit of drizzle. To me, this was perfection.

Then I grew up and moved to Sydney and that city has its fair share of cold, wet days and my appetite was sated.

And then I moved to Ukraine where it was too bloody cold and snowy and slippery, and I’m sure I got SAD and after three winters, when the Mr told me that he had a job offer in Darwin – the tropics, the land of perpetual summer! – I thought that it sounded absolutely blissful.

It took about three years until I stopped yearning for a cold snap. Finally, after all this time in the tropics I can appreciate the nuances in the weather and enjoy them. The thermometer dipped below 20 last night for an hour? OMG BLISS!

In September 2010 we took a little family weekend to Melbourne so the Mr could take in some of the football finals. My awesome friend and former boss said that we could stay at her lovely terrace house in North Carlton (even though she wasn’t there for a few days – talk about brave, letting a family with a small kid loose when she’s not there to protect her domain).

In the evening while the Mr was at the footy, I got the Sprog off to sleep, switched off the central heating, and for an evening, I lived the life that I haven’t quite lived yet: groovy inner city pad, cold but not TOO cold, glass bottle of red, cheese and crackers and a chick flick period drama. The drama of choice just happened to be something my friend had lying around next to her DVD player: the Rupert Penry-Jones version of Persuasion.

That night still stands out as one of the best nights I’ve had in recent memory (sad, I know!). I enjoyed the me-time immensely – and it was definitely augmented by the fact that I could curl up in a ball and not have my limbs slip off each other because of the ever constant sweat of the tropics. It was an evening parenthesised by a great weekend of good food, exploring new places, friends, and damn good, cheap coffee.

Last night, after a bottle few glasses of white (well, it IS the tropics), I pulled out my since-purchased copy of Persuasion and was instantly transported back to that evening. I think I bought the DVD because I hear the music and see the visuals and a feeling of happiness just floods over me. Yes. I am that sad.

Even though tropical living is on the cards for the next little while at least, it’s nice to go on a trip down memory lane.

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