With its natural beauty and its culture and traditions, Portugal is for me a highly photogenic and visually inspiring country. It was great that recently I was able to spend 4 months there, and I’m already looking forward to going back soon. In a post I wrote back in December I stated that I was excited to go to Portugal and that I had a few ideas around themes and subjects I wanted to shoot.

During my stay, one of these ideas became a sort of photo-obsession, and so I made a commitment to make it into a long-term, ongoing personal project. The idea is to document and visually explore Portuguese tascas, that is, family owned traditional taverns and cafés. Although I’m attracted to their peculiar look and the time-warp feeling they can give, my primary focus is the human and social element that makes tascas the warm, special place they are – a sort of extension of people’s homes, a place for local characters to just chill out, read the newspaper, or meet up and share secrets, stories, laughs and sorrows.

Unfortunately, due in part to the austerity policies being implemented by the Portuguese government in the face of the global economical crisis many tascas are closing down across the country. Other tascas are modernising under the driving force of the generational change, and therefore increasingly losing their traditional feel.

The photos I’m posting below were shot in various location including Romana’s village Outeiro da Cabeça, Moita dos Ferreiros, Torres Vedras, Lisbon, Lagos, and Grândola. On my next trip to Portugal I want to explore the north including Porto, which I suspect will open up a new exciting chapter in my project.

Portuguese people or connoisseurs of Portugal, I’d be grateful if you could flag with me any traditional tascas (anywhere in the country, not necessarily in the north) that you think I should photograph as part of the project. Some of you already gave us a few tips on Facebook some time ago but if you have more, please shoot them my way.

I hope you enjoy the pictures, and any comments or feedback are welcome as usual.

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A few years ago, not too long after we met, Emanuele and I wrote together a list of things we wanted to achieve in life. Working remotely was on this list. Actually we wrote something like ‘having a location-independent job or business that allows us to travel often and spend time with our family’. We were getting tired of the Dublin daily routine: commuting to work in the cold and rainy Irish weather, sitting in a grey office all day long, having uninspiring canteen lunches. We were also growing frustrated with the limited amount of annual leave we were entitled to, and – consequently – the limited amount of time we could devote to visiting our families in Italy and Portugal, and to traveling for our leisure.

As we quit our jobs and traveled around the world, we met a bunch of people who were already working remotely and living a location-independent lifestyle. Meeting these folks and talking to them gave us a certain confidence that we could achieve location independence too – we just had to find a way.

Perhaps it was pure luck or life brought this to us because we wanted it so badly – or maybe we just have the best friends in the world (right Aga? ), friends who trust us and don’t think twice before recommending our work to other people. The fact is that both of us are now working as virtual employees for an online TEFL courses provider.

I’m aware that virtual work is not for everyone. Although many people wish they had a location-independent job and lifestyle, many others find the idea of remote work strange or not so attractive.

At this stage of my life, I feel privileged that I can work from pretty much everywhere, and the idea of going back to an office makes me cringe.

Why? Well, here are a few reasons why I love telecommuting so much:

Being close to my family. For me it’s the best part of the job. I always need someone  to look after my son while I work, so it’s great to be able, whenever we want, to be based close to my parents in Portugal or Emanuele’s parents in Italy. When we’re not close to any of the families, then we usually hire a child minder, but in any case having Diego at hand all day long and being able to play with him on my breaks is priceless. Now that he is growing so fast, I don’t want to miss out on any of his evolutionary milestones. On another note, because Emanuele and I work together, we get to spend a lot of time together during the day, sometimes working on the same problems and helping each other with work related tasks when necessary or applicable.

Being close to the OTHER family too. As Emanuele and I are from different countries, this means that we will always be far from at least one of our families. We’ve just spent 4 months in Portugal and now we are back in Sicily. It’s good to be able to travel to both Italy and Portugal  with a one way ticket, without having to worry too much about the return date. In my previous job, the maximum time per year we would be able to spend in Portugal would be 2 weeks, if I was lucky. My mum is loving this job too as she can now see me more often and for longer

Being able to work from wherever we want. As long as we have wi-fi and our computers, we can bring our ‘office’ with us to wherever we like (even in the back-garden, as in the picture above ). And the plan is to move this office around as much as we can, (of course we want to do that in a way that is compatible with Diego’s needs). In fact, we are constantly planning our next moves – stay tuned if you want to know our whereabouts in the coming months

No more commuting. When I was living in Dublin, taking a bus or driving to work was the worst and most stressful part of my day. It contributed to set my mood: by the time I was in the office I had a pessimistic outlook on everything  Now I get to enjoy every minute of the early morning. I cuddle with Diego in bed and have a nice, relaxed breakfast (I don’t have to rush anywhere!), so when I start working I’m usually in a good mood and approach work with a positive attitude.

Stay local, work global. Working remotely we are able to enjoy the best of both worlds: we work for a young, forward thinking foreign company, so we don’t have to cope with the backward Italian or Portuguese work culture, but in the meanwhile we can eat great Italian or Portuguese food and enjoy sunny weather and beaches for several months during the year. We’re also thinking of moving close to the equator or the southern hemisphere at the end of the year, to avoid winter weather altogether this year

I actually talk to my colleagues and have a laugh in our virtual office. I already knew some of my colleagues, but most of them I never met in person. Our virtual office is Skype, where we have group and individual chats. The type of interaction going on among us is similar to the one we would have in person: we tell jokes , have a laugh, share pictures and music and we get to know each other a bit better. Of course it’s not the same as going to the pub together to have a pint of Guinness (we go to the pub with our local friends though), but it is enough interaction to make our work day more enjoyable.

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I like to think that remote work is the future of many currently office based jobs – more and more companies will eventually realise that allowing people to work from home will save themselves money and will make most of their employees happier. And happy people at work tend to be more productive. With widespread virtual work we may also have less cars on our roads during rush hours, and this would be beneficial for the environment too.

If you have an office based job that could be done from home, would you like to become a telecommuter? Do you think that working remotely could be the thing for you?  I would love to hear your thoughts about it.

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Our fundraising campaign came to an end. Thanks to your donations we’ve been able to raise $3,072 against our goal of $3,000. In addition to that we’ve also received some contributions offline, plus a friend I helped financially a couple of years ago, came back to me with the same amount of money I loaned him when he was in difficulty - We don’t have words to describe how grateful we are for your awesome support. We really owe you a lot – once more THANK YOU!

I’ve already used part of the funds (and part of my savings, plus other donations) to purchase some gear, and I’m going to start shooting again very soon. When the rest of the funds will be released I will buy another couple of pieces of equipment and I should be fine for quite a while.

Although I like to live here, Siracusa never really appealed to me photographically (perhaps because it’s where I was born and raised), so I’m seriously looking forward to getting out of here with the new camera and start building a new travel photography portfolio from scratch. Fortunately we have this location independent job which makes our semi-nomadic lifestyle possible, so we can actually choose where we want to live and for how long before moving somewhere else.

In fact we’re quite excited that we’re moving to Portugal in less than a couple of weeks The plan is to spend Christmas with the in-laws and subsequently rent an apartment somewhere in Lisbon downtown. I have some ideas as to what I want to shoot while there and I made a commitment to treat these ideas as a self assignment. Hopefully by the end of my stay in Portugal I’ll have some decent photo essay for magazine submissions, contests or perhaps exhibitions.

We’re also thinking of moving to South East Asia in February or March, but we’re still undecided as to whether we’ should go to Bali or Thailand - both places provide the right mix of traditions and modernity, and both offer easy access to photogenic material for my portfolio, so it’s not an easy choice (maybe we go to both?) In any case, we should be back in Siracusa in the summer. Or at least that’s the idea right now.

Well, an exciting 2013 is ahead of us and hopefully the Maya were wrong about the end of the world on the 21st of December Once again, thanks for helping us go through these tough times. Now we’ve got to go and look for camera insurance and reliable off site back-up solutions.

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