DAMMAM: Traveling to exotic locations around the world without having to worry about running out of vacation days or how you will pay the bills is a dream that many of us may want to live out.
However, this nomadic lifestyle is a reality for some brave individuals, including some who previously lived in Dubai, who are choosing to live as digital nomads.
A digital nomad is a person who works remotely, via technology, and is not tied to a physical location. This could mean retaining the same job, but without the restrictions of an office or it could even mean changing career altogether.
Kate Smith, a former project manager at an advertising agency in Canada, left her dreary nine-to-five cubicle job to pursue the nomadic lifestyle and has not looked back since.
Long working hours and the daily grind had started to take a physical and mental toll on Smith. Ultimately, she desired flexibility and the ability to travel more. Ever since she quit her job and booked a one-way ticket to Prague in 2015, Smith has traveled to more than 23 countries and has lived in 12 countries over a span of two years. This month, she has chosen Bali as her home and office.
Smith employed the services of a US-based company called “Remote Year,” which offers a year-long travel experience. According to the company’s website, 75 like-minded professionals with remote jobs work around the world for a year, spending each month in a new country. They pay for each month and services include travel between countries, a private bedroom, access to a co-working space, Wi-Fi and professional, cultural or social experiences in the country.
During her time with Remote Year, Kate identified a gap in the program — only people who had a remote job were eligible to apply. She then started “WiFly Nomads,” which enables a digital lifestyle by providing the necessary facilities and services, including a SIM card, accommodation, co-working space, high-speed Internet, workshops on how to remain productive while traveling, excursions in the new country and even assistance with finding a remote job or starting your own remote business.
Several Dubai-based professionals have also left their fast-paced, stressful corporate jobs to pursue the digital nomad lifestyle. After working for three years in the marketing department of an international FMCG company, Joan Torres decided he had had enough of the 14-hour work days. Even five weeks of annual vacation could not make up for stress at the workplace and he regretted not dedicating enough time to travel. Andrew Miller, who worked in the Dubai tech industry for five years was tired of paying rent in expensive cities. Later, his company was acquired, which left him with no job.
These days, Miller works as a remote marketing consultant, assisting early-stage start-ups with launch, strategy, content creation, social media and blogging. He is currently in the Czech Republic and will then fly off to Puerto Vallarta, Mexico.
“Travel helps me learn about cultures and new languages. In the past few years of traveling, I have learnt Spanish and gotten pretty good at Arabic, Hindi/Urdu, French, Italian, Russian, and Yoruba,” Miller told Arab News.
Torres took a different path and combined his passions — photography and writing — to start a travel blog called “Against the Compass,” writing about off-the-beaten-path destinations. He currently lives and writes in Uzbekistan and is enjoying his newfound freedom.
As many professions take to the Internet and four-walled offices become a thing of the past, many people are trading in the stability and structure of a full-time corporate job for the digital nomad lifestyle. Such a lifestyle provides flexibility, greater ownership of work, personal development, a wealth of travel experiences, social and cultural awareness and, most importantly, a sense of belonging to a global community.
As Greg Caplan, founder and CEO of Remote Year, says: “At the core of the remote revolution is the potential to be a better global citizen and move through the world with purpose, cultural sensitivity and awareness.”
Torres says the digital nomad lifestyle has helped him go “beyond all the general misconceptions (of a country) and understand the world better.”
For Kate, the experience has expanded her horizons and perspective.
“I’ve met a diverse group of lawyers, entrepreneurs and bloggers and they can all teach you something. It gives you a better understanding of the world as a whole. You learn to appreciate what you have back home, but also appreciate where you are at the same time.”
So, will you ditch the nine-to-five grind and go digital?
The life of a digital nomad: Is it for you?
The life of a digital nomad: Is it for you?
Filipinos master disaster readiness, one roll of the dice at a time
- In a library in the Philippines, a dice rattles on the surface of a board before coming to a stop, putting one of its players straight into the path of a powerful typhoon
MANILA: In a library in the Philippines, a dice rattles on the surface of a board before coming to a stop, putting one of its players straight into the path of a powerful typhoon.
The teenagers huddled around the table leap into action, shouting instructions and acting out the correct strategies for just one of the potential catastrophes laid out in the board game called Master of Disaster.
With fewer than half of Filipinos estimated to have undertaken disaster drills or to own a first-aid kit, the game aims to boost lagging preparedness in a country ranked the most disaster-prone on earth for four years running.
“(It) features disasters we’ve been experiencing in real life for the past few months and years,” 17-year-old Ansherina Agasen told AFP, noting that flooding routinely upends life in her hometown of Valenzuela, north of Manila.
Sitting in the arc of intense seismic activity called the “Pacific Ring of Fire,” the Philippines endures daily earthquakes and is hit by an average of 20 typhoons each year.
In November, back-to-back typhoons drove flooding that killed nearly 300 people in the archipelago nation, while a 6.9-magnitude quake in late September toppled buildings and killed 79 people around the city of Cebu.
“We realized that a lot of loss of lives and destruction of property could have been avoided if people knew about basic concepts related to disaster preparedness,” Francis Macatulad, one of the game’s developers, told AFP of its inception.
The Asia Society for Social Improvement and Sustainable Transformation (ASSIST), where Macatulad heads business development, first dreamt up the game in 2013, after Super Typhoon Haiyan ravaged the central Philippines and left thousands dead.
Launched six years later, Master of Disaster has been updated this year to address more events exacerbated by human-driven climate change, such as landslides, drought and heatwaves.
More than 10,000 editions of the game, aimed at players as young as nine years old, have been distributed across the archipelago nation.
“The youth are very essential in creating this disaster resiliency mindset,” Macatulad said.
‘Keeps on getting worse’
While the Philippines has introduced disaster readiness training into its K-12 curriculum, Master of Disaster is providing a jolt of innovation, Bianca Canlas of the Department of Science and Technology (DOST) told AFP.
“It’s important that it’s tactile, something that can be touched and can be seen by the eyes of the youth so they can have engagement with each other,” she said of the game.
Players roll a dice to move their pawns across the board, with each landing spot corresponding to cards containing questions or instructions to act out disaster-specific responses.
When a player is unable to fulfil a task, another can “save” them and receive a “hero token” — tallied at the end to determine a winner.
At least 27,500 deaths and economic losses of $35 billion have been attributed to extreme weather events in the past two decades, according to the 2026 Climate Risk Index.
“It just keeps on getting worse,” Canlas said, noting the lives lost in recent months.
The government is now determining if it will throw its weight behind the distribution of the game, with the sessions in Valenzuela City serving as a pilot to assess whether players find it engaging and informative.
While conceding the evidence was so far anecdotal, ASSIST’s Macatulad said he believed the game was bringing a “significant” improvement in its players’ disaster preparedness knowledge.
“Disaster is not picky. It affects from north to south. So we would like to expand this further,” Macatulad said, adding that poor communities “most vulnerable to the effects of climate change” were the priority.
“Disasters can happen to anyone,” Agasen, the teen, told AFP as the game broke up.
“As a young person, I can share the knowledge I’ve gained... with my classmates at school, with people at home, and those I’ll meet in the future.”
