How a paperclip or kindness fixed my anxiety

Kindness from a stranger recently reduced a sphincter-clenching episode of anxiety completely.

When you travel, how much do you plan what you pack in your bag?

When I’m travelling overseas, and sometimes interstate, I get anxious about forgetting something I really need. If I find myself past the security screening (inappropriately and stupidly called the ‘sterile’ zone by imbeciles with no understanding of science or the English language) at the airport or worse, on an aeroplane and I suddenly realise I’ve forgotten something I get into a mental lather. I fret and worry. No one else would know, but the thought of what I’ve forgotten consumes my head. The forgotten thing will be all I can think about.

Yea, I know, first world problems. I get it.

The kindness from someone I did not know quickly eased the tension in my bowels and calmed the tempest in my head.

 

 

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Last Saturday, I was about to board the Airnorth flight from Darwin to Dili. I felt good that I hadn’t forgotten anything. I’d arranged to have a Timor Telecom Sim card in my possession ahead of the flight (see Drapes from the last week’s post) and I was going through the steps in my mind that when I could see Timor-Leste from the window seat I was sitting in, I’d open my travel wallet (Drapes called it a purse), pull out the Sim card, remove the case from my iPhone, turn my iPhone off, use the Apple tool to open the Sim card tray…WTF!

I froze. I’d forgotten the Apple tool to open the Sim card tray. How was I going to change the Sim card and be ready to roll as soon as I landed in Dili? I love to stay connected, having to wait until I could find something to open the Sim card tray was doing my head in. I thought, did I have a paperclip in my carry on bags? No, this week of work was completed soft, no paper. I had everything backed up on my iPad, MacBook, and a couple of USB drives (yes, I believe in redundancy). I had no paperclips. I had no safety pins. The screwdriver I carry for my glasses was a tad too thick.

The aeroplane took off, a meal was served, passengers were chatting or looking out the window, or playing games on their devices. Then I saw a passenger across the aisle pull out a little bag and she pulled out a Sim card and an Apple Sim card tray tool. My eyes lit up, I felt excited. I asked the passenger next to me if she could move so I could get out of my seat. The passenger with the Apple tool didn’t speak English so I used gestures to ask if I could borrow the tool. She smiled and handed it to me. It made my day. I sat back down and carefully changed Sim cards so I could be Timor Telecom ready when the flight landed. The kindness from someone I did not know quickly eased the tension in my bowels and calmed the tempest in my head.

If only I had a paperclip. From now on I will carry a few paperclips in my bag. I used to carry the Apple tool because it was on my travel checklist. But because I’ve recently only travelled to places where Vodafone offers $AUD5/day roaming, it’s fallen off the list. I will now add it back to the list.

A week with what seemed like dial-up internet bandwidth

This week has been amazingly good in so many ways. However, one of the downsides has been the quality of Internet access. The Hotel Timor offers free unsecured Wi-Fi throughout the hotel. Anyone is allowed to use it. It is flaky at best and often fails to deliver. Through the whole week, I could not log in to my work IT. I could not open more than one webpage at a time. I could not have an e-mail application like Apple Mail open and have Chrome open simultaneously. Gmail in Chrome would not open most of the time. Because Internet services come from satellite services in Timor-Leste, when there were a lot of clouds in the sky, there was no Internet access. This time of the year there are often clouds.

The Sim card was better, but while it was a 4G or LTE service, it was so tenuous that it usually took five minutes from opening my work e-mail app on my iPhone to seeing refreshed e-mails. Sometimes, it just would not work. I could not open attachments in e-mails. As much as I’d love to return and have a holiday in Timor-Leste, the poor connectivity would really do my head in. Hopefully by the time I return the Internet connectivity will be better.

On landing in Darwin with my Vodafone Sim card installed, I felt like I was in a different dimension. Opening and accessing information on apps was seamless.

The benefits of a VPN

I have an old Hotmail (now outlook) account and accessing the account overseas triggers a warning about the unauthorised activity. Without my regular mobile telephone, I was not able to receive a verification text message to confirm it was me trying to access my e-mail from a foreign country. I could get around it by adding my local sim card telephone number, but the easiest way is to set the VPN to an Australian server.

A VPN also provides an element of security, however, when Internet bandwidth is poor, the VPN can create problems with connections to sites and accessing e-mail services. It did strike me that with the connectivity being so poor, the likelihood of cyber intrusions was low, but I don’t want to take the risk.

As you can imagine, my week had a significant amount of anxiety associated with poor connectivity. Can you imagine how I’d be with no connectivity at all?

It made me laugh when fellow Canberra food blogger Beck tweeted this

It’s just like a tree falling in the forest – if Gary eats dinner with no internet, did he really eat? 😆

— Beck@GoldenPudding (@BeckGoldPudding) November 21, 2018

The purpose of the week in the Democratic Republic of Timor-Leste (DRTL)

I normally do not write about work and I’m not about to share any details here either, suffice to say, I was part of a visit arranged by the World Health Organization’s South East Asia Regional Office (WHO SEARO) to undertake what is known as a Joint External Evaluation of DRTL’s capacity and capability under the International Health Regulations 2005.

Leyla Alyanak

A member of the team who was responsible for writing our reports and presentations turned out to be a travel blogger. May I introduce Leyla Alyanak who blogs at Women on the Road. Leyla also has an Instagram account, Women on the Road Pix. Please check out Leyla’s blog and IG feed.

The food on this trip to Dili

Rolls and Bowls

This place which is close to Hotel Timor serves very nice pho. I enjoyed a mixed beef pho and a beef brisket pho. The soup was delicious.

Hotel Timor

I have mixed feelings about the food here. Basically, it was fine but seven nights in a hotel when you’re working long hours and not in a position to get out explore the available options almost forces you to eat more hotel food.

Breakfast

Breakfast was mostly the same every day assuming you could wait for the bacon. I’d always been taught to be wary of cut fruit in places where there were potential problems with food safety. I tended to stick with fruit from a tin but I succumbed to freshly cut pawpaw.

The bacon was cut into small pieces before being fried, I like this way of having bacon. Cut short like this, it has no ability to flick a ‘tail’ and spray oil on a business shirt. However, my preference would be to cook the bacon in an oven rather than frying in oil or butter.

Fried eggs are a target of love for me and I had been warned about soft yolks, but it’s really difficult to resist the temptation of a softer yolked fried egg. Occasionally I ate them scrambled.

Lunch

Lunch was an affair of mixed feelings. Bain Maries containing lots of foods at a tepid temperature. Some things I really liked and some things were just funky.

Dinner

Dinner was an opportunity to experience some of the Portuguese influence in Timorese cuisine. I enjoyed both the Bacalhau à Brás (Scrumbled Codfish with Fried Potatoes and Eggs) and the Bitoque (beef steak with a fried egg and chips). Monday night we were “treated” to a meat buffet. One of the treats was boiled cubes of meat.

It sounds like I’m privileged and ungrateful. I’m not. The boiled cubes of beef were flavourful but a bit too chewy for my liking.

One night I asked for a chicken schnitzel. It is usually served with rice in Hotel Timor, but I prefer chips. The good people of Hotel Timor were able to oblige me and make me schnitty and chips! It tasted good.

Salted and dried codfish.

What can I say, one dish can taste so good and another dish left a funky flavour in my mouth. The good dish was Bacalhau à Brás (Scrumbled Codfish with Fried Potatoes and Eggs), the not so delicious dish was Bacalhau com natas (Codfish baked with onion, diced fried potato and cream).

Dionysus restaurant

To celebrate Thanksgiving with our colleagues from the USA we went to Dionysus Restaurant and Bar. This is a new place and while there was no turkey and pumpkin pie we did have a very enjoyable meal and very good fellowship. I particularly enjoyed the fried cassava and the rice with cassava leaves. The fish was also fresh, flaky, and delicious.

 

Malmequer Restaurant (although the sign said Aubergine)

On the final evening of our stay, after we had presented our recommendations to the Timor-Leste authorities, we were entertained and dined at this restaurant on the foreshore of Dili.

The food was great and the entertainment engaging. It was great to hear and see local colleagues singing and dancing.

This is a gallery. Click on a photograph and scroll through the images.

 

The weather on this trip

The weather was truly glorious. It was warm and not hot. It was humid and not steamy. My skin felt great. My throat was good. I slept well by keeping the air conditioning off and the windows open.

In the afternoons and evenings, there were downpours of heavy rain. Proper rain, not the piss weak stuff we get in Canberra. The rain cooled everything down and added to the post-downpour humidity.

What have I watched this week

Nothing. I did not turn the TV on. It remained off the entire time.

I did look over these motor scooters though which were in the Hotel near a staircase.

What have I listened to this week

Barely anything. The Internet connection was so poor it took hours to download a podcast. I elected, in the end, to turn off the automatic download on my iPhone.

What have I photographed this week?

Apart from food, there was our work travel mascot, viz., Dead Duck Dilbert.

On Friday afternoon I also walked up some stairs to the Cristo Rei, a statue of Jesus Christ, donated to the Timorese people while they were still in annexation under Indonesian rule. The then president of Indonesia, a man of the Islamic faith, felt he could appease the mostly Roman Catholic Timorese with a graven image of their god incarnate. It is noteworthy that the graven idol points to Jakarta.

The staff from the local WHO office in Dili make a point of watching the sunrise from the top of Cristo Rei every Saturday. I had a flight early Saturday, so that’s why I walked up with a fellow Australian on Friday evening.

The view of the peninsula from Statua Cristo Rei is stunning and the cloud porn freaking amazing.

To the north is Dolok oan beach and to the west is Cristo Rei beach. Given a choice, I reckon I’d want to spend some time on Dolok oan beach. It looked gorgeous.

This is a gallery of photographs. Click on one image and scroll through the rest of them.

The trip home

Darwin

After the business of work was finished and we celebrated with dinner, the trip home began with a flight from Dili to Darwin. In Darwin, I caught up with Drapes and spent some time chatting with him while eating hash browns and party pies.

The flight from Darwin to Sydney lacked free wi-fi so I listened to podcasts I downloaded while in Darwin.

I ate a dish of pork and potatoes for lunch.

Sydney

I spent the night at the Mecure Hotel Sydney Airport and ate a steak and chips with onion rings for dinner.

After a good sleep in a very comfortable bed, I got to Sydney Airport and ate some raisin toast and drank some coffee while looking out a window.

Canberra

Then I got home

Yummy Lummy this week

Because I’ve been travelling I don’t have a Yummy Lummy post this week.

 

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Final thoughts

• Do you have a travel checklist?
• What’s the last funky tasting food you’ve eaten?
• How do you feel when you’re not connected or poorly connected?