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by personlurking 4665 days ago
Being and having been a digital nomad for the past several years, it can become tiring having to switch up location and work setting so often. While living in Rio de Janeiro, I often wondered how people who are from there work in office buildings in the wealthy neighborhoods (which are a stone's throw from the beach), deal with knowing that fun and sun is literally 5 minutes away at any given moment, that people are always on the beach enjoying themselves while you have to be stuck up in your office with a possible view of the sea.

In any event, I wasn't one of these people as I could take a break when I wished and hit up the beach, etc. It was great...until the project that kept me financially stable went under. Instead of looking for more work, I sacrificed the need to work more for the free time (and ability) to very cheaply or freely enjoy myself in my surroundings, eventually tiring of demanding little of myself after a few months (you can only be young-ish and 'hang' for so long). It's great living in a beautiful place, but even better when that place is very affordable (or, in the least, when you've found a way to make it affordable...almost an art in itself).

In the Bay, I almost never went out because everything cost money and therefore my friends only did things that cost money. Being poor in US standards was social suicide.

In Brazil, I was going out 4-5x per week! My average night out in Rio I'd spend about US$5, maybe $10 (drinks included, try doing that in SF!). Plus, there just so much to do for free, from hiking to beaches, to free concerts and art exhibitions...you name it. Things that other young people are also doing, mind you. In developing nations, or even economically strained ones (I'm in Portugal now), where most people are on a budget, I find the amount of fun and interesting things to do, for free or cheap, increase. Not only do the events and activities increase, but the number of people doing them increase, too.

Being a digital nomad, with at least one stable project, in places like these is where the 'good life' is. But when that stable project goes bye-bye, the sense of the good life goes with it, no matter where you are.

_____

As an aside, having just read the article, I saw that it's a minimalist blog (post) on github.io, which I'm not familiar with. From their landing page, I don't see any offer for blogging.

On Wordpress, I couldn't find any theme like this but on HN I come across these types of entries somewhat often, though this is the first I've seen from github.io. Anyone know how I can get a free one like this, where there's just a white page and words, via any blogging service?

5 comments

Author here. Exactly as digitalboss commented plus a custom crafted html/css on top of twitter bootstrap. It's not perfect, but it does the job.

Best, Alex.

And it looks clean.

I use 'noscript' and had to enable the javascripts in the page to get sensible justification.

"In Brazil, I was going out 4-5x per week! My average night out in Rio I'd spend about US$5, maybe $10"

That is certainly not nowadays... Even though yes, this may be doable in some places still (if you keep yourself to drinks and maybe some food for sharing)

This is in the last few years up this year, so it is nowadays. It's easy to keep it cheap, but many people have standards of living which say that a night out should be at nice bars and clubs.

For example: Buses that run most of the night (roundtrip) - about US$2.75, Beers (four Skols from supermarket) - about US$3. That's US$5.75. Meet your friends near the beach, in Lapa, at someone's home or at some predetermined free event (of which Rio has many). Even if the beer is bought while out, the night's bill upon returning home would be no more than US$10. Plus when I lived where I didn't have to take the bus in order to meet people on most occasions, it was even less. In places where there were nicer bars, there'd usually be many people hanging out on the sidewalk in front of the bars and inevitably, there'd be street vendors selling food and drinks.

Yup. The rent in Rio de Janeiro is high, but you can really enjoy yourself at night for less than $20
Could you say what high means in that context?
Ah ok I understand it now. Yes, like that you can have fun and meet people for cheap
I can totally relate. I'm living in SF now and previously lived in both Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo. Both SF and SP have the issue that going out always costs a lot of money and time, whereas in RJ, it was fast and cheap to spend time with friends.
True. Plus Rio is thin and short while SP is wide and, well, just big. Rio-like living in this sense can be found in some of the smaller capital coastal cities of the northeast, but they'll have less activities to offer.

Props on the portmanteau/compound username. I suppose your name as an action would become malandrewgem, then.

I built one for Wordpress, as I like you couldn't find it anywhere. Also I just checked my blog, where I have it running, and it looks much better on iPad

https://github.com/seanvoss/medium-clone

Do you speak Portuguese fluently? Language is the thing...
Yes. I learned beforehand. I couldn't imagine living somewhere w/o speaking the language (though now that I'm in Portugal, European Portuguese feels like it actually is another language, lol).
Good for you. I teach some Afro-Portugese students who have washed up here in the UK. I always think they are talking German amongst themselves in the cafe!
In Lisbon, I feel like I'm hearing Russian half the time. It's like riding the bus in San Francisco, old Russian people. Speaking of, Lisbon is chock full of the elderly.

One of the interesting parts of living here is the African diaspora. It's really nice to get my fill of African culture in a language I can understand. Speaking a few words of criole is even considered cool among Portuguese teens.