You can find French books in some places, but you can find cheap Portuguese books virtually anywhere, but particularly so in Porto, close to where I live.
We call local/old/second hand bookshops “alfarrabistas” and they are very common around the country. Some have closed with the savage turistification that’s hit the country, but most are still around for now.
Do you have any favorite you feel like suggesting? I've been there several times but never noticed them and even my Portuguese partner wouldn't know where to find one after many years living abroad.
If you are moving there please make an effort to support the local economy and get involved with local politics and governance. The country is being flooded by techies and rich artists thinking that Lisbon is the new Berlin while ignoring completely that they are considerably damaging the local population’s quality of life.
I also use a trello board. I have one column for each year, plus a wishlist column with short/mid/long term goals and a separate column just for travels that I want to do. Once a task is completed I mark it with the green label. If I just don't care anymore about something or I "fail" the task, then I mark it in red.
I find this setup quite helpful for:
- breaking down huge goals (such as learning a new language)
- having short/mid/long term goals all available at a glance
- giving priority to stuff I'd otherwise keep procrastinating (I tend to procrastinate for weeks or months doing several things until I put everything in one checklist at the top of the current year column and power through them all in a short time)
- giving myself some perspective and appreciate all the things achieved in the past months/years. Things that were once just dreams or seemed very hard to achieve are now the normal day-to-day life and it's way too easy to undervalue them.
I use the board in a positive way, in the sense that I don't see deleting tasks or failing to achieve something as some kind of failure. I only celebrate the green "done" labels.
After finding this ~2-months old Medium post* strongly advocating for showing pricing upfront, I'm now curious to know why they changed their "philosophy" and if and in what way it affected their pricing.
Hey there. Good find in the blog post. I'll be dead honest here. I had rent to pay that month and bills to pay. We thought we were being bold by making that claim, but in reality, it killed our sales process. Leads come in in double digits, not in the dozens. It was a bad decision, and I own up to it 100%. I should probably make the blog post unlisted.
Thank you for your question. Let me know if you have any more questions.
Being Italian myself it makes me both angry and sad reading about what you experienced in your interviews.
Beside what many already mentioned (developing games is actually quite complex, so keep doing that and don't hide it!) I'd suggest you to take a look at developer jobs around Europe. I'm working as a developer in Berlin and I can tell you there are a lot of great opportunities here if you are willing to relocate. Feel free to get in touch if you need anything! Buona fortuna!
From my experience visiting Kruger earlier this year, the overcrowding problem is fixed by simply closing the gate after a certain quota is reached. I was there during a local holiday and they closed the gate at around 11am as enough people entered already by that time.
I'm not sure if I'm confusing what you mean with 'Safari' with something else, but entering the park and driving around to spot and see wildlife, is not that expensive. Entrance to Kruger is under 5euros for South Africans for instance, definitely not for the rich and privileged only.
You are right of course, a safari is not that expensive once you have traveled to the place. I myself was 3 weeks ago on a one-day trip from Johannesburg to Pilanesberg. The cost was USD 250 for a trip for two people, with pick-up from hotel, transport, entrance to park, game rides, lunch and drop back to hotel. Anyone who can afford to travel to Johannesburg from Europe, Asia or America can afford that.
The ride around the park is not that bad for nature (it's on roads built around the area, no-go outside vehicles) but if the number of visitors increases a lot, I can see the pressure definitely is a problem (more and more people want to come, so maybe the gate needs to be open for a few more people? And so on.)
I saw many of the impressive big animals there, elephants, giraffes, zebras, GNUs, etc, and to top it all, a leopard waited behind a bend on the road, and walked right next to our jeep so that we could just observe it. It was not bothered by our jeep at all. Even cell phone camera pictures are very good.
It was great to see it. But somehow I felt not comfortable about it. Why's that great animal not afraid of people that drive this ugly jeep right next to her hunting grounds?
In 5 days I found only one leopard, and it was fairly distant, I'm glad you could see one up close!
I understand the pressure factor you mention, but at the same time I don't think that making it an exclusive expensive experience only for a few is really a solution (as parent was hinting to). One possible solution that comes to mind is Machu Picchu: you want to go there? You need to buy a ticket months in advance.
About your last comment, on why are animals not afraid of us: I've been talking with a Park Guard, and he mentioned that people in cars are not seen as humans but as a big harmless object moving. When in a car we are just like other animals. Once you are out of the car the scenario completely changes as you are identified as human and animals either move away or charge you. It kind of all made sense once I took a walking tour in the park, and I could clearly see that animals were moving away as we were approaching, keeping a very large distance between them and us. Not sure what's the percentage of truth in this but it makes quite some sense.
Not sure what places you are referring to but I did a self-driven safari early this year in Kruger (South Africa) and even though it was definitely an expensive experience compared to the rest of my trip, it was well below that amount. These are approximate amounts, but I think that including the car rental, the daily entrance fee to the park and staying overnight, all together was around 50-60euros per day. Guided tours that span over multiple days tend to get quite expensive, I agree. And there's plenty of high-end accommodation and travel packages. But there are also ways to experiencing it without spending a fortune.
Can I ask you where? Also, in French of Portuguese? Moving to Portugal in 2020 and would love to know where to find books for cheap!