The government relaunched its website recently. It looks like all the main government ministries and departments now have a at least a reasonably workable website. The government's main website is powered by Wordpress. If you go to http://timor-leste.gov.tl/wp-admin you get a log-in page.
The theme is custom designed from what I can tell, and it was done by a Portuguese company called Mediacode, specifically by a chap called Jorge Sepulveda.
I think the website looks good, if a little sparse at the moment.
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On Saturday night we bid farewell to pretty much the only nightclub in Dili that is ever worth going to. Motion Bar will close its doors on Wednesday and with that we leave behind a lot of history in Dili in terms of the people who have run the place and the people who have been there.
I went to Motion on my first day in Dili a year and a half ago. It was closed for the afternoon, but still, I went and had a look. My friend and I threw a parties there when we could in an attempt to give ourselves and others some kind of nightlife alternative that didn’t involve Akon or anything reggae-related.
Motion’s most popular night was every Thursday, which had become something of an institution in Dili with the live local bands outside and DJs playing music inside, but it was the parties on other nights I most looked forward to.
Motion also hosted weekly movie nights, which was something of a blessing in a country that has no cinema. And the food at Motion was also great. So with all this in mind, we organized one last shindig there and combined it with my friend’s birthday party.
For anyone who went, I was the one DJing and playing all the music. I was still quite sick (with this illness) and had been to hospital the previous evening. My body was in some pain and I’d just begun a course of antibiotics, so I should have been in bed, but decided to slug it out.
When we do parties at Motion, we try not to indulge in music we don’t like, such as RNB, mainstream hip hop and suchlike. I mean, you can hear all that stuff at pretty much every single nightspot in Dili. There are ample places in the city where people can bump n grind, so once again I decided to play actual nightclub music, in a nightclub. It’s a radical idea, I know, but this city is supposedly all about progress.
I’ve been DJing for about 12 years in all. Once upon a time I’d spend all my money on vinyl. Now all those records are in someone’s house in Sheffield, I think. But last night was the first time I’d ever experienced such a barrage of bamboozling one-liners as this:
Do you have any reggae?
Do you have any hip hop?
Are you going to play anything a bit more danceable/dancey?
Do you have any RNB?
Do you have any djembe?
Do you have any Michael Jackson songs?
Do you have any girly songs?
Are you going to play anything good?
I have Michael Jackson songs on this USB. Can you play them?
The answer to all these questions was a straight “no”, so to those people I am sorry, but I honestly thought the party went all right without succumbing to the wonders of inane pop music. People seemed genuinely offended and even quite angry, but this was the last night at Motion, not Mister Guitar or Casa Minha.
And come on, in how many clubs in Dili can you hear Underworld, The Prodigy, The Chemical Brothers, Daft Punk, Booka Shade, Tiga, Zombie Nation and so on? Don’t get me wrong, I like good hip hop (Cage, GZA, Raekwon), but RNB is like the devil’s love music. It makes me want to pull my nails off.
But whatever, Motion was a great club, the people who run it are great people and we had a lot of good times there. So, farewell. This was one of the tunes I played towards the end.
I don’t know what it is with me these past few months, but I seem to be getting sick a lot more than normal. This latest illness was the worst yet. I was in Suai district doing a short training course at the media centre there when I began feeling ill. My throat was hurting, my body aching and my head sore. I thought nothing of it and went to bed early, but the next day it really hit me.
My body ached like hell all over, I was struggling to swallow, my head was banging and the lymph nodes in my neck were swollen and extremely painful. I was feeling nauseous and had completely lost my appetite. That night, I had such intense chills and fevers that I thought I’d mapped out a plan for an entire world war in my head. It was most bizarre.
The next day was more of the same. One minute I’d be shivering, the next I’d be sweating like a pig. My lymph nodes were huge by this point, kind of like when I had mumps at university. The car ride back from Suai was horrendous and I threw up pure bile twice.
It got so bad that my friends took me to hospital in Dili, where a Cuban doctor gave me a once-over and took a blood sample. I was prescribed antibiotics, paracetomol and these ginormous vitamin tablets that I can’t even swallow.
I started on my meds right away and that night I slept about 14 hours. And then in the morning I started to feel a bit more normal. I hadn’t eaten for two days and my body was exhausted, but I wasn’t in as much pain. And indeed, as the day progressed, I made a rapid recovery and managed to get myself to hospital to pick up my blood test results.
All the doctor could tell me was that I didn’t have malaria or dengue fever. So I have no idea what was wrong with me. My lymph nodes are still a little swollen and quite painful, especially on the left-hand side, so I’m wondering if maybe I had glandular fever or something similar. I also feel like I have a regular cold now and I'm sneezing and all sorts.
In short, it was two days of misery, another two days of half-misery and now a cold. Someone reading this must have been through something similar, right? I’d love to know what was wrong with me.
For any family members who might read this, I really am OK now, so there’s no need to worry.
This is a translation of a Diario story about Gil Alves, East Timor's Minister of Tourism, Commerce and Industry. It's the funniest thing I've read for ages.
Members of the National Parliament have asked the Minister of Tourism, Commerce and Industry to shut his mouth up and not make nonsensical statements.
MP Rui Menezes of Democratic Party (PD) said, “It’s not government ministers who control the parliamentarian but the parliamentarian because it is the parliament that approves the state budget to be executed by the government.”
According to Menezes, to oversight the performance of the government is the prerogative right of the parliament stipulated in the constitution.
MP Estanislau Aleixo da Silva also said that Minister Gil should shut up his mouth because he is being nonsensical these days.
Mr. Da Silva urged Minister Gil politely tender his resignation to Prime Minister Gusmão as he is obviously incompetent as a minister.
“It’s better for him to be a rice seller,” said the former Minister of Agriculture.
Due to mounting criticisms against him, Minister Gil Alves recently told the parliamentarians not to intervene in the government’s affairs but prepare themselves better for parliamentary discussions.
Lourença Lelan and António Varrela from Komoro Sub-district in Dili had accused the United Nations Police from the GNR unit of physical assault against them during a protest of internally displaced persons (IDPs) in front of the Ministry of Social Solidarity in Dili, Thursday.
“The Portuguese police pulled me from behind and told me to go home but I declined …. So he twisted my arms,” said Lelan.
Lelan is pregnant.
António Varrela Belo, who saw the event, decided to use his mobile phone to record it. However, he was suddenly beaten and his mobile was confiscated.
These are only accusations at the moment, but wow, they are strong words. I remember once when I took photos of the bumbling GNR trying to subdue a Brazilian man, an angry GNR officer came at me, shouting and waving his baton, and ordered me to delete the photos.
If the above news story is true, it's disgusting. It's one thing that the GNR keep getting into fights at nightclubs and parties, but it's another to get physical with a pregnant woman. I dislike the GNR presence in Timor-Leste and I hope to goodness that the UN does a proper investigation into this.
