Arnan de Gans

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My story

Early days

Born in 1985, I lived a fairly normal life up until highschool where everything started to come off the rails. The education system tried to force me into a mold I didn't fit into which clashed with everything I am. I have frustrated more than a few teachers and employers just for 'thinking differently'. As a result I quit school early to pursue my own goals. Since then I have worked for several companies in various tech related jobs, before starting out on my own and doing webdevelopment full time in 2012 - Turning my long time hobby into my job.

Doing the minimalist thing

During the 2010's I became increasingly dissatisfied with the European Union and their overbearing totalitarian nonsense and finally figured out I wasn't going to be happy if I stayed for much longer. Worn out by rising costs, poor weather, peoples ignorance, illegal immigrants and many more frustrations I felt that I had to make some drastic changes to my life. After nearly bankrupting myself with a brick and mortar business in 2014 I've had enough.

I spent almost a year preparing for the next phase of my life, something more enjoyable. This started with cutting ties with anything I didn't care for. This included people I used to tolerate in my bubble, but also getting rid off everything I didn't need. I ended up selling pretty much all of my belongings.

I quickly learned that being free and more unburdened is a good thing and as a result I have turned into a bit of a minimalist. The few things I owned bacm then all fit in a large backpack and a laptop bag. The few things I owned were much more valuable to me, and actual consideration was put in about if I should have it at all. On top of that, I found new things to do and learned to leave behind a lot of other things and habits. As a result, my life got simpler, but at the same time this new lifestyle brought a whole new set of challenges.

Moving to Southeast Asia and back

In late 2015, having prepared everything there is to prepare for and I moved to the Philippines. I flew to Manila on October 1st, arriving the next morning. For the first few months I stayed in a touristic town called Puerto Galera to get my bearings and get over the first culture shock. I then moved south to Iloilo City and later on to Bacolod to sort of end up in Dumaguete City on Negros Island. Where I stayed for almost 3 years. Meanwhile I have explored a lot of the country and have been on most larger islands and some smaller ones.

In late 2018 it was time to do a so-called visa run. This amounts to leaving the country for a few days to get a new visa when I get back. For this little vacation I choose to go to Kuala Lumpur in Malaysia. There I discovered, much to my frustration, what a underdeveloped country the Philippines really is. Seeing a more developed country for the first time in years I suddenly realized how low I had sunk in my living standards and the daily frustrations I had to deal with. Malaysia was a huge eye-opener in that regard and after returning to the Philippines it quickly became apparent that something had to change yet again.

After some contemplating I left the Philippines for Southern Europe with the idea to roam around there for a bit and to secure a visa for Mexico.

To Mexico and...

The plan was to stay in Spain for a few months to recharge and plan the next move, unfortunately the reverse culture-shock of Europe was so great that I skipped Spain entirely. As planned I spent a few weeks in Italy where I visited Rome, Venice, Pisa and finally ended up in Milan. From there I took a train through the Alps to the Netherlands. Back 'home' I applied for my Mexican Visa.

From the Mexican embassy I did manage to get a permit to apply for a Temporary Resident Visa. And in early 2019 I boarded a plane to Cancun, Mexico. Unfortunately while I was there, waiting for the residency status the world kind of ended.

The world quickly descended into *social dysfunction*, and the *Chinese Flu* spreading like wildfire made things even worse. The government especially moved extremely slow. After more than a year of 'processing' I finally got my resident card. Anxious to get on with life I bought a motorcycle in January 2021. This allowed me to finally explore more of the country on my own terms.

After having explored Quintana Roo for the last 2 years I couldn't wait to get out of there and finally see Mexico. A plan was made to go cross-country to La Paz in Baja California Sur. I saw *a lot* of the country and I spent almost 4 months on the road. I went against all advise to stick to main highways, to avoid robberies and cartels and whatnot. Instead I travelled on smaller roads and only used the 'safe' toll roads if there was no other option. Ironically, the few highways and toll roads I used were the most dangerous and troublesome.

In 2023 I made a similar trip going the other way. Again cross-country on my motorcycle, but from La Paz in Baja California Sur to Merida in Yucatan. I've lived there for a while, got bored with the big city and in 2025 moved back to La Paz. This wasn't a spur of the moment thing, I think to know that on average La Paz is the most to my liking.

Will code for Tacos

Since 2012 I have been a full time freelance webdeveloper. During the first few months I've spent most of my time on making a more professional website and turning some WordPress plugins into paid products. Usually I'm working on something WordPress or WooCommerce related. But along the way I've also attempted to create a self-hosted search engine for Torrent Downloads, I've tried my hand at plugins for games like MineCraft and Endless Sky and some other stuff. More recently I've been working on a RSS feed generator that you can host yourself.

I maintain a growing library of plugins for WordPress, WooCommerce and ClassicPress such as AdRotate and AdRotate Pro. And I sell a bunch of smaller plugins for WooCommerce and bbPress.

I always work online, and while travelling that's just convenient. As long as I have internet I can get work done. I guess that makes me something of a Digital Nomad. But I'm not all that Digital. Just being a Nomad is enough for me. I don't follow the hype and never visited a co-working space like those hipster types you see on Instagram and YouTube. I rather focus on doing my own thing and keep my own identity.

I know PHP/MySQL/HTML/CSS and a bit of JavaScript. Among other things.

I've been making WordPress plugins since about 2005, back when WordPress 1.5.2 was hip and cool. Before that, I attempted to make my own Content Management System. And did odd jobs for local businesses. At the time I wasn't sure where I wanted to be with web-development and had a regular day-job. On the side I've been doing on-demand network administator work for a few people. I've used and maintained Soekris hardware with pfSense or Monowall and made sure routing, VPN, load balancing, Wifi and firewalls would work as intended. File sharing services and home streaming servers were often part of the action as well.