Jayvee Fernandez is a tech enthusiast and sitting TechNology Editor for The Philippine STAR.
He is also an EAN certified SCUBA Diver and underwater photographer based in Metro Manila, Philippines. His photos and videos have appeared in various international and local publications including Random House Germany, Discovery Channel Canada, and CNN.
Dr. Conaco documenting the nursery of clams at roughly 5 ft deep
So, you’ve decided you would like to travel the world and work as a travel blogger. Or at the very least, you’re toying with the idea. Heck, maybe you already are traveling the world and are just looking for more tips.
Here are five tips for turning traveling the world into your job:
Tip #1 – Have A Way To Quickly Send and Receive Money
Traveling from country to country means you must have a means to quickly send and receive money and to convert your money from one currency to another. This best way to do this will be to utilize the services of a money transfer business such as Remitly.com. You can either walk into the physical establishment of a money transfer business to use their service or you can utilize their services online or on an app if they have one.
Tip #2 – Don’t Neglect Other Ways To Make Money
Just because you work or want to work as a travel blogger does not mean that you should avoid other ways to make money. Traveling from country to country is not exactly inexpensive and you need to have a steady source of income.
In addition to your travel blog (from which you will likely make money through ad revenue and affiliate links), you can also put your skills to the test through freelancing (writing, graphic design, website design, social media manager, etc.) in order to make even more money on the side.
Tip #3 – Do Fun Stuff
People who visit your blog will always be more engaged and likely to turn into repeat readers if you do interesting stuff while you travel. Don’t just visit hotels and eat at restaurants. Actually do fun activities, like biking, hiking, swimming, camping, sailing, and so on.
Tip #4 – Get A Tourism Card
As was noted above, traveling isn’t cheap. It’s certainly one of the downsides to working as a travel blogger.
But one way you can mitigate this cost as much as possible will be to buy a tourism card, which is offered at most local tourism officers. It will give you free public transportation and discounts to restaurants, tours, and other attractions.
Tip #5 – Create Content That’s Useful To Readers
In addition to creating content that shows you on your adventures, you should also create content that is actually useful to readers. Examples of topics you can write that readers should find value in include, but are certainly not limited to:
Food/restaurant recommendations in specific cities
Tips for traveling on a budget
A list of the cheapest and most expensive places to travel
Activities to do at specific locations
Best places to go shopping in specific cities
Top reasons to travel
Tips on traveling safely
Tips on traveling with children
Working While Traveling The World
Working while traveling the world is a very fun and rewarding adventure, and each of these five tips will definitely be ones you should keep in mind.
There’s a special place in the world for startups and we aren’t talking about Silicon Valley.
Viber. Wix. ICQ. Waze. What do all of these companies have in common? These popular apps all have their roots in Israel, a melting pot of culture, religion and yes we aren’t sugar coating it — conflict. But in the same way that the last decade has been good to the Philippines, lifting itself up from being the “sick man of Asia†to an overperforming infrastructure and GDP growth hub, Israel has been making waves in research and development. The startup scene is vibrant in Israel — namely in key cities Tel Aviv and Jerusalem because of a few key factors that make this small country unique.
For one week I immersed myself into the startup culture of Jerusalem. I toured startups, accelerators, VC’s, co-working spaces. For those who need a step back, a startup is an entrepreneurial venture that is set up to meet a certain demand. But what makes this type of company particularly interesting is that it is designed to be lean and agile — meaning it needs to scale very quickly. As to how quick, some may say that these companies need to grow around 5% every week — whether it be sign ups, page views, or the holy grail of metrics — revenue.
Instagram, Uber, Waze, Facebook, Twitter — these were all startups once and have since exited or become acquired by bigger fish (in the case of Instagram and WhatsApp being bought by Facebook and Waze (formerly called FreeMap Israel — being bought by Google). Silicon Valley painted the perfect picture of a startup ecosystem as the location was nourishing to the tech community in general. But rising real estate costs and other factors made it harder for startups to cut costs – a major impediment to being agile.
Enter Israel, ‘the land of milk and honey’ and now the Promised Land for technology entrepreneurs. From my immersion, I’ve gathered that startups thrive in Israel because of three key situations that are unique to the geography:
Israel needs to innovate because of their geopolitical situation
With negative immigration, scarcity of resources and conflict in neighboring countries, Israel has needed to fend for itself. They invented drip irrigation, engineered crops (the cherry tomato was invented in Israel), built the iron dome missile defense system (the technology which they also repurposed to combat agricultural pests) and made such huge advancements in medical technology and automation. “Adapt or die†is a common catchphrase in the startup world and this has been inculcated into their culture. The scarcity of resources encourages “thinking inside the box†to immediately address needs.
Israel has a unique military
Speaking of culture, the military plays an active role during the formative years of every citizen. By law, all men and women are required to serve in the military — 3 years for men and 2 years for women once they turn 18. Service is considered a rite of passage and since conscription is mandatory, strong bonds are forged which become vital in civilian life as well as employment.
Unlike in the Philippines where the most training a civilian received was with the ROTC, military service in Israel throws you in the middle of a hot bed – military intelligence, tank and chopper pilot, artillery. For many women , they may opt to do what is the equivalent of the NSTP in the Philippines which involves a lot of community work, which helps open doors to being great tour guides and public relations specialists.
It has become such that in one way or another, the military had influenced the careers of these tech entrepreneurs in one way or another: Hanan Lipskin, an entrepreneur who develops an anti cyber-bullying app for children called ‘Keepers’ used to work in military intelligence. Another tech entrepreneur Zeev Farman, CEO of Lightricks (makers of the ever-popular app Enlight) says that although he didn’t benefit directly from military service, he did meet his co-founder while in service.
An Israeli startup immediately needs to go global in order to survive
The total population of Israel is a bit over 8 million people — which by comparison is way below the total population of Metro Manila with about 10% living in Jerusalem and half of that in Tel-Aviv. In other words, you could fit the entire population of Israel inside Metro Manila and it still would not be as crowded as it is now in the city.
That being said, there are over 5,500 startups in Israel, which if you think about it. brings a huge disparity in supply vs demand for tech services. As such, due to their small population an israeli startup always sets itself up to be acquired – such as how Waze was acquired by Google and just recently, Mobileye was acquired by Intel.
FAST NUMBERS
5,500 startups in Israel
500+ in Jerusalem
USD $1B in funding from Jerusalem-based companies
70 VC funds active today
USD $100M funding from government
4.3% of GDP invested in R&D
2nd largest number of companies on NASDAQ next to China
Failure is an option in the startup community, so much so that the culture of failure is not frowned upon, even by the Israeli government. With about USD $100 million in the bank reserved solely for entrepreneurs the government takes an active role as both VC fund and accelerator. Any Israeli citizen can pitch their concept to the government and after undergoing a rigorous vetting system, they receive seed capital. If their venture succeeds, the seed money is returned. If a venture fails, the government calls it a learning experience and the doors are left open to try again in the future.
In his book, Startup Nation, Saul Singer has branded Israel as the new Promised Land for research and development. It is a welcome label backed by astounding facts — Israel has the second largest number of companies on NASDAQ next to China, with more than 4% of GDP invested in research and development.
Israeli Startup Rundown
bitemojo
Dubbed as the food crawl app that doesn’t need a tour guide, bitemojo helps foodies and tourists build custom food tours by availing any of their curated packages. In our stay, we took the Jerusalem Market food tour, one of the most popular destinations in Jerusalem. Husband and wife tandem Michael and Yale Weiss developed the app to help tourists discover the city through food, with everything curated by locals. Since everything is pre-paid, tourists do not need to second-guess prices and potentially be ripped off by tourist traps.
OrCam Assistive Technology for the Visually Impaired
This is the world’s most advanced assistive technology to help the visually impaired. Resembling a camera that attaches to your glasses frame, OrCam makes use of a highly accurate text-to-speech recognition using the camera and hand gestures. OrCam also does facial recognition as well as brand logo recognition and can translate up to 20 languages as of this writing.
EatWith
Imagine the “Uber for family dinners.†Enter EatWith, a “social eating†experience that allows you to book dinner with a family in Israel. During our stay we were graced into the home of Chef Aliza, a Cordon Bleau trained chef who migrated to Jerusalem. She acts as EatWith’s ambassador, creating dishes that speak about the cosmopolitan influences of Israel. As a tourist, EatWith is one of the best ways to experience Israeli hospitality.
Keepers
Hanan Lipskin is passionate about keeping children safe from the perils of the Internet — especially with cyber-bullying. With background in the Israeli military intelligence, he developed Keepers, an app that protects children from cyberbullying on their social media platforms and chat by alerting parents if conversations are leading towards harassment.
ModLi
Nava brief Fried had a career in PR before she founded ModLi, the “first and only modest fashion platform.†Whether due to religion or simply fashion sense, ModLi takes into account cultural and religious nuances into the fashion world. Since launch she has gone global, realizing that the demand for modest clothing went beyond Asia and the Middle East.
Mobileye
This startup darling is the recent poster child of what every Israeli startup wants to achieve: being fully acquired by a bigger fish, in this case, a USD $15B acquisition by Intel for their vehicle automation technology. Although self-driving cars are still in development (and Mobileye is the world leader), current technology includes super advanced dash cameras that can predict accidents and help driver navigation, “turning back the clock 3 seconds†to help drivers make better decisions on the road.
ALYNnovation
Although more of an accelerator and less of a startup, the ALYN Hospital for Pediatric and Adolescent Rehabilitation Center has its own R&D center inside the hospital. Whereas in other countries, startups are usually “outside looking in†out of the box solutions, in this case, the startup is located inside the hospital to find “inside the box†solutions for their patients. One of their projects is the Wheelchairs of Hope, which aims to mass produce the most affordable wheelchair into the market at only USD $100.00 per seat.
Once you stumble upon the necessity to write a group project report, don’t allow it go with a flow. Take the organizational part under control and keep in mind the following steps to succeed and get the highest grade for your assignment.
Step 1. Think with the end in mind
This idea is not ours, it was presented by Steven Kovi, and it doesn’t lose its actuality through decades. Before you start dividing responsibilities and working on each part think what you want to achieve at each stage. Of course, it is obvious, that you want to achieve the highest grade while applying the least amount of efforts. However, you should write down that your goal is to have a final draft till the particular date, it should have the particular amount of pages and additional materials, such as, for example, a presentation. Give short description to a presentation as well. Finally, you will come up with a 1-page document which will be a skeleton of your future work. Once you are done with this one, move to a strategy. Step 2. Choose the roles and write them down
Use the skeleton you’ve received at the first stage and expand it adding new information. It will take no more than 15 minutes but will save an enormous amount of time later. Divide the responsibilities, but don’t forget that a group project report is not only about writing, it is about organization. Note down who is responsible for technical issues, for instance, who checks the formatting, who answers for plagiarism check, who is accountable for the graph information, for text for slides, for pictures for slides. Many groups make the same mistake — they decide to deal with all that later, as the time comes, but it comes too fast and they often get lost. Finally, 3 people are making a presentation, while no one is checking the formatting the way it should be done.  Step 3. Set up the detailed internal deadlines
It is a no-brainer that you have the external deadline for your group project report. Most probably you have two deadlines — one for the raw draft another for the final draft. However, students are famous for violating them and here is the way to escape this well-known pattern. Use the skeleton again and add dates for each step. If you are really interested in doing things right, set up 2 deadlines for each stage: the first one marks it should be done or written, the second — presented to the rest of the group. Of course, with all those groups in messengers and shared documents online you just have to say “look, I am done with this, maybe someone wants to make some comments?†and call it a day. Step 4. Apply the old-school approach
Print everything you wrote and read it aloud for several times. Each of you. It might sound not just boring, but simply arcane. However, it is the way speechwriters around the world deal with the texts for presidents, kings and celebrities. You should both do it with the report itself and the presentation. It helps you find weak parts and make your writing sound more humane and engaging. More of it, research shows that when reading a printed material we can spot almost twice more mistakes and technical omissions. Underline them while reading and edit later — this way you will not lose the flow.
Diverse Architect People Group Working Concept
Step 5. Cross check critical points
No matter how much you trust each other, your final grade depends on this report, and you should be very attentive to others’ work when it comes to the crucial points, such as plagiarism, formatting and compliance of text with the graphic information. If possible, split into pairs and make a cross check. Make it a peer review experience, and don’t forget about the key principles: emphasize bright sides before criticizing, and if criticizing don’t forget to offer something better. There is a chance you think all this is boring and time-consuming, and the key idea is to get rid of this custom assignment faster. However, if you spend several hours following the described steps you will both stay on the safe side with the quality of your final draft and impress your professor with a creative, diligent approach.
Burglary and theft rates are on the rise all across the United States; it looks like no state and no city or town is safe from these predators. Consequently, it is very important to know how to protect your investments and your precious items from theft. Most people think that it won’t happen to them, so they don’t take many safety precautions. However, it is always better to be safe than sorry. This is why you need to protect your valuable items – and diamond rings immediately come to mind. It is not enough to correctly choose the real diamond; you also need to make sure you don’t lose it. Keep in mind that a diamond ring costs several thousand dollars or more. So, let’s take a look at some tips that will help you better protect it.
Five Tips to Protect Your Diamond Ring at Home
Buy a safe for your home; this is the first thing to do if you want to protect your valuable jewelry. This may be an obvious idea, but you would be surprised how many people disregard the importance of having a safe. Of course, make sure the safe is sturdy and capable of withstanding burglary attempts. Many safes are also able to withstand fire for prolonged periods of time. Choose a safe that can be hidden in a wall or behind a painting; anywhere it is not easily noticed.
Do not brag about your jewelry. Yes, you may get away with doing it with close friends and family. However, bragging about your 1.0-carat diamond engagement ring is dangerous. It is even unsecure to talk around about the engagement or post pictures of the ring. If this information gets to the wrong ears, you could be the next burglary victim in your neighborhood.
Do not leave your diamond ring where everyone can see it. Strangers – like pizza delivery people, construction contractors, and even the mail carrier – could see the ring easily and immediately notice that it is quite expensive. They may talk about it with other strangers until this piece of information gets to a burglar or thief. You don’t want to become a target.
Insure your diamond ring. You will pay a small premium every year, but it may be well worth it. In case somebody breaks into your home and steals your real diamond ring, the insurance company will reimburse you so you can buy another one. You may be able to decrease your monthly premium if you install various security systems like alarm systems and CCTV cameras in and around your home.
Install an alarm system, even if you don’t need it to decrease the insurance cost. An alarm system – which may have a CCTV system as well – is one of the most reliable methods of deterring would-be burglars. It is very difficult to bypass a properly installed alarm system, and most burglars and thieves will not even attempt it. To make sure your alarm system is installed and working perfectly, use the services of a licensed and bonded locksmith.
Things to Know About Burglars and Thieves
Burglars and thieves are just like other professionals. They make it their job to steal from other people, and some of them can get quite good at it. Remember that an experienced thief or burglar knows exactly where to look in a home to find your jewelry. Think outside the box and you could outsmart them. Also, keep in mind that thieves and burglars are usually cowards; they will flee if confronted.
For your peace of mind, if you keep valuable items in your home, get a license to carry and use firearms. Owning a gun for self-defense is nothing out of the common in the United States, and many other countries permit it if you prove you are likely to be targeted by criminals or that you need the weapon to protect your valuables.
While it may seem that some of the biggest challenges facing a company is finding customers, making a healthy profit, and expanding their business, in reality choosing the best software for the company is right up there in terms of challenges. While you may not give much initial thought to the software you pick, the fact is that it can have a massive impact on the success of your business.
If you’re at the point where you are selecting the right software for your business but you’re unsure of what you need and how to go about picking the right product, then these tips are meant to help you.
Start by Setting Your Goals
It’s hard to pick the best software without first giving thought to what your goals are. What do you need the software to be able to do? Will it be focusing on one task or goal, or does it need to be multi-functional? How many different software options do you want? Are you looking for a one-size fits all solution or are you willing to use a couple of different products?
Understand That the Right Software Will Change How You Do Business
It’s also important that you understand and embrace the fact that the right software will change how you do business. You can’t expect to install the software and just go about everything as you had in the past. It will require approaches and workflows to change, but the goal is that this software is creating changes that benefit the company.
Research Your Options
When picking software, it’s never a good idea to rush in and just pick the first thing that you find. You want to be sure you do your research; look at how other companies are using that particular software, if the software is being used in your industry specifically, and start to build a better view of what it has to offer. Looking at a feature list or specs isn’t enough information to make a decision. From here you’ll be able to start to create a list of software vendors and whittle it down as you do more research.
Do You Need It to Work Across Various Platforms?
Because so much of today’s business operations depend on things working across various platforms, you will also want to take this into consideration. Will the software work on a desktop just as well as a tablet or smartphone? Will it work on both the Apple and PC platform? What about Android and Apple? Most companies require software to be diverse in that it is optimized for all platforms, making it easier for staff to do what they need to do.
How Many People Need to Use the Software?
The final question you’ll want to ask is how many people will need to use the software? Is it your entire staff, and if so how many people is that? Are we talking about hundreds or just a dozen? These answers will also help determine what software will work best.
Picking the right software is a process that you don’t want to rush through, as the software you pick will have a huge impact on your company.