Stories from the Tropic #7

Hopefully everyone has found the new spot for my weekly or bi-monthly posts. While I have been pretty fairly constant to post weekly, either my adventures have subsided, or my assimilation into Timorese life has me less tuned to my environment and more oblivious to the goings on around me. Hence less to talk about and less frequent posts; that or I am setting the stage for imminent writers block? As mentioned previously I am still getting used to this blogging way of posting so things like pictures and other changes will come in due course. In the interim pictures will remain on the Shaw photoshare site.


Things at the office are changing yet again. Mac, our Director General, arrived back from his leave on 11th after a 4 week river tour of Cambodia and Vietnam with his wife Carol. He said everything was great and made the point of mentioning that the motor scooter ratio in those countries is much greater than here. Mental note to myself never to visit those countries as I am ready to run all scooters, and taxis off the road. Yet another sign that I am getting used to my environment as I swear as profusely as I did driving at home. Funny how your attitude changes in that I now long for traffic signs, street signs and lane painted streets. Perhaps I am being to optimistic in thinking that those things could change the traffic kaos - but one must always have hope.


Back to work changes: Mac is back and one is departing for good, and another newbee is arriving. Dan, who's job I am stepping into was here for about 5 weeks to transition me into the job. He has been invaluable to me and I will miss having him around when he departs back to Canada. While the actual difficulty of my tasks are not complex, Dan was able to give me the 'reading between the lines' version so I could anticipate bottleneck, problems, personalities that can grind things to a halt around here. To temper the loss of Dan, leaving me solo from now on, another Man Hydro mate will arrived Tuesday the 17th - Keith Au, the Customer Accting Manager at home will be our new director of Commercial Operations. I have known Keith for many years through working together at Hydro, and will be a fine addition to our team and nice for me to have a familiar friend. This will make our team complete - with 5 directors all in place: Mac the DG, myself the director of Finance and Admin, Don the director of distribution, Curtis the director of Generation and Keith whom I mentioned. Perhaps there is hope that we can make some progress now - again one must always have hope.

We had yet another supplier stop by (which they do periodically), first was Shozo from Tokyo in late January, with the last couple of days from the boys from Maguris Corp, Hendri from Singapore, and his partner Yap from Jakarta. While not as wild as Mark it is filled with business discussions, but primarily we get taken out for lunch and dinner. Very gracious, warm guys who are always asking if we need more food, more drink, anything. One day it was sushi at a Japanese place (very good suprisingly) and last night was Chinese food, also very good. Only Yap, Hendri and myself did the whole meal with chopsticks - the others complained they would go hungry otherwise. In addition to their graciousness here they are know for hosting us for an evening should we ever pass thru either Singapore or Jakarta. Which Dan will do with yet another employee of Hendri, Nono and what Mark and Rob did on there way to see us.


On another note I have failed to date to mention the Dili Hash Club. The idea of the Hash is nothing new to the expat community with local chapters almost everywhere in the world. The idea is to meet weekly under the auspicious of running but actually an excuse for expats to get together and have copious liquid refreshment. Many Hash clubs post as there mantra: "A drinking club with a running problem." The Dili version of the Hash is no different, perhaps even worse as most of the members are Aussie's and while I have come to love all Aussies they do love there beer and I would never try to keep up with them.

Every week someone in the club 'hosts' the hash for the week. I have only been 3 times but the process is the same: show up, pay $5 bucks and do the run around the hosts local area. After the run everyone comes back to the meeting place where four huge coolers await - 2 full coolers with Aussie beer on ice, 1 with coolers (not like our vodka coolers at home but somehow different in a green bottle - not a big fan of coolers at the best of times, I had a sip once and never bothered with them since), and another with soft drinks which never get drunk. Everyone mills around in circle and while enjoy their beverage watch the rituals that go on in the center for things like new comers, 25 runs, 50 runs, asshole of the week (invariably bad driving stories involving UN drivers in their SUV's) and other significant benchmarks. The ritual is the same, and you guessed is based around drinking: the charges kneal in the center and are handed cups of beer, the hash song is sung while the charges must drink there ration as quickly as possible. I starts at about 4:30 and usually home at 7:30 or 8. I say usually as sometimes things are changed up a bit. Last week in honor of valentines day, it was the annual red dress event where everyone (yes everyone) is required to wear a red dress. The pictures will say enough when I figure out how to post them. Lucky for me I found my sexy little number in the market where they sell donated clothes from richer nations (usually Japanese around here) for $2. Should you wish this item I can arrange to bring it home - free! I'm sure that I won't be needing it in the future, as well, if I happen to be here for the next one well god forbid I should show up in the same red dress! Its hard enough to run with shorts when its hot and humid but obscenely so with a rayon red dress on! I was soaked. We had about 85 people show up (a record # apparently for here). We ran to the local red cross office about 2kms down the road and had a little ceremony where we raised a $1,200 donation for the local red cross. We continued on by scaling a nearby hill and then back. This was, in part paid with our $10 fee and anything extra people wanted to throw in. This also came with a dinner catered at the site and the breveages - I was home with a good buzz around 10:30 that night. The hash is good for meeting people (all expats) and is nice for just having standing plans for a Saturday night. I try to limit my visits every second week to limit the boozing. While you might think at home you can not drink, but you haven't had the Aussies hounding you otherwise - alot of which live at my complex where we sit and have brews at the bar in the back- "No excuse Mate"! I got a bit of a scare the next day when I got to my room on Sunday to find as usual my daily laundry laid out on the bed, along with the red dress!


Tommorow is payday (instead of Thursday its Friday now) and the week is over yet again. Its all good and getting better.

Take Care.

Still no luck with pictures primarily due to the slow download speeds. I will try and post new pictures to the shaw site tommorow so you can see how I look in a red dress!

A place with no real seasons, its just always hot
The temperature is the same, just the sky that is not