A Year Away without leaving the ground no 4.... Tenerife to Salvador de Bahia Brazil - including my Story Telling debut (a long and sad love story that got a standing ovation)
A floating conference! At Sea! With around 400 "Digital Nomads" travelling with Nomad Cruise.... From Tenerife to Salvador. On board not just a cruise ship but a full scale Art Gallery with hundreds of pieces of specially created art - paintings, prints, sculptures... and gourmet food ... and swimming pools.... what's not to like!
Such a good experience to see every inch of the sea from there to here... imagining the old ships that didn't even know where they were going, what they would find when they got there...just going with the wind....some beautiful sunrises
out of our cabin, and some sunsets too...
Met some lovely people who I'm going to be keeping in touch with... and my Portuguese is coming along nicely! (ie I can understand pretty well if someone's talking directly to me and wants me to understand. If it's two Brazilians talking together, pretty much no chance, but you take what you can!)
Some of the presentations were absolutely fascinating - well I suppose all of them were, but the ones that were TO ME included one about diversity in business from Tue Le from Remote Year - I've just written the beginnings of a diversity strategy for Halton Mill, the event and coworking space that I used to be ops manager for and that I've been a director for for 11 years... (just taking a year's break from being a director, but obviously still thinking about it!) Here's Tue with her colleage Jermeel , my niece Jen who I'm travelling with, and her friend Tom...
Then there was one with loads of interesting tips for getting your message in front of journalists from travel journalist who really lives the dream, Rosy Bell - look out for HARO - Help A Reporter Out for requests for quotes for lifestyle and specialist articles....
I did an 'Unconference' session about our exhibition in honour of Dom Phillips and Bruno Pereira, who were murdered in Amazonia last year while researching Dom's book about the Amazon. You can find out more about the exhibition and download a low res version at this link. The session went really well - one of the people who attended had actually met Dom in 2019 at a journalist conference in Rio - which sent shivers through me. My friend Sian's brilliant journalist brother has touched many lives.
I was blown away by the amazing art on the ship. I might turn my little recorded tour into something more formal some time, in the meantime here's some of the art.... in every stairwell... in every lift... around the restaurants.... in places you wouldn't expect to see it. It was curated by curator and artistic duo Casagrande&Recalcati
OK the art tour being over, I told one of the other nomads in the swimming pool (Iris, who has a WONDERFUL makeup importing business bringing Korean beauty to Europe) about my long and sad love story, and she encouraged me to enter the story telling competition.... I ended up being coached over a whole day by the wonderful Bori
and this is the result - a ten minute story that got a standing ovation. There's a moral to it, you have to listen to the end for the moral. Many of my friends know some of this story, but I've only told a very few friends the full extent of it. Till the other day when I told 350 or so more or less complete strangers on a digital nomad cruise about my innermost secrets. I feel I have an important message to share with people and it is (maybe!) worth making myself completely vulnerable to get my message across. You'll have to watch the story to get the message. And here is the video (10 mins)
Let me know what you think.... I've been invited to share it on a couple of podcasts over the next weeks too! Please share this blog or just the video (direct youtube link is here https://youtu.be/LOSvvUFgwkU ) because I really want people to hear the message so I'll just get over myself.....
Never one for holding back, I was playing Irish music on my little mini "Lilliput" travel melodeon in the talent show on the last night ... we arrived in Salvador on Monday afternoon and the city is incredible - we (my niece Jen and I) are staying in the absolute centre of Pelourinho, surrounded by music and sounds and colours and art - so that will be my next blog.
over and out
goodnight....
by the way one friend suggested that she wanted a whatsapp group to get immediate updates about my journey - let me know if you'd like to be part of that and I'll set one up and send a link.
love, Fiona in Brazil!
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