I turned 26 years old yesterday. I’ve accepted the fact that I’m aging and I feel as if my life is moving forwards. My priorities haven’t changed much in the past year. I don’t care much about money, although I’ve saved enough to feel secure. I still refuse to spend money on things like cellphones. Nothing has changed about my perception of people: I don’t find much that interests me in them.

I’ve become more cynical – I guess that’s one thing that has changed. I dislike organized religion more than ever. Christianity in particular bothers me. One thing I feel very positive about, however, is East Timor. I seem to be spending most of my time working or hanging out with the locals. I have lots of Western contacts here, but I wouldn’t call them friends. The Western friends I do have I don’t see very often, which is something I didn’t envisage before I came here.

More than anything my time in East Timor has been one of reflection and learning about people. Last night I was with some young FRETILIN supporters and what they told me was both intriguing and terrifying, but I’ll leave that for another day. I passed on the offer of going to a club and ended up home about midnight I think.

My views on relationships haven’t changed. I see marriage as unnecessary and I certainly don’t want children.

I’m looking forward to going home next month. I’ll have about a week in the UK to catch up with friends and then a week in France to see my mother and brother. I know that it means a lot to my mum that I’m going home for Christmas. I am certain she will start crying as soon as she sees me.

After Europe it looks as if I will arrive in Bali at 6 pm on New Year’s Eve, which is not an ideal situation to be in, especially after flying Bordeaux to Paris to Doha to Denpasar in the space of a day.

But that’s life.

I’ve been giving some thought to returning home, not to live, of course, but to visit the place and see the people I still consider friends even though we haven’t met for a long time. It’s been three and a half years since I was last in the UK. I left for Bangkok in July 2005 and stayed in Thailand up until about two months ago. I now live in East Timor and expect I will return here after New Year.

What I’m most curious about is to see what people have been doing and compare stories about how we’ve spent our early twenties. As far as I’m aware, almost all of my friends still live in England and most of them have traveled a bit, even if only for a few weeks.

With the people I went to school with I feel confident that we will be able to slip into a familiar groove and vibe like old times. I think it will be the same with most of the folks I was friends with in Sheffield. But I’m worried that I might go back to Bath or London or Sheffield and people won’t recognize me. I don’t think I’m much taller than I used to be, but I’m sure my face has changed and I’m also more tanned.

If I do go back I will also visit my mother and brother in France, where they now live. My mother has a boyfriend I’ve never met and my brother, well, he’s still a mystery to me.

It’s exciting because I’m going to try and cram as many different cities into my trip as possible. I expect I will only go for about three weeks, but it would be a good way to end the year and to see what I’m missing.

I don’t imagine there will be much of a reverse culture shock other than feeling very cold all the time. What I can’t wait to do is to buy a family pack of Monster Munch and a four-pack of Woodpecker cider.

I’m still as simple as when I left.

Other plans include a month-long trip to China in February, a trip to parts of Indonesia in January and more travels out to the districts of East Timor.

There was another Mexican party in Dili recently. That makes two such parties in the space of a few weeks. This one was much the same as the last, only this time I was more drunk and decided to dance.

There was a lot of salsa dancing going on. I was happy to just bop by myself, but at some point a lady, she may have been Portuguese, started teaching me to dance.

The other couples on the dance floor were flinging each other around in circles, twisting and turning with ease. You have to lead me, said the lady. I’m freaking trying, I replied.

I was taken back to about 10 days before, when I had been taught Timorese dancing. I quickly mastered that left-left-right-left-left-right shuffle. But this salsa had me beat.

You have to lead me, said the lady again. I could see she was frustrated. My years of dancing to house, techno, trance and drum n bass music were no help. I felt like a kitten stranded in the middle of a highway.

After two songs the lady decided it would be better to leave me to my own devices. I’m not built for salsa dancing – I hate it. There may come a day when I change my mind about all of this, but for the foreseeable future I don’t want to dance – I can’t dance.

The big question is, Would I like salsa dancing if I could do it better? I don’t have an answer.

During my first week in Thailand I went to a restaurant near Khaosan Road and ate green curry. It cost thirty-nine baht. At this stage I was still fairly green myself and I had yet to suss out the tipping situation. I was under the impression that forty baht was a lot of money so I paid with two twenties and went on my way, leaving what I thought was a respectable tip: one baht.

Later it occurred to me that the waiter probably didn’t even realize it was a tip. Something similar happened in Bali. My girlfriend and I were clueless as to the value of rupiah (far too many zeros) and we ended up giving a thousand-rupiah tip to the bellboy, which I think works out about 10 baht.

In Thailand I usually tipped any shrapnel (coins) handed back or else 20 baht. The main places to tip are restaurants and bars. I wouldn’t usually tip after buying a bottle of beer, but might have for a bottle of whiskey. Vendors of street food don’t expect tips, but most restaurants do. I hate being given change in one of those folding wallets, but there’s no escaping them.

In Dili I’m faced with a tipping dilemma: do you or don’t you? The issue seems to be a point of contention in expat circles. Some people tip at every opportunity while others see this as setting up a level of expectation from foreigners. I’ve already seen that, like the Thais, the Timorese see foreigners as rich. I don’t know if there is any level of resentment.

So far I haven’t being tipping in Dili. I don’t think it’s expected and I don’t want it to be. It seems common only in the Western bars and restaurants out here and therefore tipping is reserved only for expats and foreigners, which I think is ludicrous.

The best tip I was ever given while working as a barman in Sheffield was seven pounds. It was given to me by an extremely drunk girl who’d recently been paid some kind of loan, possibly her student loan. I should have declined the tip, but I was saving for my travels and wanted the money. The girl then stalked me for about two weeks and even turned up at my house one night. The life and times of Matt Crook.

What do other people think about tipping?

I never really gelled with the expat scene in Phuket. In Bangkok it was different because in a city that big you’re bound to meet so many people that at least a few of them are worth sticking to. Since I arrived in Dili I’ve seen a completely different type of expat scene. The foreigners living in Dili are, for the most part, passionate about whatever field they work in, be it tourism, aid, peacekeeping, journalism. More so than that, there’s a sense that many of these people are dedicated to Timor-Leste.

From one day to the next in Thailand people just moaned about the state of the place. It’s not that people shouldn’t be able to criticize the country in which they live, but here in Timor-Leste the expats see an overwhelming positive side, despite everything that has happened and could still happen. I haven’t been able to pinpoint why this positive mindset exists, but I imagine it stems from foreigners living here and working in jobs they’ve devoted at least part of their lives to.

The nightlife scene in Dili is interesting. There are more bars and clubs than I thought there would be. Almost all are aimed at foreigners, but I get the impression that the people running these nightspots to support themselves do a lot of work in the community.

About a week ago a bunch of us ended up at a Mexican party. It was surreal: a Mexican party in the middle of Dili. There were hundreds of people there and I heard “Macarena” twice. I didn’t really dig the party because I’m kind of anti-social in large groups of strangers.

My friend and I snuck out of the party around midnight and walked back home. We passed a little shack where half a dozen local ruffians were playing pool. What the heck, we thought, and we rolled up to the shack to say hi.

We put up a buck-fifty and played a game of two-on-two pool that involved shooting the balls in ascending order while one guy turned over playing cards. I never found out what the playing cards were for, but through sheer drunken luck we won the game and got back our buck-fifty and, I think, the stake of our opponents.

Although my end of the conversation was limited, hanging out with those bare-chested kids, who looked to be in their early-twenties, was a better deal than being at the party. This all happened on the road where just a few nights before an old, haggard man had stalked me down the street.

More than anything I’m enjoying being a part of the local community here. As tough and wary as the locals look on the outside, they are good, warm people and I feel humbled to live among them.

Note: For some strange reason I posted a draft of an unfinished blog post (this post) and gave it the headline and picture of the post I was trying to publish, which is actually about tipping.