If you have nothing better to do, Jackie Chan (a UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador) will be “interacting with youth” at the Dili Stadium from 4:30pm today. And if you see a naval vessel down at the docks, it is a French frigate on its annual goodwill tour of the region.
Lots of goodwill today. I bet the best restaurant in town is parked at the Dili port.
This is an interview by ABC’s News Hour with Atul Khare, the head of the UN here. Dated 17 June 2008. Flashplayer required.
http://australianetwork.com/newshour/stories/m1598847.flv
Where would we be without the dedication of the UN ?
Recently, I was a little disturbed that I was not called on to offer my silky skills to the newly-formed “Timor-Leste Crocs” AFL football team *. Obviously, the news of my dog bite and tree incident travels fast and they assumed I was on the injury list. The Crocs went to Bali to play in the 2008 Bali Nines competition (because 9 players fit more easily into the much smaller soccer pitch playing area).
However, I have made myself available for the next match which is coming up soon I believe here in Dili. My health insurance is paid up and I need a trip to Darwin anyway 🙂
I think the Crocs came 6th out of 9 teams and played against the elite of expat-based teams from Bali, Jakarta, Borneo, Dubai and a couple of others. The boys were extremely complimentary towards the standard of playing surface in Bali. It is a pity I don’t play too well on the bumpy surface likely here in Dili. (This is called excuse forward planning.)
Watch out for this memorable game coming up soon.
* AFL means Australian Rules football. Normally 18 players a side on thee ground at the one time.
It took a few passes before I worked out what has happened with a few restaurants down at Metiaut, towards Christ Rei. It looks like Sabai Sabai has gone and after a few renovations, it looks like the Garden 88 restaurant has replaced it. A little further down, Tuk Tuk has now opened – it is the Thai Jasmin but in a new location. There is also another new one without a name right next to Long Beach Health Club.
This follows the closure of Enigma’s beach-side restaurant operation and the renovations to the beach-side operations of the Atlantic Grill and Sol e Mar. Sol e Mar is no longer the small, quiet cozy juice bar. The beach operation is now a fully fledged retaurant and bar and across the road, the main building is being completely re-built and about 5 times bigger. Who knows what it will look like.
The traffic yesterday was apalling around the Palacio. Someone told me it was Xanana’s birthday. If that is true, he must have been having it at his new office location which is on the western side of Lita supermarket.
Timor Diver is right on the money re. motorcyclists and helmets. Over the last month, I have seen at least 5 occasions when a helmet goes rolling down the street. These are the “ice-cream container” helmets made of thin and useless plastic and utterly pointless if not strapped on at all.
I have noticed the high tides of late crashing over seawalls in a couple of places, dumping water and tons of sand. I can’t wait for that king tide coupled with a nice northerly wind whipping up some big high waves. Could be interesting.
On Wednesday, students at the National University (just behind the Parliament Building) put on a rally demonstrating against the government providing new cars to all MPs. They claim that in a time of increasing food prices, the poorer people in this country are having a struggle just to get enough food. The government claim that MPs need cars to do their jobs.
From what I heard, it sounded very entertaining but appeared to have no effect on the government decision and security was never really an issue.
That night, I was woken several times by “yahooing” out in the street – motorcycles revving, car horns blowing, chanting. Sounds travel a long way in the dead of a still Dili night and maybe my brain is sensitised to these sorts of sounds after 2006. “Damn those students, I said … I need sleep”. Gong ! It turned out it was a cheerful group doing some serious celebrating after a football game.
OOPS : Local papers report that following discussions between the government and the students, the students actually got the government to back off and reduce the number of new cars from the 65 planned to a much lower figure with none of them actually assigned to individual MPs. Such success ought to get them employed as lobbyists for a whole range of issues.
Looks like Megha Indian was just on holidays and it is back open. Carlos (ie the 1st restaurant on the left in the Metiaut strip) has closed the beach road side of the operation and installed a flasher eatery across the road in the main building.
Sol e Mar (my favourite juice bar) has renovated its operation and the bit by the beach is now a flasher area but have yet to try. The Atlantic Grill has also heavily developed its beach-side setup although it is a bit too formal for my taste.
I think there is a new Thai restaurant next to Sabai Sabai at Metiaut and I guess it is the new Tuk Tuk restaurant (ex Thai Jasmin) but no sign yet when I last went past.
If I am not mistaken, there was a little earth tremor at 10:45 pm last night.
(MORE INFO] :
The quake had a magnitude of 6.4 and struck 289 kilometres east of Dili at a depth of about 120 kilometres around 10:42 pm (1342 GMT).
I have almost forgotten what has changed lately, having spent far too much time pondering over Dili-gence technical problems in recent weeks.
As one commenter mentioned recently, it does look like the Indian Megha restaurant is closed and I think the Thai Pavilion has also shut its doors. That all comes not long after the Fat Boys closure and the temporary Thai Jasmin closure. [ADDED : and Carlos (ex-Purple Cow) across from Exotica].
The Jardim IDP camp (ie the one between the port and Hotel Timor) has almost emptied of people and tents. To be honest, the area looks a bit on the post-apocalyptic side today.
The road block near the Memorial Hall by the lighthouse has now been removed, which will take the heat off the roads around Motael. Regular roadblocks outside Hotel Timor seem to be more common these days, presumably because some person deemed to be of note is staying in the hotel.
The odd bits of road repair are occuring. I am sure traffic is the heaviest I have ever seen these days.
The Mr. Timor competition was held last weekend. (Think male bodies, oil and bravado.) I was elsewhere at a farewell function but I am told it was all a bit of a laugh.
The dog bite wound is still slowly healing up. The back is better after the fall 2 weeks ago but the shoulder is not in such good shape – strained ligaments or something. Note to file : do not trip over while running at pace and hit a solid immovable object.
And FOS had a big birthday a couple of weeks back.
I thought everything was back under control but it appears that there was a misunderstanding between myself and my web hosting provider. My provider went way above expectations in trying to help me out when Dili-gence disappeared off the TL internet map but somewhere along the line, he got the DNS messed up.
It is normal for there to be 2 DNS servers for a domain which provide the translation from “wombathole.com” to an IP address. Somewhere along the line, he had one pointing to the old server and one to the new. So sometimes I could post (to the new) and sometimes I couldn’t – depended on whichever server I got.
When a reader pointed this out to me, I asked the provider to fix it and clearly asked him to shift the web site to the new server where my posts were going. I really meant point both DNS servers to the new server. So he copied the contents of the old server to the new and I lost quite a few posts. I have put them back but lost a few readers comments along the way.
It has been a bad 2 or 3 weeks for the technical background stuff.
Yesterday may have been “Restoration of Independence Day” here but for Dili-gence, it was Restoration of Internet Day. Dili-gence is now visible in TL again after about 2 weeks in the barbed-wire canoe. It sometimes pays to be a surly curmudgeon or at least know someone who is.
Prepare for a brain-dump of the last 2 weeks of interrupted activity. I know there must be something in there.
I believe I have almost recovered from the expired credit card saga. Not that a credit card is particularly useful here, but if you have a few automatic deductions going through your card and it expires and due to a delivery error, the replacement card is returned and destroyed, and you start getting notifications suggesting that automatic payments are failing, well …
And then you have all this trouble re. this website not being visible to local internet users – need I say more in this post. I think I am making headway on this one.
And you cop a bad prawn at a local restaurant on the weekend thus resulting in “enjoying oneself in reverse”, mercifully in the ablution facilities at home.
And you also hurt your back by tripping over while running thus making lying down an ineffective vector for cutting edge relaxation. Well, its over.
I am popping an ibuprofen and am going to stack a few zeds tonight prior to tomorrow’s cultural extravaganza in front of the Palacio do Governo. Military parade and flag raising at 9am. Cultural activities during the day. More military parade and flag lowering at 5pm and fireworks at 8:30pm down at Cristo Rei. Monty Python here we come.