Category: Work
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2019: What I wrote
At the end of last year, I gathered together links to all the articles I’d written in this blog post. It’s time to do the same for 2019.
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What I wrote on my Timor-Leste trip
My round-up of freelance pieces written during and after my trip back to Timor-Leste in August 2019.
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My landmarks in learning Tetun
A couple of weeks ago, my friend Laura and I signed up for Indonesian language classes. This surprised a couple of people, who asked us, fairly, why. We replied that we thought it would be fun; that we thought the language would be useful for us, and it’s got hundreds of thousands of speakers here…
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Working language, working
I’ve got a few strong and loosely held opinions about foreigners in Timor-Leste who don’t speak Tetun, which is the only one of Timor-Leste’s national and working languages indigenous to this country. And that’s changed since I’ve been here, and will likely change again after I depart and when I return. When I first arrived,…
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3 ways to make work in Dili easier
You’ve just arrived in Dili with a brand-new job contract, AVID assignment, research project or consultancy offer in hand, and you’re anxious to get started. But on day one, they forget you were meant to be starting now. Then, the power goes out and the internet’s off too. Your office doesn’t have a window and…
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9 ways to find work in Timor-Leste
Coincidentally, two different people have asked me this week how to find work in Timor-Leste. I do not consider myself particularly expert on this — in fact, I feel more like a hapless good-luck magnet who’s somehow flopped from job to job and remained gainfully employed for the entire time I’ve lived here — but…
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2018: Favourite blog posts
I’ve written 83 posts on this blog this year, which feels like a lot. If you’re like, hey, I wonder what Sophie got up to this year, but wow I don’t want to have to look through all her posts, here’s a list of some of my favourite blog posts from 2018, broken into four…
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Timor-Leste traditional food
I have lunch once a week with my boss. Last week at lunchtime, we both had to go to the airport, a short drive from our office (me to farewell a friend and pick up some books; he to drop a Christmas gift), and he suggested we go together and eat lunch at the airport’s warung,…
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2018: What I wrote
In addition to spilling thousands of words of my personal thoughts here on this blog, I also sometimes pitch and write freelance articles. Freelance article writing is something I love doing — I find it challenging, terrifying, and deeply fulfilling — and a dream would be to do it full-time. This time last year, I saw…
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There are no wrong decisions
Several months ago, I was getting myself really worked up wondering whether to accept a full-time-ish job or continue going along with erratic, exciting freelance work. Then, I was just a couple of months out of my full-time AVID volunteering position, had successfully found a couple of small contracts writing website stories for a UN…
Sophie Rai Liur 