I'm going to Baucau and Viqueque over the weekend. I leave tomorrow and will return on Sunday. I'm relieved to be getting out of Dili again. It's always refreshing to escape the little city and see a bit of the countryside. Hopefully I will have some interesting tales to tell on Monday.

This is a song that should brighten your day. It's by a Tucson band called Calexico.

The Dili carnival happened on Saturday. Several hundred people showed up despite the rain. Everything was going smoothly until an incident involving a Brazilian national and the Guarda Nacional Republicana of Portugal. I will have more on that later. For now, enjoy the good stuff.

I have another story up on the IRIN news website. It's called Women get WISE to self-employment. Although it's only a short story, writing it involved a lot of interviews in Baucau. I had great fun compiling the story and seeing something that is having a positive impact on people's lives.

As I mentioned yesterday, I’ve stopped smoking. You can’t imagine how hard this is in a country like Timor where everyone smokes. I’ve taken to chewing toothpicks after seeing such a tactic work for a buddy of mine whom I used to work with. I’m now four days into this and the dreams about smoking have started. I’ve also started having dreams about talking to people about quitting.

This may sound weird, but I kind of enjoy an experience such as this because it’s interesting to see how something like addiction affects me. Physically I’m fine and I haven’t noticed much difference. After a little while I expect my throat and lungs to feel healthier, but most of what’s going on is psychological.

I got back into the habit of smoking when I was bored, nervous, worried and so on. The reason I decided to stop now is because I hate waking up feeling ill. I also hate having a sore throat and tight lungs.

The biggest test will come when I visit my Timorese friends. They all smoke. For me, smoking in Timor became kind of an ice-breaker. It’s an easy way to connect with people by finding something in common. It’s a social thing.

If I lived in England, I wouldn’t smoke because it’s so expensive, but here, where cigarette cost $1 a pack, the cost doesn’t come into it.