After finishing Live Below the Line last week, I was looking forward to a slower weekend – one where eating banana-peanut butter toast would feel as thrilling as getting out of Dili for a dive trip.

There’s not a coral reef as beautiful as banana and peanut butter in my eyes

On Saturday, I slept in, made and savoured my toast, and read the Monthly out on the porch while I ate. Then, I caught the microlet to Timor Plaza, and sat at the top-storey cafe to have a coffee in a new-to-me place and write a long blog post about Live Below the Line: an annual post-campaign tradition I’ve done since I started drinking coffee in 2014.

When I finished writing, I returned home for lunch and more reading, then planned to walk to UNTL for a tais market my friend Emma told me about – but confused myself with the 24-hour time on the poster and arrived for what I thought was a 5pm finish just after 3pm – what turned out to be their 1500 end time.

Undeterred, I continued walking, until I reached the beachfront markets at Lecidere.

What, you don’t colour-code your produce?

One great takeaway from Live Below the Line was being forced to shop and cook more, instead of relying on eating out. I crammed my tote bag with what you see above at the markets – feeling very impressed with my sturdy AS Colour Carrie bag for holding all of it – and then decided to clean out the fridge, freezer and pantry before I put everything away. And, of course, colour-code it. Obviously.

Dinner with a good friend at our shared favourite restaurant – Little Pattaya; beachfront Thai – before falling happily into bed with an optimistically early alarm.

What I wore on Saturday: Dili markets prairie dress, perfect for groceries and cleaning; Melbourne boots, perfect for walking the city’s length; and tais tassel necklace – a perfect reminder I don’t really need more tais stuff.

My new housemate, Tony, had a friend staying with us, and I successfully procrastinated my writing work until 12pm on Sunday by sipping iced coffee and chatting with Lexie. I set up the ironing board desk an hour before I took my lunch break – finishing the Monthly as I ate – and worked until about 5pm, when I stopped to walk out of my house’s internet dead zone for a trans-continental Skype with school friends in France, Perth and Melbourne.

This was a particularly special sunset, because I saw for the first time that the sun sets exactly over my house – you’ll see the tiny lighthouse to the right of the sun, and my suburb, which takes its name from the Portuguese word for lighthouse, spreads behind it

I left with enough time to watch the sun set over the bay and write in my journal at Gino’s while I waited for my friends. One hilarious hour and one Tony-recommended bowl of lentil soup later, I cabbed home, feeling warm and full from much more than the soup (good as it was).

Three blog posts and a bowl of fruit isn’t much to take from a weekend – and I forgive unreservedly the sister who on the phone last night described it as “pretty boring, Soph” (she was joking, but it was!) – because it was exactly the slow, quiet, unremarkable weekend I was looking for.