Howdy there, folks! I found out that I might be visiting some people in Thailand and thought I should start learning what my (digital) resources will be if I go over there.
I've found a ton of great specific/practical resource sites, like
http://www.thailandguru.com, stickman etc, and have read their entire backlog (except for stickman's user submissions, which I've read approx 20% of. I tend to be very, very obsessive in my interests, which is helpful in my line of work (software architect).
But, aside from those resource sites (of which thailandguru.com seems the most useful), I need to have some kind of human context in which to phrase things I learn, or I might end up with a faulty understanding and/or make poor decisions because of that.
So, first of all, let me say -- hi!
I'm Luc. I'm 21. I'm about 6'4", 220lbs. I am from Minnesota, in the US (southwestern part of state). My skin is BLINDINGLY white.
I've been learning Lao, off and on, for a while (as sort of a side hobby, albeit one that is always trounced by other hobbies) and I can read Lao and can read Thai somewhat more haltingly. I've got six or so books on learning Lao + Lao dictionaries. It seems that Thai is similar enough to Lao that an intelligent person could make the transition at least easily if not gracefully (Portugese/Spanish analogy comes to mind).
The main reason I'm interested in Thailand is probably the reason that most of you guys are. <insert bargirl joke/> No, not that. It's the possibilities it offers to live one's life well and still freely.
I buck authority a lot; I got expelled from school at 14 and started college, graduated w/degree, started working full-time as a programmer at 18, surpassed everyone at that company to the point where the prior Lead Dev felt threatened and got me tossed out (costing the company an entire product that was revolutionizing their internal processes even in beta, I might add), which brings me to my current job as a work-from-home programmer for a small, frighteningly successful company with exactly one other employee, current boss.
I'm having a blast, but hearing that some of my friends were going to Thailand (to see some of my OTHER friends, who went there as missionaries) has made me start thinking. In the past 6 months I have developed programs for banks, hospitals, power companies, construction companies and consideraly more . . . and the demands on my time are extraordinary, largely because we do so much throwaway contract work (although that custom work pays exceptionally well, all things considered). So, that's a force pressing at me on the one hand.
On the other hand, I'm being squeezed from the other end by the skills disparity between my boss and myself. He has been able to contribute nothing to the last 2 projects I've worked on, zilch, nada, because he doesn't understand the (really not terribly complicated grrrr) underpinning motivating factors for using the more abstract but cleaner architectures I use. As I move forward I'm forced to do even more, with no real end in sight, and less and less of a hope that he will be able to join me in working on these architectures.
To summarize: job-wise, I've got an increasing number of throwaway projcets that are increasingly complex, and I've got a decreasing amount of help. This means that I will do MORE work, HARDER work, that requires better solutions -- but the solutions are thrown away with each installation at the client's end. I have been pressing slash hinting at my boss to get into the ASP racket so we can centralize these apps, but I digress.
IN A NUTSHELL, AT SOME POINT I MIGHT HAVE TO GO SOLO.
And that's a daunting prospect, but I've been educating myself about that as well (downloaded all of the course material from the MIT/Sloan School of Management, even some great video lectures about web app development from a business pov, and a course on "Developmental Entrepreneurship" -- startups in developing countries). Basically, the threads of thought that made me think of Thailand in connection with this are
1) The bricks-and-mortar portions of starting up a business are an anathema to a person who can literally create and manage a complete product and presence on the web for a small enough amount of money to fund himself by working at a steak house if he has to;
2) Muang Thong Thani is supposedly amazingly cheap and lightly populated;
3) 'Grunt' coders in Thailand make between $100 and $300 per month. Really, really good programmers like myself, $600. (This info, btw, is my SECONDHAND knowledge).
4) If I have an office SOMEWHERE, having a NICE office (and a NICE establishment/location) in the US is not a requirement by any means to do business in the US; the facilities at both of my previous places of employment showed me that!
So, this sort of shows you where I'm going with the idea.
It all started as a "what if" game with myself -- what if I tried to retire to Thailand? Instant answer: I'd run out of money before I was 30. How to solve that? Cash flow IN. How? With what you know how to do well enough to get other people to pay you: either visual design or programming. Programming I can make a stronger business out of.
And of course, there's a huge question there: how the fudge do you plan to go about setting up a MULTINATIONAL corporation when most small businesses started locally in the US go under in their first year? How do you expect to maintain relationships with clients if you live in Bangkok?
Those are all, obviously, interesting problems.
So I'm trying to come up with interesting solutions to them . . .
That's my big-ass introduction.
This concludes you Mr. Luc familiarization.