Category: Travel

The opportunity to move for work is a privilege. Remote Work unlocks the potential of those who can’t

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With Remote Work, you don’t have to choose between your career and behaving like a human being. You don’t have to uproot yourself and embark on an uncertain journey to seek a better life. The days of Wild West are gone.

The opportunity to move for work is a privilege, and the immense potential of those of us who are not willing to leave our lives behind is only beginning to be explored.

As I write this, my grandfather is not doing so well. I very much enjoy the opportunity to visit him and listen to his crazy war stories. About the time he was running a public house as a 14-year old to feed his family. Or how he stole german weapons and sold them to the resistance.

My Wife appreciates these stories too, and she “adopted” him as her own.

…

Read more on Medium, how remote work allows me to spend time with grandfather while still pursuing a career in Silicon Valley 👉

Simple Payments for India 🐘

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Automatticians and my fabulous turban.

This is a summary of the presentation I gave in Mumbai in February of 2018.

Prefer PDF format? (4.1 MB)

Why Simple Payments?

I am a public school teacher and not a web-designer. I decided to start a new business (…). After I found the “Add Payment” button I knew I could do it. I went public and started taking payments two days later. The new button simplified everything.

Simple Payments is a feature of Jetpack plugin and WordPress.com that enables you to sell products on your site. I had a privilege of being a part of the team that launched it in 2017.

Yes, there is WooCommerce with ample functionality, various payment gateways, plugins and options.

But starting with WooCommerce is not easy. The choice and configuration can be overwhelming, especially for someone that just wants to test their business. WooCommerce has a fantastic wizard now that simplifies the process considerably, but there is always a tradeoff between functionality and ease of use.

Simple Payments is designed for an easy start. No, there are no other payment gateways, no plugins, no automated fulfilment, no AI. Easy start, that is it.

But often, the start is the hard part.

 

PayPal is coming to India

As of now (feb 2018), PayPal is gearing towards entering the Indian market. Simple Payments is built on top of PayPal Express Checkout.

  • Launching soon for general users.
  • Testing with large merchants at the moment (BookMyShow, Yatra)
  • Accepting and payout in INR

  • Right now, you can collect USD and pay out to your bank account that will convert to INR

How hard it is to start with Simple Payments?

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That is all information you have to provide to start selling

To start selling with Simple Payments, you need:

  • PayPal account
  • One of the plans:
    • Jetpack Premium (₹690/m, ₹6900/y)
 OR
    • WordPress.com Premium (₹575/m, ₹6900/y)
  • One form to fill out

Yes, that is it. One form. And in this form the required fields are:

  • Name of what you are selling
  • Price / currency
  • Email that will be connected to PayPal account

One more thing…

You don’t really need a PayPal account.

PayPal has a feature called “progressive onboarding”. That means, if you receive money destined to the email address that does not have PP account yet, money will be waiting for you to claim until you create such account.

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Email badgering me to claim the money I earned

Simple is also sustainable

Back in the day, I was running an e-marketing agency and we also did WooCommerce stores. Whenever something broke, API changed, etc – I had lots of work to keep it all running. Sometimes client changed API keys to PayPal, or a setting got deprecated. But with Simple Payments:

  • No payment gateway setup
  • No access token keys, app secrets, etc
  • Reliant only on 1 plugin (Jetpack) and external API (WPCOM) that is heavily tested every day
  • Auto updates and backups built in (JP „undo”  feature)

No late night calls from your customers that something broke!

Successful Simple Payments sellers

This is a small gallery of successful Simple Payments sellers. As you can see, there are various business models.

 

Minnetonka Fishing Team

High school fishing championship participation.

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Tom Bol Photo workshops

You gussed it – photography classes 🙂

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Smart Food Solutions

Prepared meal plans

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Beltaine Cottage

Self-published books.

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North Winds Wilderness School

Outdoor wilderness classes.

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Bend it like Budha

Yoga retreats

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Under the hood 🔧

So what are we doing there to make it happen?

  1. Customer clicks „Pay with PayPal”
  2. PP JS makes request to WPCOM endpoint
  3. WPCOM endpoint calls transaction/create PP endpoint
  4. Returns transaction id to your site JavaScript
  5. JavaScript opens PayPal dialog
  6. Customer enters CC details, clicks „pay”
  7. PayPal JavaScript calls WPCOM endpoint to finish transaction
  8. WPCOM endpoint calls PP transaction/execute
  9. Passes success message to your site
  10. Sends you notification and email
  11. Displays result to the customer

 

All data stored on your site

  • `jp_pay_order` custom post type
  • `jp_pay_product` custom post type

Start selling!

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Simple Payments is designed to get you started. Don’t over-engineer your solution if you are not yet selling anything. Start simple, test your business and then scale with WooCommerce once you have more orders than you can deal with.

 

More resources

#20 Go to Legoland

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Item 20 on my Bucketlist.

I was raised on Lego. My engineering skills were honed by building the infinity of stuff that can be assembled from these ingenious little blocks. I love how they are designed to be great fun for years without buying heaps of new sets.

My love for Lego is is so strong, that I travel with an assortment of Lego minifigs to capture their ventures around the globe.

Fortunately, I have great friends (adult ones!) excited by Lego as well and they together we embarked upon a sentimental journey to Legolland, Billund. (The original one).

To say that have amazing stuff there build from lego is a huge understatement. But, apart from Lego construction it’s a pretty rad theme park in its own right! There is a plenty of rides, water-related activities etc.

 

 

One trick that a friend found is that we have stayed in Lalandia – a closeby water park and had 2 day Legoland tickets, water park unlimited pass and a very neat skadinavian cabin/ house for the 4 of us. It was a great stay!

#164 Swim in a Cenote, Mexico

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This was number 164 on my bucketlist.

I love swimming in various weird places, so swimming in a Cenote was a dream of mine ever since I swam in “Blue Hole” in Jamaica.

In Mexico, Yucatan peninsula is made of porous limestone. That means, that water just sinks through rock and all the water bodies (lakes, rivers) are underwater. It also means that sinkholes are very common there. Cenotes are just that – sinkoles filled with water.

Check out Anna’s ultimate guide to Yukatan cenotes.

And so – in the autumn of 2016 I found myself in Mexico. So I swam!

My favourite Cenotes:

  1. Cenote Samula
  2. Cenote Xkeken
  3. Cenote Ik Kil
  4. Cenote Dos Ojos
  5. Grande Cenote

 

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My Japan top 5

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Few years back, I visited Japan with my friends. My intention was to “tick off” the country, because I’m not a great fan of whole Anime culture and it didn’t seem like my cup of tea.
But instead, I was blown away by the incredible mix of old and the new and recently I find myself wanting to go back there. This is my subjective top 5:

Food

Japanese food is not really about sushi. The variety of food is much greater than you would expect and everything is delicious (except for nanto – fermented soy beans…)

Things to try

  • Bento box – my definite fav. This is a neat lunch box, sold near offices and this is what Japanese people really eat. This boxes have a cute assortment of dishes
  • Proper Miso soup
  • Conveyor belt sushi – the cheapest variety there is and Japanese people consider it subpar quality. More modern ones let you order from an iPad and automatic conveyor belt brings you your sushi
  • Takoyaki – battered octopus pieces deep-fried in waffle iron. Literally, very hot!
  • Omu – Rice ommelette with, well, almost everything inside
  • Tuna – tuna is a big thing in Japan and it tastes like heaven in any form
  • Any streetfood

Tradition

I fell on love with old Japanese tradition. Enchanting red temples inside a lush green forest are just spectacular. Respect for tradition is an important thing in Japan.

 

Things worth checking out:

  • Splendid temples in Kyoto
  • Holy Deer in Nara
  • Little temples anywhere
  • Tsukiji Fish Market

 

Just sheer out-of-context weirdness

 

Things worth checking out

  • Alcatraz ER – a prison/hospital themed cafe. Weird fun!
  • Dog / cat cafe
  • Japanese toilet seat. Really!
  • Any “supposedly european” dish. It will be the weirdest european dish you’llever have

Japanese day-to-day

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Japanese are very modern, but the tradition still lives on in day-to-day struggle.

Lost in translation

  • Kaizen – Philisophy of never-ending improvement
  • Mottainai – Regret concerning waste. Or resources, but also unnecessary action or a word.
  • Ikigai – A reason for being, something that drives you
  • Komorebi – Sunlight filtering through trees
  • Shinrin-Yoku – Visit to forest for relaxation / “forest bathing”
  • Yugen – A profound understanding of the universe that triggers a string emotional response
  • Majime – Reliable person who gets things done without drama

Dont miss!

  • Sumo match
  • Onsen – Hot spring/spa. I highly recommend convincing a friend to jump into a “electric stimulation” bathtub. So much fun!
  • Pachinko – Hydhly addictive pinball machine. In Japan there are whole floors of these machines. I cannot express weirdness of it. You have to see it.
  • Traditional tea ceremony

Interesting links

 

Stuff to come back for

For me, there is still so much to see. Of course I want to there again!

  • Love hotels – tiny cheap hotels with a variety of decorum. Their main purpose is not hard to figure out, but weirdness may be interesting
  • Ryokan – Traditional Japanese “Inn”
  • Sagano bamboo forest – A bamboo forest near Kyoto
  • Hand-Made Damascus steel Chefs knife – I want one
  • Shinkansen – Japanese bullet train

 

This fullfills my Bucketlist #78

 

#181 Giants causeway

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This fulfills my Bucketlist item 181

A long time ago, I stumbled upon photos of this incredible phenomenon in the vastness of interwebz. In Northern Ireland, there’s collection of these weird hexagonal bazalt pillars. As you can imagine, there are competing explanations for this incredible natural phenomenon.

One includes a Giant, Finn McCool (name almost as good as McLovin’) building a bridge to scotland, to fight another giant.

Another, completely bonkers explanation suggests that while basalt was cooling, cracks formed at the top and then penetrated lower and lower while the mass was cooling.

To me, one with the giant sounds more believable.

 

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Getting there

Its pretty easy – and totally worth it to get there from Belfast. For 12 pounds you can get on route 252 from Belfast to Bushmills and then you can walk or take a city bus to “Giants Causeway – The nook” stop. That stop is right beside the causeway. You can consult schedule on Translink site.

Alternatively, there’s plenty of tours going there from almost any part of Ireland.

A nice walk

This is a stunning place with a  lot to offer. I highly recommend taking the Causeway Coast walking trail which is part if the “Ulster Way” . Its about 5 hour walk and its definitely worth the effort. On the way you can see:

  • Giants causeway on your own, without bus full of people getting in your photos
  • Majestic cliffs
  • Balintoy Harbor, where they filmed Game of thrones
  • Carrick-A-Rede bridge, phenomenal rope bridge to a fishing island
  • Sheep everywhere
  • Bushmills whiskey distillery