Coffee Break [27/6/22]

Your mid-morning pick me up

If you’ve ever dreamed of living in Bali, or are fleeing an increasingly fascist government, now’s you’re chance. The Indonesian government is offering 5 year digital nomad visas to remote workers. Here’s everything you need to know about moving there. Make sure you have a guest room for visiting Deadsplinters.

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27 Comments

  1. Some of my pro-surf friends used to go to Bali every year.  They would end up in some surf camps where you had to sleep in tree houses to avoid being eaten by tigers in your sleep.  It always sounded like great waves but lots of work to get there and some scary ass jungles!  One of my friends while traveling on a boat to one of the surf breaks got chased by pirates, yes, they still have pirates! The plus side is they would tell of $10 hour long massages on the beach, that sounds pretty damn nice.  I’m too old for all that these days but I do regret never surfing the spot so nice, they named it twice…

     

  2. I have been told because of my grandfather, I can get Ireland citizenship…and given the direction of things, it’s something I’m giving alot of thought to. Well, for retirement purposes anyway. I’m stuck here til then.

    • I think Ireland might have tightened their restrictions. They were very loose about it when historically they were hemorrhaging people and then for a brief period became The Celtic Tiger in the 90s and were facing a labor shortage.

      I’m of Canadian descent but they don’t have a right of return like Ireland and Israel; both my maternal grandparents were born in Canada and I still have tons of Canadian relatives, but years ago I was told, in the most polite way, to fuck off unless I was willing to buy my way in for several million C$. Or had some invaluable skill, like healthcare, because a lot of their doctors come down to America where healthcare is not a human right but rather a giant profit center.

  3. We’ve been planning to retire abroad for several years now. Not out of disgust for ‘Murica, land of the brave and home of the free, just…why not, if we could do it. We’re targeting mainland Europe, downsize and maintain a small apartment here in Manhattan and gradually spend more and more time in The Abroad. I don’t want to go somewhere where English is spoken but where it’s widely understood might be a plus for the aggressively monolingual Better Half. I pick up languages pretty easily and I think I’m still pretty fluent in two and could get by in two, possibly three or four others.

    One of the problems is in the course of my day-to-day life I would then turn into an accompanying translation service for Better Half, should the need arise. On the other hand, both of us anticipate working well into normal retirement age, partly out of necessity but mostly out of enjoyment of our work, and it could be done anywhere. We could have moved abroad years ago as far as our companies/clients were concerned, but we just never did.

    We’ll see how this all turns out but should/when we pull this off you’ll all be invited to the housewarming.

    Maybe we could get on HouseHunters International and they could pick up a lot of the tab. I will present myself as a maker of artisanal marzipan and BH can be a wellness TikTok influencer and our budget will be in the €2 million range. Nah, this will never work for HHI, since we’re not in our early 30s.

  4. If you go where there’s any sort of Ex Pat community at all BH would have other people to help him navigate the language barrier. But on the downside there would be more Americans.

    • We will probably go where others have gone before us, the Brits and sometimes the Germans, who mostly come from the West and learned English right quick after 1945. The newly somewhat affluent retiree Brits from the 1960s onward went everywhere, to lots of northern France, Mediterranean Spain, and there was a point where the Chianti region of Italy was called Chiantishire (by the Brits, certainly not by the locals who resented the intrusion) because so many Brits had second homes or had retired there.

      I’m not too worried about this actually because, for better or worse, English is the language of the Internet, and it’s becoming scarcer and scarcer to find a European who can’t understand an English speaker. There are somewhat cloistered communities of emigrés from former colonial possessions who don’t really like speaking Spanish or French or Italian but they can. They might not have a deep understanding of American pop culture, so they might not be up to speed on the Kardashians or Lizzo or whatever, but by and large if you use sign language you can communicate.

      I’ve done it myself in Genoa, down near the port area, which is a medieval Kasbah-like claustrophobic immigrant colony. It really has to be seen to be believed, centuries-old buildings built close together and narrow passageways with tons of steps leading you around. I knew that we needed to get up on higher ground, near the train station, and from there it would be more apparent where we were. The residents could barely speak Italian and what they spoke was Genovese, which I can’t really understand, and I can’t speak Arabic, which itself has lots of regional variants…Anyway, after a few tries, we got to the train station, got the lay of the land, walked downhill toward the palazzi, and found our hotel.

  5. We would like to move back to the motherland of our ancestors – Scotland. I think the clan castle is actually available – it used to be a hotel. But, we’re going to stay and fight. When I was on The Patriot – I got pretty good at loading and firing a musket and since that is the true “arm” in the right to bear arms – I think constitutionally it should work out fine for me.

      • Scotland, really? My husband couldn’t get out of there fast enough. He left for uni at 18 and never moved back. With the Brexit clusterfuck, unless Scotland joins the EU, we aren’t even considering it in our escape plan. Then again, we’re Canadian so that’s pretty much our “easy” option.

        If I could pick anywhere in the world, New Zealand is at the top of my list.

        • We would love New Zealand, but from what I understand – they’re only accepting multi millionaires and we don’t have skills that are in demand.

          The reality for me is that I’m not leaving. I’ll fight to my last dying breath against these stupid MF’s. They may think I’m some peace loving hippie liberal but I grew up in the South and I’ve had to deal with these racist bible thumpers my whole life. I have no problem getting as down and dirty as they are.

  6. If we end up going and we capture the castle so to speak – we’ll send word for you and all our lovely friends here to come join us. Otherwise, we might be forced to got to my sister’s apartment in the East Village. We’ve been watching tiny house videos on YouTube in case we need to prepare to downsize from a 2500 sq ft house to my sister’s second bedroom which is the size of a very small walk in closet. I shouldn’t complain though – that is the room that has the view of the Chrysler building.

    we can’t decide which is better – going to blue state NY and trying to cram all of us and animals into her apartment or her coming here to us in reddish/purple GA  – where we’re on an acre of land and have room to plant a very small amount of crops. I mean if the republicans don’t get us, climate change will.

  7. I don’t see moving abroad … yet. I’m definitely thinking about relocating to a more progressive state. Problem is we’ve probably got 5 years before that’s feasible. I’m work from home, but my wife the librarian actually has to go to the library.

    But honestly, once I’m thinking about uprooting it’s not that big a leap to look at other countries.

  8. i wouldnt mind moving to bali….but remote working is a little problematic for me

    and they’ve probably already got all the metalworkers they need….it tends to be a fairly limited job market on the islands…

    still….island paradise sounds good to me

      • yeah i got that….kinda disqualifies me

        unless i win the lottery…then ill move there and just not work

        actually…that sounds fantastic….stupid lottery needs to stop being obtuse and help me out here

        • Not so fast! Here in the US of A (#blessed) we, or at least I, are inundated with ads about how to live abroad on $10,000 a year or whatever and Indonesia comes up quite frequently. So does Colombia. And Panama for some reason.

          I have a friend/someone who used to work for me who did move to Bali for a year and it was totally doable for him. He also moved to Patagonia (southern Argentina) for a year. He is a free spirit.

          Lots of young Americans move abroad and teach English, so maybe you could do that. Since Indonesia was once the Dutch East Indies, maybe there’s a need for Dutch speakers? Does the Netherlands by any chance have any kind of post-colonial reciprocity with Indonesia? I know that in the British Commonwealth countries lots of people do gap years moving around, so for example Australians go to Britain and work or Brits go to South Africa. It might be easier for you to move to Bali than for me.

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