Localized Thoughts

Mobile Diaries Part 2: Our remote developer Teju Prasad gets past “vacation mode” and back to the gym.

Entering week two and it’s been an exotic, mystical journey into… taking out the trash, getting groceries, and doing laundry.

Not earth-shattering stuff, but it’s an important part of the experience nonetheless. Choosing to live abroad for multiple months means living “as a
local” to some extent, learning and observing people in their day-to-day living.

It also means “playing the long game” in a sense. By that I mean, taking the time to set up routines and schedules for some sense of “normalcy,” the same way I would do back in New York.

Part of that is establishing a regimented exercise routine, which meant signing up for a local gym, which unfortunately turned out to be more complicated than I had imagined. This particular gym was very strict in that they only gave out memberships to those with established Chilean bank accounts.

In order for extranjeros (foreigners) to sign up, one of our local experience managers had to accompany us, with our passports, and enroll us in memberships collectively, where we had to sign and fingerprint each page. I don’t recall this much fingerprinting when applying for a DOD government clearance to work on classified projects!

Before leaving for South America I would regularly do boxing workout classes, with other Small Planet employees. Wanting to keep the habit going, one of the first items on my list was to seek out a similar class here in Santiago (pictured above). That process of signing up, in contrast, was seamless. Thank you Knockout Sport Club!

Also, health and safety seem to be taken quite seriously here. It feels like there’s a pharmacy on every corner, which means either people get sick a whole lot, or they are very meticulous about their preventative care.

On the bright side, it’s a good motivator to actually hit the gym, and not let all the effort signing up go to waste.