Author Archives: Squatter

Gunfight at the President’s Corral

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A friend who lives near the President’s home (about 5 kms east of the centre of Dili) called me at about 7am this morning to tell me that there was gunfire which had been going on for about 15 minutes. It appears the gunfight started at around 6:30am but perhaps the confrontation actually started earlier. Within 1/2 an hour, the security warnings apparatus came into play and it has been like that ever since.

I rang another friend who usually goes for the ritual Jesus walk each morning and yes, the President was out on his regular morning walk as well. He walks regularly with his small security team. Reports from here (and cross-referenced with what ABC radio has reported) have differed slightly but it would appear that some sort of gunfight actually started while the President was on his walk. My friend said the President got on his phone when the gunfire started and continued walking home – probably something like 1/2 to 1 kms. A 2nd flurry of gunfire occured a few minutes later. To put this into personal perspective, I did the Jesus walk last Thursday morning at 6:30am and passed the President on his.

Later reports suggest that the President was in “convoy” but I presume this to mean this was his “on-foot” group as they were walking up the hill to his home.

The line on the map below is 2kms long. It shows the President’s house, the Cristo Rei statue and the road up the hill to his house.

TL President shooting general location map

It now seems certain that he was shot and that he was taken to the Australian military hospital which is located at the heliport. Note that the heliport is NOT the airport which is some 5 kms on the western side of town. The heliport is also just west of town and NOT near to the President’s house but some 6kms across the other side of town.

I have heard ambulances but have no info on the ABC reports of up to 20 wounded or if Major Alfredo was amongst them or indeed killed, as reported.

Basically, this has put a lot of expats on hold until accurate information comes through and more importantly from a personal security point of view, what the reaction will be from the Timorese themselves. The average Joao in the street is keeping off the streets becasue they don’t really know what will happen next.

Maybe the young girl was right

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During the week, I was doing the “walk up to Jesus” and on the way down, a young girl handed me a small leaflet which amongst other things, suggested I would burn in hell (with suitable diagram attached) if I remained a sinner. I quote : “Yes! The wicked shall be turned into hell … Hell is a terrible place where fire is. … Sinners will burn in hell forever.” I guess I had better start marinating some kebabs in preparation.

There has already been a bit of pestilence out west with locust problems and the Liquica area has copped a bit in the flooding department recently but I am still trying to get my head around recent warnings (originating from the UN I think) of extreme weather conditions to be expected over the next few weeks.

Apart from the general warning of extreme weather conditions, the water cooler chatter suggested things like extreme heavy rain, high winds and king tides which could result in large scale flooding of Dili with encroachment of the sea into the city itself.

Even now, some of the seawalls protecting the roads along the seashore are breaking up and are regularly overtopped by waves so I would expect more of that.  Maybe I wouldn’t like to be a restaurant in the Metiaut area.  These are the ones pretty much on the beach itself and I could see some of them in trouble in a king tide and a storm.

Most of us already know that the city drainage system performs poorly in heavy rain and while the ground has an enormous capacity to soak up water, there is a point where incoming rain exceeds that capacity and I would expect to see large areas of town in swamp-like conditions.  Last year’s extremely dry wet season meant none of this sort of stuff but I recall a few heavy downpours from the previous year which caused a few problems.  And there sure aint nothing quite like the Comorro River in full flood.

Now listen hear you’all sinners out there. Stop now – I don’t want my suntan to fade.

Security snippets

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February could turn out to be the most interesting month for a while. The general security situation has been stable for months and your typical expat has been able to go about their normal business and security chatter has been minimal.

As it stands right now, the UN is technically finishing up on 28 February although everyone expects their mission to be extended another 12 months.

The Timorese police (PNTL) are starting to take up key policing duties again on Monday 4 February even though I have already seen them doing traffic duty during the week. It will take a bit of getting used to again as they have been out of the action since May 2006. I admit I do struggle a bit with the boys wearing dark sunglasses and being very active (and noisy) in their policing role. None of the smiling community copper stuff from these lads but we’ll see if that persona alters slightly after their quality mentoring from the UN Police.

The IDP camps remain a problem and are making a bit of a political statement by flying Fretilin flags and of late, it seems like they are getting bigger. The government has decided to reduce food hand-outs to the camps to encourage people to leave and go back home and get on with things. The government found that one of the problems was that free food tended to attract people to the camps and that 50% of food went to people who did not need it.

A Timorese I know who had her house burnt down has been renting a small room out in the community and made the comment that “here I am trying to get on with things, doing it hard and all I have to do is go and live in a camp and I will get free food – why wouldn’t I?”. Well, I wouldn’t as the camps look particularly unattractive and it has rained most days over the last week or so. But if my alternative was a leaky grass hut that floods anyway, maybe I would.

It is a difficult one. I think the reality will turn out like this : some people will suffer with the food reduction; some will elect to move on; others will take advantage of the situation to cause trouble; politicians may well be hurling excrement at each other over it; and the NGOs running the camps could be stuck in the middle again.

Meanwhile, the F-FDTL are having some sort of anniversary ceremony today and the OZ Army Band are doing a youth concert tomorrow at 5pm at the Stadium (or maybe it is in front of the Palacio). Monty Python here we come.

Addendum : Yep, I got an SMS which confirmed that the boys did the Monty Python theme.  And perhaps the OZ Army Band will be at the university gymnasium.  I once tried to play a trombone and doing it in the rain does’nt seem too flash so the gym seems a safe bet.

Greasing the wheels of business

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Within the last 24 hours, I heard 3 separate things related to doing business in TL.  Firstly, the Minister of Economy and Development mentioned an intention to drop the company tax rate from 30% to 10%.  That is but one of the costs to business that the government could stick their oar into.

Two guys from completely different companies and quite independently mentioned one of the other main impediments to business efficiency – the cost of communications.  In any dealings with overseas suppliers or customers, the associated communication costs are horrific.  I have waxed lyrical before on the cost of internet connectivity but general phone costs are high as well.

For communicating detail, the internet is probably the preferred media these days but both of these guys lamented the huge cost.  However, their main current beef is that it is currently (for them) highly unreliable.  Down for days due to line faults and dropping out every 5 minutes.  Imagine trying to collect your email at 9am and finally establishing a successful connection at noon.  And paying through the nose for the “service”.  There was a certain desperation in their voices over all this.

Another one is the extra costs associated with importing.  “Storage fees” to pay while goods wait on the docks to be cleared by customs.  “Agents fees” to expedite movement through the customs system.  Everyone knows it is a crock.

Pie market forces

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Demand is meant to somehow influence suppliers desire to supply, but sometimes I just don’t think the market operates in the true free-market sense here. For instance, if I go to buy tomatoes at the local market, a pile will cost me $1. If I want 10 piles, $10 and someone told me once that if you go higher, the per-pile rate actually increases because in the words of the seller, “if you buy them all, then I have nothing more to sell”. Same with eggs – whether you buy 1 or 30, the per-egg price is the same. And if the goods are getting a bit shabby at the end of the day due to a long day in the heat, there is no change in price and no desire to “fire-sale” the lower quality goods.

According to the Timor Post, a Democratic Party MP (ie a member of the coalition government) is lamenting the lack of price-fixing (by the government) to stabilise fluctuating prices caused by sellers “setting prices as they desire”. Price fixing is only used by “non-free market” governments, or as a social stability measure in markets which are not truly free due to monopoly control of key supply sources. Maybe vendors are just not understanding supply and demand or see a hugely distorted view of the economy at work. Maybe I need to re-read a few textbooks.

Even the humble Mrs.Macs pies (an essential dietary requirement) are out of stock wherever I look. The supply chain is failing as it often appears to do when searching for yogurt. I may have to resort to trying the new burger joint across from the ANZ bank called “Eastern Burger Corner”. It sells burgers, chicken wings, spring rolls etc. in a burger jointish environment. Someone told me I must also try the beef rendang at Lili’s which is 30 metres east of there.

It’s amazing just how much the lack of a meat pie (with tomato sauce) at lunchtime steels the mind for the rest of the day.

Dengue valley

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Now that the 6th expat I know has succumbed to dengue fever within the last month, I reckon it is becoming an issue.  Hearing of the 5 or so days of lying prone in bed feeling like crap certainly has elevated my analness re. slapping on a bit of the old “Eau de Repellent”.

However, one of my doctor mates says it is still nowhere near as bad as it was at this time 3 years ago.  I am not sure exactly how it all works, but dengue mozzies operate in a short range and if you just happen to operate in the same zone, you are choice material unless you have the appropriate chemical arsenal on hand.

If you add in the number of people who have suffered some form of gastric utterance over the last month, it seems like a pretty unhealthy time all up.  I haven’t heard of any malaria issues so see no need to stock up on the gin just so I can get enough tonic into me (yet).  Are you with me ?

Dili CPI

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The December CPI figures have been released. They show Dili having 8.6% growth in the CPI index in 2007.

Timor-Leste CPI 12 months to end of December 2007 TL Dili
Food 11.0% 9.5%
Alcohol and tobacco 5.4% 4.3%
Clothing and footwear 6.3% 15.9%
Housing 2.7% 6.5%
Household furnishings, supplies and services -0.3% 0.8%
Health 3.7% 11.5%
Recreation and education -2.9% 0.1%
Transport and communication 3.8% 6.2%
All groups 7.6% 8.6%
All groups excluding Housing 8.2% 8.8%

It is hard to come up with sufficient anecdotal evidence to comment on much of it but food seems to be more expensive.  I would have thought the expat housing growth rate to be much higher than 6.5%.  This is based on what I have heard recently on rent increases.  I wonder how many people have been covered by 8.6% rises in income ?

Shorts – to read not wear

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(1) I noticed another raid on known girlie bars around town has netted another 87 foreign Asian nationals. I understand that people involved in the trafficking of women and associated prostitution regard countries going through internal conflict as good bases for their operations. I suspect the presence of the UN is also a good indicator.

The raids have included Mona Lisa, Moon, Great Wall and Mayflower Bars and (although I am not sure on this one) the Non-Drunking Bar. I have never been to any of these – honest !

(2) A couple of days ago, I read that the Timorese government had asked Australia to allow Timorese workers in to mitigate labour shortages in the fruit picking industry. I was speaking to a Timorese who runs his family’s coffee plantation way up in the highlands and he laughed. He struggles to get Timorese to work for him to pick coffee. He might get a couple of days work then they have had enough. His worker retention rate was less than 10% and he aint giving up those 10%. He knew why OZ had ignored the request.

(3) The Comorro River mouth has broken through to the sea about 300 metres east of the most direct route.  The current channel runs parallel to the seashore and runs right past the Ocean View deck which has been running a big risk of being undermined.  Some of the supports have been strengthened.

(4) There is a bar that is new to me called “Amigos Club” which is upstairs from the New Sanan Rai restaurant a couple of hundred metres east of the ANZ bank.  Cozy with a terrace bar feel, it looks promising for a private function of about 20 but no more.

(5) A friend underwent emergency surgery at Dili National Hospital a couple of days ago.  The preferred option of flying to Darwin simply wasn’t on in this case.  The operation was performed by an OZ doctor and a Dutch anaesthetist and reportedly, the experience was a happy one – at least the bit after the emergency reception area.  The operating bit was done in the new section of hospital opened not so long ago.  No red wine was involved.

Maybe holidays are over

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I couldn’t help but notice one single truck lapping town on Saturday. It was full of teenagers whooping it up and flying Fretilin flags. It was accompanied by a couple of cars plus a UN police vehicle escort. Back in OZ, I doubt I would be urged to vote for any party who (no matter how they did it), sent out teenagers “yee-hahing” about town.

I suspect the return of Mr. Alkatiri from holidays on the weekend may be related, plus the call today for Mr. Gusmao to resign.

Personally, I don’t know where to look – Alkatiri/Gusmao or Clinton/Obama and the gang.  You’d think at least one of them must be right.

On a lighter note, I received a Christmas present today from my sister. She doesn’t know me at all. A book called “Nosepickers of the World, Unite” which says on the cover “Let’s face it, nosepicking is a hole way of life. It unites continents and binds nations. More popular than football or even fishing, nosepicking is the sport of choice for today’s man-about-town.”

My sister’s ability to break through political conflict with a down to earth reference work like this is breathtaking.

Kazakhstan here we come

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Actually, Borat had it good. Reading the Timor Telecom phone book cover to cover reminded me about internet charges here.

There is no unlimited dial-up plan here so it is difficult to make a dial-up comparison between TL and Kazakhstan. I figured that a modest low-end permanent 256kbps connection would still be something that people in western countries could at least comprehend. Fortunately this comparison was easy. I even added in Afghanistan and Australia to the mix. The results (which may not include some other charges like installation fee) follow :

Monthly charge for 256kbps permanent connection (unlimited traffic)
Timor-Leste $1750
Kazakhstan $1057
Afghanistan $350
Australia $35 to 40

I struggled to find a figure for unlimited dial-up in Kazakhstan but an article from mid-2007 suggested USD111 per month (ie 720 hours). If you are on the heavy-user dial-up plan here, you will get about 40 hours for your USD111.

On a related matter, I cringe every time I see or hear someone refer to “broadband” internet in reference to internet access here and when I do, I nearly always correct them to say “permanent internet connection”. A 128 kbps connection shared between even 5 users in an internet cafe is not broadband. These days, most of the internet cafes have moved to 256kbps but unless there is no more than a handful of users, it is often pathetic particularly when compared to the modestly priced home internet connection I had before coming here (ie factor of 10).

I know I am being a pedant, but a simple search of online “TV” re-broadcasting over the internet shows streaming speeds of over 256kbps are the most common. I refer you to JLC’s Internet TV free internet TV listing.

A look back at a post I did nearly 2 years ago suggests that Timor Telecom tariffs have not moved 1 cent since then. I guess I should “churn” to a competitor. Hey, wait a minute … there isn’t one.