Two Conversations about Remote Work with Alli Pereira

Full Transcript

Curtis Duggan: Hey, Alli, so this is this is actually the second time that we've done this. This is, our listeners are only are hearing this for the first time, but this is actually round two for us. Jumping on the podcast.

Alli Pereira: Yeah. You know what they say about round two?

Curtis Duggan: It's always better. Sophomore. Sophomore album's always better.

Alli Pereira: That's what we hope. Yeah. It's better.

Curtis Duggan: What were you thinking that they always say about round two? I don't know.

Alli Pereira: I just wanted to hear

Curtis Duggan: you tricked me. You got me? Yeah, no we record, we recorded an episode about, and I was like, Hey, do you want to come on remotely serious?

My podcast about remote work, digital nomads in the future of work. And then we did an episode. How long have you been working remotely?

Alli Pereira: It's funny since 2016, I really wanted to work remotely,

Curtis Duggan: which no one will ever hear. It's in the, it's in the basement under Abby Road, and it's a Beatles song that no one will ever hear. But then at the end we talked and I was like, oh yeah, here's what I think about the podcast. Here's what I, my vision for it. And we had a post episode conversation.

And then at the end you were saying, oh, I feel like I know more about the podcast episode now, almost that I could do the whole thing again. And then, yeah, here we are.

Alli Pereira: It was almost like once we got off of the live of the first podcast,

Curtis Duggan: we'll have you on again sometime in the future. Awesome.

Cool.

Alli Pereira: Thank you so much, Curtis. We had our own second podcast and I was like, this is, I'm like, Curtis, is this better than the original podcast? I don't know. Yeah. It seems like it's more, more natural, but I think that's a

Curtis Duggan: classic, it's a classic problem or it's a classic observation that I. And whether it's a podcast or tvo TV shows back in the day, people come on in a show and maybe 'cause they watch C N or they just, whatever, they ha they have this feeling of, you ask a question and it's this thoughtful monologue that doesn't quite sound like their normal speaking voice and a natural cadence.

And then you hit the mic, okay, we're done. And it's Hey, I saw that thing you po you posted the other day. And they're like, oh yeah, I really enjoyed this restaurant that I was at. And all of a sudden when the mic's off the person, the real personality that you wanted on mic suddenly comes out.

And I'm not saying that's what happened to us, but it's just a classic it's a classic thing for the mics to go off and then the real Yeah, the real thing starts when you just wanted the real thing on mic.

Alli Pereira: Alright, now that we're off. But yeah. But I think the first, even like our first conversation, I think it was really good and you're welcome to use anything from that.

But I just felt like I had so much more. In my mind that I didn't wanna, I wanted to talk more about things and maybe it's just my obsession with the topics. We'll

Curtis Duggan: cut to it strategically if we need to. We'll pull pieces out of it, especially if you say anything that contradicts yourself, if you say something and then we'll go, we'll whoosh.

Hey, everybody just wanted to play a clip from the last one to show that she said she likes Brazil the best, but it's actually Portugal. And then whoosh. Whoosh back and show when you've said something that doesn't, isn't internally consistent, obviously. I'm just kidding. But yeah we talked about this is like a trailer for something people might not hear, but we talked about Brazil, we talked about Portugal, and you introduced yourself a bit.

So here we are doing round two. Maybe just to, I don't even remember what we talked about, so I'm not even gonna try and worry about whether I'm stepping over it or redoing it. And I'll just jump in. We met at running remote. We were both working on some of the media and interviews there as volunteers.

And you have a connection to Lisbon and Portugal and Portuguese. What was it like for you coming and being on the photography team for a brief time as a volunteer at running remote 2023?

Alli Pereira: I think so first of all, I would recommend being a volunteer to anyone, like at conferences. I actually did a second conference after I met you.

Th two weeks ago, three weeks ago where I was a photographer at that conference as well. But, so I think volunteering at a conference, first of all, you get a free ticket, sometimes you can save a lot of money. Yeah. I think running a,

Curtis Duggan: Let's cut to the chase. Yeah. Benefit number one.

Alli Pereira: Number one, money. But no, I think running remote, if you bought it last minute, I think it was like 800, 900 US dollars. Yeah. If I'm not mistaken. And so that's a perk. But then the other perk I think is just the connections that you make as a volunteer. What was the

Curtis Duggan: second conference, by the way?

Alli Pereira: So the second conference I went to was called Nomad Fest in Bulgaria.

Curtis Duggan: This is this SCO or Bansko Nomad Fest. Yep. Yep. In there, it seemed like after running remote, there were a series of nomad conferences that were all like the same three days. I can't remember. There's something in the islands like the Spanish Islands, and then also Bansko, and then also maybe Turkey going on.

I, I might be confusing a few things, but there's definitely a density of nomad events in that end of June, early July period. We're recording now at the end of July. So how was, that's a good segue. I'll briefly say what I know, which is that the name. SCO and SCO Nomad Fest. It's it's something that's popped up and it's on, its, there's been several iterations of an annual festival around this time in the summer.

Bulgaria is not known necessarily as a summer destination, although lots of places in the Northern Hemisphere are hot in July, and, summer's everywhere to a certain extent in July. But on, in the winter season, it is, I believe, a ski town that is not necessarily right beside the Capitol, Sophia in Bulgaria, but within a car ride or maybe public transport away from the Capitol.

Yeah, so Bulgaria being in, in Eastern Europe just nestled there in between Turkey and then the other Slavic countries up in the Northeast. And so yeah, that, that's what I know, but I don't know much else. So I'm curious what it's like there. I picture something like Colorado or the Swiss Alps, but maybe I'm picturing it wrong.

I don't know what's it like there?

Alli Pereira: Yeah, so for me now I'm in Colorado so I really came far from Bulgaria, slowly made my way here. Yeah. And it reminds me like the town, it's a smaller town. It reminds me a little bit of Breckenridge. If you've been to like Breckenridge or like the ski towns in Colorado.

I loved it. I would recommend anyone to go, and especially if you are an entrepreneur if you're looking for a remote job, if you are just wanting to meet really interesting people. Because the conferences, I think it's five days like of like speeches and activities, but the actual, like a lot of people like, so there's seven days of like activities but five days of speeches and then a lot of people stay the whole summer.

And so there's a huge community in this small town. And so you walk around and I was only there for eight days, but like by the third day I was walking around and I would, I felt like I was in a small town. Like I knew everyone and I was like, oh, hey Joe, hey Sally. Hey, I don't know.

Curtis Duggan: And what is the the prevalence of spoken language, Bulgarian versus English versus other European languages in, the average shop, or grocery store?

Alli Pereira: Yeah. So I don't speak Bulgarian.

Curtis Duggan: No, me neither. Although I one day

Alli Pereira: had that in common. What So everyone speaks English. No one well in within sco, no one tried to speak Bulgarian to me, but on the bus ride from Sophia, because I ride to, arrived to Sophia. And I took a three hour bus ride, I think it was three hours.

To sco. And the woman next to me spoke to me in Bulgarian the whole time. Yeah. And I don't know if she thought I was Russian or if she thought I was like some country that had, maybe I could understand some Bulgarian, but, and then I just grabbed my Google translate and held it up to her face.

Because I don't think she registered that I didn't understand. And so I just went like this with my phone and had her just continue talking. And but that was the only time someone actively kept on being Bulgarian to me. Otherwise, within SCO I think that the town they recognize that the digital nomads or the remote workers, entrepreneurs that come there bring such a great financial benefit and opportunities to the city.

So they try to be really welcoming and. You're walking down the street and all the restaurant owners are like, oh come into our restaurant. Don't you wanna eat here today?

Curtis Duggan: Are they're not Italian restaurant owners, that's just, are they Come on here to mar around.

Alli Pereira: I just, I honestly don't, I don't do accents

Curtis Duggan: at all, but I saw one I felt like I heard one creeping in there, but so they're very welcoming is the point.

Alli Pereira: I was just trying to change my original voice to a different one so you could hear the story, but I can't do any accent.

Curtis Duggan: Yeah. I met a fellow from Romania and he was like, it, Mario, I'm from Romania. Okay and what I'm just trying to picture the elevation. So I've got, it's a small town.

I got that there's these colorful characters selling you to, inviting you to come into their shop. Is it cold? Is it, or is it cool for summer? Maybe it's not cold, but do you feel like at night, a chill comes over the night and that kind of thing?

Alli Pereira: Yeah. Oh, okay. So I was not prepared.

I made a friend, like a best friend within two days and she gave me her winter coat, or it was like a.

Curtis Duggan: She let you borrow it or she gave it to you?

Alli Pereira: She borrowed it to me, but for the whole conference. Okay. Like the whole seven days. So I would say, yeah, anyone who goes, it's super 25 Celsius between 20 Celsius and 30 Celsius during the day, or in Fahrenheit, I don't know, 70 to 80, 85.

It's really nice, the temperature during the day. But then it gets really chilly at nighttime and then it also rains. And so I would say a rain jacket and nothing like, too heavy, but just a I would say rain jacket and like a sweater would be good. But then also a tank top yeah.

Curtis Duggan: Did you get a sense of the community of semi-permanent nomads or was there a cluster of coworking spaces or some sense of what this is like when it's not festival time?

Alli Pereira: Yeah, so there's three coworking spaces, I think. And for example, the one, so also as a volunteer at this conference, you get free access to the coworking space.

That's which another perk. Yeah. Yeah.

Curtis Duggan: It's all about the perks

Alli Pereira: and I think you would get it, so if you volunteer at this conference, because it's a little bit more, it's not intense, like it wasn't intense for me, but you just have more responsibilities, than running remote. So they give you free access to the coworking space for the whole month of June as a volunteer.

Got it.

Curtis Duggan: They're hoping people might volunteer and stick around, come a week early, stay awake, late, make it a whole thing. That kind

Alli Pereira: of thing. Yep. And then also if you're really important, volunteer, like a someone who manages other people, because the whole event is basically volunteers.

There's one woman who is the manager of all the volunteers, and then there's the guy who started it. But besides that, it's only volunteers that run the whole thing. So if you're a volunteer who who isn't, who's managing other people or has more of a high priority job, then you also get free accommodation for, I don't know, for how long?

Maybe the month of June or maybe just that one week. But I know you get free accommodation. Got it. I was not the high priority. I dunno. That was my

Curtis Duggan: next question. You anticipated My next question, I guess maybe it's important to sh share that running remote, which we, I've talked about on this podcast several times, almost, maybe almost every episode it comes up.

That is a conference that's geared towards companies, it's geared towards the individuals and decision makers and leaders at companies who may be implementing remote work software, remote work processes, learning about how to take their company remote. Yeah. Incentivize remote hiring and grow their remote strategy.

And the organizers of the conference sell software. Some of the organizers of the conference sell software in that industry and there's a trade show. And then at running remote, some digital nomad people come and hang out too. As they're talking about enterprise best practices, there's, a minority of the attendees are digital nomads who are not necessarily the target for running remote, but nevertheless come for the fun anywhere.

And yeah, my sense is with Ban Bansko Nomad Fest, that it's a pure nomad festival. It's not about B two B, it's not about the enterprise. It is about the people themselves and building a community.

Alli Pereira: Exactly. Yeah. You said it better than I could have. That's beautiful. Beautifully said. But yeah, no, I think running remote is more corporate if you, I.

Are looking for or not corporate, but it's like you, if you go there, like you will get a job or

Curtis Duggan: you'll get a job full stop.

Like you could, they hand them out at the front with the lanyards. Here's a job.

Alli Pereira: Like you could get a job with a remote global company. Yeah. But Nomad Fest on the other side is more like there's a talk about, or they're called onConferences. So it's pretty interesting. Like anyone can do an on-conference. And so what it is like the first day people pitch, they go up on stage and they like pitch what they're gonna talk about.

So hello, my name's Allie. In my on-conference, which is like my group discussion, I'm gonna talk about Brazil and how great Brazil is for digital nomads. And then I get off stage and then you put yourself on the calendar, et cetera. And then whoever wants to join your unconference, we'll sign up for your time.

And then you just have your tent. And hopefully people come and then you just lead a discussion. So I could see that being really good for entrepreneurs or, someone who's trying to spread awareness about their app idea or or the app. Does

Curtis Duggan: that work? Does it work when that decentralized unconference self-organizing plays out that way?

Does I imagine I, I've never been to one maybe that way, but I imagine there's, it's cool, but I picture this potential for, stranded people that just put their name and it doesn't quite work and no one attends a certain thing, so they cancel it. As opposed to just, the traditional, Hey, there's talks you can go sit down and look at them.

Here's what they are. Yeah. Fill your boots. Did you find that system was interesting and worked? So

Alli Pereira: I didn't see I, I wasn't, I was the photographer, so I didn't do non-conference. I didn't even know about it. Yeah. Until it start, people were doing it, but I didn't see anyone that was by themselves because there were, it was in a park and there were like small tents, Okay.

In a circle basically. So you could even, as an attendee, you could go between two on conferences. So I didn't see like someone who was gonna lead a talk and they just stood there by themselves. Yeah. Otherwise, yeah. So

Curtis Duggan: have you been to many Nomad festivals? I have a few questions. I have a discussion I wanna kinda have, but I just want to understand the context a little bit.

Have you done this, like what The bands Go Nomad Fest thing? Have you done anything like that before?

Alli Pereira: No.

Curtis Duggan: No. Me neither. So don't worry. That's a good answer because me neither, I've only really been to running remote. It's, I've been in startup world and the kind of enterprise focus conference is something I'm definitely comfortable with.

Yeah. I do see, so my, my, my question then, we're on the same page in terms of our prior context, which is not much, you've been to one. I maybe been to one, but I do see these things organized in the grand, on Grand Canary in the Canary Islands, in, in Spain, in Portugal, in, in Madeira, central America.

Madeira, yeah. Now in Eastern Europe. And basically where there are these nomad hubs. Probably many in Bali that I, yeah. Over the years that I haven't been to because I've never been to Bali. But how many either? Yeah. It's on the list. I gotta, it's just it's one of those things where Side, slight tangent.

I just, I've been a lot of places in North, so I always, I said this on a different podcast. It's not a contest. It's not, no one should treat anything to do with this whole lifestyle as a bucket list or a checklist or competing. Yeah. So it's, I'm gonna put that caveat out there and then say that I've been to North America, a bit of Costa Rica and Central America, and I've been to Brazil a few times.

And Europe, a lot of my travel has been in Canada, in the United States. 'cause I had a startup there for four years and there's lots of business travel, so heavily weighted to North America. And I've been to Dubai but the whole East Asia and Southeast Asia thing is just completely never been there.

And in other places too yeah. India, I haven't been, yeah. And other places that are in south to east to Southeast Asia. And I always feel like there, it's farther away and there's just something close by where I can work on my Spanish, my Portuguese, my French, and all of these, there's nothing inherently better or worse about these languages.

They just are naturally closer to English. And it feels like chipping away at something that's like the next logical thing. And then going to, to Indonesia is just, it's just a bigger different time zone. Bigger jump. And I'm saying this, maybe a, I don't know. I dunno if that's even the right way to look at it.

You just go and do it. But anyway, I don't even really know why I got on that tangent, but No, but I agree. I say Asia feels farther away in a way that I should probably be more adventurous, but I just am not I haven't been that, I haven't made that jump of 18 hours away,

Alli Pereira: yeah. It's honestly, so I went to Thailand, and I think Thailand is the, no, so I've been to Thailand and Singapore and, but only, I've only been to the Singapore airport, but the airport is so cool. So I think that counts

Curtis Duggan: a little bit. Counts. And it's a city state, so the airport is 10% of the city, so I'm sure you've seen most of it.

Alli Pereira: Honestly, the airport is amazing. It's rated one of the top, or I think it's number one airport in the world. I went there just for the airport. Yeah. And okay, so I had only gone to Thailand and Singapore. And it was it was a long way to get there. I was there for two weeks and then on the way back, I stopped in Europe for two weeks, just because I felt it was on the way back home to the us.

I may as well stop in Germany on the way back because I found a, a good flight. So yeah, I agree. It's definitely, I. I think for me, I like Brazil and South America and Central America, and also Europe as well, just because like South America for example, it's similar time zone to the us and then Europe, it's not so crazy, so you don't have to work odd hours if, or, family and stuff. It makes it a little bit easier.

Curtis Duggan: Yeah. The only time I've really experienced the total shift I wa I was in, went to Australia 12 or 13 years ago, so that was a different time zone. But I was actually in Dubai during a time where I'm was working a few times, and that is quite drastic.

It's like you go your whole day and it's not, it's this weird, I find when I was in Dubai, this was the only close equivalent maybe to what it's like to be in Asia. It's not just that, it's like your phone silent. If I'm speaking as a North American, so my context is there would be people maybe texting in the WhatsApp group or sending me a quick note on the North American time zone.

So that's silent all day as everybody's sleeping. But it's also like the news is silent and the thing where you might quickly see what happened to a a sports team or just something that happens in the morning about an event. It happens while you're sleeping and then you wake up and at the North American day has completely happened.

And then you sit in silence, digital silence throughout the day. Obviously that would be quite different if you. Yeah. Lived in Dubai and made a bunch of friends and your life was there and you started reading the local news and all that kind of stuff. More often you would adapt. But yeah, it was, it's a strange, it's an, I actually found it productive and peaceful.

I would be walking around in Dubai hot weather, sitting down somewhere at a coworking space or coffee shop and there's absolutely nothing going through Slack or email. Yeah. That's, that's not ideal if you need to get a bunch of stuff done, with people in a sync way. But it was, for a couple days it was very peaceful to just say, I have my whole day to myself and no one's even trying to Yeah.

Communicate and then I'll just wake up in the morning with everything that happened while I was sleeping yeah. Yeah.

Alli Pereira: Until five, 5:00 PM for Dubai

Curtis Duggan: yeah. That's when it starts to happen. Yeah. Yeah.

Alli Pereira: I'm trying to, I'm trying to go out now.

Curtis Duggan: Yeah. I'm trying to have dinner. So I guess there are some people that maybe are in a synchronous situation where it's yeah, no, I actually am starting my workday and going from 5:00 PM to 2:00 AM Yeah.

That seems unappealing at this point, but I can see for maybe a certain age, a certain personality that's, yeah, that's, there's something there, if you like, I, I'm not really, I get up early. I'm not really someone who sleeps in, but. If you're just like, if you're the kind of person that's I love to sleep in, you could work into the night, have a coffee, whatever, fall asleep, wake up in the middle of the day, enjoy your workout, enjoy your walk, enjoy some shopping, enjoy some sports.

Whatever you do. And then settle in for work. But anyway, that's a very specific thing. I think

Alli Pereira: Portugal, I'm just gonna add that in really quick. I think Portugal is nice for me. It's starts at one or it depends on what time zone in the us but like you could start one or two and I think that's, and then finish like by 8:00 PM if not sooner, depending on what your business is, et cetera.

But I kinda like that. I like the morning to be free. 'cause I got, I went to the beach in the morning and, or I, just I was like, wow, this is so cool to start my day, like doing something that I wanna do first instead of waking up and then doing the thing I wanted to do. Like the fun activity the last part of the day.

Yeah.

Curtis Duggan: Yeah, something for people to think about when they are considering their remote work destination. Some of our listeners might be remote work, curious, digital nomad, curious and never done it. It does matter what time zone you're on. I think there's a lot of remote work advocates that. Propose that if you go remote, all of a sudden you can just work async and you'll adapt a certain adopt and adapt to a certain series of behaviors.

But it does matter. And it, you really do want to consider if you're working with a North American company where much of the work happens, even if it's an async culture, even if they say We're async, you still wanna figure out, what do I really want my life to be like? When do I want my eight hours of work to happen?

Or however many hours of work to happen. And some people might say, it's great that I have the private time to work async. There's a lot of people that probably enjoy the comradery and the ambition of getting work done with people around the same time. Yeah. Which is how most of work has happened for all of human history.

Yeah. So it's just something to consider for our listeners that are thinking about this. But before we talked on a long tangent about what it's like to be in Asia on a different time zone. I was just gonna say, with these nomad festivals, I have this

Alli Pereira: No, I'm so surprised

Curtis Duggan: you remember. It's a hard job being a host.

You gotta be keeping track of the levels of inception that you're down. But I'm, I've managed to wake up from the dream and get back one level up. The, yeah, it was like the thing was, so here's what I want, here's what I'm trying to figure out. Often in these festivals, they take some.

Investment of time or money to go to them. Maybe you can volunteer like you do and get the perks of a free ticket and the v i p perks of free accommodation. But the retail price, the retail offer is, Hey, there's a Nomad Festival here, and there'll be some good networking, some good socializing, and it's, three or four days or seven days in some location.

So this is what I'm trying to figure out. I enjoy running remote because it is fun, but there is that focus on enterprise, not to be a nerd, but there is that focus on enterprise and I'm interested in that. Yeah. With some of the festivals. I wonder like I am curious whether, am I just walking into a big party for 25 year olds?

Nothing against 25, but am I just walking into c Coachella that's masquerading as professional networking or Burning Man that's masquerading as professional networking? And this is out of ignorance. I'm not subtexting or subtweeting or throwing shade at any of these festivals that I'm interested in.

No, for sure. But I'm just curious what am I actually getting into? Yeah. If I decide to go to X place, I hear people say, oh, it's awesome. I met so many people and so I'm just trying to, I might just have to go to one. I haven't gone to many maybe for this reason, but I'm just trying to assess for later.

In 2023. In 2024. It is a big deal. I'm a slow mad, I'm not changing locations all the time. Yeah. I'm kick picking a few throughout the year and maybe spending some time there. And I do spend time at the home base in Canada, which is you, just the tr the normal way. And the normal life.

And yeah that's my question. It might take some research in going into one of these things, but I don't know if Bansko ISS representative, but when there's a big announcement like such and such Portuguese region or Croatia or wherever, and it says, three day festival, what am I getting myself into?

And I need to interview more people that have gone to them to find out.

Alli Pereira: Okay. So my perspective on it is that there were a lot of single people there. Yeah. Go on. I to be honest, I, what happened to me, I would take the people's picture and then it would happen where the person, the man would be like, oh, thank you for taking my picture.

Can you send me this picture? And then that would, I, I would, of course like, oh yes, I can send you the picture. But then it would start a WhatsApp conversation like, Hey, do you wanna get coffee? And it became, it was, it became a lot. And so I made a template to deny people in a nice way or deny men in a nice way.

So I think There, it's really, it depends on what you want out of it. For example, like there's normally two speeches or two things happening at the same time, or even sometimes three things happening at the same time. So one night there was like, one of the activities that you could have done was speed dating.

And initially I was like, it can't be speed dating like that. It it can't be speed dating. It's it's, it must be like speed, friend speed, professional

Curtis Duggan: networking.

Yeah.

Alli Pereira: Speed, professional networking and speed skill sharing. And I was like, yeah, I wanna go to that. But then when I found out it was actually more like actual dating where you had to talk to the opposite sex or they actually also had a L G B T like table.

But it was like for the, yeah, for the other table was like, you had to talk to the opposite sex. I was like, okay, that is really

Curtis Duggan: convenient. How many people despite some of your misgivings, was it ultimately a well attended event? Did it seem like maybe this is what people are into that, at least the people that self-selected to go to it?

Or how, so how did it play out? What was the. What was the feeling on the ground as people were swiveling through or, shuffling through rapid speed dating conversations?

Alli Pereira: I'm not sure how the speed dating went. I, so I was close to the speed dating, but I didn't sit down. But I was with a group of friends. Yeah. One of my friends, she was single and she was like, I don't wanna go. And so we, and we were against the speed dating, so we had a circle and we were like, friend

Curtis Duggan: you, you were protesting with science.

Alli Pereira: We were like friend networking or friend dating.

And it was funny because the speed dating they didn't have enough girls to the ratio of men and women was off. And so the men who didn't have someone across the table, they they were rejected in a way and joined our friend networking. 'cause it was like in a park and they just walked over.

And

Curtis Duggan: This definitely never came up on our own, on our first conversation. So this is def, this is new material folks.

Alli Pereira: But I would say, but I would say there's definitely a value, definitely value for, I. If you're looking to go there for more hard skills like I said, so the on conferences, like one person's talking about mushrooms or Yeah.

Psychedelics or something that's like doing like doing things that you're afraid of or something that's not so concrete. Other than if you're going there with intention of wanting to learn a hard skill or network with business owners, et cetera. There's the, those conversations happening too.

Yeah. So it just depends on what your intention is and what group you wanna be a part of.

Curtis Duggan: About how many people were at this unconference this conference?

Alli Pereira: I think there was 500 maybe more because I

Curtis Duggan: was the ratio at the conference writ large, the same kind of thing where it was heavily weighted to men.

Men over women, or dudes over girls? Or was it that just the speed dating event.

Alli Pereira: I am not sure,

Curtis Duggan: My memory of running remote Yeah. Is that it seems 50 50. Like I didn't notice. Yeah. I didn't notice, heard a difference or anything there. Yeah. Gender imbalance.

Alli Pereira: I don't think there was a gender imbalance.

I didn't notice, but the speed dating there was.

Curtis Duggan: Yeah. Surprise. So yeah, this is good. This is like case file number one in my investigation of these nomad fests. And I think it seems like it's unavoidable that part of the appeal is young I won't say young people, I don't wanna be ageist, but single people going for the possibility of going to a festival, the same reason they might to a music festival in a, in North America or Europe or wherever.

Yeah. And that there's an element of just like meeting people and having fun maybe hooking up. Yeah. But so I think, anyway, what I'm thinking about is, whether all, like many of the festivals have this undercurrent of that's why people are really there to meet people and maybe, meet people or, or is there a gap in the market for something that is, I don't even, I don't want to say targeted at non single people, but more that is structured to be.

Kind of like a party, but I dunno, is there something in between running remote, which is clearly about the enterprise and the future of remote work and the enterprise full stop, that is the focus. There is some secondary and ancillary talks that aren't about that, but that is the focus. And then on the other hand, you have these things that serve a very popular need, which is the need to network, hang out and party, but something halfway in between.

Do you think something like that could fly? Yeah, no, I think there sometimes if you're, I find in branding, maybe it's like sometimes if you're in the muddy middle, you don't succeed. Like being a centrist doesn't get you clicks. So if you go hard on enterprise or you go hard on, this is the fun, like this is the coolest party you'll ever go to.

Thumbs up, right? If you try and be like, we're a generalist mix of all kind of things, that actually doesn't fly well in terms of getting tickets, unfortunately. Or, realistically. Yeah. But anyway, just a thought.

Alli Pereira: I think there, so there's also another conference I wanted to go to, but logistically didn't make sense for me.

So the conference I think is called Indie maybe that's not the name, but the podcast, or sorry the conference comes from a podcast called Zero to Travel. By Jason Zero to travel. I forget Camp Indy. I think Camp Indy is the I met someone at the Nomad Fest who, because it was, that was, that conference was right before the Nomad Fest.

But it seemed like it had more of a more of a wholesome, like friend, or it wasn't such a party, if that makes sense. It was more of a like families could go there, married people. It was more just like camp, yeah. I don't know. So I think, yeah, I think there's different types and I know there's also festivals where it's focused on women, so it's like women business, women empowerment entrepreneurship, et cetera.

So I think I still think that Nomad Fest, although there is that party a little bit like, the activities sometimes are catered towards single people. I think that there is still the opportunity to find a group there that's not there to party or not there just to. Meet people or meet, like dating people.

So that's my take on it. But I think there's definitely different types of conferences.

Curtis Duggan: Married people, and especially married people with kids are just less likely to travel long distances to go places statistically in general. So yeah, it may be that just is just the way of the world. And there, there actually

Alli Pereira: was a guy who, I'm not sure if I just remember a guy on the stage with his baby yeah, I think a dog as well.

And he, I think he might've been doing an on conference about how to travel with your family. So there were families there, but there weren't a huge percentage of the population there.

Curtis Duggan: And they weren't at the speed dating, no. Interviewing people from across the table. In I won't go there.

The. The thing we talked about a lot in our first conversation. I actually, I'm wondering now if this episode, we can intercut between the two in some kind of, Oppenheimer style. There's gonna be cutting between time periods and this is from before. Yeah. It's, the color grading is different on each of the two podcasts, even though it's audio.

So I hopefully we, we maybe we will have cut in between some of your other your other comments from the first one. But we did talk a little bit about Portugal and Brazil. We'll probably cut in some of that, so I won't ask you the same questions again. But I am curious now looking forward what places you're interested in the future.

We'll cut in some of the comments you had about these Portuguese speaking nations. And we did talk about how you're interested in the countries that speak Portuguese and you, when you look at 20 23, 20 24, 20 25, do you have a sense of where you're gonna be? Do you want to return to places you've already been or seek out new, longer term stays in completely new cities or regions or towns or villages?

Alli Pereira: Curtis, this feels like the question, like what is your five year plan? Yeah,

Curtis Duggan: it's two two year plan. Two year plan. But what is your five year plan? Plan? Yeah.

Alli Pereira: I, okay, so I don't have a five-year plan because I. Think that I look back five years and I was a different person five years ago. So yeah. I don't wanna put myself in a box of like, saying, in five years I will be there.

Yeah. I make a one year plan. Yeah. So I'm, I was thinking about this the other day that I really like Colorado in the US and I really love Brazil and I really love Portugal. So that triangle for me it sounds like those three places are home to me. But maybe in the future I will go, I've never been to Greece, but let's say I go to Greece and then it just wins my heart, then maybe I would make that a base.

But yeah, for me I do want to have a base, like a home because I have a small dog that I travel with, and if I travel too fast, it just is too expensive. And so I think having a home in Brazil and a home in Portugal and a home in Colorado, I know that sounds l like luxurious, but but I think just having different bases I can go between would be really nice.

I. And places with a backyard for my dog, because that's a struggle. I would say traveling with a pet and not having a backyard.

Curtis Duggan: Where in Brazil do you think are the best places to live? Or where would you wanna live in Brazil?

Alli Pereira: Opolis. Pipa or Aju or maybe Forza. Have you, you've

Curtis Duggan: been to Pipa? No.

You just know. You just know.

Alli Pereira: I just, I've done research and

Curtis Duggan: the pictures. The pictures are, they're awesome.

Alli Pereira: I've talked to people who I like and if they like it, I think that, I trust that I would like it.

Curtis Duggan: You would buy a house there, sat sight unseen, w sign and wire and then had a

Alli Pereira: Whoa whoa. I was looking at, actually yesterday I was looking at 'cause I, so I'm still between Brazil and Portugal.

Honestly, I'm probably gonna be between both. But I was looking at buying a property in Portugal. 'cause there's the path to get residency and like the golden Visa. But then I was also looking at properties in Brazil, and I was like, man, like for the same price I can get like for less than 400,000, you can get like a really nice place walking distance to the beach in Brazil and then in Portugal it's not the

Curtis Duggan: same.

You'll get an apartment for that. In Lisbon for that amount you'll get a Yeah, an apartment.

Alli Pereira: Yeah. Yeah. And I wasn't even looking. I think Lisbon is, it's too saturated and I think it's just gone. The prices are just a little bit unreasonable in my opinion. But outside of Lisbon Carlo's they set the ball.

I have an accent when I'm saying these places,

Curtis Duggan: but I noticed, I think, I don't know if we talked about this the first time, it's like some, you have an accent, but then some you drop because it's and then you're like, Florian. I'm like, I'm pretty, what about that? What about the accent on that one?

Alli Pereira: I'm like, what? Who am I talking

Curtis Duggan: to? How would a Brazilian say Florian flori. Flori Flo, would they say the whole thing. Flo no police. Yeah. Honestly, that doesn't sound Brazilian, but

Alli Pereira: Flo Opolis I probably need to work on, if I'm gonna live there, I need to like work on sounding more like a Brazilian, when I say the whole, I think Farah is like my cheat, like to say it.

Yeah. Or like a Brazilian,

Curtis Duggan: I remember when the first time I heard the name of that city, and I feel like there's a lot of, this is in Brazil. It sounds like the most, I feel this is a cliche, but it sounds like the most exotic thing I've ever heard. Like Florian, it sounds like ancient Roman temple. That was the height of a, in 200 ad there was a, the Florian Opolis named after the Emperor Florian Floriano or something.

I was just like, yeah. It's just like any, I see little neighborhoods and cities like that in Brazil where it's just named something like, I've never heard a name like that before. Like Florian Opolis. Maybe that's the way that Philadelphia or you know, something sounds to someone in Portuguese. I'm sure it's totally all relative, but there's just something because we know Spanish names and French names.

We know Des Moines and San Francisco and all kinds of things in North America. We have the history of the English, the French, and the Spanish all commingling and fighting with the indigenous people and naming things all across the continent. But Portuguese didn't make it up here, so when you see something in Portuguese, it just has that extra Ooh, I didn't know things were called that.

Like Floria. Opolis.

Alli Pereira: Yeah. And I would say Flo Opolis is like a. A different name in Brazil. I don't know because a lot of the names of the cities in Brazil I don't, okay. I don't hold me to this, but I'm pretty sure Opolis, if you translate it to English doesn't mean anything. But a lot of the cities in Brazil, if you translate it like to English, it sounds really funny.

Like at least for a city, like we wouldn't. So for example there's Porto Ro, so Porto Seguro would be safe port. There's oto, Reto is black gold. There is Forza. Forza is like strength. Yeah. There's Salvador, and Salvador is like savior. And so like you would never hear in the US like a city called Savior or safe, or like black gold.

It's

Curtis Duggan: just only, maybe, only maybe in the Spanish, like Puerto Rico or Costa Rica or stuff like that. We might see something like that with the Los Angeles, is Yeah. We wouldn't call it an English, probably the angels, but yeah. It's, especially when you, when Spanish, yeah, there there's a few layers there and yeah.

Yeah. I guess the main cities are, that's more normal. Like we might call something St. Paul, like Sao Paulo or. I guess not. What's re ri River of a January is the Yep, yep. Which is strange. Yeah. Like strange to the, to my ears. Not strange if you're Brazil. Yeah. Yeah. So how does that, getting back to the triangle of happiness between Colorado, Brazil, and Portugal?

Yeah. Is there a certain seasonality that you see? Is there something where you would want to be in all three places? I know you're not making five year plans, you're making one year plans, but Yeah. Is that, is cycling through them, is that kind of the dream would you say as of right now based on what you know now?

Alli Pereira: So yeah, so I like different things about each place. Each place has its pros and cons and so I just decided that why not just go off

Curtis Duggan: places? Let's try and get specific, maybe specific in one area, like the average summer day. I know summer's in a different time, but Yeah.

Equivalent. The average summer day, spending a Saturday in, I. Portugal, I won't say Lisbon. Yeah. Portugal. Yeah. Versus the average summer day, let's say at the beach. In both cases we'll try and make something similar, but So you're close to the beach in Southwestern or western Portugal on the coast.

Same thing. You're in Opolis you're near the beach and it's a Saturday. What's different about being in Portugal versus Brazil that you experience?

Alli Pereira: The water is so the water. Okay. So the and Brazilians say the water in Opolis is not warm, which is true for Brazil. Like it's not,

Curtis Duggan: I'm sure the Northeast is tropical.

Yeah. It's not equatorial and tropical.

Alli Pereira: Exactly. It's not like hot or it's not warm. Yeah. But compared to Portugal, holy crap. It's it's warm. Like it's warm yeah. But I, it's weird because I actually now like that about Portugal because I've never been this person until the past two months.

But Portugal, I started doing like cold plunges in the water. And then, I don't know, like I'm telling myself that it's like really healthy for me and I'm like, oh yeah, I'm like one of those digital nomads that does cold plunges. But so for me it's like, The ocean is a place to do a cold plunge.

And in Brazil it's not, yeah, you just go to the beach and

Curtis Duggan: so you're you have some concerns about a tropical paradise in Brazil that's safe, friendly, and full of wonderful people because the ocean isn't cold enough. It's just not, you wish it was cold enough to do a polar bear cold plunge and it's just doesn't do it for you.

Alli Pereira: No, but I also I love that about Brazil. But I would have to if I wanna keep up the habit of doing cold plunges, I would have to get like a ice bucket or like a ice bath that in order to keep that habit up. But in Portugal you just have the ocean. But I think, so your question was like a summer day.

How, like, how is it different? Is that your question?

Curtis Duggan: Yeah. I'm just curious. Let's say someone says, I'm thinking about our listeners that listen to these podcast episodes and part of it is imagining what they might do or strategizing and let's just pick, let's just pick someone who's whoa, three places.

That seems like a lot. I might go to two different places, but there's enough going on for you that you would actually say, Hey, it's not just, Colorado and then the beach, it's actually three different places. So what are some things you get from Portugal you don't get from Brazil or vice versa.

Alli Pereira: Okay, so the pros about Portugal, I would say it has a huge community of entrepreneurs, remote workers. It's very international. And so you can have lunch with someone from a different country every day. Brazil,

Curtis Duggan: you can have lunch with a Brazilian every day.

Alli Pereira: Yeah. You might not find that in Brazil or, yeah.

So for me the connections I have in Portugal is like really valuable for like business and career. But also I think in Portugal, although a lot of people, try to learn Portuguese, I think it's more difficult to immerse yourself in the Portuguese language in Portugal. But then Brazil, you have to learn Portuguese, otherwise you won't be able to, go about the day-to-day activities.

But for me, I appreciate. Immersing myself into the culture. And so in Brazil it feels like I can do that more. But yeah, so for Portugal, the benefits are people access to Europe, cheap flights. Portugal's really beautiful, so it's really safe. You can road trip along the coast, you can do van life if you're into that along the coast.

And there's a lot of places to park for free. In Opolis, the Brazilians are super friendly. You feel like you're getting more of a cultural experience, at least for me. It's the cost of living is lower than Portugal. And so you can, there's also Asai everywhere. So if you like Asai, you go to the d you're talking

Curtis Duggan: about the berry,

Alli Pereira: the the, is it a berry?

Curtis Duggan: Yeah, it's a berry. It's the thing that's in the bowls.

Alli Pereira: Yeah, exactly. Yeah, like in other countries outside of Brazil, it's like a super food. And in the US at least, or like in Canada, I imagine as well, it's like really expensive. Like you go to get like an asai e bowl and it's 12 US dollars.

Yeah. But then you go

Curtis Duggan: to Brazil, you just walk down the street, you look up, you pick it off a bush, you, oh no. Is it a tree?

Alli Pereira: It's still you don't get it from you don't actually eat the I actually don't know if people eat the berry itself, but I've never heard of people doing that.

They eat it like in like a frozen ice cream it's not ice cream,

Curtis Duggan: but so what part are they eating if they're not eating the berry? Is there more to

Alli Pereira: it? No. So they're eating the berry, but not eating the original berry. Not as a berry. Yeah. So it's frozen

Curtis Duggan: as a paste. As a Yeah.

As a confection. Yeah, exactly. I don't know how to explain it. I remember I was in Costa Rica. This just reminds me of something I don't wanna overdramatize it or over romanticize it, but I'm gonna do it. I am gonna do it. I am gonna over romanticize it. Do it. Do it. Here we go. Ready? Over romanticization.

Now we were driving back from a waterfall. It was like a yoga retreat, but we had the, a day trip to a waterfall and a hike, and we were coming back and our driver was driving down the road. So this is central valley, maybe an hour and a half, maybe an hour less than an hour west of San Jose in the Central Valley.

Beautiful area. And he just pulls into, it's not someone's yard, but it's just an orchard area or the edge of somewhere and gets out. Climbs a tree. I think he hacked down mangoes. I'll have to check maybe. Are there mangoes in custody? I think it was mangoes. But he just hacked them down and just hacked a bunch of them off a tree, climbed back down the tree and then gave everyone in the car.

There was maybe four or five people on the tour, the mini tour in the car and just handing them out. And then someone finished one and he just said, oh, I'll get you another one. And went up and then just kept driving. It wasn't like, and it was just, it was funny 'cause it was like, yeah, we should have more of this.

I was like, this should be how you get fruit. I, instead of the grocery store, just because it was almost like I'll try and break out the components in a very nerdy way of why I thought it was fun. It was like one, he didn't announce it. He didn't say, Hey, would anybody like this or Next we're gonna do this.

It just happened. One. Yeah, that was good. Two, he climbed the tree. That's part two of why it was awesome. Three, the mangoes were delicious. Three check, check four. He just did it until no one, like he did it until nobody like wanted one anymore. And then five, he just hit the ignition and drove away and didn't talk about it.

He didn't say that's great. No. He didn't turn his head and be like, those are pretty good, Hey really delicious. Yeah. We do this all the time. He didn't explain the context. Yeah. So I'm sitting there and it's just, it's one of those things where you're like, is this something this person does?

It's a quirk of an individual. Yeah. Don't generalize. Yeah. Is this something that this region does? Is this a general is this totally normal? And I'll never know and I never asked anyone. So it could just be a very idiosyncratic habit of a very special individual who is our driver, or it could be something that's normal.

And I was like, I'll I don't want to know. I just want to keep that memory as it was nonchalant fruit hacking off a tree and sharing.

Alli Pereira: Okay. So I don't know if this gives you your answer, but the same thing happened to me in Costa Rica.

Curtis Duggan: That's my an that's it. Two, yeah. One is an anecdote, two is data, two is correlation.

Alli Pereira: And honestly, in Brazil, the same thing would happen in Brazil. Which I love. I love, Brazil is great for health fanatics. People who want to have their food naturally sourced, they love fruit. If you're a fruit, I dunno, Brazil is the place to be for Fruitarians or for people who love fruits.

Yeah, like you could have your own tree in your backyard. Yeah,

Curtis Duggan: You'll need your C P F number in order to eat fruit, but once you get your C P F number, then you're free to pick fruit off of the tree. But first of all, you need to get some admin out of the way. But

Alli Pereira: I actually heard you don't have to be, I think it's, I don't think you have to be a citizen to have a C P F number.

I think

Curtis Duggan: as, no, I think you can get it as a tourist. Yeah, my, that's a very insider type of joke, but it's an administrative tax number. Like you might have an S N or a Yeah, e i n in a business in the United States or in Canada. It's the s i n I think. And normally that's just for a citizen and you get it when you're a baby.

But in Brazil, it's also something that you get for your lifetime, but it's actually quite required. So if you're just visiting or you're I think it's, part of it is that Brazil, despite its size, does not get tens of millions or hundreds of millions of expats and visitors the same way that the uk, France other, yeah.

Other countries do. So it's strangely adminis a strange administrative burden to not even be able to swipe a car credit card that's foreign in certain instances. You probably know better than me, but they got this number you have to get, that's a tax number. Not necessarily that you have to pay tax, but you just need this number to unlock, yeah. All this, all the services and stuff.

Alli Pereira: The gym, I would say that might be helpful for people who are digital nomads, but yeah, the gym, sometimes you need a C P F number. Sometimes if it's a, a gym that's like a chain, they'll allow a passport. But some of the gyms only expect a C P F number.

Yeah. How to get a c pf number. I imagine you just go online, have to go to the embassy, maybe. I really don't know. Yeah. But.

Curtis Duggan: Speaking of gyms, if someone can figure out the business model that actually works where you can just show up at the gym and go to it. And as a digital nomad, that's one of the hardest things.

It's it's so domestic or what's the right word? It's just, yeah, I understand why. I know why it's, yeah. Monthly annual revenue. It's such a cash cow. And it's like how a gym works instead of going outta business. Yeah. There's gyms now I can't remember, I might've been, Montreal was one.

That's my home country. Montreal, some other gym in Europe where you're just like, just tell me what the drop-in rate is and I'll pay it. Yeah. Okay. Is it, if it's 20 bucks, I don't care if it's 30 euros. Maybe I'll just do it. Just tell me what I can pay. And it's no, you have to sign a monthly or annual contract and it's gonna be a direct debit or aach h out of your, they're like, oh my God, I just wanna, I can see it right there.

I'll give you money. Just let me in, let me go to the gym. Yeah. Yeah. And so many gyms are just, they won't accept it. And I, there, there's something there for a global, no matter there is Gym Pass that it, that does sound very complex to make, but, and to make work. But I think it'll happen at some point.

Can I tell you what I do? Yeah. Tell me. There are other people listening to this, but go ahead. Yeah.

Alli Pereira: Let me tell everyone what I do.

Curtis Duggan: Just warning you in case it's, a secret.

Alli Pereira: I have found the secret. Not really, but this is what I found that works for me. So the US. I don't know, in Canada maybe, but Planet Fitness.

Oh,

Curtis Duggan: We have Planet Fitness. Yeah. Okay. Yeah.

It's not a, there's no, okay. The reason I say it like that is that they purposely don't have squat racks and the kind of equipment you need to do compound exercises. Yeah. But I'll table that discussion for another podcast, but Okay. Please continue.

But anyways, planet Fitness doesn't have the equipment that I need, so Go ahead.

Alli Pereira: I'm not saying, I'm not saying Planet Fitness is the it's like the end all gym, like the best gym ever. But it's around the whole US and so for me it's very popular. I think there's other ones as well, but like Planet Fitness, it just is like the Walmart of the US and Canada.

So it's easy. And also ClassPass. Yeah, I

Curtis Duggan: hear a ClassPass from before the Pandemic, but I haven't paid attention to it much in about three or four years.

Alli Pereira: Yeah. And actually they have ClassPass in other countries as well. So like Portugal, they have ClassPass a little bit, which is helpful. So ClassPass, planet Fitness and then in Brazil smart Fit, so yes.

Smart Fit. And it's actually throughout all of South America. And so you can get a smart fit pass that's For all the countries. And I was in Columbia and I used my SmartFi Pass, and then I went to Brazil and I used like the same pass. And then in Portugal fitness Hutt. So yeah, fitness Hutt is the one that's like a chain.

And I would say all three of them Brazil is actually pro or like the Smart Fit might be the most expensive one, maybe, I don't remember. But Fitness Hutt was 30, $30 a month. Yeah. Which I thought was pretty good. And it was super easy to cancel. So like I just had to cancel what was it?

I don't remember exactly, but it was like, it wasn't like, sometimes you have to write a letter to the gym and go through this whole process, but yeah. Smart SmartFi and then also Fitness Hutt. It was super easy to just stop and then go to the next country or continent. Yeah.

Curtis Duggan: So yeah, I think a brand that stretches across countries and covers everything internationally is definitely gonna be a stretch.

Yeah. It's better to figure out what the national solution is when you're in a country. And then Yeah, roll with that May, maybe ClassPass is a stepping stone into having one subscription that might serve you in multiple countries. I know that's gonna be, that's gonna be a tough sell.

Gimme a gym pass that gets me in Toronto and Colorado and Flora, anolis and Lisbon, all with one pass. Yeah. That's, that's not gonna happen anytime soon. But ClassPass maybe there's something there with a tech company that kind of just, partners with the fitness institutions and gives you the pass around the world.

Not necessarily trying to deliver gyms all around the world. I think we're coming up on, well over the amount of time we talked last time maybe. I actually, I don't know if that's true, but we're hitting the hour mark here. Yeah. And so maybe I'll just end it with with one question.

Yeah. I'm good on,

Alli Pereira: I'm good on time if you have more questions, but I'm open. I can do until, let's see, I can do until the 25. Sure.

Curtis Duggan: Maybe just a final question. I might edit this part a little bit, but I'll just ask the question. Is there anything about remote work or being a digital nomad, if you consider yourself that way, it's gotten more challenging or you dislike or feels different?

Maybe there's, maybe I'll restart this question. Is there anything you don't like about remote work or being a digital nomad? Or anything that's, that sort of frustrates you and you don't, you wish there was a solution to it. That's a, a, what's the word? Something everybody talks about at their digital noma.

A lot of these things, a lot of these remote work, podcasts, digital nomads, blah, blah, blah, promoting the lifestyle. We don't necessarily always talk about what's negative and what's I hate this. And it was so much better when I just lived in my house where I grew up or where, where in the town I grew up or where I went to college or where I had my job back home.

This sucks compared to that. I don't hear that kind of like strong opinions coming down. So I'm leading the question a little bit, but I'm always curious to hear if there's something where, something's really, you got a little rock in your shoe about being a digital nomad that you just wish some company or just some government or society would solve or change.

Alli Pereira: So yeah, I got some trash talk. Yeah. Let's do,

Curtis Duggan: let's trash talk. Digital nomad trash talk on remotely serious X F M.

Alli Pereira: Can you call this segment Trash Talk?

Curtis Duggan: Yeah, we're gonna have a siren going Trash talk. Yeah. Actually I'm gonna edit out me saying that and put in the actual sound.

So here we go. First ever segment on remotely serious. Welcome to Trash Talk.

Alli Pereira: So yeah, trash talks, everything there's, it's not all butterflies and rainbows. I. I think one of the things that's a struggle is I'm also a slow mad, and or I try to be a slow mad, sometimes life circumstances don't make me one, but my goal is to be a slow mad.

And so I think having a place when you show up and there's, fast wifi your desk it's set up for you your home basically, and, or maybe you want to work outside of home. Just like the setup of hit the ground running, I think is a struggle because yeah, like I've had the experience, like in Portugal, my apartment wasn't the ideal apartment.

It was dark. It didn't have all the kitchen utensils that I thought it was going to have. It didn't have a optimal work set up. It was like a desk in the dark. So I think that's one thing, just and I know that there's companies trying to do this like the Airbnb.

Airbnb is trying to do a little bit, but also, like I know that there's other companies that are like designed for if you work remotely this place is set up for you to work optima optimally work successfully. That's one

Curtis Duggan: struggle when an Airbnb says they have wifi or fast wifi and confirms it prior to the stay.

And when I arrive at an Airbnb that's confirmed that they have fast wifi prior to the stay. Yeah. And maybe confirm that there's a work area. And when I find that an Airbnb has done this, but the wifi is spotty and slow and there is no work area, it's just that the kitchen table has chairs and that's what they meant.

Yeah. It infuriates me. It's like I feel like I've be I feel like I've been lied. I feel like I've been betrayed to the core. It's a personal attack. Oh. You said it was a 10 minute walk to town, but it's a 15 minute walk. No problem. The weather isn't, it's a the temperature's a little different than you said.

Whatever, I can roll with it. I'm easygoing, I'm not an uptight person. Okay. Yeah. When you travel, you gotta be ready to, roll with the punches. There's one punch I don't wanna roll with, which is being lied to about the wifi and there's a, and sometimes it's just oh, that's weird.

But then if I go and I read up on the local internet, the I s p, the internet service provider, I can even you can do these things where you upload and you see what the name of the provider is and then go look on the local website and see what the plans are. And if you see something like kind of hitting fif, let's say you want a hundred meg up and down and you see something just like strangely hitting 15.00 yeah.

You can tell they bought the cheap plan. You can tell, I know what you did. You bought the 15 meg plan and you said, this isn't the fast wifi. And so that's when I wish that you could, I wish that you could litigate, I wish that you could litigate and assess, deeply punitive damages that honestly, would scare them from ever doing that again.

Yeah. I'm half joking, but I'm half not. It's really, it's if you're trying to work. And this, I'm not saying this about, I'm not saying I just need to be very clear to people that are listening. I'm not saying this about visiting your friend's house. I'm not saying that this about visiting family. I'm not saying this about any kind of social situation.

It would be ridiculous to complain about the wifi in any situation like that. I'm talking about when an Airbnb, that is a business transaction that you're paying them and they've confirmed it. If it's not working, they're stealing six to eight hours of your income. If it just doesn't work or it doesn't work.

And you can't do it. Yeah. For a lot of people, you add up six to eight hours of income and it's not, 50 bucks. It's something more than that. Everybody's different. And if you just get blocked, it's the, it's a tangible, anyway, I can see that.

Alli Pereira: This comment fueled your fire.

Curtis Duggan: Yeah. I just feel like that's the one thing where, anyway I don't know what the solution is. I think Airbnb is trying to work on it, but Airbnb I think is a little bit more host friendly than guest friendly.

Alli Pereira: Oh, def definitely. It's, I can

Curtis Duggan: A lot more host friendly. Guest friendly in terms of just the way the wind blows on their business model.

They can afford to lose some guests, but the hosts are yeah. I, that, that's a whole other podcast conversation that could be like Airbnb and how it works. But I think there's a big opportunity for someone to come along and compete on this front and just forget about the vacationers and just make sure the you go somewhere, your workspace, whether it's co-working or.

Some kind of reinforcement or verification of the Airbnb. No, I don't even wanna say Airbnb of the short term rental. Yeah. That, that it actually works and you get booted from the platform if you screw up and are joking around about how fast the wifi is. Yeah. Permanent ban if obviously there's outages, but that's actually not the problem.

Most of the time it's in it's inflation it's Airbnb hosts lying about how fast, fast it's,

Alli Pereira: yeah. 'cause it's not like Airbnb's it's not their target audience necessarily. Like Airbnb is you go to the Airbnb started as oh, I'm going to have a local experience as a traveler.

And so I think there, yeah. So I think there is a market of this company only caters to digital nomads or remote workers. And it's not for travelers, it's for, although, those people are travelers, but you know what I'm saying? It's, that's their number one priority.

Curtis Duggan: Yeah. And I can't stress enough if you're going somewhere and the pitch is that I'm going to this rural part of central Croatia.

To pick fruits in an orchard. And I know that it's a re renovated farmhouse that's outside of the four G. That's totally fine. Like there, I'm not saying like everything you ever do you need wifi so you can work all day. It's more when that was, what was, that was pre askeded confirmed what you paid for.

Yeah. And let and paid for and let down. Yeah. That's a considerable problem. And for me and for many people I think, yeah.

Alli Pereira: Yeah. There, I know there's companies I've heard of. Yeah, the audience can do the audience can let you know, like they can do the research. You can do your research, let them know in the next episode.

But I know that there are companies that are

Curtis Duggan: trying Tell us in the comments, am I the asshole? Tell us in the comments.

Alli Pereira: But there, there are. It is out there at least the start of it. I've heard of it, but I just don't know their names. Sorry. Who, what is, what are you, what is this? The companies that like specialize for right accommodation for digital

Curtis Duggan: nomads.

Yeah. Yeah. There's a few that have names. I think with like nomad in it, nomad stays or that kind. Yeah. Yeah. And

Alli Pereira: there's also co livings, but co livings. I think sometimes it's a hit or miss because co livings depending on where, which co-living, which chain. Whatever. Sometimes it can be like a hostile, more environment and versus like a professional environment.

And also with co-living, a lot of times you only have it's like a hotel room a lot of times and you have a shared kitchen. Yeah. And a shared living space. And I think it'd be interesting, and I know that there is this that exists, but like interesting for like co-housing, like how they have in, or actually exactly like how they have in Denmark.

What is this exactly? So like co-housing. Have you heard about like Denmark being like one of the happiest countries in the world?

Curtis Duggan: I have, although, yeah, I've watched the Netflix show Borgen about the Danish parliament and everybody's unhappy on that show. The jury's still out, but I believe it, I believe it.

Alli Pereira: I watched this documentary about, I, I think it was called Happy actually. Yeah. Which is a great name.

Curtis Duggan: Okay, Scandinavia, they, they say we're the happiest, most progressive, by metrics of quality of life and the quality of life, of the middle class and the happiness of everyone. It's the best.

And then you go and read like their fiction that they've written, and it's like these, it's like the girl with the dragon tattoo, dark underbelly, and yeah, the power of the patriarchy suppressing and it's yeah look, I'm sure it's happy, I'm sure it's good, but yeah, let's not

Alli Pereira: they're like the government is, they're government is advertising, but

Curtis Duggan: we're actually, I don't think nobody gets seasonal affective disorder.

I'm sure it's great. I'm sure it's great, but Yeah. But sorry, you were saying Denmark's happy and they have a co-housing type of concept,

Alli Pereira: Yeah, so I know it's quite common in Denmark and maybe other places as well. I actually was looking at it in Colorado. This is I'm trying to figure out my housing situation.

So I was looking at Colorado and it's like you have your own small, house or apartment kitchen, workspace, bedroom but then you are. In either like a huge, like a condominium or like a huge yeah, like a apartment building essentially, but like an apartment building that has like its own apartments within it.

I dunno if that, yeah. You know what I'm saying?

Curtis Duggan: You're an apartment building with its own apartments in it, which

Alli Pereira: I know when I said that, I

Curtis Duggan: was like, obviously it's like there's a front door and then an elevator and then different floors and then you can walk to an apartment

Alli Pereira: Or it's in Colorado I was,

Curtis Duggan: you know what I'm, you know what the next question is, how is this different from, it's like on Twitter, like apartments.

You invented apartments. Congratulations. Tech bros.

Alli Pereira: I think so,

Curtis Duggan: because like each of the apartments has a different number to distinguish it from the other ones. And they're called, depending on what floor you're on, the number starts with the number of that floor, like 3 0 1, 4 0 1. It's like the Danes invented everything. What'll they think of next.

Alli Pereira: It's yeah, sign up.

It's did not sound as genius as I was hoping it would come across. Like guys,

Curtis Duggan: I'm looking up right now, if there's a key, is there like a key difference obviously that would

Alli Pereira: like Yeah. Yeah. So let me I said it wrong actually. So I know that in the documentary I watched it was like, They had their like, small apartment, and I don't actually think that they had a kitchen in that apartment.

And so it was like a huge kitchen. Imagine like a chef's kitchen, in this building, this huge building, or not huge building, like a good size. It's like an apartment. Like an apartment. Yeah. Yeah. That can fit that can fit I don't know, 20 different families or yeah. So

Curtis Duggan: some of the services are common more than in a normal apartment or flat.

Alli Pereira: Yeah. And then they also share a backyard or a garden space. And so what they were saying in the documentary was like they liked the communal aspect of it because for example, like the women would, or, okay that's sexist, but like that not even like the women, but like maybe the men would.

What were you gonna say? I was gonna say one group of people would cook dinner, right? And yeah. And then another night, like another group of people would cook dinner, like maybe the teenagers would cook dinner one night, and then the next night the women would cook dinner and then the next night the men would cook dinner.

But they went between shifts. And so like instead of a household where you have to do everything, and let's say if you wanna go out, If you wanna go out with your partner, you don't, you have to find someone to watch your children. But with, but within these co-housing communities, they just go out, like the couple would go out and they just leave their children with Yeah.

The elders or the people that are there and don't even have to worry about it. So I think it's just it goes back to the days in human history where we lived in tribes. Yeah. And I think it's a really good solution for, like during C O V I D a lot of divorces happened because people were isolated together and only the two of them.

And I think that's a problem because you can't expect everything from one person and then it just adds more responsibilities on the two of you. And so I think what I think would be really nice compliment to remote work or digital nomads would be like this communal living where you divide responsibilities and then you also just make life easier, for yourself.

Curtis Duggan: Yeah. I, so I was in, so not co-housing living, but like literally co-living. Yeah. I was in co-living in Brooklyn when I had my last startup. Which, which kind of had, I started in Canada, but I was in New York for three years and part of that was co-living, like literally 16 people in a place in Brooklyn to save money.

Yeah. In my first six months in, or nine months in New York, because I literally came as an expat and I didn't even know, I didn't have a US credit score. I didn't even know anything about how to get an apartment. I just landed there while I was dealing with this stressful startup and just said, oh, there's like a subscription to live somewhere.

Cool. I'm doing that. And so I had a try, baptism by fire into the co-living concept, and that's like really packed in lots of young people, some mostly young people, mostly twenties. And I was 30 ish. Yeah. And And so what I think about this, so that was more intense than having the privacy of the co-housing concept in Denmark.

You're describing what I find the challenge is, so I agree. This is perfect. This is exactly what you want. North American suburbia, it's isolating people, turn a certain age and say, is this all there is? Why? Why? Why can't I? Why don't I have that feeling? That's maybe in our evolution of being part of a tribe.

I think that's that's a good impulse or impetus for thinking about these communal concepts. You hear, I hear people on podcast saying what if I just got 10 of my friends? Like we live in different neighborhoods, we drive to each other. What if we just went to Montana and these maybe people that have a bit of money, but they're like, what if we just went to Montana or Idaho or wherever and built like a 10 places, 10 different houses and communal areas?

Yeah. Everybody can play together. It's like that's the way that society should be, and I agree. Yeah but I think the challenges that it's very hard to sustain the initial benefits of that social dynamic. You get into the natural human place where maybe, let's say there's 10 families, four of them start to be friends and are annoyed by two of the families.

And then one day it doesn't, you know who could be like a husband? It doesn't matter, a husband or a wife, but a husband says I'm just like, it's 18 months in. Like I'm just sick of these people and I don't I'm tired of being part and the idea that you're gonna get 10 people together and then that like literally raise all of their kids together from infancy to teenagers where the village raises the kids.

It's it's hard to get 10 people to be on board with that the whole time unless there's literally like what happened a thousand or 5,000 years ago, which is like necessity of survival or religion Yeah. Is keeping everyone together. Yeah. If it's, if there's nothing like that, keeping people together, that's where I see oh, this would be great, but it breaks.

What's the thing that maybe it has to be more flexible, but you know how it is PE people do get tired of their spouses and want more simulation a little bit, but they also get tired of other people and be like, oh, I wish I could just be with my spouse. Oh, this is, yeah. This is annoying.

This is so annoying. So I, I love Yeah. Exploring these concepts, but that's I feel like it's a fundamental blocker Yeah. For me to get my head around it. But I love it. It's very thing. Yeah.

Alli Pereira: Maybe you have to take a Myers-Briggs test too. Maybe

Curtis Duggan: it's, you people would be fine with this.

What's wrong with you? No,

Alli Pereira: but. You could take a Myers-Briggs test and then apply to different

Curtis Duggan: Oh, you don't mean me personally,

Alli Pereira: No. The person could take a Myers-Briggs test and then apply to a community and if you, if you fit into that community or your personality type fits in, then you can join.

But I honestly, I would say if your husband or wife or partner is annoyed with other people in the community, I honestly think that's okay. So I think it's,

Curtis Duggan: this is hypothetical. Of course. I'm not saying annoyed might not even be the wrong one. It might just be, it might even just be not annoyed, but just wi not wanting to participate in the tribe, whatever, whatever.

It's for sure. Yeah. Yeah. But I,

Alli Pereira: but don't you think it's better than two people isolated and at least the husband or wife can vent to their partner and then it feels like it, it's better for that person to be annoyed with other people than to be annoyed with their partner, yeah. It it puts it takes off the tension. It takes off the tension of the partnership, the relationship. Yeah.

Curtis Duggan: It, it's a different angle to, to pitch this whole concept that it's a different angle on the benefit, but actually, it is convincing like. That is, that does resemble a model of society that I have, which is that, we go through society with all these different relationships and putting any stress on one of them usually, is not the best thing.

So I definitely get that part of it. Yeah. Yeah, I think some of these will happen. I think I, I see there's one in Costa Rica called Yoko Village. I think not necessarily about we're a tribe and we're gonna raise our children together. It's a little bit more, probably, I like more private from each other, but it is the concept of co-housing.

I think it's still private lots. It's literally detached houses on lots, but they're all in the same neighborhood. And I believe there's communal coworking and a stage and a music room and like a amphitheater. I don't know what was the name? Y Yoko Village just yo, is that Yoko Ono.

Y O K O. Okay.

Alli Pereira: Is that the sustainable living in Costa Rica? I know that there's some communities of like people who live together and they are self what is it called? Self-sufficient as far as Producing their own food, et cetera.

Curtis Duggan: I think this is just a bit more like a commercial real estate pro, like a traditional residential real estate project.

Like a developer. Okay. Like a group of developers selling homes. I'm not sure that they have a, it definitely looks very green and very sustainable. I don't think this is the one where it has like a, an underlying philosophy like that. Actually no, they, I'm reading their description here.

They say ecos sustainable communities, so it may not be the one you're thinking of, but it, it definitely looks like they're gonna try and, recycle the water. Yeah. It has that vibe.

Alli Pereira: Yeah. Costa Rica has that vibe. Yeah. I would say people who move to Costa Rica,

Curtis Duggan: Yeah. Yoko Village in, oh, Santa Teresa.

Alli Pereira: Oh, yep. San Yeah. That's a hotspot for international or expats. Yeah. In general.

Curtis Duggan: This is a good time as any to maybe end it off. I think this is the longest recording I've ever done yet. And it's gonna be a good one. We'll see if this is a mega episode that combines our two sessions.

I think it will be.

Alli Pereira: That would be amazing. That'd feel

Curtis Duggan: so honored. Yeah. You've already guessed on two episodes in one, but anyway, yeah, I'll probably edit this part. Ali, thanks again for coming on remotely serious. It's been a good two chats that we've had, and I'm excited for our listeners to hear it.

Alli Pereira: I thought you were about to say, I'm excited for

Curtis Duggan: this. I'm excited for it to be over. 'cause I'm thirsty.

Alli Pereira: I'm thirsty too, but I thought you were gonna say it. I'm excited for our next chat and I was like, alright, round three.

Curtis Duggan: It's okay. We can we can take a longer break between this chat and our totally hypothetical next chat,

Alli Pereira: but No, it was definitely really good.

I hope that your listeners got value out of it and Yeah. My last words,

my last my,

Curtis Duggan: sorry. We're just gonna have the ending music coming in and swelling up and drowning this out. And

Ali, so we were talking just before we turned on the mic and before we get to anything, before we even introduce you told me something that I thought was really interesting. I actually didn't, I don't think I knew this existed. I'm not pretending just to make this an interesting story on the podcast, I literally didn't think I knew that dogs could get passports and you just told me that your dog got.

His or her European passport.

Alli Pereira: Yeah. Yeah. So her European passport, which apparently I don't know everything yet. This is just, my husband came to me right before this podcast started and he gave me her passport and was very excited and he said, Hey, look at, we have a passport for our dog. She's a girl.

And I think that this means that she is able to come and go within the European Union without having to pay for the international health certificate, which you normally have to pay for every time you travel with a pet to a different country, you have to pay for a certificate. It's about 200 US dollars.

So

Curtis Duggan: before it, it wasn't like your dog couldn't travel. It's not like you got to the border and the border guard was like, she's gonna have to wait in the other room and your dog's pissed. You have to talk him down and say, don't worry. We'll it the dog could still get in, but you are now experiencing less fees or you will have less fees for moving your dog around as a, to the extent that you move around or go into and out of the European Union.

Alli Pereira: Yeah. Yeah. So that's what I understand. Again, this is, I think, and this is something I did research in a year ago, 'cause we were considering moving to Portugal and so I was looking at. How we could come and go with our dog. 'cause she's a smaller dog, so we travel with her within the cabin of the plane.

And so I was thinking like, if we were in Portugal, how could we go from the US where I'm from back to Portugal with our dog if we needed to? So I'm pretty sure, yeah, this means that you don't have to pay for the fee that the main big fee besides like the rabies shots and that, and those fees that you have to pay for.

Which is not like necessarily for travel. That's just so that your dog doesn't like it stays alive

Curtis Duggan: and yeah, it's important stuff. Yeah, it's the most important thing is keeping your dog alive more so than getting it Passport freedom and sovereignty. Priority one, keep the dog alive for sure.

So you're, yeah. Yeah. And we, we met at running remote in Lisbon. And I don't want to speak for you and call you a remote worker, a digital nomad, but it seems like you are the three of you, your husband and your dog are, would you consider yourselves a nomad family or a re remote work family?

Do you identify with that, with the movement of being digital nomads or or remote workers? One more than the other.

Alli Pereira: So our dog definitely refers for herself as a digital nomad. She does not go by any other, she's very

Curtis Duggan: particular about it. Yeah. She corrects you if you call yourself a remote, if you call her a remote worker.

I'm a nomad.

Alli Pereira: She's a professional squirrel chaser, although in Portugal we haven't found any squirrels yet. But she's a pro professional, dog cuddler, so that's her duty. Yeah. But yeah, I would say we work remotely and we are in the definition of working online. My husband's a software engineer and I'm a UX designer, so we work from our laptop and we have that skill that we can do on our laptop.

So I guess we'd fit into that category.

Curtis Duggan: How long have you been doing that? How long have you been working remotely?

Alli Pereira: It's funny since 2016 I really wanted to work remotely, but I didn't know how I was gonna do it. I actually taught English in 2016 just because I was crazy about the idea. I back in 2016, I was like,

Curtis Duggan: where were you in 2016 when you were teaching English?

Alli Pereira: Yeah, so I was teaching English online. Now the company is called v i p Kids, but it used to, like when I taught for them in 2016, actually the beginning of 2017, they were very new. It was a teaching English to Chinese children online. Yeah. And now I think since then, I think it was like, actually in the past year or two, the company just stopped.

They shut down their teachers in the US completely. And so that was the news I read. All of the teachers that taught it, it actually became pretty huge. Like a, I don't know, it got really big. I didn't teach for them for that long. But but yeah, so back to your question.

I tried a lot of things. I started with teaching, and teaching was always something. I was like, okay, I can do this from anywhere. If I need to come back to teach in English online, I can always do that to travel and work remotely. But I graduated in international business and so I worked in marketing for like my, my, after school job.

And then, I also got into real estate, but then I realized that real estate wasn't as remote friendly as I wanted it to be.

Curtis Duggan: Definitely seems like it's not, doesn't lend itself to that. When you say got into real estate, is that investing in properties and flipping them or you mean becoming a real estate agent?

What part of real estate did you get into?

Alli Pereira: So both of them in the end, but originally I was a real estate agent and then we started investing properties and private equity, et cetera. But I think although I didn't pursue the path of a real estate agent, I think that the knowledge that real estate taught me really helped in investing and learning about what was possible.

Curtis Duggan: So we've got so 2016, it's not that long ago, but it is a lifetime in the world of remote work and where it's come since 2016, going on seven or eight years if I doing the public math what's the story? And we we can do a bit of a time jump. There's all kinds of crazy things that happened in 2020 and 2021 all around the world with the pandemic.

But what's the story that brought you to you mentioned you're thinking about moving in to Portugal. Did I get that right? With the passport for your dog?

Alli Pereira: So it's a little bit crazy. So we. We're torn between Portugal and Brazil. We were, we're, we were going back and forth between Portugal and Brazil.

Curtis Duggan: I think it's an And you've been both places and your husband is Brazilian just for some context, right?

Alli Pereira: Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. So for context, yeah. I am from the us. I met my husband eight years ago. We've been married for five years and we got married in the US and then we thought it'd be fun to live in Portugal for some while because basically he isn't, he's I'm only gonna live in a country that speaks the language I speak.

And so I'm like, all I also love, I love

Curtis Duggan: that reminds me of a lot of people who speak English that, that have that attitude. Yeah. I think he, it's a good philosophy. It's a consistent philosophy at least.

Alli Pereira: Yeah. Yeah. And it's not it's just not his thing to learn languages, although he speaks English fluently and he like had to go through the trouble of learning English.

But I actually told him to scoot over like last week, and he was like, scoot over. He's what? Need mean? Scoot over. And I was like, what? After eight years, you dunno what scoot over means.

Curtis Duggan: It reminds me, there, reminds me of a tick. There's a TikTok that's like that, that I see sometimes, or maybe an Instagram reel or whatever it is where it's someone with an Italian spouse, a partner or boyfriend, where she'll say something and he's what the, what that do you mean by that?

And it's exactly that kind of thing. Idioms in English that completely confound or even saying things that are bastardized Italians like cappuccino or Americano or whatever. And then the Italian partner is incensed and annoyed that there's some stupid thing that English people say in English that's, it's wrong or what have you.

But anyway, I dig, I digress. Yeah. So you what was your when did you go to Brazil the first time? And where did you go in Brazil? Because it's a big place. Yeah.

Alli Pereira: Yeah. It's a huge country. There's 26 states, if I'm not mistaken. I don't know. I should probably know that if I'm gonna get a,

Curtis Duggan: it sounds right.

I'm picturing in my mind I'm looking at, I'm picturing a map of all the borders and I count 26 in my mind's eye, so I think you're right. We'll put it in the show

Alli Pereira: notes. But the states are massive, like. The states are the size of Texas, if not bigger. Like they're really big. There's a lot of states and they're not like the US size states.

Anyways, so yeah, Brazil is a huge country. I have been to four states or five states, like where I've spent time in besides like just driving through. But I've been to Baia, the state of Rio the state of Minas, the state of Santa Cina. And I think that's, I think that's it. And

Curtis Duggan: so for people that might know some of the cities but don't know the states, the state of Menina would be where be or is that Corina, is that Menina Jar Rice, right?

Alli Pereira: Yep. Yep. Yeah, so Be Ante is in Mina, in Menina. Yeah.

Curtis Duggan: And then SCA Arena, is that Opulus? Yep, that's right. Okay. 'cause I think and probably more people know about Florian Olis now than than Belo Orant, but I still think many people don't know many Brazilian cities outside of, or aside from Rio and from Sao Paulo.

Alli Pereira: Oh. And I've also been to the state of Sao Paulo. And then Sao Paulo is also the

Curtis Duggan: city. Do you think that you'll collect them all? Do you think that you'll go to all of them? Deep into the heart of the Amazon and down south,

Alli Pereira: I think I probably want to make that a goal. Yeah. Yeah. Because I have a goal, I dunno if I told you this before but I have a goal of visiting all of the Portuguese speaking territories and countries in the world.

Like for example, in China there is Macau. Have you heard of Macau? Oh

Curtis Duggan: yeah. It's oh yeah. Great casinos. It was where the, one of the econo created out of the economic zones when I think in the 16 hundreds or maybe even the 15 hundreds, the Portuguese, if we can, if we think about all the western European countries in Northern European countries going out with their new fancy ships and colonizing, one of the things that happened was the Portuguese went down the coast of Africa and went east as well as going to Brazil.

But they went down east. And so you have Gowa in India and various, some island nations in Africa, and then Macau all the way in China. Yeah. Where the Portuguese influence where the Portuguese made their influence. And I think it was a special economic zone for hundreds of years. Maybe it still is.

I, I guess I think it still is it just the history of the Portuguese being there and trading with the. The Chinese dynasties made it a special place. Having said all that, like I just read a Wikipedia article, I don't know much about it, and I've never been there, but I do know some of the history from reading books far away and learning about it.

Yeah,

Alli Pereira: you trick me. I was like, wow

Curtis Duggan: I do actually, I wasn't, I'm not literally reading a Wikipedia article right now. I do know that but I don't wanna make it sound like I, I've never been to China. I have been to the airport, or I've been to Hong Kong for a few days at an airport and a quick trip into the city.

But I haven't been to Asia very much. So it, any, anyway, you were all the Portuguese speaking territories. Do you know how many there are? I guess that's quite a, I guess that's very, that's manageable, but it's still quite a, quite an endeavor. There would be, maybe between 15 and 25 places to go in the world to, in order to achieve that.

Alli Pereira: Yeah. And there's, there's also like territory, like there's yeah, there's territories and then there's countries. I just met someone who's from Timor Les or Timor-Leste. However you wanna say it.

Curtis Duggan: Yeah, in the area around Papua New Guinea and Indonesia and Malaysia. Yeah. Yeah.

In that part of the world.

Alli Pereira: Yeah. Yeah. Like a, yeah. Or actually, sorry, in English would be East Timor, right? Yeah.

Curtis Duggan: A relatively new country. I think I remember when it had whatever political situation caused it to become independent. And I don't know the whole story, but I do remember it becoming a country in my lifetime.

Alli Pereira: Yeah. Yeah. So I think, so this guy I met the other day, actually here in Portugal, he was telling me that a lot of the people there don't speak Portuguese. And I always thought that, the Portuguese colonized and they, and the people spoke Portuguese there, but I was just surprised to learn that they actually don't, he doesn't speak Portuguese.

And he said that a lot of the people there don't speak Portuguese. I don't know, just so

Curtis Duggan: you crossed it off. The list doesn't speak Portuguese. It's like True. That's easier. It's it's getting one chore off the list. So you're one less Portuguese speaking country. That makes it easier as you're rubbing your hands together.

Yeah. I guess there's what there's. I'm gonna try and do what I know, and it's not gonna be I close to the full list, but there, there would be Cabo Verge in the islands off the coast of Africa. Would, is Mozambique in Africa? Is that be I think that's one of them. Maybe Angola. Yep. I'm really, I'm putting myself out there if I'm wrong about this and displaying my ignorance, but I think that those are a few of them.

And then of course there's some great neighborhoods, like in Vancouver there's some around commercial drive. There's like a Portuguese speaking neighborhood. So if you're including countries, territories and neighborhoods, you'll have a long list of places to go especially in, Portuguese parts of cities across the world.

I'm half joking, but there's probably some fun places to go. Little Brazil towns and, there's a

Alli Pereira: honestly there's Brazilians everywhere. Yeah. That's one of the things that I've learned ever since. I don't know, I don't know if it's like the phenomenon where if you have the car, like you have a red car and you see that car everywhere.

And so I have a Brazilian husband, and so I see Brazilians everywhere. Yeah. But I really think that there's such a huge influence, especially Brazilians, because there's so many Brazilians. And they just I see Brazilians all over the world.

Curtis Duggan: Yeah, in fairness, there are a lot of them. There are hundreds of millions of them.

But what I find, let's talk a little bit about Brazil. What I found interesting, I've been there a few times, and as a foreigner, of course, you learn about what the norms of a region or a country is. And one of the things I think that silly North Americans, ignorant North Americans think about Brazil, maybe just from the osmosis of going to Europe and being, for some people, having some experience in Spain or France or Croatia or Italy, in, in various Mediterranean or Latin places in Europe, or even in Mexico and Cuba and the Dominican Republic, where there's a, there's often, everybody speaks Spanish and some English, or some people might speak fluent English, some people might not speak English, but there's always Spanish and some English in, in a lot of these places, Mexico, Spain, certainly in, other European countries.

And then you get to Brazil and it like America, or I imagine Japan or Russia, or a really big country with hundreds of millions of people. It's not oh, and then they know English as a favor to all the people that speak English. It really is a Portuguese speaking nation. End of story. And of course there are certain people in, probably in certain jobs, in certain parts of society that speak English, but you can't just make your way through it like you're backpacking through Europe.

That was my experience. You need to know some Portuguese you, you'll need Portuguese to speak with people. End of story. They're not gonna, necessarily, make a I So I, you I've only been to Sao Paulo, I think. I'm trying to think. But that's it. I've only ever been to Sao Paulo for a meeting and and that's it.

So maybe you have more experience with different regions, but even in Sao Paulo, which I expect is this, it is a big metropolis. I didn't find that most people knew English even Yes. No left right. They didn't understand. And I needed to, of course come to their world and speak Portuguese.

So did you experience that? Is my impression incorrect? And does that match your experience?

Alli Pereira: Yes. So I speak Portuguese, but I'm pretty sure I only speak Portuguese because of necessity. Like I had to learn Portuguese. And I think that's honestly, that's like the way to learn a language.

If you want to learn whatever language, you just have to put yourself in that uncomfortable situation and force yourself to do it. But yeah, Brazil is a great place to go if you want to practice Portuguese, because I think I read somewhere that only 3% of. The population has like a fluent 100% fluent capacity of English.

And then like about 20% of people can, converse with you and speak to you, but it's a little bit broken English. So yeah, if you really want to move to Brazil and develop relationships and have a life there or just even spend three months there for the tourist visa or get the digital nomad visa.

I, I would say that knowing Portuguese would make your life a lot more a lot easier, but also a lot more fun. Did you

Curtis Duggan: know any romance languages or Latin languages before Portuguese? Like French, Spanish, Italian, or was it totally, cold start with learning Portuguese from scratch when you got there?

Alli Pereira: So yeah, I actually learned Spanish before I learned Portuguese, which yeah, helped a lot. I lived in Peru for one one year during university. And so what I told you before, I really just I don't know how my parents let me at the time, but when I was 19 I was like Mom and dad, I want to live in Peru for a year and study there.

And so I just moved to Peru and lived there for a year and Yeah. How to learn Spanish and then yeah.

Curtis Duggan: You said during university, and I just noted that because as I'm Canadian and I feel like that's the first time I've heard an American say during university, one of, like, when I'm Cana as a Canadian, when I talk to Americans, I feel like it's just this thing where there's little things that are different.

And everyone's saying during college, I was in college during college. And and so it's just funny to hear you say during university is that, that flows off the tongue, nor normally. So maybe I'm just crazy, but I'm like, I'm having like a linguistic moment where I feel like I've, I haven't heard an American say that people in the UK say uni in Canada, we say during university and then in America, they're like, back in college.

You're like, hold on. Oh my God. Wait a second. Yeah. Sorry. Sorry. Go ahead.

Alli Pereira: I was just gonna say I think I, yeah, so I say university in, so one, first of all, I think it's for for people who are not native English speakers to understand me better. I see. Just I think I've been traveling around a lot that I just have gotten into the habit of saying things like that, but also because of, yeah, in Spanish they say you can say, Or

Curtis Duggan: yeah.

Or uni, yes. Like the words.

Alli Pereira: Yeah. In Spanish, or sorry in Portuguese. It's ji so it's completely different, but but yeah, I think just say that because of yeah. Global understanding

Curtis Duggan: better. So you've spent time in Brazil and you've had a good time there. And moreover you're married to a Brazilian husband.

What has your experience been now if we think about Where're at, in your journey to see every single Portuguese speaking neighborhood in the world and territory and country what did you find? So it sounds like Brazil was first and then port, you've been to Port, you are in Portugal, but you've been to Portugal after Brazil.

So it was Brazil, then Portugal, that you experienced, or does that, is that the

Alli Pereira: right order? Yep. Yeah, so married my husband five years ago, but the first time I came to Brazil I think was in 2016. And maybe that's also where the interest in working remotely started as well. I ever since living in Peru and I also had a German foreign exchange student during high school, ever since, like those experiences, I was always curious about traveling.

But yeah, in the last. So in the last recent years we started working remotely because we started working on technology. And your question was, I'm so sorry. That's

Curtis Duggan: okay. Yes. What I was asking was actually I probably haven't, I haven't asked the question yet. I was leading into it, but basically confirming that you're in Brazil first and then Portugal came later.

What I hear is that I, it's, it actually sounds rude sometimes what people are, talk about Portuguese in Portugal and you'll hear people say things like, oh, you don't wanna learn Portuguese from Portugal. It's awful. And the Brazilian accent is better. And I'm always a bit skeptical who, come on.

I, and I've now, I have been to Lisbon in the last year or two. I've been to Lisbon for the first time. And it sounds different and it has a, it definitely has a distinct accent. So I'm always a, people have these opinions like that. And I was just curious I assume you speak the Brazilian genre of Portuguese, and I was just curious how, what it's like being in Lisbon.

Does it feel like you're listening to this foreign tongue that's abrasive like some people say, or is it just a different flavor of a language that, where people could lean, learn either one if they wanted to?

Alli Pereira: So I think you can learn either one that you want to it's not, I think it's just easier to learn Portuguese in Brazil from my experience.

Yeah. Because at least for me, like when people look at the blonde hair that I have in the blue eyes, they don't assume that I speak Portuguese, which is 100% normal because there's a lot of tourists in Portugal. So I think learning Brazilian Portuguese, you just have a lot more practice because a lot of people don't speak English in Brazil.

And so you have a lot more conversation partners basically in, in Portugal. I speak Portuguese here and I speak to Portuguese people, but because I already know Portuguese, it's easier. Like I think if I was learning Portuguese here like some of my friends are learning Portuguese in Portugal, I think it's a little bit harder just to start the conversation.

Because if you don't have that base of like conversation, like you don't know how to have a basic conversation. It's just harder to get things done to make transactions when you're also trying to learn the language. I think they're both fine. I think it's just harder in Portugal.

Unless if you live outside of Lisbon, maybe in I'm sure like in Bragga, which is like a city in the north, they don't speak as much English or even just cities that are farther from the bigger cities like Porto or Lisbon. You can probably find a lot of practice.

Curtis Duggan: You were mentioning that when we were talking about the passport, that you're, you might have been choosing between Brazil and Portugal as a place to stay for a long time.

What, how did that calculus go in terms of evaluating these two places that both speak Portuguese? And it sounds like you're leaning Portugal. What was the criteria and how did you decide what to do or how do you decided conclusively yet?

Alli Pereira: Yeah, so we actually, I think are going to, it's not actually gonna be Portugal.

I think we're gonna try, I think our lives will probably be between the two of them. In the end. But I think we're actually going to go for Brazil first.

Curtis Duggan: Oh. Interesting. I don't know why I thought, I don't know why I thought you were leaning Portugal. I might have just read into something that you didn't say.

But I think you hit on something that's quite common with remote work is digital nomads, it sounds like something only the super rich could do 20 years ago, but it's more and more common now for regular folk middle class people, whatever you wanna call it, remote workers, digital nomads that don't have billions of dollars can still maintain a base in two or three places as they call it sometimes, renting or just switching between Airbnbs and sometimes getting real estate if people have been able to save up for that kind of thing.

But yeah it's definitely more possible now to have a base in two places, even if you're not a billionaire or a multi multimillionaire. So what tipped the scales towards Brazil as the primary base potentially?

Alli Pereira: Originally when we came to Portugal, we were thinking that we could apply for the digital nomad visa online.

And maybe that sounds silly. Maybe a lot of people know that you can't. But we were like, oh, digital nomad visa, apply for an online. Of course

Curtis Duggan: it doesn't sound silly at all. And now I'm waiting for the plot twist. It sounds like there's a But coming. Yeah. So

Alli Pereira: can't apply for the digital nomad visa.

Online online, if you can, someone can tell me. But from our experience, you can't apply for Digital Nomad Visa to live in Portugal online. You have to go back to your country of residency or where you're from. Yeah. And so we didn't do that. We didn't go to the embassy, the Portuguese embassy in the US or yeah.

So we didn't do anything. We just came here on a tourist visa. And I would say so we don't have multiple bases. Like we, we only pay for one rent at a time or one mortgage at a time. Yeah. Yeah. But like our apartment here right now, we rent an apartment for three months. It was 1,600 US dollars, which I think is expensive.

But since it's since it's only for three months, since it's for the, the duration of a tourist visa, I think it's a good deal.

Curtis Duggan: Yeah, it sounds it's expensive relative to lots of options that are available to people if they work remotely around the world. There's lots of things that are a thousand bucks a month or less, but it's cheap relative to the, what people are experiencing in places like.

London, New York, Vancouver, Toronto, Sydney, Melbourne, Paris, et cetera. It's, I'd say, it's a, I don't wanna say it's a good deal, but it's definitely we're in changing times about what is expensive and what is cheap and maybe like that, it's a kind of a, it brings up something that I think I've talked this to one other guest about this briefly, but one of the things that was happening in the news, I don't know how much the media is playing up.

Sometimes I'm not trying to get all political, but sometimes the media can play up things more than they actually are a problem. But it has come up that some, someone has decided to run with the narrative and genuinely report on sightings and instances of locals in Lisbon creating, anti digital nomad messages, graffiti, digital nomads go home just doing interviews and saying, we don't want you here specifically because there is the increase.

There's an increase in real estate prices in Lisbon as there is, or as there is in all kinds of different cities, a clo across Western Europe and North America and other places. There's been a run up on this kind of thing in the last few years, especially while money was at 0% interest rates.

Long story short, my personal belief is that it's not digital nomads that's causing the increase in real estate values proportionally to the hate, but, it's a genuine political. Message that has gotten out there. There is a growing little, maybe growing interdigital nomad movement.

Have you experienced any of that or seen any of that beyond, I've seen three headlines. I haven't experienced it myself. Yeah. But I haven't been traveling as much there. I was there in in April at the conference we were at, and I didn't see, of course, yeah. Didn't see much of it. What do you think about that?

Alli Pereira: So I think it definitely factors into our decision to move to Brazil or to live in Brazil. Yeah. And again, this is through my perspective of being married to Brazilians. So yeah, I might see things differently, but I think that yeah, I think that between the two countries like Brazil although there are parts of Brazil that are dangerous, like you have to be know where you're going.

But of course there's areas that are safe outside of the major big cities. I think from my experience, Brazil, it's like people are so happy that you're there and so welcoming overall. And I have felt a little bit in Portugal that it's like people are so nice, like especially yeah. The younger generation for sure, maybe the older generation is.

A little bit upset but overall, like people are friendly, to, to your face when they meet you, et cetera. But I would say we don't have any good Portuguese friends right now, and maybe that's just our own bad. We mostly have other friends who are foreigners living in Portugal that are here.

And so yeah, that could be our lack of our own efforts, but but I do think that there is, it's a little bit harder in Portugal. I think that there definitely is that tension of people moving here from other countries and buying, or, moving to the hotspots and pushing people out.

So yeah, I would say it I do feel it. To answer your question, we don't live in Lisbon. We live in a very local area it's called or it's close to Velos, like on the way to ca case. So yeah, so our area is very friendly to everyone, but. I would say in Lisbon there might be a little bit more tension.

Curtis Duggan: Maybe as we get close to wrapping up here the future indeed may be in, in Brazil. If someone were to. If someone were to wanna explore a remote work journey, maybe for two weeks, maybe for two months, maybe for a longer time in Brazil, there is a perception that has been there for decades that it's dangerous.

And I, and if you look at the, if you look at the statistics around something like the Dominican Republic, which is a small country on it's half of an island with Haiti, and it gets I don't know how much, but multiples more visitors than the giant continent sized country of Brazil from North Americans.

And that, that's, that doesn't mean, it's not a race. It's not better or worse. It's just a fact that certain countries get more visitors. And I think part of the reason where, why more people don't, why more people don't visit Brazil is because of its location in terms of direct flights and getting there in five hours from somewhere else.

It is down under, in, in South America in a sense. But there's also a perception that may be unfair. That it's dangerous and unsafe. Is that partially true and are there certain areas, cities, or just behaviors that people can keep in mind, to, to the extent that's true to make their trip to Brazil happy, fun, and something that happens with a sense of, security and not feeling in danger.

Alli Pereira: Yeah. So I think result does get a bad rep. I really think that. It's so tough because like Brazilian people are so friendly and like 99% of people are just so nice and so friendly. But there is that, the 1% or that ruins it and that's where the stereo or like the news comes from.

And so I would say Rio is dangerous. Sa Paulo is dangerous. Salvador is dangerous. Forza as well as dangerous. So if you fly into a major big city for example in Rio, there is like one neighborhood that is safe that, that's right next to a neighborhood that's sketchy. And then right next to that is a neighborhood that's very affluent.

And so it's like there's all of these bubbles and if you don't know what bubble you're in, you could be in trouble. Yeah. So like I met a girl in Brazil while I was there. She was a foreigner I think from like Estonia. And so she was coming to Brazil for the first time and she was in Rio and she was in the wrong neighborhood and she had a knife to her, but it was.

It was just because she was in the wrong neighborhood walking down a street at nighttime and yeah. And unfortunately that's just not something that you can do in the city of Rio, but there are parts of Rio that are safe. So I would say, yeah, there's a lot more to say about what area's safe and what area's not.

But I would say ask a local if you can or just get insider knowledge. If anyone wants to ask me like which neighborhoods are safe. I have had to really know like where to go and where not to go as a woman who does not look Brazilian as well.

Curtis Duggan: You mentioned some cities that are partially safe and partially unsafe or mostly unsafe.

Are there entire cities or areas where the majority of the city is considered safe?

Alli Pereira: Yeah, there's so many. So outside of the major big cities yeah. So now that we've scared people yeah, not make it better and make it lighter, but, so yeah. Besides those big cities, the major cities Brazil has so many amazing, beautiful beach towns.

Like a hail Deju, which is close to Porto Seguro, a Aju. Opolis is a city, but it has all of these towns on the island that are it's, it doesn't feel like a city 'cause it's just, it's a city with a lot of small towns around. Around this island. There is, yeah, there's a place called eos, which is north of Rio.

It's also a beach town. Cabo Rio, which is close to eos Iji, which is or it translates to Big Island and this this place is a magical place that has no cars on this island that's two hours south of Rio, I believe. Yeah. Three hours south of Rio by car and or by bus. And when you go to this island, it's so peaceful.

No cars. You wake up and there's like monkeys rocking around on the street. It's also it is there's a place that's a UNESCO Heritage City. And it's called or. Any English should be pronounced, like ate. Not to be. It's, it looks like party, but it's, yeah.

Yeah. Pati. And that city is also a beach town. Super safe, very walkable. Feels like you get the Portuguese charm to it. It has those cobblestone streets. A lot of history there because that was where the Portuguese landed and they, that's where they they parked their boats to come to Mina and take all of the gold from Es.

There's a city in Mina called, where they came to es to take all the gold. And then they brought it out from from Achi

Curtis Duggan: at, and Mina means mines, right? Is that correct? Yes. Yeah. Yeah, that's right. So it has, it's, it has a, it's named after its natural resource extraction history.

Yes, to a certain extent.

Alli Pereira: And the city that had all of this gold in it, it was called, or it's called, it's like a close. A close bus ride, I think a three hour bus ride from Billante the capital city of Nina. But that town I would recommend if someone wants to get off like the Beon track in Brazil, it's a really safe, like ton of history.

And that is where like the Portuguese came and like they, they took the gold there 'cause it the name of the town is called Black Gold. And they took all the gold there and they brought it back to Portugal. But yeah, there's so many places in Brazil that are hidden gems and I would say as long as you're careful in the big cities, just like any place or a lot of places, like as long as you're careful in the big cities, there's so many beautiful beach towns.

Yeah, just really special places in Brazil.

Curtis Duggan: Great. Our listeners will have some ideas of your recommendations on where are good and great places to go in Brazil and a few places to be careful. But I've definitely heard a few new names of places in Brazil that are interesting. And I also know that there's a.

There's a specific digital Nomad village community in the Northeast that's been created in Pippa. So we might talk about that in future episodes. So I'll just throw in one, one shout out to Pippa, but I need to learn a little bit more about it too. I've been following the progress, but from the same Nomad X organization that organized the community in Madera in Portugal on the island of Madera, there's now a digital nomad village in Pippa.

So I'll add that one to the list. Yeah. And yeah, Ali, it's been great. Great talking to you. We'll we'll add some contact information if people wanna follow you, your work on the internet, we'll add that to the show notes and yeah, it's been great. Thanks for coming on remotely serious.

Alli Pereira: Yeah, and if anyone has any questions about Brazil, I would be happy to, give more detailed information because I'm actually in the process of deciding whether to get a digital nomad visa in Brazil or the marriage visa.

So there's just like a ton of information. And, the bureaucracy in Brazil is a little bit complicated sometimes. So if anyone has any questions, they are welcome to reach out to me.

Curtis Duggan: Great. We'll add some info on how they can do that to, to the show notes. So thanks so much, Ali. It's been good to g it's going be good to deep dive on Portugal and Brazil and you're definitely the Portuguese Language Speaking nation re resource that we can draw upon to learn about this.

And you'll learn more as you go to every single place in the world that speaks Portuguese. You'll just soak up so much more knowledge about this stuff. So we'll have you on again sometime in the future. Awesome.

Alli Pereira: Cool. Thank you so much, Curtis.