Category: Thinking
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How to move home
A dispatch from the other side of the Timor-Leste goodbye; my guide for relocation.
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Sophie iha laran: thoughts on six months back
I’ve had enough of a trickle of traffic here to make me think someone might be interested in more of what life is like on the other side; in what happens after you leave.
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The shortest way home
An instruction not to cut corners; to spend time to do something carefully and properly, and to find that to be the most effective pathway.
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My post-Timor planu
Most people I know here in Timor-Leste know three key geographical facts about my life: 1) that I’m from Perth; 2) that I lived in Melbourne before I came here; and 3) that Felix, my boyfriend, is currently studying in Melbourne. So it’s understandable that in most conversations about my departure, people are asking whether…
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March thoughts
Inside a tumble dryer this month turned me inside out upside down flip flop round and round. Big long stretches of deliberate, generous quiet; mad long days and giddy shrill nights; endless working days and the few first how are you feeling about leavings building slowly slowly quivering piccolo notes and louder now, crescendo crush, heading…
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One day it’ll all be funny
Start your story with the words ‘loron ida’, one day. One day, loron ida, about a year ago, I was sweaty and mortified in the secondhand clothes shacks on one one of my first, over-confident OB shopping trips. I’d just tried to barter a $5 price down with what I thought was the Indonesian word for four,…
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Visible, vulnerable, vivacious: do I feel safe in Timor-Leste?
Do I feel safe in Timor-Leste? It’s a question I’ve been asked a few times, and a topic I haven’t addressed directly on this blog. After work at my regular office job today I had to finish some transcribing for an article, and I decided I’d walk up to Kaffe Uut from home to…
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Three quick pieces of advice
I received a lot of advice before I moved to Timor-Leste — advice that covered everything from what medicines to bring over, to where to do my language lessons, to how to deal with creepy bosses, to how keep busy when bored. Over the last two years, I’ve turned over, considered, accepted and disregarded these…
Sophie Rai Liur 