Wednesday November 19, 2008

I found it a bit harder to crash last night. After a full day of writing I couldn’t shut my brain down. It was still composing and revising well after I told it to go to sleep. Stubborn bastard of a thing that it is! It’s a lot hotter in Dili again today but I just hung out at City Café and finished tidying up my blogs while I sipped on coffee and had a small breakfast. Eventually I was satisfied I had all the text and photo’s in order and went to a different Internet café right near my hotel to price online access. “$6 for hour please sir” the young lady informed me. I nearly fell over. I was only being charged $2 at the place about 800 meters up the road. I should have stayed though because the Timor Telecom office I am talking about has some technical difficulties that saw the whole process of updating take hours upon hours and cost me $7.50 US. I still haven’t even finished checking all my e-mail so I’ll have some lunch now and try the first place I ran away from this morning. Ideally they will have wireless even or at least computers that can handle Skype so I can see my Mum’s beautiful face and maybe even Dad’s boofheaded mug. Hahaha. Does it kill you that you can’t tell me I’M the boofhead when I get you via blog Dad? I hope so… ya Boofhead!! LOL Much love big fella.

I’ve had a wander around Dili a bit today and it seems a very unique blend of cultures. There are all the locals of course as well as large contingencies of different nationalities working with the UN and local law enforcement. I don’t know that I will be staying here all that long; there seems a tension in the air and a divide between the UN peeps and locals. I guess I will have to give it a small chance to impress tomorrow but for the moment I am getting the feeling that if your white and you know no better you are getting stung financially at every chance. I’d swear from what I could make out of the conversations at the Café that locals aren’t even being charged $.50 an hour. Hmmmm. I better start watching what is occurring around me a bit more closely to see what the real price for everything is. I can’t stay in this hotel for many more days either. It’s too much money to sustain and the City Café ends up costing me a bit more than when I eat at one of the more local looking establishments. Not that I really care. I definitely needed to recharge and get my pimp on for a few nights. If I could just find myself a razor at one of these little stores that dot my street I’d be a happy man. My beard has far outgrown the abilities of my electric unit and I feel a bit ragged with this furry growth on my face.

Aight I have to share this story with you while it is vividly fresh in my mind. You see there I was just minding my own business at City Café chilling with a beer and listening to my i-pod when one of the waitresses came over and started a conversation with me. Her name is Lauran and she is a tiny little cutie who grew up in a village a couple hours from Dili. She now lives in town and obviously works here at the restaurant. She had noticed me typing away on my Mac over the last day or so and when she saw my i-pod she summoned up the courage to ask me if I would mind filling her Nano with tunes (yes Az… get it out of your system bruv… I know you are just about busting right now with half smart wisecracks… hahaha ya mang!!) So I dumped a mixture from Azzamates cheesy hits on her pod for her and she was so appreciative she insisted I allow her to take me down to the harbour side to meet her brother and their friends when she finished her shift. I’m not doing anything important so of course I agreed. She even managed to smuggle a couple of Bin Tang tallies out of the restaurant at cost for me. We chatted and flirted the whole walk to the waterfront. Well maybe it was just me flirting hahaha.. i just love making ladies blush :-)

When I first arrived I felt very much out of place. But Lauran’s brother Sunday was very friendly and the rest of the crew warmed quickly to me when I broke out the beers. Man I love that ale is a universal language. Other than Lauran and her Bro, there where only 2 others who spoke any English amongst the crew of 20 or so locals. I broke out the laptop after Lauran told everyone I had ‘many musics’ and set up I-tunes with some more of azzamates cheesy hits playing. Sunday and I settled into a mad conversation while the girls broke off around Lauran and started giggling and pointing at me. Lauran informed me that she was going to buy me a razor so I could get the ‘wool’ off my face hahaha. I tried to ignore them as Sunday and I got into our music tastes and quickly discovered that we share a love for rap and hip-hop. I told him how involved I was in the Brisbane scene and he insisted I play him some of my favourite tunes from home. I started with Bias and Lazy’s early shit but the crowd just looked a bit confused so I broke out Downplay, telling Sunday to let everyone know that these guys are my mates back home (actually I believe he told them that the boys are my brothers but I didn’t have the heart to correct him). I was told I had to describe the crew to them but did one better by showing them photo’s from an Uber gig I have on my laptop. They dug it from the start. I had to play ‘Round Here’ about eight times and tell Sunday every word so they could understand the lyrics. These guys were going off man. We had our own little party on the shore-side. We even attracted the attention of the police who wanted to make sure I wasn’t being harassed. I broke out my cam to take photos but the blimmin battery died again and I wasn’t thinking clearly enough to improvise with the laptops inbuilt cam. I’m spewing now cause it would have made the best ever film clip for the boys. I don’t know that I have ever laughed so hard as I did watching this gang of Timorese youth shaking their thing to ‘If you ain’t Fucking’. I seriously nearly wet my pants.

How’s that guys… not 20 minutes before Lauran approached me I wasn’t sure I even wanted to stay in Dili and now I have a dinner invite for tomorrow night with her and Sunday at their home, as well as the maddest arvo to keep in my memory banks. Life on the road is full of surprises and is constantly proving any preconceptions you may have as being false. I’m back at City Café now having received a shy kiss and a hug from every girl in the group and an enthusiastic handshake from every fella. I can’t wipe the smile off my goofy face. It might be time to hit the Internet again before dinner and try and compose myself.

I did some more catching up on the net, this time at the expensive Net café to try out their system, but it’s just as slow and clunky as the Timor Telecom office that is dirt-cheap. Not only is it slow they suffer temporary black-outs every 15-20 minutes so I doubt I’ll be going back there again unless I have to. Their computers can’t even handle the system requirements for Skype so I have to try and find somewhere I can wirelessly connect. I can pick-up networks all around town but am having difficulties finding someone who will let me connect and sell me some time. I’ll keep at it though; I really want to see Mum and Dad.

I had a huge meal back at City Café and some more Bin Tangs. I love this cold beer thing haha. After dinner I got a little lonely and decided to blow some credit calling Abnormal Ave. I managed to get Tezza without too much effort and my call found all three girls sharing some pool time in the back yard NAKED!! Hahaha Ok, so maybe I made up the naked part but it is such a pleasant fantasy I’m going to run with it. We chatted for ages and I even had to recharge credit to keep talking. I have such a great friendship with these girls… their reactions to discovering the unlisted number Tez answered was actually me made me feel all warm and fuzzy. “MMMMOOOONNNSSSSTAAA!!!” was all I heard for the first minute or so. Tez even tried to put me on speaker so I could chat to all three girls at once but her phone stuffed up and all I could hear was “blaaargh bla waaaugh da baahhhh weeeerwa ah ma”. Does any one out there remember the teacher in the animated Charlie Brown television show? Well it was just like that. In the end we said our goodbyes and I took my sorry ass off to bed feeling very much happier we had such an awesome chat but just that little bit sad as well to be missing out on naked pool time with those three hotties… oh that’s right… the naked bit was just my imagination wasn’t it… still even clothed pool and goon in the back yard of Abnormal Ave would be awesome fun. I fell asleep wrapped up in the warm love I felt through the phone. I’m so lucky to have such mad friendships.. especially Tezza, she knows me as well as anyone on this planet and loves me despite of it hahaha. Here’s a big mmmmmmwaaah for you babe!!

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