I plan to relocate to Aruba and hope meet any other traders who live there... Anyone here live in or trade from Aruba? Best regards, Alex
Thanks for your concern. My wife and I will most likely end up settling in the Noord area if all goes as planned. Despite the current slant in the media, it's like a small town and generally a very safe island ... The people are well educated and largely very friendly and accommodating. The Natalee Holloway case has really brought out the worst in journalists and has shed light on the very few unsavory parts of the country. Virtually any small town in the USA or elsewhere put under such high scrutiny and pressure by the media would yield much more menacing sights for the TV audience. For example: A friend there was offered 5K cash to use his boat to bring a TV crew to the less traveled side of the island, then to "speculate on the potential whereabouts of a body" on camera. Imagine having your face plastered on tv with the headline ARUBA UPDATE:MISSING GIRL above your face. Rightly assuming that nobody reads the fine print, he declined. Another crew of journalists paid a drug addict a similar sum to locate a crack house and imbibe for the camera... 5 grand worth of drugs for an addict provided by the news crew. Who is the bad guy there? What happened to Natalee(?) is really terrible. I don't believe the media is giving Aruba or it's people the proper treatment though. That aside, it is a real tragedy and I sincerely hope she is returned safely to her family. We live in New Rochelle NY right now and lived in Brooklyn for years so I'm pretty sure we won't find any trouble unless we go looking for it. I almost forgot to ask, do you live in Aruba?
I really enjoyed my vacation there a couple of years ago. The most amazing thing is, that no matter how hot it is outside, and it does get hot as you are about 400 miles from the equator and there is rarely a cloud in the sky, there was this very nice constant breeze, probably 20 - 30 MPH, that was always cooling you down. One side of the island has crystal clear waters that are "barradero" style - you can go out several dozen yards and the water still comes up to only your chest or so. The other side of the island, where the native people live, has water that is very rough, but still beautiful. All over the island, the food was great. We found a place where we ate fresh pescado, arroz, and a beer for like $7. In town, there is lots of entertainment, particularly Cuban musicians. They have real Cuban cigars Downtown has a couple of movie houses and some touristy things to do, but it is nice. It is not tough to go to Curacao if you want to see other things... Overall, it is probably one of the nicest tiny islands, all twenty square miles of it, on the planet imo. nitro
I love it there... The wind is also great for kiteboarding which is reason #3 for me for wanting to live there lead by reasons 1 and 2: beautiful overall(beaches, weather and sunsets) and great people. The grocery stores are also excellent once you find them... My only concerns are connectivity related... Setar, the local telecom offers frame relay($$$$$) and IDSL (SLOW) I'm looking for a viable satellite option now as a backup. I don't want to be disconnected from position monitoring even if I successfully host the trading apps on third party servers in the US.
Yeah, When I was there and dreaming of trading from the island, I asked around a little bit about connectivity and it did not seem like it was going to be easy to find. Let me know if you do move what solution you end up with. Satellite would work for me since all my servers are 3 Milliseconds from the exchanges they trade. I just need to Remote Desktop to them. Maybe one day... nitro
For a while it looked like the cable Co. was going to offer an alternative ( backup) option but lo and behold, I heard that Setar the main Telco and conectivity provider bought the cable company... Either way I think all communications to/from the island pass through a Setar owned line or feed at some point. We'll see.