Recap time. I haven’t written much of what’s happened down here in a while. For a while. In some time. Whatever. In no particular order.

Emma

Not long after i whined about what guitar i should get, i went out and bought the sunburst Stratacoustic for three hundred USDs, bag included. I named the guitar Emma, for no obvious reason (though there is a nice little tune from Neal Morse with the same name).

My playing sounded absolutely horrible. I didn’t remember how terrible guitar playing can sound, and i could not remember how hard playing guitar was. And how much it hurt my hand, and more specifically, my fingertips.

A few days of disappointment later, things magically changed. I don’t really know what i did or did not, but for some reason things started to sound pretty okay. Not performable, but good enough for me to listen to myself playing. So an improvement. I’ve downloaded some tabs from the ‘net and i try to figure out how to read music for those who can’t. Including me.

Com, sans the dot

Two weeks ago, a bunch of friends and colleagues packed themselves into two able cars and headed east. The destination: Com beach resort (this should be a honest opportunity to acquire com.com from cnet :). I’ve posted some pictures from the Com gig on Flickr.

The road from Dili was a refreshing change of scenery. We started by heading up towards the (now) green mountains. Timor-Leste is beautiful — as soon as you get out of Dili, which can be a bit harsh at times and places. The environment with the sea and the hills is just stunning, and i hope i managed to capture at least some of it on picture.

In a village, the name of which i do not know, we stopped for a picnic lunch and immediately became the focal point of tens of local children (and a hungry-looking dog). First, they weren’t too sure they wanted to be on photo with us, but soon the braver one of them yelled one more in Tetum and waved V-signs in the air!

Driving to Com took half of the day, and at some places, you really needed a jeep. After that, we settled in to the cabins not quite unlike the C-cat boxen you find on Viking liners between Ååbu and Kapellshkär, except these had an air-con box and a window. And much like the Viking liners, the food at the restaurant was good; we ordered fish, chips, more fish and some veggie stuff i didn’t recognize but is local and approved by the girls in our group.

After dinner, we headed for the lounge upstairs and played indian poker (each player takes one card and without looking at it, puts it to her/his forhead. The rest is like regular poker: bet, raise, fold, and the highest card wins). The Banks of Yemen, Ireland and Finland had a rather good game, whereas the Bank of Japan went under a few times and finally split into banks of Japan and of Argentina to avoid the taxman :). All in all, great phun.

Saturday, half of us went on a voyage to Tutuala and to see Jaco island. Now while this may look close on a map, it took three hours to get to Tutuala and another hour to get from there to the beach opposite Jaco. And you really needed a jeep. But these things aside, it was a beautiful trip. It was great to see the small villages spotted around the countryside and the people there, and there was a lot of waving and hello’ing :). The view from the plateu at Tutuala is simply stunning, and no picture i could take would do it justice.

From Tutuala we headed for the adventure of a road, leading to the beach opposite Jaco. This is where the jeep (ok, so it’s a Land Rover) is non-optional. We headed down a slippery slope to a road that was narrow, sometimes steep, and surrounded by beautiful forest landscape. One particular part was particularily scary. A downhill climb at 45 degrees (or at least, that’s how it felt), covered primarily with fist-size rocks. I went out and showed directions and Holger, our able driver, managed to steer our vehicle down safely. What i managed to do, i realized later, was to lose my phone, which had decided to jump away from its belt clip and into the local shrubbery, never to be found by us, despite the tries.

Finally at the beach, and again, a beautiful scene it was. We lunched, decided not to take the boat trip over to Jaco (at five dollars a person), and chilled on this side insted. I had my mask with me, so i went to look at the underwater world. Only 20 meters or so from the beach, there’s a reef which is just full of fish. Fish of all colours and shapes, including some pretty spiffy yellow ones with blueish squared patterns on them! I had no idea they made them like that! There was also an old turtle shell on the beach. Locals hunt (if that’s the right term) turtles for food and to make bracelets of the shell. This activity seems to be in a small enough scale not to threaten the turtle population, and it’s some comfort to know they don’t kill turtles only for the shell, but rather as food.

A visit

Last weekend, my mother came to visit me here in Dili, as a part of her tour to southern Asia. She had spent nearly two weeks in Bali, then came here, and should be back home today or tomorrow.

On Friday, we walked the streets of Dili and rounded off with dinner at Victoria. On Saturday, we climbed up to the Christo Rei statue and spent some time on the beach (waiting for the water to return — i had forgotten all about tides!). On Sunday, we visited the Santa Cruz cemetary and walked through local neighbourhoods, guided by the GPS i have borrowed. And on Monday, since my mother is a landscape architect, we got to meet my boss, who wanted to hear some about landscaping this town. Quite an interesting treat!

All in all, i was a bit hard pressed to find meaningful stuff to show here in Dili for the span of a long weekend. I guess i’m spending too much time at work…

What now?

Now, i’m feeling a bit tired and, like Michael Jackson, have slight flu-like symptoms, but not enough for it to be dengue, i’m sure. I’ve just slept with the a/c on too cold, and it’s been like this for a week soon. I’ll keep you posted.

Update

Half of the office is suffering from flu-light symptoms, so either we’re all struck with dengue, we all have a slight flu (you know, a cold, not the whole menu), or we’re all turning into Michael Jacksons. Taken the first and the third option, i don’t know which one is worse.