OMD's ABCs #276: Musings from Portugal...Human Behaviour and Digital Nomading
Hello!
There was no newsletter last week. It fell on a hurricane week of meetings as a I prepared to go on my first vacation in a long time. I planned to take this week off but decided to pull it forward given the chaos of travel that seems to be an inevitability. Hence you didn’t hear from me last week. But I’m back with more musings.
I’m writing this intro paragraph from my favourite coffee shop in Porto, Portugal as speak, accompanied by my €2 ice coffee. Though this was supposed to be a week of vacation, I hoped to fill it with as much writing as I could while switching on my tourist hat from time to time.
In hindsight, I would’ve done well to spend the jet-lagged nights writing essays instead of praying for the Sandman to put me to sleep at 3am. I’m not well practiced in the art of travel and writing at the same time. This is a muscle I continue to work on.
It would be a different story if it was just myself. But much of travel would lose its appeal for me if I were to do it myself. There is a time and a place for solo travel. Neither of them have come forth as important points for me however.
Changes of environments are always great opportunities for reflection. Surrounded by strangers in strange settings with a disturbance to rhythm create a chaos in our minds. I imagine this is what puts so many of us in reflective moods when traveling. Some who make time to stop chasing of tourist's checklist will find a bountiful amount of time to sit and think.
This might seem crazy given the passage of time that leads to many thinking vacation is a ticking time bomb that counts back down to this idea called “reality.” But I don’t agree with that mindset. If the purpose of travel is to experience something new, doesn’t it make sense to experience it right then and there? This requires time at that present moment to sit and wonder instead of on the moment of reflection on the plane ride back. I admit, it’s not so easy to execute in practice. The two essays in today’s newsletter are both reflections from this past week of travel.
The ABC’s of the OMD learning function are below. Feel free to pick and choose the segments that interest you and I hope they make you think about something you didn’t before, raise an eyebrow, or leave you satisfied.
Art: Books, Movies, Creations
Business: Investing, Systems, Work
Culture: People, Self, Observations
Art: Books, Movies, Creations
I was busy admiring buildings throughout Lisbon and Porto. It was a period of consuming the art. I’ll reflect on this in the future.
Business: Investing, Systems, Work
Rumours & Desires to Believe
There is a small bookstore in Porto called the Lello Bookstore. Some say it's the prettiest bookstore in the world. Some say it's the third prettiest. Either way, it's supposed to be over the top and grand. I recommend looking it up.
The line ups to enter stretch for many meters outside the bookstore. I don't know how long it takes to finally get inside the bookstore. But it's on an inclined cobblestone pavement and under the sweltering Portuguese heat, I dare not wait to find out how fast it goes.
It's said that about 1.2m people visit this bookstore every year. That's been the quoted number for 2017, 2019 and after the city reopened to tourists, the bookstore is said to have surpassed the 1.2m number by September of 2022. To get a sense of how many people that is, the population of Portugal is ~10m.
Now, this bookstore is beautiful. But it appears people aren't coming in droves to just admire a bookstore. I thought it was for all the literary fanatics—my fellow bookworms. But it turns out we who like architecture and books may be the minority in the audience.
The bookstore is famous for having been JK Rowling's inspiration for Harry Potter. Legend has it that Rowling sat in that bookstore, got inspired by the bookstore and wrote up the first chapters of The Philosopher's Stone there.
At €5 for admission, the bookstore has raked in at least €6m annually since the rumour spread and attracted all the Harry Potter fans along with other tourists. Now there is one interesting sort of human behaviour about this bookstore: when it’s most optimal to visit.
According to my walking tour guide, Andre, about 40% of the visitors are Spanish. I don't think it's because the Spaniards are bigger fans of Harry Potter than just mere geographical proximity. But that supposedly means the best time to visit the bookstore is between the Spanish lunch time of 2-4pm. Not the morning.
The morning line ups are longest because most tourists all think no one will wake up in the morning. So, in a battle of game theory, they call each other's bluff and arrive first thing in the morning to a massive line. Turns out all tourists think the same: that the morning is the best time to visit any attraction.
Now, the other bit of interesting human behaviour. It’s true that Rowling lived for two years, got married and even had a kid in Porto. But I read all seven Harry Potter books and I don't remember much detailed descriptions of the Hogwarts library. And so it goes...Rowling had never been to the bookstore before.
She tweeted this out and the Lello bookstore responded by apologizing. Yes. They apologized for a rumour that spread to herd millions of people into their bookstore without any of them fact checking the truth of said story.
Isn't this amazing? Millions of people make the journey to line up in this bookstore to wow and admire at this beauty, something that is accented by the context of Harry Potter. A rumour overlayed to create a sense of awe towards something.
Now, these visitors might've visited the bookstore anyway even without the Harry Potter rumour. But I think the amount of strength that moniker has to the site can't be doubted as everyone seems to talk about it as the first and main talking point of the bookstore.
Isn't that astounding?
People will believe what they want to believe, as long as it's convenient (i.e. aligned to existing beliefs and desires). Will people ever wake up from the rumour of the Lello bookstore? I don't know.
Culture: People, Self, Observations
Digital Nomad Thoughts
I’m here in Portugal for a month. What’s the objective? Well, the priority is to experience living in another country and city for a month.
It’s the next stage of an evolution from near two weeks I spent in Hanoi, Vietnam a few years back. But this time, I am working full-time with a company while building my writing career. It means I have income. Nevertheless, both Vietnam and Portugal were selected for the density of the city, its popularity amongst digital nomads, and affordability for North Americans.
The hope is to come out with some understanding of Portuguese culture, the history, and seeing a new city. I also hope to test out what it’s like to work remotely in an unfamiliar city and what I learn is important to help myself succeed in such an environment. This also includes how the experience itself could’ve been better (i.e. so that I might want to do it again in the future, if at all).
It’s been one week and I’m not sure how to balance the planning required to explore the country to some degree as a tourist while also taking on the mentality of someone who lives there. I know I’m not a local but I would like to try to do my best impression of it.
Something interesting I learned from my first week on the ground was how different reality was to theory. I had gyms, co-working places and various locations mapped out and planned out. But reality was anything like that and since then, this week has been about making adjustments to the realities of expectations not being met. I ended up discovering various coworking and gym options that never came up from the online research I did.