New Years Eve!!!!
I had a fantastic New Years Eve. Besides having a great time, in the end I felt it was a most appropriate way to issue in the New Millennium. Let me tell you about it.
The party started about 5:00 p.m. at the IRC offices. We dubbed it the sunset party, although you can't actually see the sunset from our office. It didn't matter, as quite a few people showed up to share the salsa and prime themselves with a few spirits or a cold beer (VB of course). Unfortunately Jen's boom box decided to stop working earlier that afternoon, so for music we ended up having to hook up one of the laptop computers to some Walkman speakers to play CD's. It worked pretty good and party kept growing until about 9:00 pm.
As agreed, at 9:00 p.m. the IOM people showed up with a bus they usually use for transporting returning refugees. The whole party piled into the bus and two land rovers and we headed out to CARE's party for Stage Two. CARE's party sucked! They were half-asleep and it took about 5 minutes of wandering around their compound to even find them. We showed up, took over the music and danced for about 15 to 20 minutes before growing bored. We ended up grabbing all the booze, a good deal of the beer and the sleepy CARE people and we piled back into the IOM bus and moved off to the next party.
Stage Three was the UNHCR party. Again we doubled the size of the party with our arrival. They had good coffee and chocolates under a canopy of standard issue UNHCR tarps. Johanna and Helen, also from IRC, created quite a stir by provocatively dancing in a spotlight shining atop a shipping container holding up one corner of the canopy. I was having a good time and really enjoying the chocolates, when the word went out that we were on the move again. It turns out that one of the UNHCR people told us to leave because we had local staff with us. The guy said we could stay, but they had to leave. I was shocked, and we quickly pulled out and took half the UNHCR people with us (the half that didn't mind partying with local staff). By this time we had about five land rovers following the packed bus, and I was sitting on the roof enjoying the fresh air.
We were like a swarm of locusts. We would descend on a party, take over the music, eat all the food, drink all the booze, steal half the people and move on.
Stage Four was a Toga party. East Timor Fuel, a private, temporary, Australian company providing fuel and logistics services, were out in their sheets, and well on their way to the new millennium. When we arrived there were about 20 huge, half-naked guys chatting up two well-covered females. However, they did have a good spread of food, which we quickly devoured. It was approaching midnight, so we loaded up a few of the ETF Goliaths and the two girls and took off for the big celebration UNTAET had planned for the local population in front of the Government Building down by the sea.
When we got to the government building, down by the sea, we were surprised by how quiet it was. They had built a big stage (also covered by the blue UNHCR tarps) and had it all lit up with colorful lights. But at 11:30 p.m. there were just a few teenagers siting on the stage and few people milling about in the parking lot out front. It turns out that the bishop had made a visit earlier and told everyone to go home and go to sleep so that they could get up and go to church in the morning. So they did.
Our party wasn't big enough to liven up the quiet parking lot so we walked over to the Boat to ring in the New Year. The funny thing was that folks didn't know what bar they should go to and no one really knew exactly what time it really was. So I spent my trip into the next millennium somewhere between the Heli-bar and the anywhere lounge shouting over the roar of the generators trying to find which way the majority of the mobile party went. They actually ended taking over both bars and most of the places in between. About 12:30 a.m. we did an official countdown, popped many a bottle of champagne, and danced till morning.
I got home at 6:00 a.m., slept for 45 minutes, and still a bit drunk I stumbled back down to the government building, down by the sea, to run a 6 km race. The Portuguese Mission had the bright idea of having a race first thing New Year's Day, and I was stupid enough to think that it was a bright idea. Actually, it was a lot of fun. There were quite a few local folks running (as they were sent home early and got plenty of sleep). It didn't hurt that the Portuguese Mission were also giving out free T-shirts to those folks who finished the race. I did OK considering I had only received my running shoes from Darwin three days before, and spent only two of those days training for the event. You may also consider the fact that I was still drunk and had slept for less than an hour. I should have been happy that I even made it to the finish. I really felt good that I beat this one crazy man with no shoes whose left leg was significantly shorter than his right leg, and who was keeping pace with me for a good portion of the race.
I met a few folks with high expectations of the party of the century who were a bit upset at the confusion, but for me I thought it was a perfect way to start the year.