Rishikesh | India – magnet for spiritual seekers

Words by Anna Lebedeva | June 8

Travel to Rishikesh

Famously known as the “World capital of Yoga”, Rishikesh is a small city located on the forested Himalayan hills, not far from the place where the sacred fast-flowing river Ganga starts to spread along the hot Indian plains.

It is a provincial Indian city, but a very charming and cozy one, during high season filled with local people and tourists from around the world, who arrive here to emerged themselves into yoga and mediation, Ayurvedic treatments, hiking, whitewater rafting and backpacker hangouts. You will be amazed by the experience of sitting on the bank of one of the most ancients and the holiest river in the world – the Ganges, which is believed to help people engage in the practice of meditation.

Rishikesh on the map of India

The best time to visit: October – March
Climate: humid sub-tropical
Accomodation: $3-$100
Continental breakfast: $2,5
Fresh juice: $1-$2
Coffee: $0,5 – $2
Typical Indian dish: 1,5$ – 3$
Street food: 1$

It is believed by many sages that those who meditate in Rishikesh attain moksha…

Rishikesh offers travelers quite a wide range of choices for accommodation (from free stay in Ashrams to upscale hotels), lots of nice places to eat and enjoy the view over the fast-flowing Ganga and unbeatable opportunities to learn yoga and meditation in numerous yoga centers around the town. It was also as a tribute to this town that John Lennon recorded “The Happy Rishikesh Song” in the late 60s.

The Wedding Cake Temple in Rishikesh

Accommodation

The Ganges divides Rishikesh into two parts: the  Eastern part is a typical noisy and dusty Indian municipal town (although with many Ashrams as well), where the train and the bus stations are located, while the Western part is more calm and inviting for relaxation. Both parts are connected by two  suspended pedestrian-only bridges, Lakshman Jhula and Ram Jhula, which are the most prominent landmarks of the town themselves. All interesting things for travelers such as hotels, guest houses, cafes, shops and Ashrams are located in that part of the city.

We stayed in Lakshman Jhula area as we found it the most attractive, and we really enjoyed it. It is free from city traffic, has a few Ashrams and bathing Ghats, many decent guest houses, cozy cafes, yoga centres, shops and access to Ganga white sand beaches.  During the high season the price for a double room ranges from about 300 INR ($5) to 1600 INR ($25). During the International Yoga festival, which lasts from 1st to 7th of March, the prices are a bit higher and you need to book accommodation in advance. In the lower season you can get a nice place for 500 INR ($8) for double room on your arrival.

Sheela Mohan Palace guest house in Rishikesh

We spent 2 weeks there, during low season, at Sheela Mohan Palace guest house, for which we paid around 600 INR ($10) for a very nice room with kitchen, private bathroom, TV and great common areas. If you want to cook you have to pay for gas, but the prices themselves are super fair.

Swarg Ashram is not the name of an Ashram, it is an area, located 2 km from Lakshman Jhula, that you can access by walking through a beautiful pedestrian road, finishing at Ram Jhula bridge. This area is the spiritual centre of Rishikesh, traffic-free, where all main ashrams, temples and bathing ghats are located, and where most spiritual ceremonies take place at sunrise and sunset.

You will also find there the main bazaar with ayurvedic medicine, books, handicrafts and trinkets. ATMs are also available here. If you are prone to serious meditation, you can stay in one of the numerous Swarg’s ashrams, sometimes even free of charge as long as you observe the routines. Besides the backpacking mood this area also offers a few upscale design hotels with amazing river views and spa options (prices up to $100 a night).

Ganga view Chill out cafe

Where to eat and work

Rishikesh is an ideal place to spend a few weeks, its calmness will set you on the working mood besides providing you with many things to do as hiking around beautiful mountains, taking yoga classes and swimming in the Ganga.

To eat it packs many fairly priced options, varied types of food from different cuisines such  as Continental, Indian, Chinese and Israeli. Most places will have Internet connection, but not suitable for large transfers or network heavy work. Although everybody says that they have good WIFI available, usually it is not very fast, so you might want to try before ordering or checking into a Guest House.

Amazing view of Ganga in Rishikesh

We have a few favourite places to eat in Rishikesh. Little Buddha Cafe offers the best view over Ganga, good breakfast options and fast service, on the other hand the Internet was pretty slow. A good option is Holy Palace cafe, a bit off the main area, but with very good prices and good Internet speed for this region. Although compelling for both these reasons we stopped going there as the service was not welcoming at all.

Our favourite one became Ganga view, where the Spanish breakfast rocks (160 INR / $2.5) and other meals were well priced. The Internet there was also pretty fine. A very popular place to have a fast, tasty Mo Mo, served with soup, for 70 INR ($1.2), is Petit MoMo cafe, in front of the Little Buddha cafe.

Micael is testing Spanish breakfast in Ganga view cafe

Visa to India

Many nationalities can get an “e-Tourist Visa” on arrival to India, which is valid for 30 days and makes you eligible for single entry in one of the few Indian International Airports. Neither extension nor conversion is possible for that kind of visa during the stay. Note that you should apply online for this kind of visa with minimum 4 days in advance of the date of your arrival. 

It is definitely worth to stay in India more than one month (if you have enough time) as India has so many things to offer: ranging from sea, deserts, forests to mountains. For that you have to get a visa in advance in your home country or other locations of Indian collection visa centre. Usually the process is very simple and easy, but it will require you to first apply online and then visit the centre/embassy up to 3-4 times. Most Nationalities usually receive 6 months by applying in their home country or 2-3 months VISAs by applying in any other locations, such as Kathmandu and Bangkok.

Many backpacker travelers commute to India from Nepal and therefore make their Indian visas in Kathmandu. More details on obtaining Indian VISA in Kathmandu.

Anna is strolling in Rishikesh

How to get to Rishikesh

The cheapest option to get to Rishikesh is to go by train to Haridwar and then take a local bus to Rishikesh (40 mins drive/45 INR). Haridwar is well connected with other Northern Indian cities, such as Delhi or Agra. Trains depart daily and there are many budget options, that will cost you around $4 in sleepers and $12 in 2nd AC sleeper class (including meal). There are also bus connections with Delhi and for both types of transport you can find day or overnight options.

We left Agra by train in the morning, arrived at Haridwar around 9pm, went walking to the bus station and took a local bus to Rishikesh. We arrived around 11pm, took a tuk-tuk to Lakshman Juhla bridge and found the guest house on arrival, although many were already closed.

Anna and the Ganges

Yoga in Rishikesh

Rishikesh styles itself as the place where the world yoga story was written. You can easily find yoga/meditation classes held privately and in groups, or you can apply for a free stay in an ashram, where you will be taught meditation if they consider you as a good fit for their place. There are many ashrams that offer free stay and food if you pay for a certain amount of yoga lessons. There are dozens of meditation centres around and literally every hotel offers yoga session, but Ashrams  are still considered to be the best place to immerse yourself in yoga culture.

Yoga styles vary significantly and there are too many masters calling themselves gurus. Before taking any classes spend time researching, reading special blogs and asking for recommendations. So to be sure that you find the right yoga master and place for practicing. From March’s 1st to 7th yogis from all over the world gather in Rishikesh for the World International Yoga festival, taking place around Swarg Ashram. Check the festival schedule.

Yoga in Rishikesh

The famous Maharishi Mahesh Yogi’s Ashram, located in the South of Swag Ashram, now  reminds a lost city. It was abandoned in 1997 and it is now painted and all written over, but some details and the architecture itself show it must have been quite a beautiful and unique place (compared to other ashrams in Rishikesh).

It was here that the guru Maharishi Mahesh Yogi started to disseminate the Transcendental Meditation technique (a simple and effortless technique that helps you diving into more subtle states of consciousness). He left an enormous legacy and is certainly one of the most important ambassadors for the Indian culture, bringing it to the west, keeping its core tradition while giving it a scientific validation.

By visiting Maharishi Mahesh Yogi’s Ashram, you will be able to see the legendary meditation cells, lecture halls, own house of Maharishi’s and the residential part, where yogis and visitors stayed. You can find there the Guesthouse where The Beatles stayed to learn the basis of yoga and meditation. Many people say that it was during their stay in Rishikesh that most of the “White Album” was written.

Meditation cells in Maharishi Mahesh Yogi’s Ashram

Indian Currency

Indian Rupee is the official currency of India and 1$ is worth roughly 63 INR. If you have money in any other denomination you will have to change it, as other currencies are not so commonly circulated here, comparing to other Asian countries. It is very easy to find a Money Exchange counter and ATMs in Rishikesh, so there is no need to bring a lot of cash with you.  The best ATMs to use are those of State Bank of India, which doesn’t charge any commission on money withdrawal.

Ghat in Rishikesh

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5 things to do:

• White Sand beaches
  

  Visit one of the many beautiful white sand beaches along the Ganga river. The closest one is in 5 min walking distance Lakshamn Jhula, if you are standing on the bridge facing the Wedding Cake Temples, turn left and follow the road – you will find the beach on your left side. It is a wide strip of white sand beach, the perfect place to chill out and take a sun bath. The Ganges’s water is very clean here, but very cold. Pay attention to the water stream as it is usually very strong, not recommended for real swimming.
  

• Yoga classes
  

  Take yoga lessons in the “World capital of yoga”, finding your master in one of the Ashrams, yoga centres, hotels or take private classes.
  

• Ancient Aarti ceremony
  

  Take part in Aarti, a form of evening Puja. It is a beautiful, prayerful and very important ancient Hindu ceremony of worship with chanting and lighting of candles, performed every evening in Parmarth Niketan Ashram, the main Ashram of Swarg Ashram area.

• Rent a motorbike

  Rent a motorbike and go around the area to enjoy the Himalayas and the Ganges views. You can drive to waterfalls, caves and a few hidden temples located nearby Rishikesh. In some parts the road is not perfect, but very manageable since the traffic is not very high there.

• Rafting and Camping

  Rishikesh is famous not only for Yoga classes, but also for a variety of adventure activities. The most popular are beach campings and river rafting, which are indeed very cool experiences, allowing you to enjoy the beautiful beaches, the Ganges and the Himalayas hills view all in one.
  

Rafting in Rishikesh

Freelancing Online – Writing winning proposals

Micael Nussbaumer
top rated freelancer in Odesk
May 6, 2015

 

How to write winning freelancing proposal?

In the two previous articles we went through setting up a profile in freelancing platforms and creating an online portfolio for free using WordPress.com, today we’re going to see how to apply to a job and get it.

Just as there are guidelines on how to write a formal letter writing job proposals also has some rules, that although breakable, should be taken into consideration.

I’ll use elance.com job proposal system to illustrate this as it’s one of the most complete. You can use the same ideas for other places as well and adjust them for those other places.

Job posting and proposal in Elance

Usually a “Job Advertisement” is made of the following information:

• Title of the job

Job title in Elance job feed

• Available budget
• Duration
• Date of posting
• End of posting
• Description – The actual brief for the job – Sometimes clients are looking for specific types of contractors and their briefs may be quite short, as they are intended to people who know what to do, other times the brief gives you some more information but the clients will only pass more relevant information to proposals they deem appropriate
• Relevant samples of the work to be done: examples of what is needed and reference work/links for you to get a better idea are usually included along the advertisement as well – Imagine someone wants a layout for a brochure, they may include brochures in the style they’re looking to get, or links for you to see them.

Depending on the platform you’re applying the fields you need to fill in vary, but mostly you’ll need to write:

• The proposal or “cover letter” – where you briefly explain who you are plus include all the relevant information about this particular job, why you are the best fit, how you are going to achieve and deliver the job, your availability and terms, ask any questions you might have, etcetera.
• Along with the proposal you usually can include in separate fields the duration of the job, when you’ll start, your cost/rates; samples; milestones structure you’ll use to bill the job, etcetera.

Bid/Proposal fields in Elance

I’ll provide you both a “job advertisement” and the proposal I wrote for it. I ended up getting this job and worked with this client in the following months, creating an income of more than 4.200$ from this client alone, during a period of 7 months (averaging 600$ per month).

Note that one difference between a fixed salary and freelancing is that many times you have several ongoing jobs, you’re not deriving your total income from a single client, but when combined together, the total income of several clients make up for a decent salary.

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The job description is as follows:

“I am a full time professional high-end architectural photographer looking to build an ongoing relationship with a professional architectural image editor to work on interior, exterior, detail, dusk and dawn images.

Please take a look at my before and after video to show you the kind of editing I am looking for: [hidden link]

Job Requirements…

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Then the client goes on to explain all requirements, from technical aspects, to software proficiency expected from the contractor, details, etcetera”

Elance job bid example

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Since it was a lengthy description I also wrote an extensive answer:

“Hello,

my name is Micael Nussbaumer and I’m a photographer and editor, with extensive experience regarding architectural imagery.
You can see various samples of my work at [hidden link]
I have read your detailed post and I’m definitively interested in working with you.

My rates range from 10$ per image to quite more, depending on the extent of the editing required, quality of source images, etc.
I can definitively fine-tune my editing process to meet clients expectations, although I have my own workflow, that usually goes like this:

• Raw-conversion, perspective correction, elements removal, cleaning up blown-out areas, selective layered editing for colour homogeneity, exposure adjustments, image placement (persons or whatever needs), selective dodge&burning, contrast, sharpness.

I’m very used to ACR, LR, Bridge, Photoshop. I’m an Adobe CC subscriber. I’ve used Nik in the past but I have to tell you I’m not that pro efficient using it, although I can learn of course.

You can see feedback here for this kind of work and in some other platforms and I have worked with some well known photographers throughout the time.
Your expected turn-around time is achievable and I would say that for what you’re asking, and looking at the detail work you need done, plus the clients you seem to work with, that around 25$ / img would be a reasonable price.

This price would include everything, from the elance fee, to uploads, downloads, reviews when needed (although if the brief is clear most probably you won’t have to ask for them). Of course we can also budget it accordingly to project or image, and in case a long-term collaboration is in place, prices can be adjusted according to volume of work.
I’m actually looking for longer term-collaborations right now and I’m available to do you a free test run, so feel free to share the image with me, along with the brief.

Let me know your thoughts, plus any questions,
all the best, looking forward to your reply and thanks for your time
Micael Nussbaumer

Approach to the Job:

Within 24h – Execution of one image contemplating all the edits previously mentioned (in the proposal field), sending back that image for review on look, colours, mood, sharpness, exposure, etc. If fine, proceeding to the remaining batch, if not, redoing it and once again feedback process.
In 5 days, delivery of all 25 images.
Cost: 500$ with Elance fee included

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Sample work done for a proposal I didn’t get – it also happens – but still this can be used for portfolio

After this proposal I got a reply and I did a sample picture for the client to see if I was actually capable of doing what he was asking. After that we started working and it went for some months.

I would write the proposal a bit differently if it was now but it worked.

First, I introduced myself making it clear that I specialise in the genre of photography this client was looking for. I could have said “with extensive experience preparing images for other photographers”. This could have worked as well, but specifying the genre shows that I read the brief and that I’m aware of the skills he needs.

Of course it’s not enough to write it, so I backed that statement with quite an extensive portfolio of interior and exterior architectural images I had edited. Here the client could see before/after images of my work, giving strength to my proposal and showing that indeed what I said was true – I had several work in that genre alone.

portfolios in Elance

Then I went on to give a general look of my costs, my method of working and the software I use. This shows that I also understand the technical aspects of the task and the software, so it will make any kind of technical communication easier, in case it’s needed.

I explain the estimated costs for this particular kind of work (based on the references the client mentions) along with my willingness to work in longer term projects, which in this case was a plus, since it means the client won’t need to go through another candidate selection for a new job – as I’m already interested and able to do what he needs done.

Skills & Tests taken at Elance

As I said, I would have written it differently now, but this only goes to show that even if your proposals aren’t perfect as long as you include the relevant bits they can go through.

After writing the proposal we talked a bit more, regarding how to receive and deliver the files, details about payments and schedules. I also provided a “free of charge” sample of my work in one of his images.

So how should you prepare your proposals?

I would organise a proposal as follows:

1. Introduce yourself and your skills – make it relevant to the specific job you’re applying – saying for instance “I’m a copywriter but I also work translating documents” is less relevant for a translation job than saying “I’ve been translating documents for companies, magazines and institutions for the past 5 years”. Even if you work mostly as a copywriter, make the focus of your introduction the most relevant possible to the job at hand, because why would the client go with a copywriter that “also does translations” instead of a full-time professional translator?
2. Give the client relevant examples of your work, things that show them you will be able to accomplish the task – like previous works you’ve done that are similar in their nature and scope to what is being asked – nobody likes to loose time and money, if you can show a client you already tackled similar projects and completed them successfully they will be much more inclined to hire you.
3. Tell them why you would be a great hire and why you would like to work in this project.
4. Ask the questions that need to be asked. If the brief isn’t clear enough, or if by your experience you know you need some more items to produce a realistic budget, ask for that kind of information – it not only shows that you have an understanding of the scope of the project, it shows you’re paying attention and putting in time ahead to prevent misunderstandings.
5. If possible suggest at least one way of accomplishing what is being asked. If, for instance, a client wants the creation of a website with a certain set of features, provide them with a brief plan and if you can do it in different ways depending on different requirements, show them that they have options depending on the subtleties of the final product – once again, this shows you have read, you understand and you’re capable of solving the current task.
6. Finish off by explaining your rates, how you want to be paid, what the client will receive, when you’re able to start and finish, how you can deliver the project, technicalities (for instance if you’re working on video you may say that you’ll deliver a master video file and a youtube optimised file). Make it clear about the included reviews and the value of your time.

Feedback history

Put some time into it, really, on the other end of the screen there’s someone who will probably be receiving quite a bunch of proposals, someone who values their time and money and wants the best possible solution for their problem, within their budget, or they might be working for someone else and they don’t want to tell their client “the budget isn’t enough” because they had to pay you and then someone else to finish it or they miss their deadlines because you didn’t follow through.

Don’t waste time bidding on projects you aren’t that good at. You can vary your fields of expertise but make sure you’re really up to the competition. “I think I can do it” it’s not the type of thing somebody who’s trying to launch, keep or improve their business want to hear. Another reason why you should stick with things you’re really good at is that it’s not worth receiving sub-par reviews. I recently had a very bad experience with a client and definitively that bloody low review this client left me is going to stick for a while. That’s also why it’s important to make things clear from the beginning.

When freelancing through these platforms, although tempting it might be to do it outside or not using their message system and escrow systems, don’t do that unless you have a very good reason for it or you know the client already well enough and there’s trust between both of you. This message systems is a record of the conversations – if you say something in the proposal or work room and then you amend it through e-mail or Skype if you go to dispute a work it won’t stick. Make sure you either bill the work through the work logging software the platform offers you or that you have funded milestones for the work at hand. Don’t be pushy but stand your ground. Not using any of these systems may end up with a client not paying, arguing and stress.

Another piece of advice when starting is – offer a  discount to your client. If you don’t have marvellous work and references, plus you don’t have feedback on the platforms, it might be difficult to land a job by offering fair prices.

Try smaller tasks. They might not pay enough to cover your hourly rate, but since they’re small, you should take them as “investments”. If you have the experience to do something and you can deliver a great product but you don’t have feedback, tell exactly that – “I don’t have yet any feedback here as I’ve only now started working through this platform but I’m willing to give you quite a decent discount to make up for that. Be assured that I’m highly professional and will deliver much more value than what you’re paying for and I’m doing it as an investment for my own profile here…”

Architectural image editing portfolio view on Elance

Of course this all depends on what you can offer, maybe sometimes you can start right away with your real rates if you have a proven track record, many times on the other hand, the easiest way is to loose a few bucks in the beginning.

After getting your first feedbacks don’t bid on jobs where the budget is much lower than what you can make. If the difference is small, you may bid and justify the higher price by backing it up with stellar work, but otherwise stick to those where you see that the budget fits your needs. I stopped bidding on clipping path projects because I cannot compete with outsourcing companies who charge 25c, 50c or 1$ for clipping complex objects, instead I try to compete in projects that require more know-how and where I know that my work stands-out when compared to cheaper freelancers. Clipping paths require time, I know I can offer much better work, but the clients sometimes just need an enough-to-go-by work and a difference of 2$ per image is too much for their budget to handle.

Don’t look at providing free samples as a waste of time, look at it as an investment. I’m an image editor. When I was starting many of the jobs I applied to required a “sample” image to be provided with the application for choosing purposes. Instead of doing a sloppy job I did my best on those free-of-charge samples. Why you might ask? Loosing one or two hours for work which isn’t guarantee to be paid for? The reason is that, I was looking for jobs, I didn’t have feedback yet, so that meant a bonus to my application, because it showed I could handle the job, maybe even to a higher standard than the client was expecting or others were offering. So if it made me get that job it meant it would have paid itself plus by showing it, sometimes, I was able to charge my original price for it. But even if the proposal wasn’t selected, that meant I had done a real task that was ordered by someone, and since I put enough effort in it for it to look good, it ended up being another item for my portfolio.

So it’s a win-win situation. One other thing is, it sends a message, because if you are willing to put work ahead of a payment it usually shows that when getting paid you’ll put the same kind of effort and that’s always a good indicator.

Feedback & ratings @ upwork.com

Another thing you can do, but this is just to save your time, is to create a text document where you have one or more templates for job proposals with the basic stuff you always write so that you can easily copy that and past into the proposal. If you use this method pay attention to customising and filling in the blanks before sending because, in case you forget, it will show your prospective client you are using a “template” proposal, which doesn’t come as professional – nobody likes to be treated as “just another one”. If you don’t like templates or you don’t see a use for them you can still just save the links for your portfolios and copy/paste them whenever you fill a bid.

Last but not least, keep trying. Invest time in polishing your proposals, spend time setting up a good profile and coming up with a compelling portfolio. If you’re good and willing to put in the effort I’m sure you can do it. People are always looking for competent workers who can deliver what they need.

This was a very big post so we’ll end it here. If you have any questions or suggestions, please leave us a comment!

On the next article we’ll talk about how to protect yourself and your work regarding payments and © copyright in the many available freelancing platforms.

Profile Stats @ Peopleperhour

If you haven’t read our other articles on freelancing online check them out below:

• Introduction to Freelancing Platforms
• Creating a compelling profile for freelancing online
• Using WordPress.com to set-up a free great looking portfolio

Until the next article, safe trips and good luck writing your proposals! If you use other tricks to write compelling proposals and win jobs please share them with us in the comments for others to check.

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Varanasi postcards

Sacred  ‪Varanasi

Varanasi‬ was the first ‪Indian‬ city we visited and it left a very strong impression on us. It is one of the world’s oldest inhabited cities: the most colorful, chaotic and holiest place in ‪‎India‬. You can be sure that it will not leave you indifferent, either you like it or not. The best way to explore Varanasi would be a stroll through the Old city’s narrow streets and a walk along its eminent Ghats (the long stretch of steps leading down to the water).

Assi  – my favourite Ghat

The eighty Ghats, situated along the sacred ‪Ganges‬, are particularly photogenic during the sunrise. Take a boat ride around 5 am to see Varanasi at its best. There is no need for preliminary bookings, you just need to arrive to one of the Ghats early in the morning and pick up a boat rider you like. There are plenty of them around, offering rides for one to three hours. We got a ride for three people during 1,5 hours (including the stop on the other margin of the river) for about 300 RP.

The boat ride is the best way to observe the life of local people, performing traditional morning Puja and doing their laundry. Varanasi is entirely located on the West bank of the Ganges, where the sunset is set, and the sunrise is happening on the opposite side, creating an incredible magical morning light, that gradually covers the city. You will see plenty of ancient temples and unique Hindu-style buildings built along the river.

Sacred Ganga

Ganga is considered to be a sacred river in Indian culture. Many pilgrims flock to Varanasi to take a bath in the holy waters of the Ganges: they believe that taking a bath (at least once in the lifetime) in the Ganges will wash away the sins and help achieving Moksha (freedom from the cycle of death and rebirth).

They say that at the Ghats you can see “life and death together”. There are a few burning Ghats, where you can see bodies being cremated in public. If you go there, be prepared for some strong experiences.

We were very proud to be let into the ‪Golden Temple‬, situated in the Old city of Varanasi, as usually non-Hindus are not allowed to get in. You should also try, as long as you don’t practice any other religion. It is the most important place for worship in Hindu religion.

Another thing to see is Aarti ceremony, one of the most important events in Varanasi, an unforgettable experience, involving a lot of light, fire, candles, smoke and smells from the burning of special incenses and torches. Aarti takes place every evening at Dashashwamedh Ghat, the main and one of the most spectacular ghat in Varanasi. You will find it close to Vishwanath Temple and the Jantar Mantar observatory.

Varanasi is a very special place…

Ghat in Varanasi

 

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Boatmen at Varansi Ghat

Ghat in Varanasi

View over Ganga from “Dolphin restaurant” in Varanasi

The main Ghat of Varanasi – Assi Ghat

Morning bathing ritual

Wedding style photos

Sunrise and the Ghats

Boats at Varanasi Ghats

Amazing sunrise in Varanasi

A man sleeping in a boat

Sacred Ganga

A boatman riding in the Ganges, Varanasi, India

A man and the white sand

Morning Varanasi

Ancient Aarti ritual in Varanasi, India

Bathing in Varanasi

Talk with Zhenya Starostina: living in Brazil and finding work with Linkedin

” A person can adapt to anything if she wants. People can change.”

Name: Zhenya Starostina
Age: 27
Nationality: Russian
Current Location: Sao Paulo, Brazil
Employment: Meltwater

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Sao Paulo, Brazil

A true gypsy and an adventurous person by nature, Zhenya speaks 4 languages and has lived in many cities between a few countries. She was born in the Russian Republic of Tatatarstan, got her bachelor degree in International Relations at Saint-Petersburg State University and later obtained a Master’s in European Law at Moscow State Institute of International Relations. She enrolled herself in the Work&Travel program in the USA, she was an exchange student in France and finished her internship program in Belgium. Now she is in Brazil, making her dream job career in Norwegian company Meltwater, before working for the early-stage investment company Bolt Ventures.  

StayGypsy: How long have you been living abroad?
Zhenya: I’ve been living in Brazil for 3 years and a half, which is the longest period of time I’ve been living abroad. Before that I spent several months living in the USA, France and Belgium.

StayGypsy: What are you doing in Brazil?
Zhenya: I am working in sales in a Norwegian SaaS company – Meltwater. However, I studied International Relations and International Law. You never know what life has in the makings for you!

StayGypsy: What was the reason to move abroad?
Zhenya: It was due to personal reasons. I met my Brazilian boyfriend in Strasbourg, where we both were students.  We were together for two years at a distance and then we decided that it was time for me to move to Brazil. I am always ready to experience new things and change my life accordingly. The first 3 months of living abroad weren’t adventurous enough, so I decided to keep going and see where it would lead me to.

StayGypsy: What advices would you give to people willing to relocate?
Zhenya: Keep an open mind and be flexible! Things won’t be the same as you were used to in your own country. Keep initiative! To feel comfortable in your new country you have to put effort into it: meet new people, discover new places, get used to the city, and – the crucial one – learn the new language.

Zhenya in France while studying

StayGypsy: Is it expensive to live in Brazil? What is the average rent for a one bedroom apartment in a decent neighborhood, a cup of coffee in a cozy centrally located cafe and a basic lunch?
Zhenya: Surprisingly, for foreigners, it is quite expensive to live in Brazil, especially in the major cities as São Paulo and Rio. Although, remember that Brazil has a very wide income range. So virtually you can find prices for every kind of pocket. One furnished bedroom apartment (kitchen, bedroom and living room) in a decent neighborhood in Sau Paulo will cost up to R$2,000-R$3,000 ($630-$940). Usually the apartments for rent are unfurnished and it is possible to rent one of these for around R$1,500-R$2,000 ($472-$630). A cup of espresso will make your wallet lighter by R$5-R$7 ($1,5 – $2,5) and a cup of cappuccino by R$7-R$12 ($2,5- $4) in a nice european standard place.

The price of lunch depends a lot on a neighborhood and type of restaurant. There are those places called “restaurantes por kilo” where you pay per kilo of food you get on your plate. It is very common to eat in these places during the week as it has quite a big variety and the service is fast so you can go back to work quickly. The price for such lunch is approximately R$15-R$25 ($5-$8). If you go to a restaurant with a menu (à la carte), you would pay about R$20-R$30 ($7-$10) for a salad and R$40-R$50 for a main dish ($12-$16).

StayGypsy: Sao Paulo is considered to be the business center of Brazil and Rio more of its cultural capital. Is this the right definition? Which is the best place for a young person to settle down?
Zhenya: I think you are right. It depends on what a person is looking for. For those who are more artistic oriented, I would say that Rio is a better choice. Those who are searching a job in finance or law, Sao Paulo will provide more job opportunities.

StayGypsy: Taking into account that you have visited a few Brazilian cities and have been living there for some time now, what are your thoughts regarding security?
Zhenya: Well, that’s a tricky one. As for Sao Paulo, it depends a lot on which neighborhood you live in. However, you always need to be cautious there as in any other big city in the world.  Drawing attention by wearing very expensive jewelry or using a good cell phone on the street is not a very wise decision.

Another example related to security is that here in Brazil children don’t go to school by themselves, they are accompanied by a parent, nanny or they get picked up by the school bus at home. This is the opposite of Russia where, even in the big cities, children of 13-14 years old are moving around the city alone.

It’s difficult to compare Russia and Brazil in terms of security, but to resume, I would say that I don’t worry that much about safety issues in Russia but in Brazil I do a bit.

São Paulo, Brazil

StayGypsy: Since you’ve studied in Russia, Belgium and France, in your opinion, are there any differences in how these countries approach the educational process? What is your opinion about the level of education you obtained in Russia?
Zhenya: I have been studying in Russia and France only and went to Belgium to do an internship for a couple of months. The higher education in Russia is very theoretical and it is good as long as it is balanced with practice, which doesn’t always happen. It’s not that common to have obligatory internships, which, in my opinion, are crucial for recent graduates.

In France students are very independent, they study and discover a lot by themselves, reading non-obligatory literature, attending facultative seminars and setting up discussion sessions. They know that there is no professor on top of them, who will be constantly reminding their duties. It is entirely their responsibility and it is in their interest to receive a good education.

Another thing about Russian education is a lack of customisation, which is good and bad at the same time. Students normally don’t choose the subjects at university, it is pre-selected according to the program you have chosen before, which is kind of limiting. But on the other hand, my studies were in International Relations and International Law, both degrees with very broad curriculums. I treat that as a great advantage as I can apply my knowledge in any industry.

Meltwater kick off in the USA (Zhenya’s photo)

StayGypsy: What have you learnt from studying abroad? Did this experience help you in your life and career?
Zhenya: I think studying abroad helped me realize that there are different approaches to education, friendship, and life in general, and depending on the context they may actually work.

StayGypsy: You’ve been living in many countries, where would it be easier to make a fresh start, especially for the young and talented? 
Zhenya: Russia and Brazil are very similar in this sense. Your success depends a lot on connections and the financial resources you have. Though in Brazil, I would say, it is a little bit easier to make a fresh start for foreigners, simply because Brazilians are more tolerant people.

StayGypsy: Is it easy to find a job in Brazil without knowing Portuguese?
Zhenya: I would say it is fairly easy for Executives, people applying for top-management positions. For everybody else it is extremely difficult to find a job without speaking Portuguese. You must have at least a very good conversational level.

Rio de Janeiro

StayGypsy: How did you find a job in Sao Paulo?
Zhenya: I found my job via Linkedin, however it is not that common here. I was very lucky that Meltwater was entering the Brazilian market at that time and the first thing they did, when searching for people in Brazil, was posting the jobs on Linkedin. In general, from my experience, Brazilians depend and rely a lot on connections and referrals.

StayGypsy: You mentioned that hiring people through Linkedin is not the most common practice in Brazil. How do Brazilians go about hiring people?
Zhenya: It’s all about connections and recommendations. You ask for a recommendation when you are looking for a hairdresser, doctor or job. There are big HR companies like Michael Page and Hays, which, theoretically, should help you find a job, but they don’t get back to you when you write them. It is something weird, but, unfortunately, in the majority of cases only good connections and recommendations will get you a good job.

StayGypsy: How then did you manage to get the job through Linkedin?
Zhenya: It was a Norwegian company, Meltwater, entering the Brazilian market.  It is quite common to post vacancies online, outside the company’s original country. They were very responsive on Linkedin and after numerous interviews I got the job. You should be very proactive if you really want to grab some opportunities that Internet presents.

Meltwater team in Sao Paulo, Brazil (Zhenya’s photo)

StayGypsy: What advices can you give to people who are looking for a job through Linkedin?
Zhenya: You should make your profile look very accurate and complete. I also like using Linkedin job alerts and find it very useful. Besides that, using Linkedin is great, but don’t forget to check the company’s website as you can find there more information related to a possible job.

StayGypsy: What can you say about Brazilian working culture? Your boyfriend works for Google, we’ve heard that they go out with colleagues a few times a week (smiling). 
Zhenya: Brazilian working culture is something that many foreigners can’t understand at the beginning. It is common to be late to a meeting, heavy traffic being the normal excuse. Lunch can last for 2 hours as Brazilians are not in a hurry (smile). You don’t start a meeting/call without a small talk. If there is a holiday on Thursday, it means that many people will not work on Friday. That said, Sao Paulo is considered a business capital and  people work a lot here. To leave the office at 8-9pm is a common thing. The working day usually ends in a bar with colleagues. And talking about Google, I think it is not just Google culture, but Brazilian traits in general.

StayGypsy: What are the best ways to socialize with locals?
Zhenya:  First, you need to speak their language. In Brazil few people speak English and if you don’s speak Portuguese, your only friends will be gringos like you (foreigners in Portuguese). Second, experience the local culture. For example, football is always a hot topic, so you literally can speak with everybody about it.

Park Ibirapuera in Sao Paulo (Zhenya’s photo)

StayGypsy: Many people think that life in Brazil is an endless festive (smile)? Do you go out a lot with your friends?
Zhenya: It is partially true. Brazilians, indeed, go out a lot. There are plenty of bars, which stay completely full all week long. It is very common to go to the bar with colleagues after work to grab some beers. Brazilians like gathering together, and they use any excuse to do that (smiling).

StayGypsy: Tell us about young Brazilians. What they want and what they strive for? Are they much different from their Russian counterparts or are the “new young” the same everywhere?
Zhenya: Young Brazilians are very different from their Russian counterparts. In Brazil nobody is thinking about getting married before 30 (I’m talking about the middle class). In Russia, creating a family is an early project. Also, women are more feminist here than in Russia, if we talk about daily issues For example, they are not expecting a Brazilian man to open a door or carry heavy bags for you. The cultural codes change a lot from place to place.

Part of the young people in both countries are very entrepreneurial and strive to live better than their parents. They seek more interesting and exciting lives, they want to travel and have fun!

StayGypsy: You’ve been working for a company investing in startups around the globe. What can you say about the startup culture in Brazil?
Zhenya: Young people here are fearless and due to a strong entrepreneurial spirit they are ready to implement any idea. Despite the huge number of startups, the majority of them is very amateur. The economic situation in the country doesn’t help startups grow faster either. However, I believe that both Brazil and Russia have a lot of potential in developing their startup scene.

Street art in Sao Paulo (Zhenya’s photo)

StayGypsy: You speak English, Russian, French and Portuguese. Are there any tips you can give to people willing to learn a new language?
Zhenya: Having a reason that motivates you to learn a new language always helps to do it faster. Of course, being in a country where the language is spoken makes learning it much easier and natural.

StayGypsy: And for people who can’t move abroad what would be your suggestion?
Zhenya: Watching movies and listening to music in the original language facilitates the learning process. Nowadays there are plenty of websites that offer online video classes with native speakers and it is a great way to catch the language quite fast.

StayGypsy:  What do you like most in your current location?
Zhenya: The weather, beaches, fruits, friendly and happy people.

Beach in Rio de Janeiro

StayGypsy: Which things do you miss most about your home country?
Zhenya: Besides my family, friends and Russian food, I miss a lot dairy products! Here, in Brazil, due to the hot climate, diary products are different and very sweet.

StayGypsy: Many people, who are planning to travel to Russia, ask about the major cities, Moscow and Saint-Petersburg. You’ve been living in both for quite a while. What can you say about them?
Zhenya: I love both of them. However, my preference goes to Moscow as, in my opinion, it is more diversified and more “Russian”, if you could say this, than St’Petersburg, which is historically more “European”. St’ Petersburg is a very beautiful city, known as the cultural capital of Russia, marked by European inspired architecture and a totally different atmosphere than Moscow, more relaxed and romantic. Definitely, worth visiting both cities!

StayGypsy: How long are you planning to stay and what is your next location?
Zhenya: I will stay in Brazil for the next 2-3 years and then my plan is to work from the company’s offices somewhere in the USA or Europe for a couple of years.

StayGypsy: What are the main things you have learnt while travelling?
Zhenya: A person can adapt to anything if she wants. People can change.

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5 things about Sao Paulo

SG: Best parts of the city to stay?
Zhenya: The neighborhoods Itaim Bibi, Jardins, Vila Olimpia.

SG: Your favorite restaurants?
Zhenya: I would recommend Le Jazz and Ruella (love French cuisine).

SG: Your favorite local food?
Zhenya: Fruits and fresh juices, rice balls (bolinho de arroz), dry meat with onions (carne seca com cebola) and the famous drink caipirinha with red fruits.

SG: Things worth doing?
Zhenya: Biking in Ibirapuera Park and visiting “Edifício Italia” in the center of Sao Paulo, where you can get a  panoramic view of the city and enjoy a delicious meal in the top-floor restaurant. Another of my favourites would be having capiriniha in one of the bars in Vila Madalena’s neighborhood and going to Churrascaria “Fogo do Chão”.

SG: Local words worth knowing?
Zhenya: Tudo bem? (“How are you?” or without question mark “Everything is ok”), Cerveja (beer) and Churrascaria (steak house).

Sao Paulo view

Saigon (Ho Chi Minh City) – New Style Asia in Vietnam

Words by Micael Nussbaumer | May 27

Travel to Saigon, Ho Chi Minh City

Although the capital of Vietnam is Hanoi, Saigon seems to be the center of everything. We lived there from the beginning of October/14 until the beginning of January/15. It’s a vibrant megapolis continually bustling with energy, a mixture of motorbikes and people, that offers everything you might need. It’s the business and comercial capital of Vietnam, with a very dynamic population, great cuisine that you can sample either in super local stalls or in super hip places for very reasonable prices. If you want to hang out at night there are options for every pocket and taste. It is one of our favorite places until now, because of many things, but specially because of the people – an energetic, hip and digitalised youth.

We always felt safe in Saigon and we think that even though some people say it’s not as welcoming as Thailand – there’s not as much that “received with a smile” thing that is predominant there – we found people to be friendly and helpful in a very natural way. If we had to decide where to live for a while in SEA we would definitely go back to HCMC.

View Saigon’s Photogallery

Portrait of Obi at Saigon’s Zoo

Jump to: How to get, VISA, Accommodation, Where to Work, Food, Motorbike, Exploring Vietnam and SEA

The best time to visit: From November to May
Climate: sub – tropical
Accomodation: 6 – 25$
Continental breakfast: 2,5$
Beer: < 1$ (.33cl)
Coffee: 1$
Typical Vietnamese dish: 1 – 3$

Saigon is a lively 8 million large city with everything you might ever need – literally EVERYTHING!

Everybody calls it Saigon, even though it has been renamed Ho Chi Minh City after the unification of Vietnam. This amazing city is an excellent choice for anybody working remotely. It packs a bit of everything, it’s a very democratic city, where one can find whatever fits him. To live it sports everything you’ll need, affordable accomodation, widely available wifi connection, public and private infrastructure, from super cheap street stalls (but dirty good!) to high quality restaurants, bars & pubs, night life, commodities, safety and friendliness.

We still miss driving through the city at night in a scooter, getting up and having a lunch for breakfast for 1$, go for a swim and after that work in any of the many available cozy places.

A friendly kid and a parking guard in HCMC

It’s lively throughout the whole day and has an interesting night life. Vietnamese people love to gather out for dinner, coffee or small-talk, wherever you go, there are restaurants, coffees, bars and karaokes. There are a few nice parks to escape the noisy streets (one of our favorites was the ZOO), some museums, activities and cultural happenings. There are small “enclaves” of different countries in the city, for instance, in D1 district there’s a small Japanese neighborhood that is different from the remaining city, when you enter it the streets get smaller, everything is written in Japanese and everybody is somehow connected to Japan. It’s a very interesting place to go sample some sushi or try some bars.

Work Saigon – Co-Work space in Ho Chi Minh City

TRAVEL – HOW TO GET TO SAIGON

It’s fairly easy to get to Vietnam. From Europe, USA and others you can easily find flights that land in HCMC, Tan Son Nhat International Airport. From Europe you can find flights from 420€ up, depending through which company you fly and from where. We got from Barcelona with Ethiad for exactly that amount. We had to do Barça to Rome (Air Italia), Rome to Abu Dhabi (Air Italia) and from there to HCMC. It was a great option and we are sure if you keep an eye on Skyscanner you’ll also be able to find cheap flights. To get from Barcelona to HCMC it took us about 24h.

If you’re in any of the neighboring countries then you have some options to cross it over land, but be sure you already have a VISA stamp in your passport as “VISA-on-Arrival” are only possible through the international airports (still have to “pre-approve” it even if flying). There’s a land border crossing to Cambodia, Laos and China.

Man rowing boat in one of the rivers of Saigon

VISA TO VIETNAM

To get a VISA for Vietnam you can either do the usual procedure of visiting an embassy or you can do it comfortably from your home. It’s quite straightforward. First, you need a Pre-Approval letter and after having that you can just embark on a flight to Vietnam and get your VISA on arrival. There are costs of course, but besides Thailand and Malaysia, the VISA options are quite fairly priced.

To get the Pre-Approval letter you have to contact a travel agency. There are plenty of them. We used Hotels-In-Vietnam and the process was smooth, easy and quick. You fill a form and make the payment. Two days later we got an email with the letter for printing. In the meanwhile response to email. This was around 35$. When we arrived in HCMC, we went to the VISA queue like everybody else and paid another 40$ each, got stamped and out of the airport!

Pre-Approval letter for VISA on Arrival at the airport

If you’re planning to enter Vietnam by land you need to have an issued VISA on your passport. You can either do it in your home country or better, do it in Bangkok or one of the neighboring countries. For you to have an idea making the VISA in Sydney is 70$ but making it in Bangkok is 30$. If you plan accordingly you can save enough for a week’s accommodation in Vietnam in these details alone.

Extending a VISA is easy and straightforward. The most common extension is 30 days, but there are others available. The official way of doing it is by visiting the Vietnam Department of Immigration (you need a filled N14/M form and your passport). This is the cheapest way but you need to go through all the process yourself. The other options are to just visit any tourist agency and ask for a VISA extension, you can extend it to 3 months, single or multiple-entry and the cost vary depending on the length you want to extend and if single or multiple. In these cases expect to pay around 40$ to 100$

RENT – ACCOMMODATION IN SAIGON

Saigon offers many options regarding accomodation. You can literally find a place to stay starting at 6$ per day. We would say that 10$ to 15$ per day for accomodation is the ideal for hostels/guesthouses, but you can rent a smallish flat for 250$. Couchsurfing is popular here and you can find many interesting people willing to host you for a couple nights or just to hang out for a drink.

Dinner with Cac, Obi and Igor – Cac hosts in CS and Igor was travelling

The most famous part for backpackers is Pham Ngu Lao Street. Here you have more options than you’ll ever need. Since our reservation had a problem when we arrived in Saigon we just took a Taxi to this street and found a hotel. Do not stay on those facing directly the main street (an error we did for the first 2 nights). It’s better to enter the alleys and search for accomodation in the smaller streets behind, the difference can go for more than 10$ in price – don’t forget to do a bit of bargaining. On one side of the street you have a public park and on the other you have the hotels and some entrances to the small streets, quite easy to figure it out.

If you’re planning to stay for longer terms we would advise you to check some real-estate websites and search google. There seems to be plenty of places to rent in this 8 million people city. We found an independent en-suite room around 300$, with 3 days per week laundry and cleaning, mini-fridge, big bathroom, cable TV, king size bed and a small hall, right in the middle of District 1. We stayed there for one month only, but I’m sure if staying for three or more the prices would have been negotiable.

Pham Ngu Lao street – the heart of the backpackers scene

One easy way to find a place is to go to Nguyen Thi Minh Kai street, after the Sommerset building, and walk in the small alleys, many buildings there have a sign saying “Rooms for Rent” and they are used to renting for students and foreigners. It usually includes laundry and cleaning, mini-fridge and the prices may go between 250$ and 400$.

Map to Nguyen Thi Minh Kai

WHERE TO WORK ONLINE

Really, Saigon compared to other South East Asian cities seems to offer much more in terms of working places for online freelancers. Wherever you go you can always find other people working, at cafes, with their laptops, in restaurants, parks or whatever. It’s a very energizing city to live in. There are plenty of cafes with good internet connection and a cozy ambience, where you can charge your devices and choose from varied menus with affordable prices.

Working at Cúcuta Coffe

We found it easier to work here than in other places and the quality to be of higher level. It seems Vietnamese are quite entrepreneurial by nature, everywhere you can see people selling stuff, working, providing services or engaging in commercial activities, from the guy on the corner who offers you a scooter-ride for 2$ to the lady selling Banh Mi, young people starting their businesses from cool cafes to cloth designing ateliers.

There’s also a culture of working outside an office or home. Wherever we went we saw programmers, designers and others armed with their laptops, drinking iced chai (iced tea) and working or talking around a table. There is at least a formal co-working space, offering not only a place to work, but also food and drinks – You get free sitting as long as you order a drink. It’s called WORK SAIGON and also offers monthly memberships for working desks in a room only for members – although you’re free to sit wherever you want if you’re member. When we visited it was packed with freelancers working online each one on their desks and a few in the communal tables in the ground floor.

Breakfast at Downtown Coffee

One of our favorite places was DownTown Cafe. It has a decently varied menu, good service, prices and comfortable areas. A bit further north in D1 you can find Cúcuta Coffee which is a very cozy two floor coffee/restaurant, with a great menu and quite good prices.

Internet access in apartments, hotels and guesthouses is normal so you will not have a problem with the internet here. Even outside D1 you can find a lot of places, just take a walk or go on a motorbike around.

FOOD – EATING

Eating in HCMC is both easy and difficult. It’s easy in the sense that everywhere there are great places to try and so many different foods at very affordable prices. It’s difficult – in a good sense difficult – because with so many choices you might end up having a hard time choosing what to eat.

Fresh spring rolls with fried peanuts and other goodies thrown in for taste

There are a few recommendations we want to give you to make your life easier:

• Phò Soup – This is a perfect meal at any time of the day, it’s light but filling, made with noodles, beef and fresh herbs.
• Hot Pot – In many places you can try this typical meal and it’s great for groups of two or more – it’s usually a mix of vegetables and noodles with meat or seafood of your choice
• Bun Cha Hanoi – It’s a typical dish originated from the city of Hanoi made from small grilled pork hamburgers and bits of bacon served with fresh herbs, vermicelli and a slightly spicy soup where you soak the noodles, meat and herbs for a storm of flavours
• Fresh Spring Rolls – You can eat them in the street or in proper restaurants, they’re much less fatty than their fried counterparts and usually very fresh
• Deep-fried Frog – really, it tastes better than chicken from KFC and that’s all you need to know

Deep Fried Frog with rice and draught beer – total around 5$ with two 0.5L beers

There are many open air restaurants where you can grill your own food (from seafood to meat), specific hot-pot restaurants, beer-gardens or street like restaurants. We have tried from the most local ones (1$ per dish with iced-tea included and small bowl of soup) to more upscale restaurants and really, it’s difficult to go wrong.

MOTORBIKE

If there’s a city where it’s worth to drive a motorbike we would say it’s Saigon. As a disclaimer, we should tell you – we don’t have a motorbike driving license, but we have a car driving license and experience driving a car. To be honest the transit looks crazy, thousands of motorbikes honking around and transit that moves with much less regulation than in European cities (for instance) but it is actually quite easy to drive in Saigon.

Night driving in Saigon

We were stupefied by the lack of accidents. We saw one accident in three months. That’s about the daily occurrences in Lisbon. Since there are so many people driving around the transit never goes at high speeds, but it’s speedy enough to feel a fresh breeze of air to fight off the heat. Crossing the many bridges on motorbike and seeing the city during the night, all lit up, is definitively worth it.

You can rent a motorbike for around 5$ to 10$ per day in many places. You usually can negotiate the rates for more than two days. A normal requirement is to leave your passport, although we were able to go without it by leaving one Citizen ID Card and Car Driving License together. Nonetheless, some places might not accept that.

Night life in Saigon

Don’t forget that even if you have a motorbike driving license you’re not entitled to drive in HCMC, you should do a specific driving license for Vietnam…  Getting a motorbike is also a great way to explore the region around HCMC and there’s even some coastal cities you can visit and stay for a night or two.

Just pay attention and be fully present when driving, it’s quite easy!

EXPLORING Vietnam & South East Asia

Boat trip around Phu Quoc

Ho Chi Minh City is a GREAT city to live for a few months and it is also a good city to connect to other parts of South East Asia. You can easily get into a bus that connects to Cambodia or Laos or fly to anywhere around at very accessible prices, including Malaysia (where most nationalities don’t need a VISA). From HCMC it is also easy to get to Phu Quoc Island to laze a few days on the beach, visit the center (either beach or cultural cities) or go to Hanoi (close to beaches, mountains and forest).

Trying a Mekong Delta tour

View Saigon’s Photogallery

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5 gypsy things to do

• Visit the Mekong Delta either through a travel agency or by renting a motorbike
• Try Karaoke! There are plenty of bars around Saigon for Karaoke and live singing
• Visit one of the several markets and bargain some prices
• Taste some street food, from Banh Mi to fresh spring rolls, there’s plenty of diverse food
• Either ride or get someone to take you on a motorbike ride through the city at night

Around Mekong Delta

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Related articles:

• Cafes in Hanoi or the city of a thousand coffees
• Traveling tips

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Six Great Free Online Marketing Tools

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Anna Lebedeva
Marketing Communications Specialist
May 25, 2015

 

We don’t have any affiliation with the tools mentioned below. This list was compiled based on our own experience.

Our previous post was about online skill-based platforms, which can help you obtain new marketing, programming,  design and other digital skills. Nowadays the ability to learn new specific things is a crucial advantage in a competitive and fast changing environment.

In this post we will give you the list of essential online marketing tools, from our point of view, which we personally prefer to use in our everyday work and life. They are all free up certain limits and widely used through different industries.

Google trends

Internet trends and keywords popularity analysis
www.google.com/trends/explore

Do you want to know what was in search trend yesterday or what is in the headlines today? How  people search for your company/brand and how your competitors perform? If you are short in time  Google trends, using real-time search data, will perform a complete analysis on what topics are hot right now. It will show you in detail what people care about in different region of the globe, so you can plan the right content for your target audience.

Consider, you are looking for the right keywords for your content strategy, then you need to know if the keywords, you are going to pick up, are of any interest for the people in the exact given moment of time. Also by knowing the search curve for a specific keyword regarding the previous year, you can build an effective content strategy for the future period, as basic needs repeat a pattern over a long enough period of time.

Prezi

Presentation and storytelling Software
www.prezi.com

If you are tired of boring slide-based presentations, then Prezi software is definitely for you. It is  an easy to use Flash-based online zooming tool, that allows you to create compelling, impressive and catching presentations. Despite being used by some speakers at the World Economic Forum and TED Conferences, its interface is a breeze to work with. You can either start with a blank canvas or choose from the hundreds of templates available.

The platform uses the very popular freemium model. The free version of the platform allows you to create presentations for free, but they will be publicly viewable and offline editing will be disabled.

Seo site checkup

SEO tool
www.seositecheckup.com

Even if you are not a SEO specialist, but since you are in marketing, it is essential to know your overall website performance. By improving the quality of your website (aka user experience approach), you are improving its ranking. There are many partially-free SEO tools, which check your website and give you a set of tips and recommendations on optimizing your visible and hidden content.

A great tool we’ve discovered is Seositecheckup, which proved itself as reliable and user-friendly. It will take you a few minutes to receive a comprehensive, complete and easy to read and understand report of your onsite SEO. With Seositecheckup you can analyze the performance of your meta tags, keywords, sitemap, broken links, image alt tests and others. We enjoy the way they present the data analyzed and find their approach very professional.

Bit.ly

Click tracking software
www.bitly.com

Great free click tracking and URL redirection software, which shortens the original URL for use in social networks, SMS, and email. This software is especially popular for Twitter users, as the shorten link allows you to write more by keeping the link shorter.

By posting a short link, generated with Bit.ly, you are also able to track the clicks and analyze the view link statistic, such as CTR of your tweets. By using URL redirection software you create another backlink to your website. That makes the webpage available under several URLs, which impact your SEO as the shortened links are counted by SE.

Ginger

Grammar and speller checker
www.ginger.com

If English is your second language, then you will definitely gain a lot by installing grammar and spell checker tool in your desktop or mobile phone. No doubts, that none of the existing checkers will make your written communication completely perfect, but they certainly can enhance the reviewing of your writing. 

We personally enjoy working with Ginger, which is effortless and very intuitive software, performing as your personalized editor. Sometimes it suggests a wrong solution, so you have to be able to discern when it is wrong or right.

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 Almost free

Dollarphotoclub

Photobank
www.dollarphotoclub.com

If you need images to complete your marketing proposal, to customize your presentation or to make posts on social networks more visually attractive and your messages more appealing, you need a reliable source where you can find images that will enhance your communication.

Dollarphotoclub will provide you with huge base of royalty free images ready to use anywhere for a ridiculously small amount of money. One dollar per image. All images are provided in high resolution jpg and vector format. It is very easy to search and navigate around, the subscription is also painless. It is worth mentioning, that the photo for this article was purchased with Dollarphotoclub (smile).

Ways to build an excellent portfolio online for free

by Micael Nussbaumer 
Top rated freelancer at Upwork.com
May 6, 2015

 

How to build a great freelancing portfolio

Welcome back to our series on Freelancing Online. In the previous article we talked about creating your profile in some online freelancing platforms. You can also take a look at how to write job proposals and bids that will land you that gig.

Now that you have an online profile through which you can sell your services it is time to put up a presentation of your works. There are many ways in which you can do this. We’ll go through some free options and some paid options. I’ll mention these to showcase images, other types of portfolio elements might benefit from other options. I think that they offer quite a good value. In the end you should be able to build a portfolio like francisreckart.wordpress.com

Final look of your main page

How to build freelancing portfolio with WordPress?

As far as free services go my two favorites are WordPress.com and Cargocollective.com. These offer quite a bit of choices regarding visuals and customisation, they provide you with “not as ugly” to share web addresses for your portfolio and a fairly easy to use interface. While WordPress is the most straightforward to register, I personally prefer cargocollective.com. Since you have to apply with your portfolio to be granted access to the free version we will not use it in this tutorial. If it was for my own portfolio I would nonetheless use cargo, it offers more customisation for free and doesn’t put advertisements while WordPress sometimes displays them when using the free version.

Another option would be a behance.com gallery. Take into account that if you own an Adobe Creative Cloud subscription you get free of charge the behancePRO website builder. This tool allows us to create beautiful, simple websites using your projects from behance.com. If you don’t have the Creative Cloud subscription then behance.com is quite sub-par and expensive to set up the PRO (10$ month, which means 120$ year, fairly more expensive than the other options and it doesn’t include a domain name).

Jessica Svendsen in Cargocollective.com

Cargocollective.com on the other hand, offers you a yearly subscription for 66$ or a month for 9$. It doesn’t provide you with the domain, but allows domain mapping, so just add more 8$ to 15$ for the domain and you’ve got an unlimited bandwidth website, fully customisable CSS and HTML, with your own domain and beautiful themes for 75$ per year. That’s quite a good price, about 20 cents per day.

Independently of what you choose, I will always vouch for creating your own domain and mapping it. For WordPress you can register a domain through them for 18$ per year or you can register the domain somewhere else and then map it to your wordpress.co. This is a fairly low cost for having such a presence, in the sense that during one year whenever you send a proposal to your clients, you’ll use something as http://www.caroline-brisk.com – this is much more professional than caroline-brisk.wordpress.com or even worse addresses that some platforms will assign to you.

This post is more about using the available tools creatively to your own purposes. Although you also need good feedback and great portfolio items, the way in which you present them gives many clues to whoever interacts with you. That’s why your own domain is important.

Erik Olson portfolio view on cargocollective.com

In a sense you’re telling that you invested time, money and effort to have your own domain and website – if you’re discussing rates you can always pull this one out to make your client understand you also have costs – it’s especially useful when people try to bring the rates lower than what is fair.

Although freelancing online is mostly about digital connections, never forget it’s people on the other end of the screen and people are sensitive to many different types of clues. Some of these come from simple things like having a domain and your own website, others will come from your form of communication while others will come from the way you set up your presence online.

To guide you through building your own WordPress portfolio I’ve put up a small Prezi presentation that you can check, but at the same time, I’ll go through it in detail here – PREZI presentation

Prezi preview

WordPress.com is very SEO friendly by nature and you can incorporate TAGs, Categories, Description to your “posts” as well as metadata in your images. WordPress.com is also very malleable, which allows you to use something that was built for a purpose to do something else. It’s what we’re going to do with this free theme.

The things you need to have prepared for this are the images/elements you’re going to showcase in your portfolio, images for the “Header” and a small text about you. Of course you’ll be able to change it to whatever you want. If you’re a copywriter you can use a platform such as WordPress to show your own work, but instead of putting images in the posts, you can use the posts themselves as portfolio items. You just need to think about it creatively.

The list for a basic portfolio

1. 10 or more images from two different categories you want to showcase
2. 3 images for the headers
3. Small text for the about section
4. The name you want to use as the address
5. Name for the site and tagline for the site
6. A valid e-mail account

Preparation of the images

You can customize the size that is displayed on your website, but I would advice to save the portfolio items as 800px on the longest side and the header images 2000 x 1500px (as this is the best size for this theme we’ll be using)

Saving for the web or as lower quality JPGs is fine and I would use a quality of 6 to 8 when saving, this way the file size is quite lower but the quality remains the same “visually”. This is good for you when uploading, but, more important, it’s good for whoever visits your website as it will take much less time to load.

Let’s start

• Go to http://www.wordpress.com and click “Create Website”

WordPress landing page

• You’ll be prompted to enter your desired address and wordpress.com will verify if it is available

Choosing the name for your “portfolio”

• If it’s available proceed by clicking the button. You’ll be prompted to enter some more details
• If it’s not available you’ll need to think out of some variation on the name

Other information

After that, you’ve literally created your website at wordpress.com.

• Now you’ll need to verify it. You’ll get an e-mail from wordpress.com with a link/button, you just need to click it and you’ll have your e-mail address verified

Verification confirmation on the dashboard

So now that we have our own website, let’s start customizing it. First, we’ll decide which theme to use. For this small tutorial I chose “Cubic”, I like how it shows the posts in the landing page. For choosing you theme click “Themes”.

It will open a new window where you can browse through many themes wordpress.com offers.

• From these if you want to follow the same tutorial, choose “Cubic”

Cubic Theme in wordpress.com

• Choose activate and then customize

In the next window it opens you’ll be able to customize some small things. We’ll go to the “Site Title, Tagline, and Logo” tab.

• There you can put the name you want, the tagline and choose a logo for the header if you have one

We put our name “Francis Reckart” and as tagline we put “image editing” because supposedly this portfolio is for image editing.

Site name & tagline

• Now you should close that window (clicking the X in the upper left corner)

You’ll be taken back to wordpress.com main page. WordPress now has two dashboards – a modern looking one which makes creating blog posts much quicker and effective and the legacy dashboard. We’ll use the legacy as it’s fairly more complete at this point and we aren’t blogging, but instead creating a “static” portfolio.

• Just click on “WP Admin” – this will open the dashboard on another TAB of your browser

Before creating our post I want to change something in the way WordPress displays the galleries. It usually assumes black as the canvas and I want a white canvas to match the background color of our website.

• To change this I’ll navigate the left menu to “Settings” – “Media” and there, under Image Gallery Carousel, change the “Background Color” to White;
• I also un-ticked the “Show image metadata…”

This way if somebody clicks to see the image it will not show all the weird info that comes from the EXIF of your images.

• You should also tick “Display all your gallery pictures in a cool mosaic.”

After that, you just navigate the left menu to “Posts”. By clicking there you’ll get a list of all your “posts” as well as some options. You have a basic template post called “Hello World!” already there.

• We’ll just erase this one by hovering our mouse under it and clicking “Trash”

Trashing an unwanted post

Now we’ll add our own posts.

• Just click either on the left menu “Add New” or on top of the Posts – “Add New” as well. This will create you a new empty “blog post”

We’ll use the posts on our blog as “parts” of our portfolio. So, in this case, I want to show some of my image retouching in architectural imagery. I do this because I want to have this kind of work available to show to clients.

• On the title of the blog post I will put “architecture”

It speaks for itself and whenever somebody visits the website they’ll see the tagline “image editing” and easily understand that “architecture” is related in this case to image editing. For this page I just want a simple one-line text and the actual images.

• You can write any text you want to include before your gallery
• Then click “Add media” button.

A new window will pop up. Usually it defaults to the “Media Library” tab, where it shows all media you already uploaded.

• Since we’re starting fresh we need to hit the “Upload Files” tab and either select the files or drag them from the finder into the window

It will upload them automatically and you’ll be able to see them.

Uploading images into wordpress

Here you can add captions to your images, descriptions and ALT text fields.

• In mine I’ll put a brief description including the keyword “After” or “Before” so that it’s understandable which file is before and after my manipulation

Applying info to your pictures and selecting display settings

• Then I select all the files I just uploaded and click “Create Gallery” in the upper left corner

Here you’ll get a new window where you can add descriptions (that will be loaded if you filled them in the previous window) and choose the type of gallery you will create. I like the Tiled Mosaic option of wordpress.com, it nests image inside a multi-size gallery and you can click on each one to open it in a fancy slide-show.

Creating a gallery in wordpress

After having all files with the appropriate captions and the type of gallery correctly chosen

• click “Insert Gallery” on the lower-right corner and it will place the gallery inside your post

In this post we are still missing one thing, the featured image, or header image. This image will be loaded in the main page of your blog and it will show up in the header part of this “post”.

From the editor scroll down and on the right side of the window you should see “Featured Image” and a clickable link saying “Set featured image”.

• Click there and you’ll be taken to the upload page again
• Choose the file
• Apply the text you want and click “Set Featured Image”

We’re almost finished with this first item of our “portfolio”. The last thing is to assign a category and some tags to this “page”. This way search engines can understand a bit of what’s going on in your page and maybe even retrieve it for search queries. Anyway, it’s good SEO practice to do it.

• Just look for these fields on your post editor – if you don’t see these fields scroll up and click “Screen Options” and then tick ‘Categories’ and ‘Tags’

Selecting categories and tags

After having done this you can “Save Draft” and then “Preview” – this will open a new tab on your browser showing you how it will look for anybody visiting your website.

• If everything looks fine, just click “Publish” and you’re done with the first part gallery of your portfolio.

Your first “gallery”!

Having created this first part of our portfolio we should create another two “posts” using exactly the same procedures as before. I will create one for “Product” retouching and one “About” page. For this you just need to:

• go back to your Dashboard
• click “Posts” – “Add New”
• put some text
• upload the images
• give them descriptions and place them in a gallery
• choose your featured image
• apply tags and categories to each “post”.

After doing this if you want, you can add more “posts” or you can delete any that you don’t need anymore. You can also change the pictures you uploaded inside each one, so it’s fairly easy to manage and update such portfolio.

View of the “Architecture” page

Lastly, we want to take out some of the buttons that show on our pages, like the comments and sharing buttons.

1. Navigate to the “Posts”
2. Click “Edit” under bulk actions
3. Click “apply”
4. Choose “do not allow” next to comments
5. At last click “update”

This way you won’t see the “Leave a reply” box under your posts. This makes it look more like a real portfolio.

• You should also change “Show Related Posts” to “Hide Related Posts” in the Dashboard-Settings-Reading

In the end you should have a very simple yet pleasant portfolio, much better looking than what you would get by just uploading your files in the freelancing platform portfolio areas. It also offers many more options for presenting it and supports quite a bit of formats. You can include links to download presentations, embed video, put sound files, etcetera.

Final look of your main page

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We hope you found this useful. Remember, although it might not seem that important, having a “portfolio” online is a great asset for any freelancer. Branding it by spending a fair amount of money (10 to 20$ for one year – 2 to 5 cents per day) to have your own domain and some other options is quite a good deal and the jobs you might land by having a professional good looking personal website can easily pay many times the investment you need to make.

We also made a PREZI for you, showing the steps to create your online portfolio.

Now that we have a portfolio set up we can move into writing a proposal! Stay tuned as that’s our next post about freelancing online. If can read about Registering on a freelancing platform, or in case you don’t know what they are take a look at our introductory post. If you’re ready to start applying to jobs, well just read our post on writing proposals for work online (Elance, Upwork, Peopleperhour and whatever else!)

If you have any questions, drop us a message. If you found other good solutions for online portfolios, please share with us your “gems” and we’ll later compile the best options for our readers.

Safe travels and stay gypsy!

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Gonçalo Almeida – Talks on paving his way doing cinema in London

“I would wake up one day and think that I was a genius and the next day I would feel like I was the biggest idiot in this planet.  Now I don’t know, but I am definitely not a genius.”

Gonçalo Almeida, 2015

Name: Gonçalo Almeida Age: 29
Nationality: Portuguese Current Location: London, UK
Employment: Filmmaker, Bartender

During the filming of Bodies with Ricardo Saraiva, Simon Mesa Soto and Antigone Davaki

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An intimate talk that goes through Cinema, crowdfunding, meditation, London and trying to create what you feel you should. Gonçalo Almeida is a Portuguese filmmaker currently living in London. He got his Masters through London Film School, after having already a BA in Design and musical education. Besides having produced some short-movies and having others on works he also crowdfunded part of his graduation project. He balances his work time between cinema and bartending in one of the most competitive and tantalising cities of the world.

Severed Garden (still frame)

Staygypsy: How long have you been living abroad? 
Gonçalo: I was living in Lisbon until January 2012, when I moved to London. Been here since.

SG: What is your current occupation?
G: My goal is to be a film director. I work part-time in a restaurant where I am a bartender and I work as an electrician in films.

SG: What were the reasons to move to London?
G: I came to London to study Filmmaking which is what I always wanted to do.

During the shooting of Severed Garden

SG: Do you think that it was worthy going to the UK to study cinema? Why not Portugal?
G: Coming to London to study was a massive experience for me. I was surrounded by people from all over the world who shared the same passion that I do. Met a lot of good friends and interesting artists. I didn’t know anyone in Portugal who was taking cinema seriously. I was just completely outside of the circle and didn’t find a way in. I tried to find work there and pitch for projects but didn’t manage to get anyone excited about what I was trying to do.

Another thing that bothered me there was the negative attitude. There was a sense and a belief that some “godly” entity would give you what you needed and if that didn’t happen, it wasn’t your fault. It’s like this myth of the suffering artist who is waiting for someone to knock on his door. The mood was wrong for me. I had the opportunity to move to London, so I did. I held my brother responsible for pushing me out of my comfort zone.

Frame from Severed Garden

SG: You are working part-time in something completely unrelated but you keep on doing what you set to do in the first place, movies. Is it a sacrifice worth doing? Does it prompt you to work harder in what you really want to do?
G: I did several different jobs around here, and I should do more. A part-time job helps me to get out of my head, meet people and relate more to reality. I don’t have the feeling of “one day I will not have to do that anymore” because to be honest, I don’t see how that can happen, at the moment. I lean more towards the feeling of “one day this will become your life because the other life you wanted” never happened.

I keep working, I write every day and make films when I can but I don’t dream as much as I used to. I am a very lucky guy, my family and friends support me and I have a nice life. I think I have to be grateful for that and not suffer for things that are out of my control.

SG: What are the main advantages of being in London now that you finished your course?
G: The main advantage is the people that I met in school. I still work with some of them and intend to work more in the future. In that sense, I think that leaving London would be a bad idea. Also, London is the number 1 place in the world for cinema nowadays.

Gonçalo, Micael and Carolina Sousa shooting a scene back in Portugal, 2010. Carolina is a friend of ours, since childhood. She is a portuguese actress and an amazing performer. Micael is one of the authors of this blog.

SG: Directing, producing and coming up with a short or medium length film isn’t easy. Can you explain us a bit how it all works?
G: I only made short films. The most ambitious one that I did was my graduation film “Severed Garden”.  For me it always start the same way, with an image or two. In Severed Garden, the first image I had was one of a dream that I had when I was in college, where I saw an egg opening and cockroaches coming out of it. At this time I was thinking a lot about parenthood and the chances of being a bad father in the future. A child is so fragile and you are not in control of her destiny. This feeling of loosing control was something that was in my day-by-day life so I decided that I should make the film about that.

So I write the first draft of the script in about three months and then I show it to a friend of mine from school who offered to become the producer. Then I contacted another friend of mine who is a very talented Director of Photography and he got on board. Pre-production took about seven months if I am not mistaken, given the ambitious nature of the project.

From “Birthdays”, an experimental short with Andrea Pinto and Carolina Sousa

During that process, a lot of things fell down but the original idea was kept until the end. We assembled the cast and crew and started searching for locations. The film was shot in eight days and it wasn’t easy but it was a nice experience. The atmosphere on the set was smooth. The people were nice to each other.

I didn’t enjoy the post-production phase because I was tired and I didn’t know exactly what I was doing anymore. I would wake up one day and think that I was a genius and the next day I would feel like I was the biggest idiot in this planet.  Now, I don´t know, but I am definitely not a genius.

During the recording session with the orchestra I felt the shivers for the first time and I had to hide my face to cry a bit as I thought about my grandmother. Don’t know exactly why this happened but this was a moment where I felt that I wasn’t failing, that I did what I did for the right reasons.

CONDRONG still frame

SG: What are you interested in showing through your films?
G: I am interested in things that I don´t understand. What is unknown for me. The inner life of women. Things that I am afraid of. What is not said. Dream and reality as one. Absence. Moments where everything comes together. Compassion, tolerance and loneliness.

Experimenting with friends and phones, Portugal, 2014

SG: I remember you ran an IndieGoGo campaign for your graduation film. Do you think this type of crowdfunding platforms are a new way of empowering individuals, or are they just the same but using different methods? I ask because successful campaigns seem to take quite an effort, in terms of PR, marketing and managing. What advices would you give to people (even outside cinema) to start and succeed in a crowdfunding campaign?
G: I ran a crowdfunding campaign for my graduation film. I didn’t want to do it but I had to. At this time I had already exploited my family and friends and still needed money to finish the film. It’s definetly a good option if you want to become independent and establish a direct connection between you and your audience. Even established artists like Alejandro Jodorowsky are using it.

I think it’s great because they can do what they want and don’t have to compromise their vision for people who don’t really care about it. I think that most people, when they think of crowdfunding, they see it the wrong way. It’s not meant to be about asking for money but about an exchange. People give you money and you give them something back.

Work in process

I was scared of failing the campaign goal so I did some research. I understood that you have to have something that keeps popping up on the social networks, something that people see constantly without getting too annoyed with it.

So I decided I should make a video of me thanking everyone who gave money to the film. These videos then turned out to be made also by friends of mine who are musicians, artists and my family. So it started to become kind of fun. People started to ask me to do videos for other people. I tried not to repeat myself or censor anything. I never repeated a take and I didn’t care where I was when I shot the video. Some were made 2 minutes after waking up. Some where made in weddings, in bars, in the tube, wherever I felt that I could do something interesting.

The crucial thing about crowdfunding for me are the social networks. I don’t really use twitter and I never will but I have a lot of friends on facebook. Laura (co-producer) managed our facebook page where she would write constant updates and I would just do the videos. In the end we achieved 111% of the goal. So that wasn’t too bad. I still have perks coming from Portugal to give to the backers, given a mystery involving the post office in my hometown.

Frame grab from Severed Garden

SG: How long are you planning to stay in London and would you like to live somewhere else?
G: London is not really the perfect place as I grew up in the country side and am more fond of smaller places. Having said that, I don’t intend to leave unless I have to.

SG: You have a documentary shot in Gambia. When will it be ready? Can you unveil a bit of what it is about?
G: I was going to travel to The Gambia with some friends of mine and I decided I wanted to make a film there. I didn´t know anything about the place except a story that one of these friends told me. He said that once when he was sleeping there he saw a child-like demon entering his room. The name of this demon is CONDRONG. I thought that it was a nice starting point for a film.

So, I arrive there and in a natural pace, I started to film things that I thought would relate in some way with this idea. It’s a beautiful place and the people are lovely. I became friends with the headmaster of the school and also with a funder here in the UK and we are in the process of helping the local school raising funds to buy the land they are occupying, which is currently rented.

Shooting CONDRONG in Gambia

SG: You like to travel and I know you’ve been to quite a lot of places. Where do you want to go next?
G: Right now I have to stay in London for some time. Towards the end of the year or beginning of the next one, I want to go to the desert for some time. I don´t really know why, to be honest.

SG: I learned Transcendental Meditation with you, exactly at the same time. What are your thoughts about meditation?
G: This is a very complex question – Laughs – When I wake up in the morning, there is a moment of peace and then immediately after, there is chaos and noise and there are those thoughts that come to my mind, about things I should have done but I haven’t and things that I have to do.

So, my impulse is to jump out of bed and start doing everything at the same time in a state of anxiety and panic. So I have a shower and then I turn everything that is electronic in my room, off. So that there are no spam email beeps that you actually think might be something important but they never are; it pushes my heart-rate to the limit.

I sit down, do my meditation for 20 minutes and then I deal with everything that I have to. It helps me fighting anxiety and exercising patience and tolerance. I go outside and start noticing things that I normally don’t. It raises my awareness and a sense of connection with what’s around me. It dissolves the sense of self.  Sometimes works better than the others, depending on how anxious I am in the day.

On the set during the filming of Severed Garden

SG: Where and what you would like to be doing in 5 years?
G: I would like to have made my first feature film “The nature of our wound”, keep making no-budget experimental short films and probably have a girlfriend. I would also like to be working in Portugal, travelling there when needed, shooting commercials and music videos.

SG: Do you have any projects in the making or soon to start?
G: I am finishing the documentary I did in The Gambia. Working on the feature film project I just mentioned. I just shot a segment which I intend to make part of a series of surrealist films set in London at night called “Out here”. Inspired by songs I listen to on my phone when I walk alone.

I’ve been working on a music album with a childhood friend and we intend to finish it by the end of the year. Recorded here and in Switzerland. I’m starting to sketch ideas for a feature length documentary that I want to start making soon with a friend cinematographer.

SG: Where can we follow you and keep up to date with what you do?
G: You can check all the updates on my website: www.goncaloalmeida.net

Shooting with João Pika back in 2011

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5 things about London

SG: Which are the best parts of the city to stay?
G: I think that East London is the best place to stay now. It’s where I am staying and it’s where everything is happening.

SG: Your favourite places to eat?
G: I normally eat at home so I’m not the most experienced person to talk about this. The café downstairs, in the basement of my building is quite nice, its an Italian deli. Everywhere around east London you can find pretty interesting choices. A lot of them are getting more and more expensive because of the whole hipster thing.

SG: Is there any local dish you truly enjoy?
G: I travelled a bit in the UK outside of London. Never found any local food that I was particularly fond of. I don’t like the English breakfast with beans and meat and the whole thing, it just kills me. I like eggs benedict which is also a breakfast but it feels right, sometimes.

Working on the set of Severed Garden 2013

SG: Things worth doing?
G: The British Film Institute is my favorite place to be in central London. It’s a very special place by the river. It has cinemas, cafe and a library with books about film. There is a venue in Dalston called The Passing Clouds. I was there with my brother and some friends and I thought it was great. My brother goes there often. Making barbecues in the parks, when the summer is coming, that’s really nice.

The Prince Charles Cinema in Leicester square is quite a mystical place and its program is normally very interesting.  In the royal festival hall, in Southbank, you can attend some orchestra rehearsals for free.  Every museum is normally worth checking too, most of them are free.

SG: Local words/expressions worth knowing?
G: There is one expression that I pretended to understand for the first year I was here but only later, I did. Reckon. “I reckon that…” I didn’t know what that was and people kept saying it. A Colombian friend of mine started to say it as a joke and then I felt obliged to learn it because he already knew it.

The other day I was in the cinema and two intellectuals were having a fight in front of me. I didn’t understand any of their words but there was one that stayed with me. Disingenuous.  I like that word.

Elisa Lasowski in a scene from Severed Garden

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Let’s talk about Cinema

On set in Severed Garden 21013

SG: Name 1 to 3 directors you love and why
G: It´s a hard choice. I’ll mention three artists not based on how great they are but because how important they have been to me.

• Georges Franju There are movies that you keeping hearing about but somehow, it´s not the right time, so it happens later. “Eyes without a face”. I don´t know exactly what to say about this film and this director because everything you have to know is in the movie. I was blown away when I watched it. I still am.

Frame from “Out There”, with Assis Almeida, 2015

• Takashi Miike Everything is possible in Miike’s films. Completely un-compromised. I would recommend “Audition”, “Gozu” and a short film he did as part of the “Three Extremes” anthology, called “Box”. He made about 70 films already and he is still going. If you like Asian cinema, you should check him out if you don’t know his work already.

During preparations of last weekend filming (May 16th, 2015)

• Pedro Costa I feel like I have to mention this director, not just for being Portuguese but for the experience he provided me once. It must have been 8 years ago. I was in college at that time. I shared a house with a flat mate who was sleeping. It was 2 AM, I believe. I was bored and watching whatever was moving on the small TV we had. On the 2^nd Portuguese channel I catch a film when it´s starting. “No quarto de Vanda”. At first I thought it was a documentary and I was never sure what it was but it was an amazing experience. I sit up and I forgot about time, it´s like something I had never seen before. Incredible. Later I saw some of his other films just to confirm how interesting this artist is.

On the set with Laura Spini ( producer)

SG: Two classics that everybody should see and two recent movies that got your attention
G: Vertigo is the ultimate film. It´s just paradise. Then The Shinning. Recent ones: Under the skin. This film made me go out of the cinema in pure bliss, go to bed listening to the soundtrack and go back to the cinema again the next day. And also Only God Forgives.

SG: What moves you in Cinema?
G: It’s the most beautiful thing in the world. Everything is there.

SG: Is there any school of cinema that you admire more than others?
G: I don’t have any particular preference. It changes from time to time. Last month I was watching Antonioni’s films and now I am watching Eastern European films. I was in love with the horror genre for a long time but I am not anymore.

Still-frame from CONDRONG

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View Gonçalo’s work

goncaloalmeida.net

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Severed Garden – Teaser from Gonçalo Almeida on Vimeo.

Claudio Pelizzeni – Trip Therapy for those who seek

“You go from point A to point B, but you understand what is in the middle, you don’t miss anything”

Claudio is an Italian traveler and blog author (8.300 followers on FB)  that happens to have diabetes. He left his good paying job at Deutsche Bank and embarked on a 3 year trip throughout the world without taking any flights. His journey is a journey for everyone, not in the sense that everyone should undertake a similar one, but in the sense that you should try to do what you really want, independently of the obstacles. We met in Siem Reap, Cambodia, because we were in the same guest-house.  After talking for a while about what we were doing, we decided to tape a small interview about traveling. View our video interview and accompany us on this journey, it’s a rewarding conversation.

If you want to keep receiving updates you can follow him at:
triptherapy.netfacebook.com/triptherapyyoutube,  twitter or instagram

Pokhara: your way to Himalaya | Nepal

Words by Anna Lebedeva | May 16

Travel to Pokhara

Despite being the most popular travel destination in Nepal and one of the most expensive – we found Pokhara an ideal place to settle down for a few weeks or even more. The city’s ambience is prone to relaxation and at the same time will help you concentrate on your projects, if you are a freelancer. Pokhara is a perfect place for working online.

Jump to: How to get, Accommodation, Where to work, Trekking, The way to India

The best time to visit: September to November and April to May
Climate: sub – tropical
Guest house: 6-15 $
Continental breakfast: 2,5 $
Beer: 3 $
Coffee: 0,4 $
Typical Nepalese dish: 1-3 $

While Kathmandu is considered to be the Nepalese cultural hub, Pokhara is the center for travel and adventure.

Pokhara is famous for its picturesque sights, the Himalayas reflection on the Phewa lake and the world class trekking options around the region. Three of the highest world mountain peaks are located in this area: Dhaulagiri, Annapurna I and Manaslu. But even if you are not the trekking enthusiast, you will find a lot of other things to do. Whether you are a fan of cycling, running or paragliding  – you will find many options to amuse yourself during your stay in Pokhara.

Cycling day, 6 h on a bumpy road in Pokhara valley

Pokhara is the second biggest city in Nepal, located 200 km away from its capital Kathmandu and 1000 m above the sea. All tourist life is concentrated around the Phewa lake, the main attraction for travelers, surrounded with nice cafes where you can enjoy the beautiful and peaceful view over the lake valley and the Himalayas. You can rent a boat to get to the hidden temples on the tiny islands, ride a bicycle along the lake shore or enjoy your meal in one of the lakeside cafes for a very fair price.

View Pokhara’s photogallery

Herd lady with a child in Pokhara valley

TRAVEL – HOW TO GET 

If you are not coming by land from India or China, then probably Kathmandu Tridhuvan International airport will be your entry point. Usually tourists stay a few days in Kathmandu and then take a bus or a flight to Pokhara.  Read here about the VISA to Nepal.

Two air flight companies serve the 25-minute flight between Kathmandu and Pokhara. One way flight will cost you around $100-125. For budget travelers and those who are eager to see the country landscape, the best choice would be the 7-8 hour ride with a touris bus for 500-600 NRP  ($6,5). If you are ready to spend a bit more, you can buy a ticket with the Greenline company for around $20 and commutes to Pokhara in a comfortable “deluxe” buses with AC. We chose the cheapest option and were very satisfied with the service and bus (it even had wifi for most of the trip).

Pokhara Phewa Lake viewed from the way up to Srangkot village

ACCOMMODATION IN POKHARA

To keep it simple, Pokhara can be divided into two “parts”: the city itself and Lake Side, the North part of Phewa lake, where you will find the biggest choice of budget and middle-priced accommodation such as guest houses, apartments and mini hotels. In the inner part of the city it should even be cheaper, but we really think that staying closer to the lake is completely worth it and the rate difference won’t be that much.

For $10-25 you will easily find a nice place in the central part of the Lake Side, completely fine for staying for a long period of time in Pokhara. If you are keen to spend more, you can search for upscale hotels on the southern shore of Phewa lake.

There are nice budget places to be found in Hippy side of Pokhara, an area popular among travelers and backpackers. There you will find a nice room for $6-8 (with bathroom inside) close to the lake shore. This area is full with cafes, cool shops, and laundry service options. It’s also the closest to the main popular short treks.

Boat rowing in Phewa Lake

Since we were planning to spend a few weeks in Pokhara and travel a bit around, we looked for an apartment with a kitchen so we could prepare our own food, for a change. The choice of apartments is not as varied as for guest houses  – but still, you can find quite a few through www.airbnb.com. The amount of them increases each year, as the number of travelers keeps growing.

We stayed in Diplomat apartments, a recently built building in Pokhara, only a 10 minute walk from the Lake side. The price depends on the season and length of stay, but starts from $14 a night in high season for a one night stay. Keep in mind, longer you stay, less you pay. We got a cozy flat with fully equipped kitchen, 2 balconies overlooking the city and the Himalayas (we were lucky enough to see the mountain peaks in good weather).

In the end cooking at home isn’t that much cheaper than eating outside in Pokhara. You should bear in mind that while shopping for food you will pay more or less tourist prices despite how many times you visit the same grocery stall. But definitely the early morning breakfast at home with the Himalayas on the horizon without leaving your place is something totally worth it.

The view over Himalayas from Diplomat apartments

WHERE TO EAT AND WORK ONLINE IN POKHARA

Pokhara is such a great place to stay due to the variety of cafes and restaurants that offer decent wifi connection and a great balance between price and quality. These are spread around the Lake Side, being a bit more expensive in the center of Pokhara.

From our point of view the best places you can find are on the Lake shore of Pokhara, in the so called Hippy part. For example, in Himalayan Cafe you can get a very nutritious, varied and filling breakfast for 270 RPS ($2,7), consisting of Lassi, cornflakes or fruit muesli, two eggs with hash brown potatoes, two toasts with butter and homemade jam, tea or coffee.

View over Phewa lake from Aurora cafe

Just on the left side of Himalayan Cafe, Aurora cafe will offer you a stunning view over the lake and their wifi speed is almost unbeatable in the area. Next to Himalayan and Aurora cafe you will find Tala cafe, an open terrace on the front line of the lake, especially cozy during the evening when they light candles in the covered area, with comfy chairs and sofas. There are many other good choices all over the Lake Side of Pokhara.

Not as much to work, but more to eat, although also having wifi and comfy seating, is Nepalia cafe. There you can taste delicious pizzas made in a fire oven and we can assure you, having lived 3 months in Padua, Italy, they quite stand up to their original counterparts.

There’s also the proven Himalayan Java Cafe in Pokhara, where they actually brew the coffee that goes to Kathmandu, but the prices are much higher than in places we told and here we didn’t find any need to go there for the Internet – while in Kathmandu we spent some of our hard earned money there just to get a decent Internet connection.

Breakfast at the office with a view to the lake

TREKKING IN POKHARA

Pokhara is mainly famous as the starting point for a few world class treks such as Annapurna Circuit and the Jomsom Trek, which last from 10 to 20 days. The best season for trekking is considered to be from March to May and from September to December. These treks will allow you to enjoy picturesque subtropical valleys and authentic local villages, and of course the Himalayas. On your way you will meet plenty of teahouses and lodges, where you can have a rest, get food and stay overnight (often free in case of ordering meals).

Mount Machhapuchchhre

There is also a big variety of short term treks for 1-4 days for those who are lacking the time or don’t want to stay in the mountains for long periods. They are accessible all around the Pokhara valley, picturesque and worth spending a few days.

One of the most popular and fairly easy is the 3 hours hiking from Pokhara to the Sarangkot village (1,592 m), which is especially famous among travelers for its recognizable  panoramic views around the valley, Phewa lake and Himalayan peaks, which you are able to see on clear days. You will find many decent guest houses and cafes in that area. Usually everything there is slightly more expensive than in Pokhara, due to the altitude, but the view is totally worth it.

We stayed in a Panoramic view family cottage, the first we met upon entering Sarangkot. We were very satisfied with the homemade food, rooms with panoramic views and the very welcoming family that runs the place.

Panorama View Guest House in Sarangkot

HOW TO GET FROM POKHARA TO INDIA

For many tourists Nepal serves as an entry point to India. Many people of different nationalities obtain their Indian VISAs in Kathmandu, taking around  7-10 days and costing  about 45$. Bear in mind that usually they don’t grant VISAs for more than 2-3 months (we got 2 months and 3 months single entry – we applied exactly on the same day, we wrote the exact same application forms).

So if you are planning to stay longer in India (it definitely merits it), it is better to apply for VISA in your home country and get a 6 months for multiple entry (another option for 6 months would be Bangkok, but it might not be certain and the VISA starts from the date of emission and not from the date of entry).

From Pokhara it is very easy to travel to the Indian border of Sunauli.

With a kid during our trekking to Sarangkot

From Pokhara it is very easy to take a bus to the Indian border of Sunauli. It takes around 7 hours to get to the passport control point (very easy and simple process). Before getting out of Nepal many people take a short ride bus from Sunauli to Lumbini (20 km away), the birth place of Buddha, and spend a day or two there, coming back to cross the border and enter India.

After crossing the border you’ll get prompted by some “money exchanges” telling you, it’s the last spot where you can exchange your Nepalese rupees for Indian ones, they’ll give you a very bad exchange rate so just politely refuse their offer and exchange your NRP’s at any shop around – as we did. After that keep on walking until you pass many buses waiting for customers, ignore them and find the real state bus company.

Ganga and the Ghats in Varanasi

Take the bus to Gorakhpur for 95 IRP’s and once there, you-re free to take a train to any major city. The ride was calm and the bus stops right next to the train station in Gorakhpur. If you’re ready for it, just get on a night train to travel to one of the most interesting destinations in India, one of the oldest inhabited cities of the world, the sacred city of Varanasi. We went on sleeper class, for 115 IRPs ($2), we slept overnight and arrived to Varanasi early in the morning.

To travel to Sunauli from Pokhara you can purchase a ticket for a local bus for 600-700 NRP ($6-7) in any of the hundred of tourist agencies in Pokhara. Keep in mind that very often – and it seems everywhere – they will try to sell you the tickets for a local bus claiming it’s a tourist bus – they’ll go so far as to lie to your face. To get the right ticket for the right bus the best option is to guide yourself by the time they leave – the only tourist bus leaving Pokhara is at 8:30 in the morning – or visiting the “Bus Park” and buying the ticket in their counter.

Even when we asked many times exactly about the bus and the type of transport, once in the place where the buses leave we saw a stand and after understanding which would be our “tourist” bus we went there to ask. The real tourist bus departs from Pokhara at 8:30 and buying a ticket there in the counter costs you 800 NRP’s, with a bottled water included, normal chairs, minimum stops and free WiFi.

View Pokhara’s photogallery

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5 things to do in Pokhara

• Complete Annuparna circuit or take any other short treks, plenty of which are available around the area
• Go for a tandem flight, paragliding over the lake and valley,
• Cycle your way around the Pokhara valley
• Enjoy the sunset on a bench along the Phewa lake
• Get on a boat ride through the lake and then hike your way to the World Peace Stupa

  

  Paragliding in Pokhara

Pokhara postcards

Read post about Pokhara

Exploring Pokhara Valley map

View from our balcony in Pokhara

Driving a kid through a dirt road in Pokhara

Boats on Phewa Lake

Cycling day in Pokhara valley

Breakfast at the office with a view to the lake

The view over Himalayas from Diplomat apartments – Mount Machhapuchchhre

Mount Machhapuchchhre

Mount Machhapuchchhre

With a kid during our trekking to Sarangkot village

Map and noodle soup during a 6h cycling through Pokhara lake

View over Phewa lake from Aurora cafe

View of Panoramic View guesthouse’s lobby/restaurant

Panoramic View Guesthouse

Paragliding over Phewa Lake

Paragliding in Pokhara

World Peace Stupa in Pokhara

Pokhara Phewa Lake viewed from the way up to Srangkot village

Man and boats by the Phewa Lake

Boat rowing in Phewa Lake

Pokhara valley

Portrait of Nepalese kid

Herd lady with a child in Pokhara valley

Herd lady in Pokhara Valley dressed in traditional clothes

Portrait of Nepalese man relaxing by the Phewa’s lakeside

Group portrait at sunset in Phokara’s valley

Yellow sunset over Phewa Lake

Mountains viewed from Pokhara valley

Fields in Pokhara Valley

Mountains viewed from the roof of Diplomat Apartments

Read post about Pokhara

Freelancing Online – How to build a great profile

by Micael Nussbaumer
top rated freelancer at Upwork
May 6, 2015

… and land your first gig!

How to build a great freelancing profile

Welcome back. In the previous and the first post of this series, we took an overall look at the freelancing online platforms and how they work – if you haven’t read it you can find it [here] – in this post we will share with you some guidelines you can use to build your profile, in order to maximize your impact when applying to a job. If you already have a profile you can check how to build a portfolio for free with wordpress or how to write a proposal that will get you the job.

I will not go through each platform’s specific profile setup, instead, these guidelines will guide you on how to complete it in a relevant way. It’s your story and you should take advantage of it.

To register just visit the homepage of any of the platforms you’re interested in and choose “Register”, “Start Selling” or whatever is their wording for it. Note that you have to register as a freelancer, or to “sell”, not as a buyer or someone looking to buy services (although you can also).

Then navigate the website to the profile and edit it accordingly (many will direct you through that as a step in the registration process).

Keep in mind that you should take some time to navigate the website, understand how it works, read their resources (they have good tips on how to get started), overall, getting the feel of it. It requires time and effort to start having work but I’m sure you’ll find it valuable in the long-run.

Profile picture

Bhaval Patel profile on Elance – 2nd highest earner individual on Elance, probably around 180-200k last 12 months

The profile picture is the first glimpse into you. You should use this opportunity to show a bit of who you are. We know we aren’t how we dress or how we look, nonetheless the visual impact is a very important factor. It isn’t more important than great feedback and relevant work experience, but still, if in a tie with someone else it can play a role, besides, it can draw attention to your proposal right from the start.

Choose a good picture according to what you do and who you are. If you’re an accountant maybe a bit of professionalism and confidence should go into the picture (maybe attention to your clothing, a clean background and even a visit to the hairdresser), since those are traits that people will look when hiring an accountant. If you are a graphic designer or photographer your own picture should reflect your art and skills (if your picture is bad and you’re a photographer I might not even click your amazing portfolio).

It’s not always easy to get a good picture, but it’s worth spending a bit of time and/or money on that. You can either take it yourself or ask a friend to take a picture of you, you can also hire a photographer near you to just take a headshot or you can hire someone to edit a decent photo into an amazing one.

Title & Description/overview

Name & Title at oDesk.com (recently named Upwork.com)

This is your “professional” title. It can be Video Editor, SEO Expert, Financial Consultant, whatever. It should clearly tell what you do and in case you do more than one thing, it should tell what you do most or what you want to be known for. Imagine, maybe you get the bulk of your income from translating, but what you really want to be is a copywriter. Stating it here will work for your own and for others, you’ll get closer to being a copywriter and people will treat you as a copywriter because you are assuming it.

Some of the freelancing platforms allow you to have a tagline in which you can expand a bit on what you do – in these cases you can do something like “Creative Copywriter – Copywriting, Translation, Proofreading in English, German and French”. Or… Get really creative and go “Copywriting that matters – There’s good copywriting and there’s copywriting that sells”

The description/overview

Here you can put a bit more of information regarding yourself and what you offer. Pay attention to the length of it and make it relevant. You can use it to show a bit of your personality, or keep it completely professional, nonetheless, make sure it is well written. Imagine you’re looking to hire someone to do you a job that is important to you, even if a simple task, with your hard earned money. Reading a profile with errors and badly written will put you off I’m sure… Why would you risk paying for someone who doesn’t even took the time and effort to make their profile error-free?

Other than that, don’t state silly things as “Best work ever, over 10 years of freelancing experience at the highest level…” – Really, keep it relevant. Your work samples and work history will provide the proof of that. If you write wondrous things, but then have 0 feedback or can’t show a relevant past work to back up your claims, you’ll come off as a liar.

Micael Nussbaumer profile on Upwork

An example with all fields could be:

• Name: John Doe Title: Developer
  
• Tagline: Expert in PHP, Javascript and C++ application development

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Description: I’am a developer working with PHP, Javascript and C++ for more than 4 years in several small to medium scale projects. I’ve worked with companies such as Something New, DoItNow and Revolution, implementing their ideas into a fluid, well written web applications to power their main websites and supporting networks. 

I’m a bit of a Geek and that’s why my work in this field is so good, I’m interested not only in programming, but in elegant programming solutions, delivering what my clients envision while making every effort to do it in the correct way, a product that works without my constant supervision and that anyone who knows programming can develop or change further. 

I was born in the US, but moved to Italy fairly young. I studied IT and Programming at the University of Milan, finishing this degree with higher than average grades. After that I took a step further and did a Masters at the Technical University of Lisbon. 

I’m currently back in the US, New York and I have sort of a busy schedule, although I’m always searching for new and exciting projects. 

For an updated work history take a look @ http://linkedin.com/johndoe  

I can help you with:

• Website development;
• Plugin development for WordPress;
• Refactoring and maintenance of applications;
• And the list can go on with your services.”

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On the other hand, if you don’t like the personal tone, you can just stick to a more technical presentation of yourself, strictly talking about your skills.

Example of profile on Elance

Now remember, this won’t get you any job by itself, but backed-up by relevant samples in your portfolio and interesting, professional proposals it certainly will make it easier.

Portfolio

Online portfolio

All of these websites allow you to include samples of your work. These can range from pictures, to videos, to documents. If you’re in the graphical/visual business, then make sure you upload the most relevant samples here.

Try to only use really good samples of your work; seeing something below average will automatically put a prospective client off – if that’s in your “portfolio” it means you don’t take that much pride on your work. I studied photography and when we were preparing our “artistic” portfolios, we were told something similar – “Just include your best work. Including work just to fill it up will only hurt your portfolio, it’s as strong as the worst piece in it”.

If your work goes online somewhere (imagine a piece of copy write, a website you made, a logo) you can put a screen capture of it (or the original file) and then place a link to where your work is being used in the description. This validates your work, it shows that your work is in use somewhere and can increase the willingness of another person hiring you.

On the other hand, if your work goes mostly offline or to the back-end (accountant, print design, code refactoring), you should still include some form of portfolio items. You can sketch a TAX form and explain what you did and why your services are the best option. You can take a picture of your work being used in the print version of a magazine, or a flyer. You can make a screen capture of the application you refactored and in the description include what you did (from 12.000 lines of code to 6.000, an increase in response time of 6x, etc.).

Sometimes it’s a bit of time consuming but it’s worth it. Keep in mind, try to organize the files that go into your portfolio on your own hard-disk, this way you’ll be able to upload them easily and to other platforms, so it will only take you the time once. If in the future you want to change them it also allows you to keep it all neatly organized.

Other elements

A complete profile will also boast your feedback history, some stats regarding the hours you billed, earned amounts, overall satisfaction with your services among others, but these you cannot fill yourself, they come as you start getting work.

Besides this, some platforms as freelancer.com, elance.com and upwork.com, will allow you to take exams/tests (some free and some paid) that you can “hang” on your profile page. These aren’t “important” if you have a portfolio that speaks for itself or relevant feedback but when you’re starting and you haven’t got any feedback, taking these exams shows once again you are putting effort into it.

Example of tests on Elance

Peopleperhour has their own certification system called CERT, that uses various metrics to decide in which tier you are, and displays a badge on your profile. oDesk has a Top Freelancer flag that they give themselves to high ranking freelancers.

Some of these platforms also allow you to put your studies and work history, so feel free to fill these in.

Profile pages are an important aspect of your freelancing activities, but they don’t work alone. For you to be successful working online you must use some creativity and build an on-line presence that works together.

There are many tools for achieving this, but you can think for instance of filling an updated Linkedin Profile page, with relevant referrals and endorsements. Using free services such as wordpress.com or cargocollective.com, among many others (we’ll go through these in a future post), to build a portfolio or showcase your work. You can make it look more professional and you can customize it more to your liking, in order to enhance the impact and readability of your work.

Each of these parts aren’t enough by themselves, but when coupled with a good proposal they will make it easier to land a job.

Think of each bit as a part of a bigger picture:

• First, there’s your proposal. This is probably the first thing your client will see so it should be compelling.
• Second, you have your work samples and portfolios. This shows that your proposal is funded.
• Then you have other online presences that serve other purposes, like a more in-depth look at you as a professional and a person.

When they are well carved and put together they make up an irresistible proposal. It doesn’t make sense to write a lengthy description of all your skills on the proposal, but it makes sense to have them on your freelancing profile. It doesn’t make sense to put all your work samples in your proposal, just what is relevant, but it makes sense to have your best work available for viewing somewhere on the web. It doesn’t make sense probably to go through all of your job history and your interests in the proposal as well, but if someone is interested in working with you, having it in a place such as LinkedIn could help.

Mashable CEO & Founder Linkedin

But… If you write a clever proposal where you state what is important, making it easier for the client to access quickly the relevant facts, he will read it. If it triggers their interest, they will click your profile and check other bits of you, and since it’s complete they will feel more compelled to work with you. Then, if they get interested and you put up links for your work, they can go and see other stuff you have done that, although not directly relevant to the task at hand, might be a good indicator that you’re professional and know what you’re talking about. If in the end they have a link or somewhere to look at you like Linkedin they can find other relevant information that might just make up their mind.

Remember, you’re in control of how you present yourself. Make it compelling and consistent. Tell a story.

In the next post we’ll tackle on how to write a job proposal, until then, get those profiles shining and prepare your portfolios, safe trips and happy bidding.

If you want to read an introduction to freelancing platforms, check out our previous article here. We also covered how to build a free  appealing portfolio using wordpress and the best way to write your job proposals (with a real case included)

If you want specific details or have any request or questions, feel free to comment and we’ll get back to you!

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André Nussbaumer talks about freelancing and working abroad

“I’ve learned so far that ignorance and stupidity aren’t a nationality trait but, rather, a human condition.“

Name: André Nussbaumer
Age: 24
Nationality: Portuguese
Current Location: Warsaw, Poland
Employment: Freelance designer/animator

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André Nussbaumer is a Portuguese artist freelancing online from Warsaw. Having started in painting he now works mostly in digital mediums, going from illustration to game design and animation. His personal work has a very particular style, white line drawings against black backgrounds with a sketchy feeling, while his game design work covers a vibrant palette and polished look. He studied 2d/3d animation at ETIC in Lisbon and after that went to do a 3 month Leonardo DaVinci internship in Eallin Motion Art, Czech Republic. Now he works directly from Warsaw to clients from different places around the world thanks to the internet. 

Staygypsy: How long have you been living in Warsaw? And before that?
André: I’m living in Poland for about 4 months now. Before that I lived in Prague, Czech Republic, for 3 months and previously in Portugal.

Staygypsy: What are you doing for living?
André: I am a designer. Right now I’m designing iPhone and android games.

Staygypsy: What were the reasons to move abroad?
André: I wanted to experience new things. The first 3 months I was living abroad while doing an internship at Eallin Motion Art weren’t an adventure enough for me so I decided to keep going and see where it would lead me to.

André ‘s work, digital illustration

Staygypsy: What advices can you give to people willing to relocate?
André: Build a steady income before you move and save some for eventual adversities, they are always going to happen but if they didn’t probably it would suck. I don’t think I have any really valuable advices. The best ones and the ones we should follow are inside each one of us.

Staygypsy: How did you start freelancing online?
André: I started freelancing online because my brother told me that I could generate a great income and at first I was a little bit skeptical because it’s not easy to start. But once you do, you realize that there’s nothing better than that: you decide when you want to sleep and to wake up, when you want to work, what type of work you want to do, with whom you want to work… Instead of just being stuck in a dead end 9-5 job chasing collectively someone else’s dream, now you can chase your own dream, work in your side projects. Well, now you get to choose how you want to live.

Staygypsy: What are the essential things you think are needed to work in this way?
André: Discipline definitely. Be flexible, be an accountant, charge for everything, be a great communicator, be a great salesman, be a great artist, and essentially be the person you would like to work with.

André Nussbaumer’s game design illustration.

Staygypsy: Do you have any advice for people looking to work through online platforms?
André: Perceive yourself as a brand. Be professional, even thought you might not be. The clients don’t know you so this is a great opportunity to create the person you want to be. They will see what you want them to see, so you basically control everything. Learn how to educate your clients.

Staygypsy: Which tools do you use to create your work?
André: Basically, I use a laptop PC and for drawing a Wacom Intuos4. Software wise I mostly use a mix of Photoshop, 3ds Max and After Effects.

Staygypsy: Where do get work?
André: I find work through Elance.

Staygypsy: How did you find accommodation in Warsaw?
André: I found through Facebook groups and also through Gumtree. pl

Staygypsy: What are the best ways to socialize with locals?
André: Just go to places where international people hang, grab a beer, and ask someone what he/she does, where they are from, etcetera. You will probably meet a lot of people this way. At least that is what I’ve been doing. Some will go on their own way, some will stay and probably in for a long night of talking and getting drunk. Nevertheless, you will make lots of friends by just approaching them.

André’s game design illustration for a character

Staygypsy:  What do you like most of all in your current location?
André: I like the people a lot. I’ve learned so far that ignorance and stupidity aren’t a nationality trait but, rather, a human condition.

Staygypsy: What do you miss most about your home country?
André: Friends, sea food, weather, beach, Alentejo…

Staygypsy: How long are you planning to stay and what is your next destination?
André: I have no idea, but my next location would eventually be Berlin. I always heard from people that Berlin is a very open minded city, with lots of alternatives and different people, and as we can see from history a lot of artistic styles, from music, to art, to architecture, emerged from Germany, so i think i should spend a couple of months there to see how it is.

Staygypsy: What have you learnt while travelling?
André: That there’s more to life than the things we take for granted. Be with yourself, be with people you love.

André ‘s work, screenshot of mobile game design

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5 things about Warsaw

Warsaw, Poland

SG: The best parts of the city to stay?
André: With this weather you couldn’t stay in many places, but I like to hang out around the pubs in Pawilony, you can also hang around the old town or near Vistula river, I think these places have the best atmosphere.

SG: Your favorite restaurants?
André: Zapiecek, it’s quite famous. There’re a lot of them, a few in Old Town and Nowy Swiat.There’s one called Manekin, which is amazing! Also Piwna kompania has great offers for groups, if you want to try a bit of everything this is the place to go.

SG: Your favorite local food?
André: Gołąbki (cabbage roll)

SG: Things worth doing?
André: Strolling through the streets of Nowy Swiat, Krakowskie przedmiescie. The monuments and museums and all of these things are near the old town and are worth visiting. I enjoy walking in Lazienki park, along the Vistula River and near Lacha Potocka.

SG: Local words worth knowing?
André: Kurwa! (and we leave it to you to discover what it is)

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Check André’s works

André Nussbaumer’s game design illustration.

Link to portfolio: www.behance.net/andrenussbaumer
Link to online work profile: https://www.elance.com/s/andrenuss/

Chiang Mai – Thailand North Escape

Words by Micael Nussbaumer | May 8

Thavel to Chiang Mai | Thailand

You’re looking to get into South East Asia, but you’re not quite sure where to start? If, like us, you work on the go, making use either of local available jobs and opportunities or using the internet to get a hold of opportunities, then Thailand’s Chiang Mai is a good place to look. It is the second biggest city in Thailand, located in the picturesque mountainous North, a bright combination of historical sights, creative spaces and many modern cafes with good wifi speed. It also has suitable options for every kind of budget and is overall a cheap city to live.

Wondering around the Chiang Mai’s city center, the cultural sanctuary, you will find a multitude of temples, shrines, ancient art, wandering around monks and meditation courses. Comparing to fast-moving Bangkok, Chiang Mai’s pace is laid back, but the city is quite international, ideal for digital nomads, nature connoisseurs and sight-seeings lovers.

Whereas Bangkok and other party locations cater to a different style of tourism and the islands to lazing on the beach, Chiang Mai, located on the North of Thailand, is more moderate in its weather (although still hot), not given to have many excesses and packs both cultural references and beautiful scenery around.

View Chiang Mai’s Photogallery

Buddhist altar

Jump to: How to get, Visa, Accommodation, Where to work,Food, People,Motorbikes,Currency

The best time to visit: September to May*
Climate: tropical wet and dry climate
Accomodation: $2,5 – 25$
Continental breakfast: $3
Beer: < 2$ (.33cl)
Coffee: $1,5
Typical Tai dish: $1 – 4$

*During the rainy season (May to September), it doesn’t rain all and every day. It is usually short and refreshing showers between sunny intervals.  For nature connoisseur the rainy season could be the best time to visit Thailand North. Temperatures are relatively low, the countryside is green and lush, the birds and wildlife more active, and there are far fewer people around.

Chiang Mai has suitable options for every kind of budget and is overall a cheap city to live.

HOW TO GET TO CHIANG MAI

To enter Thailand, unless you’re already in one of the neighboring countries, you’ll have to fly to Bangkok’s international airport, Suvarnabhumi, or directly to Chiang Mai (which is usually expensive – you also have other international Airports in Thailand). The usual route though is through Bangkok.

Once there you have 2 options, you can either go by road in bus/micro bus, or you can go by train. We’ve used Bus once to go from Chiang Mai back to Bangkok and also trains both ways. It really depends on what you prefer and the way you schedule it. For bus, it’s around 8h, and the tickets go between 450THB (15$) and 650THB (21$). I found the trip comfortable, with reclinable seats that allowed for sleeping.

Old buddhist stupa in a temple complex in Chiang Mai

On the other hand the train offers you real sleeper beds, big comfortable chairs with AC and without AC, and 3rd class rigid sleep unfriendly wagons, but takes 14h. I used the 2nd Class AC once, for around 420BHT (20$ – I found it to be too cold during night, but otherwise very comfortable), I would advise you to go on 2nd Class non AC, as it’s also comfortable, cheaper and the weather when going to Chiang Mai is usually cooler. Then I traveled twice in 3rd class. If like us, you are saving money, why not, a ticket will cost you around 6$.

If you don’t have to budget so cautiously and want a bit more of comfort go to the 2nd class, they start at around 13$ for Non-AC, and sleepers around 25$ (it also depends on when you take the train – the most expensive ones are the overnight trains, but this way you save one night stay).

VISA TO THAILAND

Getting a VISA to Thailand is fairly straightforward and you don’t need to worry with monthly stays. If you plan to stay more than a month then you must visit an embassy in order to ask for it. The 1 month VISA on arrival is free of charge (for most of the nationalities), but a normal tourist VISA done at the embassy will set you back around 40$ and will be worth for 2 months. Really, if you’re planning to work there as well as travel a bit (Thailand has a lot of different things to offer), I would say a 2 month arrangement is the best. It is very often that people travel to Thailand and get a 1 month on arrival VISA but soon discover they want to stay for longer.

Then they have to do either VISA runs, which end up being more costly than the 2 months VISA and annoying – unless you do it to visit another country- like Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar, etc., or apply for an extension, which is also more costly and takes time.

ACCOMMODATION IN CHIANG MAI

Chiang Mai is a great place for remote workers to spend some time. It’s fairly cheap. Most hostels have free wifi, and you can find a twin bedroom  with hot shower from 150BHT to 350BHT (5$ to 12$) per night. A bed in a dormitory for 120BHT up (this is 4$). It’s a fairly good deal. For instance, if you’re staying for a month that would be 185$ – and you can negotiate when you’re staying such a long time, for instance including breakfast or something. You can also get an apartment for 1 to 3 months, for around 5000THB (around 150$ per month) – quite nice looking – but you need to pay for the month and make a deposit of another month (when staying 1) or a deposit for 2 months (when staying two or three). If you’re willing to pay around 300$ per month, you’ll have a kitchen, access to swimming pool and fitness center (Huay Kaew Residence).

People overseeing Chiang Mai from Doi Suthep view-point

I stayed in Chiang Mai Inn, they have a nice place to work, at the entrance, and you get to meet a lot of people traveling by. Their double bed room goes for 200BHT per night, if you are with someone else that’s 3.3$ for each one per night. The rooms are humble but clean, with hot water, regular private toilets and they have free wifi in the entrance in a nice place with tables and chairs for you to use.

For longer term rentals one of the websites that helped me was http://chiangmai.thaiapartments.net. Here you can search by zone, type of accommodation and budget. Be aware though that a 1 month stay will have higher prices than the monthly prices they show on the website, usually those only apply for 3 months on.

Nonetheless, if you have done your VISA for two months, it’s quite worth it, you can easily go spend some days in a neighboring country (as Laos, Myanmar (check for VISAs) or Cambodia and come back for the last month of the contract.

WHERE TO WORK ONLINE IN CHIANG MAI

Internet in Chiang Mai is quite accessible and has ok speeds. Nothing amazing, but quite workable. You’ll find Wi-Fi access for free in most guesthouses and hotels, restaurants and coffee’s. I used to work mostly in my guesthouse – Internet speed was sufficient enough. I worked in a common area with several tables, comfortable enough chairs, several power sockets to charge your devices, shade, water running and open to the outside – although completely calm since it was about 5 min into back-alleys from the bustling center.

Other than that sometimes I visited a small Vietnamese restaurant/coffee some streets away and other times entered the old city and just walked until I saw something interesting. It’s not difficult to find places to work in Chiang Mai. Ask if they have Wi-Fi, sit, connect, check the speed, and order.

THAI FOOD

Regarding food Thailand as some unique offerings along with normal western food. Pad Thai (stir-fried rice noodle) is a very common and cheap dish, followed by Tom Yam soup (spicy and sour soup). Besides that, there are curries, noodle soups, rice cooked in many ways with different servings. In the street stalls you can find a variety of dishes for relatively low prices (like a chicken noodle soup for 1$, quite filling). You can also hop into most restaurants and find dishes priced from 1,5$ to 6$, depending on the type of restaurant.

Lady preparing Roti Mataba in the streets of Chiang Mai

If you are not alone, then sharing a hot-pot with friends makes up for a great meal. In case you have a place with a kitchen you can find most ingredients you would need to cook selling on street stalls, shops, supermarkets or street markets.

THAI PEOPLE

Thai people are usually very friendly and they will help you out most of the times. They make it their national motto to receive you with a smile, they’re very welcoming in a commercial way but that’s also very natural. I’m sure if one would stray from the traditional touristic routes, one would find a very welcoming culture as well.

Tourism is a big contribution to the national GDP, so people are used to deal professionally with tourists from around the world.  Quite highly developed infrastructure helps to make travelling around the country very easy, totally diminishing the cultural shock.

Buddhist monk

Whatever part of the country you are planning to visit, you can be sure to find it welcoming, up to your acceptance.

DRIVING MOTORBIKES

It’s cheap and fairly easy to rent a motorbike for a month. Usually you can get from 4$ to 12$ per day depending on how many days you want to rent. Make sure they have insurance for their motorbikes as well as you (I didn’t but you should…). You can also rent for a day, but prices are higher – if you rent for a few days you can usually always negotiate at least a dollar down per day. You usually will be asked for a passport, but there are ways to work around it if needed.

It’s easy to drive in Chiang Mai as long as you pay attention. With a motorbike you can visit Doi Suthep temple and climb the mountains, or go to some cities around.

It was one of the pleasures we had in Thailand, driving the motorbike through fresh mountains and hills, just feeling the breeze on your face and watching the luxurious green vegetation pass in front of our eyes.

THAI CURRENCY

The national currency of Thailand is Thai Baht, and it’s usually rounded up to 30 Baht’s for 1 dollar. ATM’s are to be found everywhere and most (if not all) will charge you a surprising 6$ per cash-withdrawal besides your own bank processing and conversion fees. This is not that much if you withdraw large amounts, but it adds to the expenses if you take small amounts every time.

Thai Baht

You can change/convert money everywhere also. Bargaining is fine up to an extent, on markets, street stalls, etc. Chiang Mai is fairly cheap, allowing for a decent stay while keeping costs low. Like in most Thailand, you get quite a good value for what you pay, including security and smiles.

View Chiang Mai’s PhotoGallery

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5 gypsy things to do

• Take a bus trip or a motorbike and explore the region, go to other places like Pai, Chiang Rai and see a bit more of the North. The weather is cooler here, it’s more crisp and not as prone to laziness as in the south. Nonetheless days are warm.
• Try meditation, learn how to cook Thai food, or do a massage. Live here for a month or two.
• Visit some of the temples. There are many here. Really. Many. Like everywhere. You just have to get into a street and you’ll eventually run into one, or two or three. Or more depending for how long you walk.
• Try out a hiking experience! Included in some trekking programs are visits to see elephants, give them breakfast and take them for a shower in the river.
• You can also try some different meals, which you wouldn’t try back home, such as insects, snake and many more. Try it! You might miss the mark, but at least you will know what they taste like.

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useful links to check:
www.chiangmai.thaiapartments.net
www.tripadvisor.com
www.airbnb.com
www.agoda.com

Chiang Mai postcards

The Cultural Capital of Thailand

Have you ever been to Chiang Mai, the Cultural Capital of Thailand? The second biggest city in Thailand is up in the mountainous North and far from the lovely beaches and party locations in the southern part. The landscape there is picturesque and the city itself is a bright combination of historical sights, modern and creative spaces.

Wondering around Chaing Mai’s city center, the cultural sanctuary, you will find multitude of temples, shrines, ancient art, wandering around monks and meditation courses. Comparing to fast-moving Bangkok, Chiang Mai pace is laid back, but the city is quite international, ideal for digital nomads, nature connoisseur and sight-seeings lovers.

View our post about Chiang Mai

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Buddhist statues in a row in Doi Suthep Temple, Chiang Mai, Thailand

Old buddhist stupa in a temple complex in Chiang Mai

Statues of the Buddha in a row at Doi Suthep Temple, in Chiang Mai, Thailand

Kid jumping from a corner of Chiang Mai’s old city into the canal

Buddhist statue

Naga sculpture in the stairs of the temple entrance of Doi Suthep, Chiang Mai, Thailand

Dragon sculptures at the entrance of a temple

Buddha statues in Doi Suthep temple

People overseeing Chiang Mai from Doi Suthep view-point

Young Buddhist monks playing with water balloons

Buddha statue in a temple in Chiang Mai, Thailand

Buddhist statue in the small museum at Doi Suthep

Elephant sculpture in Doi Suthep

Kids taking a bath in a corner of Chiang Mai’s city wall

View from the night-train connecting Bangkok to Chiang Mai, during the morning before arriving

People executing a ritual on Sunday behind the Emerald Buddha statue in Doi Suthep Temple

Detail of a painted panel in the walls of Doi Suthep Temple, in Chiang Mai, Thailand

Painted panel in the walls of Doi Suthep Temple, in Chiang Mai, Thailand.

Monk statue in Doi Suthep

Wooden carved depiction of Hell

Row of Buddhist statues in a Temple in Chiang Mai

Bells on the ceiling in Doi Suthep Temple with a crowd of people on the background

Thai Baht

Symmetric door in Doi Suthep

Lady preparing Roti Mataba in the streets of Chiang Mai.

Buddhist altar

Dragon sculpture at an entrance of a Temple in Chiang Mai

Orange crystal buddha statue at Wat Doi Suthep

Buddha statues in Doi Suthep temple

Statues of the Buddha in a row at Doi Suthep Temple, in Chiang Mai, Thailand

View our post about Chiang Mai here

The 5 best skill-based e-learning platforms

Anna Lebedeva
Marketing Communications Specialist
May 7, 2015

 

You were probably thinking about starting something on your own, something completely new. Many times people are driven by good ideas, but they don’t know how to develop and bring them to reality.

There are lots of online learning platforms, providing a huge variety of courses, that could help you in acquiring new digital skills. It is very time flexible and very often free or significantly less costly than offline studies.

Online education is a powerful tool which allows you to learn  exactly what you want and when you want.

We’ve compiled a list of the most popular online skill-based learning platforms, providing courses,  recommended not only by us but also by experts in different industries. They are not based on the traditional academic coursework, but specially created for students willing to improve job-related skills.

Bear in mind that although some of them are not free,  more than often you can get a pretty good discount. For example, Udemy offers  “special” discounts on some courses as well as discounts for frequent purchasers of their trainings. Skillfeed  is running a 7-day free trial so you can test the courses before making a decision whether to buy a monthly membership or not.

Lynda

The pioneer in online education, now providing world class trainings in software, creative and business skills.

• Owned/founded Linkedin
• Educational focus: broad range of different subjects from Design to Business
• Cost 25$ month membership  with unlimited access to  3,505 courses and 80,000 videos

  

  Lynda main page

Skillfeed

The online marketplace of professional instructional videos, from comprehensive courses to skill snacks in Design, Coding, Photography and Business.

• Owned/founded by Shutterstock
• Educational focus:  3D, motion graphics, design, photography, mobile, video, and web development
• Cost: 19$ monthly gives you access to 78,000 videos

  

  Skillfeed main page

  Khan Academy

Non profit educational platform that provides completely free access to a library of 6, 500 micro-lectures.

• Owned/founded by Salman Khan
• Educational focus: Science, Humanities and Computer programming
• Cost: Free for everyone
  

  

  Khan Academy main page

   Codeacademy

An online platform that gives access to free coding classes in the 8 most popular programming languages.

• Owned/founded Zach Sims, Ryan Bubinski
• Educational focus: HTML, CSS, Python, PHP, jQuery, JavaScript, AngularJS, and Ruby.
• Cost: Free for everyone
  

  

  Codeacademy main page

Udemy

Online platform, offering courses across a wide range of categories (25,000 courses) such as business and entrepreneurship, academics, the arts, health and fitness, language, music, and technology.

• Owned/founded by Eren Bali, Gagan Biyani, Oktay Caglarn
• Educational focus: Technology and Science
• Cost ranging from $10 to $500, depending on the course, but most of the courses are priced between $29 – $99.

  

  Udemy main page

We chose these 5 online learning platforms, based on our experience and online reviews. There are many other online learning platforms which can also help you in obtaining new skills and qualifications. The world of open online education is expanding day by day, what gives us a perfect chance to learn outside the traditional education system.

Freelancing Online – The basics

Micael Nussbaumer
top rated freelancer in Odesk
May 6, 2015

All you need to know about freelancing online

This is our first article regarding freelancing online using different platforms. We also wrote a few other articles that you might want to check in case you’re considering to start freelancing online, or improve your presence and reach. We wrote about creating a compelling profile, setting up a pleasing portfolio for free with wordpress and also an extensive post on how to write your proposals in order to get clients.

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Benefits of freelancing

You probably have heard about it already by now, it seems sort of a buzz word nowadays and everybody is interested in doing it. The reasons for such an interest are many and understandable.

From the point of view of the freelancer you get:

1. to work remotely, from anywhere in the world with as much as an internet connection and access to a computer;
2. the freedom to choose your schedule, rates and projects;
3. possibility of working in whatever you like that is possible to be executed remotely;

From the small-business and entrepreneur side by outsourcing, on the other hand, you happen to be able to:

• cut down costs while getting access to an extremely varied pool of talent in many different areas;
• easily change contractors if they no longer suite your needs or if you find a better option;
• easily assemble teams that can tackle many technical aspects of developing a business without having to hire costly companies;

Although still a child, this movement is set to change the face of how we work.

Here at www.staygypsy.com we will develop a series of articles regarding freelancing online, where we will tackle how to set-up your profiles, give you real-life examples of how to apply and get jobs, deal with clients and expand your portfolios while increasing your revenue. They will not be the magical “get-rich-working-from-home” articles that seem to flood the internet nowadays, it all involves work, perseverance and professionalism, but what sort of a challenge would it be if it was easy?

In this first article we’ll go through how this kind of work functions and also through a few platforms you can use. We’ll focus on the platforms for freelancing alone, although in the articles regarding portfolios and worksamples we’ll dwell into the different websites and services you can use for free to put up a more professional showcase of your work.

My profile on http://www.oDesk.com

So how does this stuff work?

Basically you register into a website that works as a market place for freelancers offering a wide variety of skills and clients looking for specific tasks to be done.

Imagine you’re starting your own eBay or Amazon store, to sell clothes you make or buy. You don’t have the resources to photograph these articles according to their guidelines nor the skills to make them look really good for potential buyers. Previously you would have to hire a costly photographer or company to edit your photos, ask a friend who’s good at photography to do it for you (this is still a good option if you happen to have one),  but now you have the same options but at much more competitive rates:

• you can put an open advertisement for photographers in your area to shoot your products professionally;
• or you can take the photographs yourself and then post an advertisement hiring someone who is able to edit the photographs to eBay’s or Amazon’s standards, while improving everything that is possible (for you to have an estimate it can range from a few cents per image to a few bucks).

Custom service offering on https://www.peopleperhour.com/site/register?rfrd=321475.1

When we say “advertisement” we are talking about a “job offer”. This is basically made up from a job description, a budget, time frame for completion and samples of what you need done, along with special requests. It’s essentially a brief that tells any prospective freelancer the task you need done, how much you’re willing to pay for it and when you need it delivered.

Imagine now that these tasks can be anything, from writing a specific article, doing research, translating content, producing video, cleaning up audio, designing a brochure, making a website or developing a website functionality, coding an iOS application for your business, hiring a virtual assistant or an accountant, managing your social media channels, doing costumer research and support, interviewing someone in another country, you name it. Anything that is possible to do remotely and delivered remotely can be done. For big companies probably it’s better to have their own departments to handle these sort of things but if you are a small business or an entrepreneur all of a sudden you get access to top quality workers at much lower rates.

So how does this work for the people who sell their services?

It’s also easy, you register yourself, you fill up a profile with information and skills, links to your work, referrals and you start applying to jobs other people post there.

Job offers on http://www.oDesk.com

Why use these platforms you may ask? Hasn’t freelancing been around for a long time now?

That is true but all of a sudden you’re not limited to your geographical network, you can work for clients all over the world, through simple and quick interactions over the internet. You’re not tied to a single client either, you can have many and you can easily decide which ones you want to keep or not. It also allows you to play with different income levels and make up for the “cheap” rates by working with people in which countries the “cheap rate” is higher than your country’s “decent rate”.

One of the things that piss me off though is the fees these platforms take from you. It is true they provide for a system that allows you to exchange messages with your clients, upload files, invoice them, receive the money, transfer it to digital accounts or bank accounts and create a feedback history that rewards people who keep up good work.

On the other hand all of this would be possible without the high-fees they charge, you’ve got more than enough options when it comes to messaging and storing files and the same for receiving money and passing it to your bank accounts. There are nonetheless two aspects that without such platforms you will not be able to get, one is the feedback rating system – specially important if you are an excellent freelancer – and the payment protection.

Every platform of online work offers some sort of payment protection be it through guarantee payments on jobs billed hourly or milestone/escrow payments that assure you the money is already there and will be yours if you complete the job as discussed.

http://www.freelancer.com subscription plans and different fees

I still envision many changes in the freelancing environment. As more people move to this sort of platforms and more people hire through them, competition will start to stack up and at some point in order to attract and keep talent these platforms will have to come up with more competitive pricing systems and maybe offer “exclusivity” type of deals. We already saw it for instance in stock image agencies. Some of the biggest players offer exclusivity possibilities and this translates into higher placement in searches, better rates, higher acceptance rate for submitted files, etc.

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Most popular freelancing platform

ELANCE

elance.com This is probably the biggest contender in the freelancing market. It recently acquired oDesk (another big company) although they still operate in different websites.

In my view it’s the most professional one in terms of presentation and functionalities. It allows you to post jobs, invite specific skilled freelancers, apply to jobs, create a portfolio, have escrow payments and hourly jobs guarantee (with their work log software) and gives you some good insights into your freelancing metrics. It offers a free monthly wire transfer to your bank if in any denomination besides the US dollar. It supports Paypal and Skrill as well.

They charge around 8.75% in fees from each job value. This means that if you get a job with a total payment of 150$ you’ll eventually only receive 136$. They have a legal dispute department for payments but you can only use it in case you have funded escrow payments or are using their work log software.

Job proposal page on https://www.elance.com/?rid=2RB89

They also offer different types of subscriptions for freelancers. A free basic one and then paid subscriptions which boast more perks, like increased job application quota, higher placement in the search index; ability to see the highest, lowest and median bid for a particular job, and the possibility to add more skills and keywords to your profile.

One of the drawbacks is that with the free subscription you can only apply to jobs in one category – depending on your skill set this could be relevant – if you’re a digital marketer and content producer you’ll soon find yourself unable to apply to some jobs that are in different categories although completely within your skill set.

One of the unique features of elance.com though is its ability to verify your identity through a skype partner called Aristotle, this way you can upload your picture, plus legal identification documents and have a skype meeting where they will verify your picture with your face. Not essential but neat.

Elance has also a great deal of statistics and information about freelancing trends, you can use this page to navigate through skills or categories and understand what is growing and declining in demand, it’s a useful tool so check it out here!

oDesk (recently changed to Upwork)

oDesk.com now boasts most of elance.com functionalities but still keeps its own platform independently. As of today (6 of May 2015) it has been renamed to Upwork.com. It seems it’s exactly the same as oDesk but with a name change. Elance seems to be left to migrate into this new platform and both oDesk and Elance will in the next few months be merged.  You’ll find the same type of work protection but a different layout, work message system and different time-frames for payment reception and withdrawal. I enjoy it as well and I think it’s a great choice. The remaining features are kept, such as having your personal profile page, with picture, information, gallery and feedback.

It charges you 10% of your income and now it also offers different paid subscriptions. It allows you to apply to different categories of work. For withdrawing your money to a paypal account you’ll pay a fixed fee of 1$, no matter how much the withdrawal is.

Job proposal on ww.oDesk.com, with the fees charged shown while applying.

PeoplePerHour

peopleperhour.com is a new platform that is increasingly becoming popular. It’s based in UK so that explains its majority of UK clients although you can find many people posting and applying from other countries. Although it doesn’t look as professional as elance.com it’s definitively a trustworthy platform. Their messaging system works well and you get also a personal profile page. There are hourly jobs and fixed price jobs. It also allows you to create a type of “store front” where you can sell general services name “Hourlies”. This is also good and can drive a big amount of work. It’s a mixture of normal freelancing platforms and service package platforms such as fiverr.com

peopleperhour.com has the most curious fee structure of all websites. Up to the first 175£ (equivalent to 210€ and 280$) you make you’ll get charged 15% of that value. After that initial value you’ll only be charged 3.5%. Additionally, if you’re in Britain or US you get free direct wire transfers to your bank, but if you’re not you’ll pay fees and for Paypal you’ll be charged 1.9%.

Freelancer

Job category search on http://www.freelancer.com

freelancer.com is one of the oldest platforms and boasts the biggest user base. I personally started through them and in the beginning I used it quite often although nowadays I don’t get to see any action there. It has the same options as other platforms besides the hourly payment protection. You can get milestones funded before delivering work so to protect yourself, you can set-up a portfolio and your own profile and you get to bid in numerous projects for free. In their paid subscription you get many kinds of rewards. It also has a special ranking system that automatically places your bid in better position relatively to others based on your feedback, accomplished works in that specific category or in case you pay for it.

I think that it’s not as organised as elance.com or odesk.com but as I said I started there and some of my serious work in the beginning came through a client I met there.

Their paid subscriptions from Standard offer you reduced fees as well.

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Fees structure

Some examples so you can wrap your head around what their fees mean. In peopleperhour; imagine you billed 700$ in a month and withdrew that money to your paypal.com account. You would pay in fees 42$ (first 280$ at 15%) + 14,7$ (remaining 420$ at 3,5%) + 12,3$ (Paypal transfer fee from the remaining value), totalling 69$. Take into account that the difference between 3,5% and 15% will be reimbursed to your PPH wallet by the end of the month, it’s not immediate, but you’ll end up with 631$ in your paypal.com account.

For oDesk.com with the same value of jobs you would pay 71$ ( 10% oD fees plus 1$ for withdrawal), which earns you 629$.

In elance.com you would pay 61,25$, so you make 638,75$.

In freelancer.com you get 10% fees taken from your income, but if you happen to signup for their more expensive subscriptions, Standard for instance, you get charged only 5% although you have to pay 40€ monthly.

So in freelancer.com imagine that you have this subscription and you make the same 700$.

You’ll be making 620,5$ (5% which amounts to 35$ more the subscription 44,5$, totalling 79,5$)

On the other hand, with this same subscription if you’re making around 1.500$ per month, that would translate into 1380$, while on PPH it would amount to 1388$ (42 + 42,7 + 26,9 = 111,6$), on elance.com 1368$ (8,75%) and on oDesk.com 1350$ (10%).

Feedback history on http://www.odesk.com

So what happens is that the more professional looking companies, and from which I derive most of my income, are actually those who “punish” higher incomes. I believe they should fix this soon.

It’s about time that a platform with lower fees comes around, just helping handling escrow payments and providing feedback systems, without any of the remaining features as of today it’s quite easy to use free cloud storage and e-mail to communicate.

Besides these platforms you have other options, like guru.com, fiverr.com and new freelancing platforms that aim to a particular language/geography . These are the main ones for me and if you know any others feel free to comment and we will add them to this post!

If you have questions regarding this kind of freelancing ask us we will surely include it in the following posts!

Next time we’ll cover the basics of a good profile and how to write a job proposal with real examples that actually worked, and also how you can build a great portfolio online for free using WordPress.com, until then, safe travels.

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Useful links:

• If you want to read about Upwork and the merging of Elance with Odesk check it out here: Upwork
• You can check Elance’s annual impact repot here it tells you a bit about how online freelancing is changing the marketplace.
• Peopleperhour has a nice blog with many insights, tips and other articles that can help you, check it here.
• And Upwork (former oDesk) also has their own blog and resources page, where you can also find interesting information, click here to view it.

Now named Upwork, previously oDesk keeps the same structure for their Job feed.

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The talk with Yulia Pavlova – vibrant photographer based in Australia

“You don’t have to be rich to see the world. You can find beauty in simple everyday things.”

Name: Yulia Pavlova
Age: 28
Nationality: Russian
Current Location: Melbourne, Australia
Employment: Yulia Pavlova Photography (photography business)

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Yulia is a professional photographer based in Melbourne, Australia. She was born in Russia, in Murmansk, the largest city above the Arctic Circle, which is famous for an unique natural phenomenon – the Northern Lights.  She got her Public Relations degree from the oldest university in Russia – Saint-Petersburg State university  – and then engaged herself in the art of photography.

Staygypsy: How long have you been living abroad?
Yulia: I’ve moved to Australia from Russia 5 years ago.

Staygypsy: What are you doing for a living?
Yulia: I am running a small photography business specialising in newborn, family and wedding photography.

Staygypsy: What advices can you give to people willing to relocate?
Yulia: It’s one thing to have a great holiday in a new place but to live there, day after day, is a completely different reality and you might face many challenges such as searching for a job, finding new friends, learning the language. Be prepared that it takes time to adapt to a new culture and lifestyle.

Staygypsy: What are the best ways to socialise with locals?
Yulia: Take a class in something you’re passionate about: cooking, language, photography. You will meet people there who have similar interests as you; it will be easier since you already have something in common.

Courtesy of ©Yulia Pavlova Photography ( http://www.yuliapavlova.com.au/ )

Staygypsy: What are the things you like most of all in your current location?
Yulia: Australia’s nature and wildlife, friendly people, good food and coffee.

Staygypsy: What are the things you miss most about your home country?
Yulia: My family and friends and… Kefir (a kind of sour yoghurt widely consumed in Russia).

Staygypsy: What are the main things you have learnt while travelling?
Yulia: You don’t  have to be rich to see the world. You can find beauty in simple everyday things. 

Staygypsy: How is it to setup a business in Australia?
Yulia: It’s very easy to register a company online in Australia. This website has all information about setting up a business, http://www.business.gov.au , you can use it to guide you through.

Staygypsy:  Were there any difficulties or obstacles in setting up your own business?
Yulia: For running a business in a new country you need to know the local market, people and laws. Running a photography business in Australia is very different from one in Russia: each country has its own specific ways of working.

Courtesy of ©Yulia Pavlova Photography ( http://www.yuliapavlova.com.au/ )

Staygypsy: What is the difference in running your own business and working for others?
Yulia: Running your own business has advantages and disadvantages. For example, you have flexible working hours but you have financial risks. You are the boss and the employee.  You are literally everything and that makes it so interesting.

Staygypsy: How did you find your first clients?
Yulia: I built a portfolio taking photos of friends and then they spread the word to their friends.

Staygypsy: What is your advice on how to make clients “permanent clients”?
Yulia: Do a great job!

Staygypsy: How are you spreading the word about your photo service on the daily basis?
Yulia: Word of mouth and social media, such as Facebook. I also have my website, which I keep updated.

Courtesy of ©Yulia Pavlova Photography ( http://www.yuliapavlova.com.au/ )

Staygypsy: Did you meet any substantial differences between the working culture of your home country and your new location?
Yulia: Australia is a very multicultural country and it’s usual to have employees of different nationalities and backgrounds in one company. It is very diverse here! Also Australians start the day early and finish at around 5:30 pm. In Russia the working day starts at 9:00 am and doesn’t finish earlier than 6:00 pm. People also have the habit of working during late hours, especially in big cities such as Moscow and Saint-Petersburg.

Staygypsy: What would you like to be doing in 5 years, professionally speaking?
Yulia: I still see myself working in photography. It is my passion!

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5 things about Melbourne

SG: The best parts of the city?
Yulia: Try out CBD for Melbourne laneways, galleries and restaurants. Fitzroy for hipster cafes and vintage shops. St. Kilda for the beach.

SG: Your favourite restaurants?
Yulia: There are plenty of good options, but I would highlight  Nieuw Amsterdam, Le Bon Ton, Mamasita and Squires Loft.

SG: Your favourite local food?
Yulia: Oysters, macadamia nuts, hamburger with beetroot and Pavlova dessert (Australian dessert with a meringue base, topped with fresh cream and fruit.).

SG: Things worth doing?
Yulia: Driving along the Great Ocean Road, having a glass of wine in the Yarra Valley, taking a stroll through  Melbourne’s laneways!

SG: Local words worth knowing?
Yulia: G’day mate! Let’s have a Barbie in the arvo (Hello friend, let’s have a BBQ). No worries!

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Check Yulia’s works:

Link to website: www.yuliapavlova.com.au
Link to online platform: https://www.facebook.com/YuliaPavlovaPhotography

Kathmandu postcards

Bhaktapur panoramic view from Nyatapola Temple top

View of Blue Mountain Homestay terrace

Buddhist sculptures in Monkey temple

Small stupas and decoration in Monkey Temple

Holy stupa top in Monkey Temple

View over Kathmandu Valley from Monkey Temple

Anna Portrait

Anna and 4 Nepalese students we met on our way down from Monkey Temple

A Nepalese girl jumping with a rope in Kathmandu

Vegetarian burger is a typical dish in menus of Kathmandu’s cafes

Street stall selling Nepalise “traditional” parafernalia

Hindu imagery in a small shrine in Thamel, touristic center of Kathmandu

Street on the way to Thamel

Street celebrations during the night on the North of Thamel

Street art in a street of Thamel

Hindu Statue detail

View of OR2k middle-east restaurant in Kathmandu

Two traditional Newari food sets

Kids in Kathmandu’s Durbar Square

Kid running to pigeons in Kathmandu’s Durbar Square

Thukpa (noodle soup) and Mo Mo

Buddha’s eyes stupa in Monkey Temple

Pigeons flying on Swayambhunath, Monkey Temple

Golden Buddha in Monkey temple

Buddha’s eyes stupa in Monkey Temple

Small stupas and decoration in Monkey Temple

Stupas and nepali decoration on Monkey Temple

Buddha’s eyes stupa in Monkey Temple

Monkey mother and child overlooking Kathmandu

Kids playing in a pateo in Thamel with a Stupa behind them

Buddhist sculptures in Monkey temple

Statue in Kathmandu’s Durbar Square

Secret Garden view, Thamel

View of Kathmandu’s iconic Durbar Square with people enjoying a sunny day

Kathmandu’s Durbar square during a rainy day

Kathmandu’s Durbar square market

View from Blue Mountain Homestay, Kathmandu

Candles inside little buddhist temple, in Monkey Temple

Nepalese decoration flags on the way down from Monkey Temple, Kathmandu, Nepal

View of Blue Mountain Homestay 1st floor balcony

Bhaktapur sunset

Bhaktapur man on the street

Bhaktapur panoramic view from Nyatapola Temple top

Bhaktapur Durbar Square

Kathmandu – the city of yellow and red

Words by Anna Lebedeva | May 3

Thavel to Kathmandu | Nepal

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A small tribute to a country we love

The idea for this blog came to us while we were travelling in Nepal. We deeply fell in love with this beautiful country, with its friendly  people and breathtaking landscapes. We started thinking of sharing with others the possibilities of working remotely in such welcoming places as Nepal.

The first post would be about Kathmandu and how to organize the life and work in the city. Just after two days of leaving Nepal, this exceptional country suffered heavy earthquakes, which lead to the partial destruction of the city, leaving many people homeless. We still want to tell about Kathmandu because we are sure that when these brave people overcome the tragedy that hit them it will once again become a bustling, chaotic and very welcoming city to visit.

If you want to help Nepalese people, you can donate to some of the following institution that are in the field struggling to reconstruct the affected areas of the country:

• International Medical Corp
• International Red Cross
• Doctors without borders

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Kathmandu – the city of yellow and red

Nepalese decorative flags on the way down from Monkey Temple

Are you fond of strolling backstreets, know how to find your way among different types of vehicles and you enjoy bargaining? Then Kathmandu is definitely your place. The city, more precisely its touristic center Thamel, will drag you into its own busy flow of tuk-tuks, stalls with street food or handcrafts, cafes from simple local ones to completely westernized, hundreds of motorbikes honking their way to prevent accidents and thousands of interesting faces passing by.

Jump to: How to get, Visa, Accommodation, Where to work, Food, People, Currency

The best time to visit: September to November and April to May
Climate: sub – tropical
Guest house: 10-20 $
Beer: 3 $
Coffee: 0,6 $
Typical Nepalese dish: 1-3 $

If you want to feel like a local, you should let the city absorb you into its own way of living.

Maybe to spend here a month or more will be too much, but 1 week will definitely be worth it as the city has many things to offer: Hindu and Buddhist temples, variety of trekking routes, old cities of Kathmandu valley, good variety of restaurants and nice places to work.

View Kathmandu’s photogallery

Kathmandu’s Durbar square market

TRAVEl – HOW TO GET

If you are not coming by land from India or China, then the Tridhuvan international Kathmandu airport will be your port of entry.  The airport is located 6 km from Kathmandu, in the east side, what makes for quite an easy ride to the city center. On average the taxi ride will cost you from 7$ to 10$.

We flew to Kathmandu from Phnom Penh with AirAsia (very good quality for low-cost), but instead of buying a direct ticket, we purchased one ticket Phnom Penh -> Kuala-Lumpur and another Kuala-Lumpur -> Kathmandu. We don’t know why, but the flights this way saved us around 50$ on each one of us, making in total 500$ for both of us with 20kg checked luggage besides carry-on.

From many places in South-East Asia you have to fly through Kuala-Lumpur so you might take advantage of Malaysia’s free-visa policy for most nationalities (http://www.malaysia.org.au/travel6.html) and take a few days here.

Monkey temple

VISA TO NEPAL

Most nationalities can make a visa on arrival (check requirements here) without any pre-arrangement. Multiple entry visa for 15 days will cost you 15$, for 30 days – 40$ and for 90 days – 100$.  If you decide to stay longer you can always apply for visa extension (for up to 150 days max a year).

Indian nationals do not require any visa to enter Nepal and a few South Asian countries such as Bangladesh, Bhutan, Maldives, Pakistan and Shri Lanka are granted a free 30-days entry visa.

Keep in mind that credit cards, Nepali and Indian currencies are not accepted to pay the visa fee at Kathmandu airport. Although there are ATMs, from which you can withdraw dollars and they accept other currencies to pay (check here).

ACCOMMODATION IN KATHMANDU

This is the part we felt was more lacking in Kathmandu, although we were lucky enough to stumble upon an excellent guest house  – Blue Mountain Homestay.  We ended up paying 12$ per night for two persons with breakfast included. The bathroom was not en-suite, but the room was big, pleasant and bathroom has been just outside the door and served max 3 rooms per floor. Besides that you had an access to the beautiful balcony and small roof terrace garden, with comfortable table and chairs. The only downside of the place was slow Internet. Despite not being exactly in the very touristic center of Kathmandu (Thamel) it was a very short walk of 5 minutes and compared to other options right in Thamel the price was very fair.

Blue Mountain Homestay

We did spend a few nights in Thamel, touristic center of Kathmandu, in three other places, all located in the very center and the prices were about the same: 10 and 11 $ with en-suite bathroom included and 8$ with common bathroom. If your budget is higher and you can spend from 15$ up you will be able to find a decent cozy place for a long stay in Kathmandu. Besides that if you are planning on staying for a longer period of time, you can easily negotiate the rates. All our bookings were made through www.agoda.com and you could find other options such Homestay with local families or nice whole apartments through www.airbnb.com. The prices should be around  300$ a month for a cozy place  in a good location of Kathmandu area.

We personally recommend instead of staying in Kathmandu center like we did, to stay in the “cultural gem” of Kathmandu Valley, Bhaktapur. Because no cars are allowed in the city-center. The air is much cleaner and the city itself, thanks to its preserved ancient buildings, feels much more authentic. You might have to pay 15$ for a weekly pass to the old city center.

WHERE TO WORK ONLINE IN KATHMANDU

Depending on your Internet speed requirements your options will vary. If like us, you sometimes need to download and upload very large files, you might be restricted to more up-scale places. One where we did work regularly was Himalayan Java, located in Kathmandu center, a Nepalese coffee chain, where the average upload speed through FTP was 40 to 150 kbps depending on the amount of people sitting there. It’s a more expensive kind of cafe, but it’s very pleasant and has some nice sandwiches. This place is very popular among expats and tourists.

If you want to keep the bill low you can also just hop for an Americano and eat somewhere else. In case you just need Internet for regular e-mail, upload of small files, you probably can work from any guest house or coffee place around Kathmandu. In the “Freakstreet”, near Kathmandu’s Durbar Square, you can also find some trendy places with  “high-speed” internet.

Other than that it’s becoming quite ubiquitous, so besides small villages you should get access to the internet and you can always buy a cheap SIM card that will allow you to connect.

NEPALESE FOOD

Nepali cuisine is very simple and is based mainly on the neighbouring countries’ gastronomy (Indian, Tibetan and Chinese). The typical Nepali dishes are made of dal (rice) accompanied by mixed of vegetables, meat and curries. The most common course are Dal Baht (soya beans, curry, steamed rice with meat options available),  Mo Mo (filled dumplings), Thukpa (noodle soup) and Chowmein (fried noodles), which like Mo Mo can be with veg, buff and chicken. Indian yogurt-based drink Lassi is popular to go with meals, but you can always find a Nepalese beer such as Everest, Himalaya and Ghorka.

Traditional Newari set

Besides this you will easily find western cuisine in Kathmandu, American hamburgers and sushi. The usual price range for a dish goes from 0,6 $ to 7$ (really depends where you eat and what you choose). Don’t be afraid of trying the local looking restaurants because some of the best meals we had were in places that don’t look western at all. We can easily recommend for budget travelers such places as Momo star (all types of dishes) and Western Tandoori (specifically Indian food). If you are ready to spend a bit more money, try one of our favorite places are Utza restaurant (the oldest Tibetan restaurant in the city) and Or2k (Middle East vegetarian cuisine). Both with pleasant rooftop terraces and located in the heart of Kathmandu.

One liter bottle of water will cost you 0,25$ in shops, a tea cup in a local place will be about the same price and coffee around 0,60$. A 750 ml beer bottle will cost you from 3 to 4 $ in a cafe/restaurant. The full continental breakfast with tea/coffee is around 3$.

NEPALESE PEOPLE

We proudly name Nepali people as “free riders”. They are very friendly and free by their nature. Maybe it has something to do with the fact that they were never colonized or conquered by any nation. You can feel true freedom, dignity, peace and self conscience in their eyes. They are never in a hurry and don’t like to be stressed.

A Nepalese girl jumping with a rope in Kathmandu

Take the time and start a conversation with someone  that strikes you as interesting. The majority of Nepalis are Hindus, what makes them follow life’s natural flow. They are deeply religious and firmly follow their ancient traditions.

CURRENCY IN NEPAL

The local currency is Nepalese rupee, normally abbreviated as NPR or Rs. One dollar is worth around 98 NRP. In contrast to countries such as Thailand and Cambodia dollars are not that much used when paying, although some places will accept them. Keep in mind that withdrawing money from an ATM for certain card holders will hold an extra 400 NPR charge (besides your usual bank fees). While there are plenty of ATMs in Kathmandu open 24 hours, many places don’t accept cards.

View Katmandu gallery

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5 things to do in Kathmandu

• Visit each of Katmandu’s Valley Durbar Squares, located in Kathmandu, Patan and Bhaktapur old cities
• Catch the sunrise with hundreds of Buddhist and Hindus pilgrims at Monkey temple and  enjoy the best view of Kathmandu valley
• Get spiritual inspiration and turn the prayer wheels at the largest stupa in Nepal – Boudhanath Stupa
• Stroll around Thamel and have a traditional meal in a rooftop restaurant
• Take a peek at the sacred Hindu cremation ritual at Pashupatinath templethe Pashupatinath temple complex

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useful links to check:

www.welcomenepal.com
www.tripadvisor.com
www.airbnb.com
www.agoda.com