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We are currently at the looking to move phase having come to the agreement that, yes, we are moving, and have informed our friends and family. What we haven't d
by yardie 13y ago
We are currently at the looking to move phase having come to the agreement that, yes, we are moving, and have informed our friends and family. What we haven't done is figured out where to go from here. Traveling seems to come up a lot in our family discussion, so we've agreed to do that for 6mo-1.5years. But after that it is the logistics of what to bring, what sell, what to store, and where to keep it.
We've begun to give/sell our things, throw out things when they're worn out or broken (we have a dining table with no chairs). Scan and shred the inordinate amount of paperwork a family accumulates over a decade.
Also at the end of our travels we're not sure where we want to be. Wife is EU passport holder and I am a US passport holder so either side of the pond won't be a problem as far as visas are concerned. But, those places are not where we want to live, yet. Places we're interested in moving to are AUS, NZ, and SA (costa rica, and chile for my wife). But we're not really sure we'd ever want to live there in the long term, either.
I'm curious if there is a short term visa that allows you to "sample" a country before making a big commitment. Most of the ones I've found appear to be for students under 30.
- jacquesm 13y agoTourist visa are good for 90 days usually, you can ask for extensions once you get close to the end of your 90 days. Some countries (Germany for instance) have special permits during which you can figure out what you want to do, provided you are self supporting in the interim. Once you have a permit like that for one EU country you can go to any other (though formally you have a deal with the Germans).
- yardie 13y agoTourist visas wouldn't be adequate in our case. For example, I had some friends move to Barcelona, rent an apartment, find jobs, open a bank account and travel every weekend to different regions in Spain. Then after 2 years they decided to move to Melbourne on a holiday work visa for 2 years. Then after that they moved to the south of France. In each case they had a work permit (one is a French national, so France doesn't count) based on some work holiday scheme. But a few of these have age or education limits. Our next adventure is to buy a boat and circumnavigate. First we have to buy a boat, then we have to equip it to cross oceans. BTW, Berlin does appeal to me, and I recently discovered my wife speaks a little German. What is it with the french not wanting to speak any other language?
- jacquesm 13y agoFor work you'd indeed need a bit more than a tourist visum but if you just want to get a feel of a place to see if you'd like to grow some more roots then it may work if your income stream does not require invoicing others. I was on a work visum in Canada employed by a company that I held the shares in, applied for permanent resident status and never even got the papers before we decided to move again. The French speak plenty of languages, especially the younger generation. You may have to prod them a bit and if you speak a little bit of French that may help to grease the wheels.
- rabino 13y agoChile. And they will even give you money to get a startup going. http://startupchile.org/ http://startupchile.org/
- yardie 13y agoLike most geeks I have far too much self-doubt to consider a start-up alone. Every time I have an idea I can pick it apart technically in minutes in my mind (Dunning-Kruger effect). Really, who needs online file synchronization when a USB key and rsync are perfectly fine!
- jacquesm 13y agoTry a couple of things that you'd normally discard and see if a bad idea doesn't lead to a good one once you get a bit of user feedback.
- yardie 13y agoI have some IaaS ideas I've been kicking around but they are all capital intensive. The only way I can make it financially feasible is to build my own servers. And with no SLA or warranties I would basically have to live at the datacenter.