March 20th, 2008, 8 Comments »
I never know when there are holidays anymore. I chalk this up to three factors:
- Living abroad, while not working in the local economy.
- Having clients in Canada, the U.S., Ireland and the U.K.
- Being self-employed, with mostly self-employed friends.
This is not a “woe is me, I don’t get paid holidays” post. I work really hard some weeks, not so hard other weeks and take holidays when I want. I like it this way.
I just learned that tomorrow and Monday are statutory holidays, thanks to Easter. This is a ‘work really hard’ week, so I won’t be taking them off. Still, I’m struck by my recent ignorance of local holidays. When you live in country a and work for companies in countries, b, c, d and e, it gets tricky. I had to be aware of bank holidays in Malta, because everything (yes, everything) closes.
I first observed this when I worked at a software company in Ireland. We had offices and customers in the U.S., U.K. and Europe, plus a few random employees around the globe. We got to talking about which countries had the most holidays, and which had the least. I seem to recall that Italy was very well fixed, and the U.K. was screwing the proverbial bank holiday pooch. I did some Googling, but couldn’t find anything remotely authoritative that covered a bunch of countries.
Speaking of Google, I’m going to go find some public-facing Google calendars that show the holidays for all the aforementioned countries. That way I can keep track of who’s working when.
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March 7th, 2008, 4 Comments »
I have ascetic aspirations. I certainly don’t live a monastic lifestyle, but I try to listen to the simplifying impulses in myself.
Years ago, I decided that an easy way to live more simply was by limiting my choices. These inclinations are, at least in part, why I don’t drink alcohol, coffee or tea, and why I don’t care much about food. When at a restaurant, I usually scan the menu until I spot something I want to eat, and stop there. I frequently don’t read the whole menu.
These impulses are also at least partially responsible for my ignorance of entire segments of our culture: celebrities, cars and so forth.
I suppose this approach could lead to an ‘ignorance is bliss’ argument, but that’s not what I’m getting at. Modern life in the developed world throws a lot of cruft at you–a lot of inconsequential decisions that have only a minuscule impact on your happiness. Those decisions differ from person to person, but everybody has too many of them.
In theory, the more of these decisions that I can avoid, the more time I can spend on stuff I care about. And, in theory, the happier I’ll be. So, I’m always on the lookout for ways to distill the important choices from the great froth of trivialities.
As it turns out, living in the developing world really helps my ascetic aspirations. Simply put, there are fewer trivial decisions to make:
- Menus are shorter, and most restaurants have more or less the same thing.
- There are more shops, but they roughly sell the same things at the same prices.
- There are fewer forms of entertainment, or least the kinds I’m used to.
- It’s more difficult to get from point A to point B, so you do less local travel.
- I don’t know anybody, so there are few invitations or social obligations to contemplate.
These sound like complaints, but actually it’s quite liberating in the short term. I’m speaking primarily of my three months in Morocco, but these also apply (with slightly less strictness) to rural Malta.
There are frustrations, but they’re definitely exceeded by a sense of simplifying your life, and of spending your time more meaningfully. This has been an unforeseen side benefit of a year away from Vancouver.
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January 20th, 2008, 9 Comments »
In a comment on a recent post, Mark asked about how we choose where to live:
How do you go about choosing locations, and what other locations you have on the list? I imagine you look for cheaper places that still have decent internet, along with easy access to lots of culture and sights. Are there any sites you use to find out about the net or apartments?
Any thoughts on Buenos Aires, Cinque Terre (Italy), or Cyprus?
I described my rationale for choosing Malta a year ago, but I figured I’d revisit my philosophy and try to extend it to a generalized, goofy theory of choosing foreign homes. I call it the Foreignness Index.
The Foreignness Index is a value of 1 to 100 which describes how foreign a new home is to you. Using the Index is personal–the value you ascribe a place is particular to you, today. For me, living in an apartment in Vancouver might be a 1, while living in a cave in Afghanistan might be a 100. Obviously those numbers would be very different for, say, an Afghan.
What factors contribute to rating a place? Here’s what I can think of, in vague order from more important to less important. When I use ‘new home’ in this list, I mean to refer to a variety of scales–the destination country, city, neighbourhood and your actual dwelling:
- Do locals speak the same language as you? If not, how much of your language are locals able to speak?
- How safe–in terms of crime, war, disease, and so forth–is your potential new home?
- What religion are most of the locals?
- How open and welcoming is the culture? This speaks to how important is it that you meet and befriend locals.
- How different will the weather be?
- How different will your actual dwelling be from what you’re used to. If you’ve always lived in modern apartments, how weird will it be to live in a mud hut?
- How different are the environs from what you’re used to? Are you an urbanite moving to the countryside, or vice versa? Will your new home’s population density differ from what you’re accustomed to?
- How difficult will it be to obtain the products and services that are really important to you. For me it’s reliable web access and Coca Cola. For you it might be Neiman Marcus and caramel lattes.
- Is the locals’ relationship to time different? Are shop hours more fluid? Is timeliness important?
- How different is the food? This one’s a bit tricky to objectively measure, but you can, both figuratively and literally, just trust your gut.
- Does the alphabet use the same character set as yours?
The list could be much longer, and each person will have different criteria, but that’s a good start.
The Foreignness Index in Action
Now, let’s apply that list and arrive at some values for places I’ve lived, and might go.
- Dublin, Ireland – 20 – Same language, similar social structures, similar weather, lived in somewhat different environs.
- Gharb, Malta – 35 – Plenty of English spoken, North African and Arabic influences, radically different location and environment, significantly different weather, limited access to usual products and services.
- Essaouira, Morocco – 55 – French is a second language here, radically different culture and religion, different weather (I walked on the beach wearing only a t-shirt yesterday) easier access to stuff than on Gozo, but not as good as the West.
Let’s put those and a few other values on a map (you’ll want to click for the big version):
A Dearth of Data on Living Abroad
To answer Mark’s specific questions: I like to find a couple of country-specific forums, particularly those frequented by ex-pats, to ask dumb questions. Here’s one I used in Malta.
There’s actually a real dearth of centralized information about living in foreign countries. I guess that it’s a hard data set to assemble, but the only book we found was Getting Out: Your Guide to Leaving America. It wasn’t bad, but it was US-centric, and focussed on permanent relocations instead of temporary time abroad.
Buenos Aires was actually on our short list, along with Malta and Panama. To select a country, I printed out the Wikipedia list of all the nations in the world. Julie and I then went for burgers and milkshakes and eliminated all the countries we definitely wouldn’t consider. That got us down to about 40, and we winnowed it down from there.
Argentina felt a little too foreign for our first time moving the business, and it’s a long way from Canada. Plus, we knew that if things went south business-wise while living in Malta, we could always scare up local business or make a quick trip to Europe. I didn’t fancy trying to make a solid living earning Argentinian pesos.
Italy is my dopplenation–it’s beautiful, but I’ve never cared for it. Cyprus might have been nice, but it seems like it wouldn’t have been that different from Malta.
Presumably the next time we live abroad we’ll choose somewhere more adventurous–a higher number on the Foreignness Index. Or maybe not. Who knows?
What about you, dear reader? What nation would you rate at, say, 50?
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January 17th, 2008, 6 Comments »
Last week, tNb from Atomic Dogma linked to my site, and wrote this about traveling and living abroad:
I always feel most alive when I’ve been pushed out of my comfort zone. For example, two years ago I was invited to join a motorcycle trip from Rome to the Sahara desert in Tunisia. For weeks we were cold, hungry and uncomfortable but I loved every single minute of it. I felt alive!
I may have written about this before, but ‘getting uncomfortable’ is central to my choice to live abroad. I have a natural inclination toward stasis and the path of least resistance. Choosing to live in somewhat unlikely places is kind of an attack on that habit.
Do Something Every Day That Scares You
The first few days in a new place are always stressful. Add language issues and cultural differences and they can be really unpleasant. Not to sound too twee, but I think adversity builds character, and one way to make yourself a better person is to try things that make you uncomfortable.
My mother used to say “do something every day that scares you”. That didn’t happen back home in Vancouver, but it does here in Morocco. Not terrifying things, obviously, but when your French is as crap as mine, even asking for directions is a little scary.
My most recent triumph of pidgin French was locating dish detergent, or liquide àvaisselle (I find it difficult to remember not to pronounce the ‘qew’ sound). I had to ask at about four shops, but I eventually tracked it down.
Obviously discomfort is in the eye of the beholder. For a seasoned global traveler, what we’re doing in Morocco would be totally ordinary. But I also have friends who have never left North America, so for them what we’re doing seems pretty radical.
One reason we’re only spending three months in Essaouira is because I feared the discomfort level might be too high. That is, I’m not sure how my boundaries would readjust. Happily, they’re adjusting nicely. I could do with better French, a faster Internet connection and a better office chair, but we’ve already got the basic stuff–food, heat, hot water–sorted out. The rest, I’ve learned, is easy enough to figure out.
On a related note, I also still believe that living abroad makes you a better human.
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