Flags are out. Apparently from tomorrow if you don’t have a flag on your car the police will get cross.
But that could have just been a ‘lost in translation’ moment.
Category Archives: Expatting
The Empty Water Bottle (a hate letter in poem form)
I hate changing water.
Every third day
the bottle runs empty
and I’m filled with dismay.
The empty bottle is there
high on the bench
staring at me
like I’m a kitchen wench.
It bubbles, says plolop –
the water is gone.
It taunts me to change it.
I’m a mere sad pawn.
With a groan and a sigh
I give the bottle a wash.
It’s time for a new one
but I’ll lose half in the slosh.
I hoist up the bottle –
all nineteen litres.
From my shoulder I chuck it
to the container; it teeters…
With one final hoist
it goes over the edge,
upside down in the dispenser
perched on the ledge.
And with the now full bottle
I cook with glee
anything with water,
no worries for me.
Because I don’t have to change it
for at least a few days…
But-oh-how I wish for town water
T’would be a novel craze.
Weird stuff for sale in Timor
In Timor one can find quite the mix of goods. For example, in one store I can find grocery staples from Indonesia, Portugal, Brazil, China, Thailand and Singapore.
Recently I was scouring the shelves looking for face moisturiser with SPF in it. My freckly skin is prematurely ageing after almost four years in the tropics.
I was rather amused, then, to find that I could reverse the effects of ageing with a healthy dose of Placenta.
Cause, you know, why the heck not. And at $3.55, it’s quite the bargain.
And continuing with the lady bits for medicinal usage theme, today I came across this little beauty.
Nothing like a cervical collar to ward off a little dose of whiplash.
I wonder what I’ll find next…
ETA: one of my twitter peeps has just told me that a cervical collar IS A THING? Totally weird, man…
Mixing things up a bit
One thing my recent holiday demonstrated to me was how much a miss walking.
Now, I am not an athlete by any stretch of the imagination. I am a plodder. Which actually suits my preferred style of exercise just fine – walking fairly slowly but for a long long time. For example, in 2007, the Mr and I walked the West Highland Way in Scotland. Seven days of plodding. It was great.
We recently spent 10 days in Vietnam soaking up the sights and sounds of our computers, tablets, kindles and phones Hoi An, a UNESCO heritage listed town near Da Nang in the centre of Vietnam.
The plan was to relax by the beach – 10 days in one spot is THE LONGEST we have spent in one holiday spot EVER (except for when we visit parents) and I booked it for that long because I wanted to force us to relax and just enjoy the beach.
Unfortunately, the weather had other ideas.
It was the monsoon season in Hoi An, and there were some lovely cool, rainy days.
Great for us, crap for the kids and our plan to tire them out by throwing them in the pool every day. So we spent a lot of time visiting the old town and walking around, exploring each little nook and cranny.
This weekend was our second weekend back in Dili, but the first weekend ‘back to normal’ – last weekend we had a whingey, whiney sick little Harrie to deal with.
Being Saturday morning, I thought it would be a nice treat to go out for breakfast. The catch – I wanted to walk there.
There are a few places within walking distance from our house, but the roads here don’t have footpaths and don’t have proper drainage so at the moment, things are very muddy. However, I insisted it would be no trouble – it was early, not too hot, not too busy, and it was only a 10 minute walk.
After walking for five minutes, the Sprog had fallen over and we were sick of climbing over fences in order to walk on grass and avoid the traffic. And we were getting really sick of every. single. taxi. that drove past slowing down, beeping the horn and trailing us to convince us to hop in.
The Sprog wanted to be carried so I picked her up, not really looking where I was stepping. Next thing, my leg flew out from underneath me as I fell down into the mud. If you want to picture what I looked like, I was genuflecting down on my left leg in a puddle of mud.
Props to me though, I didn’t drop either the kid or my handbag. I just stood up, said, “Well that was fun,” (SARCASM) and kept walking.
When I washed my leg off, the damage wasn’t so bad. Just skin grazes that are a bit ouchy but nothing major. Hopefully some Timorese taxi drivers got a slight kick from the sight of the big malae lady going knee surfing in the mud. And Mr is refusing to ever walk to breakfast in Dili again.
ETA: This post was inspired by Carly at Confessions of a 30 Something Woman and her post “Pushing outside the comfort zone”
When America came to Timor
Dili is currently a very international city, as a result of its tragic history. There is a UN mission in Timor, UNMIT, which is winding up as we speak. There are people from literally all over the world contributing to the workforce and Police force as part of the mission. Within a few months, though, the ubiquitous white SUVs with massive black letters U N plastered on the side will be a distant memory.
Many countries have independent or integrated missions here too. For example, there is the Australian Defence Cooperation Program (DCP) and the Portuguese GNR (I will very shallowly admit that they are good eye candy), and recently the US Military visited Dili, from where (I think) they then move onto the districts for 6-month stints doing whatever they do (building roads and health checks I think is the most likely).
America arrived in Dili in three warships – one absolutely massive one and two smaller ones. The massive one was an aircraft carrier, and the sound of choppers doing exercises around Dili and the hills surrounding became commonplace. Then, on the final weekend before they left, the noise of choppers became incessant. And extremely loud. And JUST. WOULDN’T. STOP.
Then one of my neighbours happened to mention that the choppers were flying in and out of the US Embassy (definitely the biggest Embassy in Timor), so I decided to go and have a sticky beak.
As we arrived, we got buzzed…
But most impressive was seeing one of these choppers sitting on the lawn of the Embassy.
