Tag: Dili
-
Homegoing
Last night, on beach road outside Esplanada, as two carfuls of middle-aged Australian men hauled their suitcases out from the tray of the Hilux and shook strong handshakes, the bespectacled professor turned to me. We’d spent two days bumping through the hills and holes of Manatuto together on a project review field trip, and I’d…
-
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…
-
Two birthday cakes: on perspective and sweetness
When I first moved to Dili I lived in a little green house in a compound just around the corner from where I do now. It sits behind a small electricity kiosk, which was run by a couple, Fredi and Angelina, who lived with their two small kids in the compound. I used to make…
-
My cheesy Timor soundtrack
“I’m trying to hold… my breeeeath…” Has anyone seen The Greatest Showman? I have not. But this song from the film, called ‘Never Enough’. I think I’ve heard about forty times and its lyrics, which start with this one dramatic line, I could probably recite by heart. Because one day a couple of months ago,…
-
Practical tips for living in Dili
Over the two-ish years I’ve been writing on this blog, I’ve covered topics from anxiety and anorexia to Dili market shopping, catching microlets, and what to do when work forgets to invite you to the workshop. As I’ve mentioned several times, I started this blog partly to record my new life abroad for friends and…
-
The Timor-Leste list
Would I be my giant sooky self if I didn’t make an ambitious list of final things to do before I leave Timor-Leste? I made a similar list at the end of the the year-ish I spent living in Melbourne — a long, thorough, and consulted list, peppered with suggestions from friends who loved and…
-
9 tips for driving in Dili
When I first moved to Dili I decided I wasn’t going to buy a car. No need, I thought, dismissively — I’d newly mastered my microlet-catching, felt confident enough with my Tetun that I could direct a yellow taxi, and also, sheepishly, felt too scared of Dili’s wayward haphazard traffic to actually contemplate driving in…
-
Here, more than anything: On two years in Timor-Leste
At the bottom of the blog post I wrote yesterday, on the first of this month, on the first day of the last month I’ll spend living here in Timor-Leste, I pasted in a scrap of a lyric that read I want to be here more than anything. A simple, clear and true reflection of the…
-
February thoughts
Remember how you handed me a cherry blossom, starts the first sentence of the last paragraph of Leah Jing’s poetic tender bruised essay blossom, the last thing I read today, the first day of March, the last full month I’m here before I go home, drenched already in sweet blush-pink nostalgia; turning my thoughts to missing…
-
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,…
Sophie Rai Liur 