I wrote this blog a day ago, on Friday 20/02/2009, mostly relating to events of the previous day. My leg is healing up nicely, so don't worry. I have to admit, back home I sometimes check SMSes while driving. This is of course illegal; back home. What I do not do, however, is check my SMSes while driving a minibus jam packed with 25 people around hair-pin bends with an almost-vertical 200 m drop and only an intermittent one-foot high guardrail, on a heavily trafficked road barely wide enough for two cars. As a general rule, I would be opposed to that sort of behaviour. Besides, I can SMS blind, which this guy clearly can’t. I can see his eyes in the rear-vision mirror and they’re firmly facing down at the mobile phone. No-one else seemed ... read more

Just a quick note that I arrived in Dili yesterday. As far as I can work out, Internet is a bit unreliable, and I can't find a wireless access point. I mainly spent yesterday walking around Dili, which is quite spread out, fairly poor, and full of UN vehicles everywhere. I got bitten by lots of mosquitos already, despite taking all the precautions, but don't worry Mum I'm taking my doxy tablets :-) East Timor's very expensive compared to other SE Asian countries. They use the US Dollar as their official currency which doesn't help, and like everywhere else that uses the US Dollar, the constant struggle is to find denominations low enough to pay people with, because no-one has change! The bit I saw yesterday showed signs that it used to be much prettier than ... read more

OK, I woke up at 04:20, which is too early to go to work and too late to go back to sleep, so I thought I'd try writing my first real blog entry. Unfortunately my USB cable for my camera is packed away deep in some box, so I can't upload any photos of Melbourne in here at the moment. I guess I didn't realise how much stress and hassle the last week would be. As well as trying to finish off all the odds & ends at work, there's the usual stuff associated with moving house, and other stuff for the trip. I've changed my address and redirected my mail to my parents, who'll open my mail for me while I'm away. Last weekend I moved all my stuff up to their place for storage, ... read more