Amazing how you blink one day and five months have gone by.
Pretty much home in Pasadena and settled back in to life in California, enjoying the amenities (and restaurants) of the developed world.
Am working on PR/web strategy for President Ramos-Horta Continue reading
There is absolutely nothing like sleeping in your own bed.
I am slowly recovering from having been run over by a Mack truck called jet lag. Also slowly getting back to my own bad habits – like eating meals in front of the computer.
Continue reading
Dili-Singapore-Tokyo-Los Angeles. 37 1/2 hours straight in planes and airports.
But I got a shower and five hours of sleep in Singapore, and overall a very comfortable flight on Singapore Air.
Saw Mount Fuji at sunset coming into Tokyo. The experience of the Japanese in the airport made me want to come back and see more of Japan. Continue reading
I expect this to be my last Sunday in East Timor.
Brian Pinkowski, an anti-corruption expert on a project in Timor, goes out every Sunday snorkeling and diving, so this week I tagged along with him. Continue reading
Before the Indonesian invasion in 1975, Timor-Leste, or East Timor, was a Portuguese colony for more than 400 years. They effectively abandoned it in 1974 when they decolonized in Africa.
Oh but they are back.
I am scratching my head over the fact that Portuguese is the “official language” of independent Timor. The official language, but the language people actually speak here is their own language, Tetum. Continue reading
The President was out of town for six days.
I was waiting for approval on the new site and strategy, so I took a break.
I have friends in Sydney, one of whom had a possible new web site client for me. Continue reading
A few views of a typical (not that there’s anything typical about it at all, really) “work day” in Timor.
Mostly working in the President’s office on a new web site and social media strategy. Continue reading
I have been pretty flat out since I arrived, working with his staff in the press office, and juggling work back in the US, a foot in both countries.
I have an hour of downtime this afternoon. The US is sleeping. The President is arriving from China in an hour.
I thought I would use it to catch my breath, and post some photos. Continue reading
I am staying in a guest room at the “Presidential compound” in Dili.
I have known José Ramos-Horta for more than ten years. When I first met him in 2000 I don’t think he even had a post. But he was a Nobel Peace Prize winner and an international human rights figure for what he had done for East Timor.
From there he became Foreign Minister of the new democracy. Then he was Prime Minister and now President. We have remained friends, working on projects off and on both for East Timor and international human rights issues.
So what do you talk about at the breakfast table with the President of an emerging democracy? Our love lives, of course.
I started coming to East Timor in 2000. It was still coming upright from the devastation of 1999.
Timor was under UN administration then, with UN personnel EVERYWHERE, Armored Personnel Carriers from the peacekeeping forces on the road, traveling through military checkpoints.
The country had been devastated in 1999, when the UN had sponsored a referendum allowing the Timorese, who had been occupied by Indonesia for 24 years, to vote for their independence. Continue reading