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When travel restrictions will be lifted.

The New Normal: Connectivity Bubbles

An increasing number of countries see a light in the end of this dark tunnel of the last months. With the gradual control (at least partially) of the Covid19 pandemic by few nations, governments start to announce measures for when travel restrictions will be lifted.

This article is the refined version of a Linkedin post I wrote that made repercussion there. The post itself came after conversations with other entrepreneurs, colleagues from my former career at the headquarters of the world’s greatest airline, as well as acquaintances in the political/public life.

We came to an interesting scenario for the next 2 years about the international travel market.

International movement will come back.

However, not in the same way as before, but in the form of connectivity bubbles.

Countries in more advanced stages of controlling the epidemic (like Poland, where I live) will reopen gradually to others that achieved the same conditions.

What is “control” of the pandemic?

By controlling the pandemic we understand not only a reduced number of victims, but also a reduced reproductive rate. This rate is also known as R0, if no measures are taken, or Re in a controlled scenario. In epidemiology, R0 is understood as the expected number of new cases directly generated by one contaminated person. Therefore, if in each infectious individual transmit the disease to other 2, the R0 in this place is 2. This reproductive rate will vary across regions depending on factors like demographic concentration, social distancing or isolation of suspected patients.

There are plenty of material about epidemiology. If you are interested, it is worth to check them for a deeper knowledge since this is not my area, which is International Travel. Now, back to our previously mentioned concept of connectivity bubbles between countries that achieved a desirable level of virus control.

Where are the possible bubbles?

Some of those bubbles, where we expect that people movement will gradually resume by mid 2020 are:

Australia <-> New Zealand. The Australian prime-minister Scott Morrison in April gave signals during a press conference of a possible reconnection with New Zealand. His counter-part in New Zealand, Jacinta Arden, made similar statements. Thoughts go as far as including some pacific nations in this bubble, since few were not much affected by Covid19.

Australia and New Zealand corridor — *Both the prime-minister of Australia and New Zealand already outlined the possibility of a travel-corridor between them.*

V4 (Czech Republic <-> Hungary <-> Poland <-> Slovakia). The group of Visegrad, also known as V4, had a remarkably quick response to the pandemic in its initial phase. Poland and Slovakia closed their borders before having a single fatal victim. Nowadays, all of them are among the least affected countries in Europe. Some members are discussing to reopen their land borders to each other already by July.

Poland, Czech, Slovakia and Hungary compared to Sweden regarding Coronavirus — *Comparison between V4 countries (Poland, Czech, Slovakia and Hungary) and Sweden regarding Coronavirus victims. Souce: Ourworldindata.com*

Greece <-> Cyprus <-> Israel. Greece is among the countries that most successfully reduced the speed of the Coronavirus epidemic in Europe. Unfortunately, they are also among the most affected economically, given the fact tourism is responsible to near 25% of their total GDP. Similar situation happens in Cyprus. To relief this burden, both nations plus Israel are negotiating a travel-corridor. This would ease the crisis in the tourism sector by allowing movement between those countries.

The losing side

On the other hand, countries like Mexico and Brazil will be for a long time barred from most of the international travel market, due to numbers still quickly rising. In fact, harsher restrictions are implemented in the US-Mexican border. Meanwhile the government of Florida Ron DeSantis recently submitted plans to the American president restrict travel from Brazil.

Personal digression: this would mean thousands of expatriates, like me, restricted from visiting our families at least until 2021.

In Europe, the always-trendy Balearic islands are considering imposing a travel ban for UK visitors for the whole summer. As the tourist minister Iago Negueruela explained to local media:

There are countries like the United Kingdom that have taken too long to adopt containment measures and that also puts us in a different situation with respect to them.

Balearic Islands to ban UK travelers — The balearic islands may impose a summer-long ban for UK travelers.
Photo: Cala Macarella, Minorca.

From a macro point of view, this should be (relatively) good news for the tourism industry in some places. Examples like Colombia, which will partially absorb the demand previously belonging to Mexico and Brazil, or Greece, able to boast the badge of a safe destination for the whole planet.

Thoughts?

Author: Levi Borba, founder of Colligere Expat Consultancy, former RM specialist of the world´s greatest airline, co-founder of Nearby Airport Hostel Warsaw. Author of the books Moving Out, Living Abroad and Keeping Your Sanity and Budget Travelers, Digital Nomads & Expats: The Ultimate Guide

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Cultural Shock

Quiz – Which country better suits your goals?

We made a quick (but well-based by the experience of our battle-tested consultants) a quiz to help you discover which country better suits your goals, both professionally and personally. Based on specific questions and a method approach, you are about to identify the part of the world where your dreams are closer to be achieved. If you want to know more about Expat life, check our FAQ.

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Business

5 reasons to save our local businesses NOW

I though a lot before writing this article. Maybe it was too off-topic. However, it goes completely in line with what we do at Colligere. To help this specific part of the population will trigger the recover to everyone else. So here i list 5 reasons to save our local businesses NOW. Not after the Coronavirus epidemic crisis or just when things got better, but now.

“In order to progress, modern society should be treating ruined entrepreneurs in the same way we honor dead soldiers, perhaps not with as much honor, but using exactly the same logic . For there is no such thing as a failed soldier, dead or alive —likewise, there is no such thing as a failed entrepreneur”
Nassim Nicholas Taleb, Antifragile: Things That Gain From Disorder

5 reasons to save our local businesses NOW

1 – All sorts of business are in trouble. But local, small business are the most fragile.

The thing that separates a company from bankruptcy can be resumed in one expression: Cash flow.

If a firm don’t have cash flow and the bank account goes dry, they cannot pay their obligations and suppliers can execute them. This process has some variations between countries but the basic steps are similar in the western world.

Why big corporations have a smaller risk during this crisis?

Even though their cash flow also drops or even stops during a crisis, huge companies have plenty of bank credit lines available. So when things go bad, it is easy for them to access money and keep running their operations.

Small companies don’t have such easy access to credit, or if they have, it is just too expensive.

There are exceptions (small companies with big credit lines and corporations without), but as a rule of thumb, this difficult access to money makes small business much more fragile

2 – The lion’s share of governmental help will go to massive corporations, not to small entrepreneurs.

Big firms can afford entire teams of lawyers and accountants to prepare documentations and cases with the sole target of accessing relief funds from governments.

Meanwhile, in small business, sometimes this is done by the owner or some non-specialized employee. They don’t have the same knowledge (or contacts) of a famous law firm, so they eventually end with the breadcrumbs of all those billions that governments, everywhere, are investing to save companies and jobs.

3 – We must avoid a world like the one of the movie Demolition Man

In 1993, Sylvester Stallone and Wesley Snipes starred a classic movie where they confronted each other in a high-tech future. There, the fast-food chain Taco Bell took over all other restaurants. As the female character starred by Sandra Bullock explains to Stallone in a classic scene, now all restaurants are Taco Bell.

Before I wrote about big corporations having easier access to credit and government money to survive during the crisis. Many of those gigantic companies can use the governmental money (which is your money) to later take over the small businesses that didn’t have the same privilege. Something similar already happened in 2008. Bigger market concentration, less quality of services for you.

4 – More meaningful jobs

I write this item as someone that worked both in multinational corporations and in local businesses.

When you work in a smaller firm, the effects of your efforts are way more visible. You see it advancing, people around talk to you about it and ask questions that you know how to answer.

The same cannot be said in most corporations, if you get enclosed in a cubicle doing very specialized tasks, with an effect in the final product very difficult to distinguish.

It is much easier to be proud of your work when you see your contributions making the difference. You don’t see yourself only as another gear in the machine.

5 – Local Business more often procure their supplies in the local community

Let´s think about restaurants and food-chains.

Mcdonalds, Burger King and alikes buy what they need using large and long-term contracts, generally made with other colossal corporations (like when they buy meat from food-industry behemoths like Marfrig or JBS).

Meanwhile, the local restaurant will procure fresh vegetables in the nearby market, and buy meat with the local butcher. So if this small restaurant goes bankrupt, soon the butcher, the vegetable stand or the laundry that washes their table cloths will all be in trouble.

By supporting the local restaurant instead of the chain restaurant, the local hotel instead of the chain hotel, etc. you are actually supporting your entire environment to cross this difficult moment together.

Just like with the supplies, local firms let a good part of their profits in the neighbourhood.

When you stay in a chain hotel like Ibis or Marriot, a small part of what you pay (aprox. 4%) is profit for the company itself and it’s shareholders. Part of this profit is remitted to some billionaire in his yatch at Seychelles (or some other paradisiac island).

When you reserve an independent hotel, the profit goes to a retired couple, so they can buy a new car in the local dealer. Money stays in the neighbourhood.

Ok, you gave me 5 reasons to save our local businesses now.

So how can we help local business to overcome the Coronavirus Crisis?

Some suggestions are:

1 – Order delivery food from your local restaurant.

2 – Instead of Starbucks, goes to your local coffee-shop. Here in Warsaw, after discovering a small and charming local cafe called Cafe Charlie, I stopped visiting chains like Costa Cafe. It tastes better, and it feels better.

3 – Book a local hotel or hostel when travelling. More important: Book direct with them instead of using websites like Booking.com. Those sites take 15% of the reservation for them and have some very questionable practices against small hotels.

4 – Do good reviews of the local places that you enjoy! In Google, Yelp, or Tripadvisor. As a Hostel owner, i lack words to explain how a good review makes my day better.

5 – Spread the word, share this article and soon we leave that behind. It will pass.

optimism during crisis — *It will pass.*

Author: Levi Borba, founder of Colligere Expat Consultancy, former RM specialist for the world´s greatest airline, co-founder of Nearby Airport Hostel Warsaw and author of the book Moving Out, Living Abroad and Keeping Your Sanity.

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Skills

5 ways to develop life-changing skills during your quarantine

At this point, I bet you know most of the things about the virus, like how to protect yourself with FFP2 or N95 masks, wash your hands or keep a safe distance. You are also aware of every kind of discovery about how the Coronavirus can be treated or how important is to ask the local immigration to extend your Visa if you got stranded. So I will not spend time with that. Rather, I want to list here 5 ways to develop life-changing skills during your quarantine.

FFP 2 mask — FFP2 Mask, similar to the N95 mask, used for protection against particles and harmful agents.

However, if there is one thing I have some experience, is to be in the middle of a crisis.

I have this strange ability to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.

I got stranded in Qatar once. Likewise, my wife and me found ourselves in Yerevan during the 2018 Armenian Revolution. And then there are all the civil unrests I witnessed in Argentina, Brazil, Chile and Lebanon.

Still, all those finished in few days or weeks. As much as I saw the revolution explode in Armenia, I also saw them celebrate with fireworks when it finished. Meanwhile, the pandemic crisis we are experiencing now is already completing one month.

We do our part by staying at home and flattening the curve to avoid hospitals to get overloaded. In other words: Quarantine.

Social Distancing banner — It is about protecting the most fragile!

Here is for you the list of 5 ways to develop life-changing skills during your quarantine:

Practice Deep Work.

As Much as we are tempted to compulsively watch the news and scroll our newsfeed, this is a trap. Avoid living in the shallows of the Internet (grabbing the term coined by the author Nicholas Carr in his book with the same name). The time we spend at home is a great opportunity to train the capacity of reaching the maximum cognitive ability of our brains.

Great creators and entrepreneurs voluntarily “quarantine” themselves every year to achieve that. Bill Gates, for example, two times per year, isolate himself just to read and think. We call it Deep Work (another author-coined expression, this time by Cal Newport). In short, it consists of long hours disconnected, concentrating in a single task that demands a lot of our brain-power. It will boost your cognitive capacity to whole new levels.

Cover of the book - Deep Work Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World — Book: Deep Work Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World

Learn Speed Reading

This is one of those meta skills: Abilities that help you acquire another abilities. With time, they exponentially increase your value. Since I learned speed reading, the number of books I read increased from 12 in 2018, to 36 in 2019. Even that being the year I started my new business and got married, two very time-consuming things.

With the correct methods, not only your reading speed will increase but also your content retention. It is not something that will take you a lot of time to learn, but you will need to practice it. The book from Justin Hammond, Speed Reading: How to Double (or Triple) Your Reading Speed in Just 1 Hour!, is a good start.

Book Speed Reading from Justin Hammon — Written by Justin Hammond

Engage in Dynamic Language Learning

If you ever went to a language school, you probably remember those endless classes of grammar that you forgot everything after 2 hours. This is why I am an enthusiast of dynamic language learning. This means acquiring a new idiom by practice, without spending time with grammar and rules. Just think about you and your native idiom: How did you learn to speak it? With your parents and little friends talking to you or having grammar lessons when you were 3 years old?

I achieved conversational level in one of the most difficult languages of Europe (Polish) entirely by this method, using a website called Lingq. Now I am learning Russian there. Give it a try!

4 – Binge in Coursera (or similar websites).

Imagine you went on a machine, back to the century XV, when universities and knowledge were accessible only to very few people. There, you told to one of those students from the Middle Ages that nowadays, the best universities of the planet give access to some of their best content for free, to anyone, anywhere. He would find you absolutely insane to not grab this opportunity.

Coursera give access to an entire range of courses in different fields, so there will be plenty of useful material for you there. I completed the Game Theory course provided by the University of Stanford and was a ton of mind-sharpening material.

Free courses from the best universities of the planet.

5 – Read, wait and look to the sky.

If you paid attention to the points 1 and 2, you saw I recommended some books. There are plenty of good reads waiting for you (actually, there is a social network called Goodreads where people can share their reading lists and reviews. You can find me there). There you can find many other books with additional ways to develop life-changing skills during your quarantine

Last, but not least:

Wait.

Everyone I know is struggling, be it economically, physically, or both. But it is going to pass.

And just like when the revolution in Armenia finished, there will be fireworks.

When it happens, do not forget to look to the sky and remind the experience you just went through.

Fireworks in the night — It is all going to pass.

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Travelling

Save money researching low-cost flights in the RIGHT WAY!

The way you search can SIGNIFICANTLY change the price you see for exactly the same flights. If you want to know how to fly cheaper with low-cost airlines, keep reading.

There is one thing that is a common knowledge for any traveller: Google Flights and other aggregators (like Skyscanner, Kayak, etc) saves us a lot of time. Those websites compare the prices of dozens, sometimes hundreds of airlines in a matter of seconds.

However people would be surprised with what they don´t do (at least not very efficiently) and the opportunities to save considerable money they waste. Especially when flying with low-cost airlines.

A good part of the low-cost carriers, (like RyanAir, Wizzair, EasyJet, etc) operates in a system called “point-to-point” network, differently than legacy carriers (those that are not low cost) like Lufthansa, Emirates, British Airways and many others that operate in a Hub and spoke network. That means that low-cost comapnies in general sell a ticket to fly from a city to another without any stop in between, while legacy (or national) carriers have stops called hubs (like Lufthansa have in Frankfurt or Emirates in Dubai).

How that can help you save money and why is this related to Google Flights and other aggregators?

The answer is in how you look for a ticket price in the internet. Most people will simply search for the price of the tickets from the place where they are departing to where they are arriving.

Therefore, if you are planning to travel from Warsaw to New York, you can enter in Kayak or Google Flights and look for flights departing from WAW airport to JFK (for example). It will show to you a lot of options, and currently a round trip between those two cities would cost around 430 euros the cheapest option, with one or two stops in the way.

However, right now, it is possible to go from Warsaw to JFK for 285 euros. But Google Flights and most agreggators will not show me that.

Why?

The answer is simple: Those websites don’t work very well with low-cost airlines.

In the case mentioned above, the cheapest way would be to fly to Norway with two of the low-cost carriers that do the route from Warsaw to Oslo. From them take another low-cost flight to New York.

Google will not show you that because those airlines work in a point to point system, as I mentioned above, remember? They are not optimized to sell flights with a stop in the way. But if yourself create this stop by purchasing two separate tickets, you can find much better prices.

The best way to find those low-cost opportunities is to look for flights separately. When I want to travel from Poland to Brazil to visit my family, I don’t look for flights departing only from Warsaw, but also from Barcelona, Milan, London, Frankfurt, etc. So if there is a very inexpensive flight departing from one of those airports, I can also look for a low-cost flight from Warsaw to those cities and from there to Brazil. In this way, you will perform a low-cost hack to fly cheaper with low-cost airlines that even Google couldn’t find!

Just be aware that flying with low-cost carriers brings its own challenges, like the need to pay even for a cup of tea or coffee. But for those cost-savvy, it is a treasure.

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Cultural Shock

Cultural Shock and questions for expats & digital nomads.

(Part of the book Moving Out, Living Abroad and Keeping Your Sanity, written by Levi Borba. Levi is also a consultant and founder of Colligere Expat Consultancy).

The majority of the first questions when moving out are about living costs, language, bureaucracy, etc. For this reason, many groups of foreigners at social media will already have a FAQ or index for questions like:

How long it takes to have my resident card?

What is the best health insurance?

Which cellphone company is better?

I will not reply those questions here. Not only because they differ from country to country, but also because it is straightforward to find those answers, since they are the things that everyone asks. The way to find those answers is the same explained previously: ask the locals in social media.

However, there is another group of questions, and those are barely asked. As a consequence of not answering them, so many expats experience frustration and regret. Those are the questions that Breno should have asked before going to Qatar. They are about the cultural shock.

The dutch psychologist Geert Hofstede^[1] organized a study of national cultures using group dimensions which should quantify core values of a society. Hofstede’s research examine national and organizational settings, tracing a general guideline about how different cultures would act in social and work environments. The findings of his study let us compare the cultural attitude of different countries, including the one we are living and the one we are moving to.

There are few fields that can cause cultural shock, and four of the most significant are^[2]:

1^st – The Rules. The approach to rules and regulations can be significantly different between certain nations. Germanic and Japanese cultures, in one side, value procedures, systems and control, focusing on getting things done how they were planned. At the other side, romance cultures like Iberians or Italians tend to give greater value to ad hoc problem-solving, relationship building and adaptation to circumstances. Now you can imagine how misunderstandings can appear when a Swiss border official questions a laid back Latin American student, or an Austrian client can be impatient in a Portuguese café because the waiter is talking too much.

2nd – The Time. This is one of the earliest sources of cultural shock. I experienced it profoundly. The different perceptions of time can make an inexperienced expat deeply frustrated and be a common source of friction. In Latin American cultures punctuality is not that important for social gatherings or informal occasions. An Anglophone that shows exactly as invited, for example, at 9PM for a party or at 8AM for the company breakfast, may find himself completely alone in the room and confused. In the same way, my wife was surprised that in Brazil would not be a problem to arrive to a doctor appointment five minutes late (because the doctor would just call my name ten minutes late).

To understand how society handles deadlines is useful to your professional life too. Contrary to some stereotypes, laid back nationalities like Greeks and Mexicans are among those that make more over-hours in the planet, while Germans are the ones doing less. Try to seek more information about how the people of your new country deal with time, how strict they are with deadlines and if the dentist will still see you if you are five minutes late. This analysis will be very useful to you sooner than you can imagine.

3^rd – The Humor. Some cultures, like the Irish or Latin Americans, have humor as a constant component of their behaviour, and jokes may surge even when things are not going well. Others, like the British, may use humor as a conversation starter, to break the ice or even to grant some loans from the US to save their economy (like princess Margaret done in 1965^[3]). At the other side, jokes at Swiss business meeting can backfire because they may see it as a waste of time. In Slavic countries, to laugh with people that didn’t get the joke can be understood as you are laughing at them. I cannot recount how many times people asked me in Poland why I was laughing for things like a baby throwing his cap on the floor (it was really funny).

4^th – The Communication. As the consultancy firm Expatica explained in their page: Differing communication styles can be a ticking time-bomb, especially in the workplace. Plenty of cultures prefer to engage in lengthy hypothetical discussions with few concrete conclusions; meetings with French colleagues, for instance, might lack structure or even an agenda altogether. Others prefer discussions with a clear and well-defined structure that allows participants to easily compartmentalize everything that was said. People who speak with a great deal of ambiguity or subtlety in their speech (the British are notorious here) may frustrate those that prefer clear and direct communication, though they may also impress their colleagues that have trouble working out complicated situations.

So, here we come to the question made some paragraphs ago: to do a proper research that goes beyond asking about internet providers and insurance plans, you must also know those cultural shock differences. Preferably before you arrive or as soon as you land in your new country. If you are already living abroad, it is still a very interesting exercise and you can discover a lot by doing it.

^[1] Research available at https://geerthofstede.com/culture-geert-hofstede-gert-jan-hofstede/6d-model-of-national-culture/

^[2] Other details about culture shock and differences can be found in this article: https://www.expatica.com/moving/integration/how-to-manage-culture-shock-108735/

^[3] You can see more details of this story at this link: https://www.mirror.co.uk/tv/tv-news/crown-true-story-behind-princess-20868858

When travel restrictions will be lifted.

The New Normal: Connectivity Bubbles

What is “control” of the pandemic?

Where are the possible bubbles?

The losing side

Quiz – Which country better suits your goals?

5 reasons to save our local businesses NOW

5 reasons to save our local businesses NOW

1 – All sorts of business are in trouble. But local, small business are the most fragile.

Why big corporations have a smaller risk during this crisis?

2 – The lion’s share of governmental help will go to massive corporations, not to small entrepreneurs.

3 – We must avoid a world like the one of the movie Demolition Man

4 – More meaningful jobs

5 – Local Business more often procure their supplies in the local community

Just like with the supplies, local firms let a good part of their profits in the neighbourhood.

Ok, you gave me 5 reasons to save our local businesses now.

So how can we help local business to overcome the Coronavirus Crisis?

5 ways to develop life-changing skills during your quarantine

Practice Deep Work.

Learn Speed Reading

Engage in Dynamic Language Learning

4 – Binge in Coursera (or similar websites).

5 – Read, wait and look to the sky.

Save money researching low-cost flights in the RIGHT WAY!

Cultural Shock and questions for expats & digital nomads.

(Part of the book Moving Out, Living Abroad and Keeping Your Sanity, written by Levi Borba. Levi is also a consultant and founder of Colligere Expat Consultancy).

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