asakiyume: created by the ninja girl (Default)
[personal profile] asakiyume
I had to return a completed job by post this morning. While I was filling out a form, the door opened and there was an amazing sound of CHEEP CHEEP CHEEP CHEEP emanating from a cardboard box, marked "live chicks" and with sides punctuated with air holes and with hay sticking out from those holes.

"The beats are the heart of the party," the person carrying this box was saying into his bluetooth. He set the box down on the counter and left.

CHEEP CHEEP CHEEP CHEEP! said those live chicks.

"Ed's called twice already, wondering where his chicks are," said J.

"Well, you can tell him they've arrived," said T.

I asked about chick delivery, and T told me that they have go overnight. Those chicks came from Iowa.

. . . Did you know that East Timor has no government-run, nationwide postal system?

They have internet and wifi. The East Timor Action Network just today reported that Timor Telecom is offering computers to schools and universities in Timor-Leste (East Timor), "to contribute to the digital inclusion of students and create a new approach to teaching." But if I want to get a computer to someone in Timor-Leste--say someone in the town of Ainaro--I either have to bring it myself or give it to someone who's going over, who then has to hand deliver it or entrust it to someone to deliver. If I make friends with anyone in Ainaro while I'm over there, I can send them emails or phone them, but I can't send them a letter, not directly to their home.

My contact tells me that within the town of Ainaro there's mail delivery that's carried out by the district administration, and maybe the same thing happens in other districts, and in the capital of Dili. But if you're in Dili and you want to get something to Ainaro, you have to arrange something with a bus driver or someone else who will play courier.

This is one way (one of many ways) in which Timor-Leste is different from the fictional nation of W-- in my Pen Pal novel. W-- has a postal service.


Date: 2013-07-30 06:30 pm (UTC)
selidor: (ti kouka)
From: [personal profile] selidor
Where I grew up, there was a regular delivery of chicks in a Cessna down to the other end of the island, in those carefully-packed cartons. The air traffic controllers said that flight was always adorably distinctive - as soon as the pilot keyed the mike, the overwhelming CHEEP CHEEP would fill the airwaves.

Date: 2013-07-30 06:56 pm (UTC)

Date: 2013-07-30 07:48 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] asakiyume.livejournal.com
D'awww! Things like that are so wonderful. And they're amazingly loud. It was incredible when the guy came in the door. Like he was carrying an armload of excited kindergarteners.

Date: 2013-07-30 10:11 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] khiemtran.livejournal.com
I wonder if Ohio chicks have a particular accent. Or maybe if chicks that travelled by plane take on a particular type of creeping.

Date: 2013-07-31 02:09 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] asakiyume.livejournal.com
Maybe there are dialect maps for chickens, just like for people. But these are Iowa chicks, not Ohio ones. Same I and O, but different places in the state name. (It all depended on where in the sky Jupiter's volcanically active moon was at the time the state needed a name.)

Date: 2013-07-31 02:24 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] asakiyume.livejournal.com
It was very cute (the chicks, I mean)

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