Dili is not the place to connect. I’ve tried it; it hasn’t been successful. Despite paying lots of money to young men on street corners, I have failed to achieve the kind of lasting connection I was hoping for. There’s the initial click, the flash of recognition and then just as I’m feeling confident things are going to move nicely in the desired direction, I’m spurned, tossed off with nothing to show but a terse “Problem Loading Page”. And then, “the connection was reset”. Reset? I didn’t touch a button, didn’t even murmur in the mouse’s direction and yet, my connection was ‘reset’? Oh but I know who reset it. We all know who reset it: Timor Telecom.
I swear there is a room full of men no doubt harbouring a lifetime of pent-up frustrations. They’ve seen their country invaded, their friends and family killed or prematurely dead from diseases that would be considered trivial in western cultures. They watch, day after day as malae slip into an easy lifestyle that is well outside the affordability of native Timorese. And so, they exercise the only control they have - disconnecting all those hoping to connect with their loved ones across town or aboard.
Skype conversations and chats are ended prematurely; usually at the most inopportune moment; potential and existing relationships left hanging in the balance. What did he/she mean by that last comment? And how will I ever know? And so you vainly try, try, try again. Connect. Connect. Connect. And it does. Oh, you think, yes!!!! Yes! Yes! I’m in. You even get as far as having the page load, as entering passwords and just when you’re teetering on the edge of connection . . . . “Problem Loading Page”.
It’s like Timor Telecom is a bully-boy bouncer and you’re a drunken sot throwing ill-timed, un-coordinated, scatter-gun hook punches that land largely on thin air. Despite your total inadequacy to impact the bully boy, you are bounced nonetheless; left hanging in cyber space wondering why? Why? Why?
What’s even more irritating than being unceremoniously dumped is being granted a pseudo-connection. We’ve all had it at one time or another. There’s feigned interest, lots of searching and waiting; the modem cheerfully announcing you have the option to ‘disconnect’ implying you would think, that you are, by default, ‘connected’. It’s a lie, all a damnable lie designed to fleece you of your pulsa or internet credits and send you once against searching the street corners for a late-night pulsa seller. For in truth nothing has changed. Your web pages still won’t load. The “connection has timed out”. You check again and again and again. “Disconnect” That’s the message; as though you have any power. You don’t. You aren’t connected, you’re just being led to believe you are and all the while those anti-social, anti-connection people at Timor Telecom are high-fiving each other or doubling up laughing at the idiocy of the malae that just keeps trying.
“Oh yes, Malae, try, try, try again. There’s a charge for every connection and ooops, you just dropped out. Oops, and again. Oops, and again.”
I can just imagine one of them saying, “Have we got enough for a carton of Heineken?”
“Not yet. At the moment we’re looking at Bintang.”
“Hmmm, better hope this one’s desperate.”
And as they hope for a better-tasting beer and I click, hoping for the merest hint of connection with the outside world, we all remain largely unfulfilled and still desperately searching.
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