Eat, Pray, Love, Elizabeth Gilbert’s ubiquitous travel memoir, is now a movie starring Julia Roberts as Gilbert. If the trailer is any indication, the film emphasizes the glib aspects of a memoir that teeters between messy real life and staged epiphanies. In the film, our first glimpse of Roberts/Gilbert, reacting to the prophecy of the requisite toothless holy man, shows a flash of Robert’s patented self-satisfied smirk. This doesn’t bode well for the film, which opens August 13.

Here’s the trailer:

For those three or four people who’ve never heard of Eat, Pray, Love, suffice to say that it’s self-realization and travel porn for the thinking woman.

Despite my reservations, I won’t be able to resist seeing the film anymore than I could resist reading the book. Critics were less than kind. Maureen Callahan called the book “narcissistic New Age reading.” Lev Grossman said the author was “trying too hard to be liked.” Grace Lichtenstein said the only thing wrong with the book is that “it seems so much like a Jennifer Aniston movie.”

I agree with all of those critics, and yet I tore through Eat, Pray, Love, reveling in Gilbert’s incisive descriptions of far-flung locales and internal states, spouting select quotes to my friends, and giving the book as a gift to more than one (woman) friend. Gilbert is compulsively readable, and if afterwards I felt a little queasy about the fast food feast I’d just wolfed down, in the midst of the meal I thought I was absorbing valuable nutrients.

And the film? Well, Javier Bardem plays Felipe, the Brazilian guy Gilbert falls for in Bali. I’ll go just to hear how a Spaniard tackles a Brazilian accent.

Dear Miss Move Abroad,

I plan to move to Panama next year and wanted your advice on how best to bring my possessions with me. I want to bring my cars, my appliances, and most of my furniture. I plan to ship a container from Miami to Panama, but hear that getting a container through customs can be a headache. Any advice?

Canal-bound

_______________________

Dear Canal-bound,

I saw a bumper sticker the other day that read:

DESIRE

ACQUIRE

DISCARD

REPEAT

We all live within that cycle, but we can resist it if we put in some effort.

My advice to you is to pare down. (If you know now that paring down for you is as likely as rock-hard abs for Santa Clause, then skip to some concrete advice on shipping to Panama).

But why lug your old life with you to a new country, especially when you have to pay so dearly for the privilege? And you will pay–thousands of dollars for shipping, high tariffs (duties on imported goods), and time and energy navigating the bureaucracy.

The easiest way to bring your possessions into Panama is as checked luggage on a flight. But most people–even adventurous souls who decide to pick up and move to another country–have a lot of stuff that they’ve accumulated over the years.

If you’ve lived in one place for a while, I’ll bet that you’ve been meaning to purge your belongings–to have a garage sale or take a few trips to the Salvation Army drop-off station.

It feels good to pare down, and a lot of people who move abroad do so in part because they want to simplify their lives.

You can start simplifying long before you make the move, by thinking carefully about what possessions you can’t live without, then selling or giving away the rest.

“I thought about selling all my favorite things, all the great stuff I’ve collected over the years, and I just couldn’t do it,” says Mary Ann Jackson, who moved to Costa Rica in 2004. “But I wasn’t going to lug it all with me, either. So I gave it all away to friends. Now I can visit my stuff in their houses.”

But ok, if you want to ignore my advice and still bring all your stuff to Panama in a container, then here’s some practical tips on shipping to Panama, courtesy of Our Man in Boquete, a German-born jazz-loving former airline pilot who relocated to Panama in late 2009.

Photo of skateboarders in Panama City by David W. Smith.

When you decide to move abroad, it’s tempting to do a little bridge burning before you go. It can be satisfying (if childish) to say the equivalent of “Take this job/relationship/country and shove it.” But remember, you may want to come back to your job, or, even better, to freelance for your former employer while abroad. Think of the job you’re leaving not just as something you’re giddy to be rid of, but a source of invaluable contacts (among your peers if not your bosses).

Lifehacker has a short article on how to leave a job gracefully, with an interesting thread of comments from people who’ve left jobs well and (more commonly) with some clumsiness. I know I’ve been guilty of clumsiness and bridge-burning—it seems to go hand-in-hand with being a serial relocator. Most of us tend towards one of two poles: the smoother-over, who never wants to make any kind of break or change, and the bridge burner, who’s always itching to strike that match.

Over the years I could have used some of the following tips, adapted from Sandra Naiman’s book “The High Achiever’s Secret Codebook: The Unwritten Rules for Success at Work”:

1. Give two weeks’ notice. Both your past and future employer will consider it a plus.
2. Explain that you are leaving because of growth opportunities, not due to dissatisfaction, even if it’s not true.
3. On your last day, write your boss and colleagues a thank you note about how much you enjoyed working with them.
4. Offer to train your replacement, and if possible, be available after you leave to answer questions.
5. Make sure your work is caught up before you leave and write notes, when relevant, to guide and inform your replacement.
6. If you have external customers or colleagues outside of your company or organization, work with your boss on how to transition them to your replacement.
7. When telling customers or external colleagues you are leaving, say only good things about the company and your experience there.
8. Let people know you only want to leave the job, not the relationships you have built.

Dear Miss Move Abroad,

I want to move abroad. How should I proceed?

Ready & Willing

Dear Ms. R&W

You may be willing but you’re far from ready. How to proceed, you ask?

Proceed by dreaming. Dream a little dream of you, abroad. Are you meandering along a beach or striding across cobblestones? Is it hot and humid or is there a hint of snow in the air? Are you headed for your Spanish class or a new job? Dream long. Dream deep. Write it all down.

Then map your dream to places that actually exist. Do some research on those places, and get back to me.

In other words, you’re not quite far enough along in your dreaming to ask for advice.  Consider, too, that people who thrive abroad are resourceful and know how to think for themselves. Sure, everyone needs help. But to get it you need to have moved far enough in imagining your plan to at least ask the right questions.

Painting by Marc Chagall: ‘Over Town’

It’s the last day of your vacation. Far from being ready to go, you find yourself wondering: What if the flight home leaves and I don’t?

If you seriously consider what it would be like to stay behind every time you travel, you may be a closet expatriate for whom a week at the beach or 10 days in Europe just don’t cut it anymore.

You find yourself dreaming longer-term dreams: a top-floor apartment in an old-world capital. An open-ended stay in a ramshackle village on some forgotten coast. Opening a bed-and-breakfast in a mountain town.

More and more of us are doing it. Between 1966 and 1996, the number of Americans living abroad grew from 70,000 to 4 million, according to the U.S. State Department. By 2006, the number was an estimated 6.6 million. And those are the official counts. Other expats are living under the radar, having dropped off the map.

If you’re past the dreaming stage and want to check out a place for its long-term potential, here are some tips on how to do it.

Stay put. If you’re thinking of moving to a particular place, you’ve probably been there at least once or twice. This time, choose the town or city you liked best and stay there. Rent a villa, find a cheap hotel with a kitchenette or stay with friends.

If you dash around too much you’ll never get a sense of the country’s rhythm. And rhythm is all. It may be love at first sight, but if the beat of the place doesn’t move you, this affair won’t last.

Do everyday things. Forget the monuments, the guided tours or running those Class IV rapids. Instead, get a haircut. Do your laundry. Go with the woman next door to pay her electric bill. Shop for food and make dinner. Gossip with the man selling fennel root. Take in a church service or go to the all-you-can-eat fundraiser for the town’s fire department.

If these activities are difficult because you don’t speak the language, that tells you what you would be up against if you moved there without some language study.

Sit and watch. Find a good perch at the center of it all, and stay there. Have some props — a drink and a book — to make you feel less conspicuous. Practice the lost art of noticing. Does everything shut down between 2 and 5 p.m.? Does the town consist mostly of older women, the men and younger people having fled to the city in search of work? Is it so hot that people work the edges of the day, leaving the midday for naps in the shade?

Take photos of mundane things. The state of the roads. Highway signage (or the lack of it). The prices on menus. What’s available at the local market. The lines at the bank. The cleanliness of the beaches or streets or fields. The smiles or scowls on locals’ faces. The wildlife and insect populations.

Back home, these shots will remind you of the quality of everyday life in your dream destination. Memory plays tricks on us, and once you get home the trip will soon be shrouded in a fog of generalization. We tell friends the trip was life-altering, but we have forgotten (or altered) the particulars. This will help.

Talk to other expatriates. Find them in the market, at Internet cafes and on that traditional expat perch, the bar stool. Ask them when and why they came to be there and how it’s turning out for them. And then listen.

Try not to let your own excitement amplify their positive comments or mute their complaints. Nod when they say making the move was the best decision they have ever made. But also really hear it when they tell you it has taken three years to get permission to renovate the old castle they bought for a song. Or that they’re so starved for English they go out of their way to use the one bilingual ATM in town, just to savor the words, “Would you like a receipt?”

Wherever you go, do some of the very non-vacationy things listed above and you may come back knowing that, yes, you really do want to make the big move and soon. Or you may return with a newfound appreciation of home. Sometimes all it takes to value what you have is to seriously think about giving it up.

And consider what author Alain de Botton discovered on a trip to Barbados. “A momentous but until then overlooked fact was making itself apparent,” he wrote in “The Art of Travel.” “I had inadvertently brought myself with me to the island.”

This article by Erin Van Rheenen first appeared in the Los Angeles Time.

Photo by Robert Doisneau, 1966

Recently, the Costa Rican Congress unanimously approved a law overhauling the country’s immigration policy. The new law is expected to take effect in early 2010.

Costa Rica is by far the most popular Central American country for Americans to buy a second home or to make the move and live there full time. Many in the latter group chose to become permanent legal residents of the country. The process for doing so is fairly simple (though often rife with bureaucratic delays).

The new law, however, increases the monthly income aspiring residents must prove to be given residency status.

For the pensionado (pensioner/retiree) category, you used to have to prove just $600 a month in pension income, from either the U.S. government or a private source (like the brokerage house that administers your IRA account). When the new law goes into effect, you’ll need to prove $1000/month in retirement income.

For the rentista (small investor) category, it was necessary to prove a monthly income of $1000 (usually a CD or annuity), guaranteed by a banking institution. When the new law goes into effect next year, you’ll need to prove a monthly income of $2,500.

For more information, see How do I get residency in Costa Rica?

I’m shopping for a netbook to take on the road, and I’m shopping hard. My last laptop, an iBook, did yeoman’s duty for 8 long years. I took it everywhere, and I used it so hard I had to paint the worn-away vowels back on with blue nail polish.

It’s time for something newer, and lighter. I thought I’d settled on a candy-apple red Dell Inspiron Mini 9, which I’d heard you could hack to run OS X. Voila! A cut-rate airbook that would work seamlessly with my new iMac.

But then Dell took that model off the market. And on looking into hackintoshing further, I heard that it can wreak havoc with the wifi and other functions. Not to mention that the “simple instructions” for hackintoshing are only simple for techweenies. Don’t get me wrong—I aspire to techweeniehood, but at this juncture have barely reached cocktail wiener level.

So I’m still looking high and low for the best netbook, a good (and cheapish) little soldier that will see me through airports and bus stations and rides in the back of pickup trucks, not to mention letting me blog from improbable places.

Everyone, it seems has an opinion. For your compare-and-contrast pleasure, here are 3 recent “Best 5 Netbooks” lists.
CNET’s top netbooks

1. Asus Eee PC 1005HA
2. Acer Aspire One D250
3. HP Mini 110
4. HP Mini 1151nr
5. Lenovo IdeaPad S10 4231

Lifehacker’s top netbooks

1. Samsung NC10
2. Dell Mini 10 (Lifehacker says this model is hackintoshable, but Boing Boing’s list of pc netbooks you can customize to run OS X says otherwise)
3. ASUS EEEPC 1000HE
4. Acer Aspire One
5. MSI Wind

Testfreaks’ top netbooks

1. Samsung NC10
2. Asus Eee PC 1000H
3. Tie between Asus Eee PC 1000HE & Samsung NC20
4. Tie between Samsung N120, MSI Wind U100, & Asus Eee PC 1000

Asus is looking pretty good to me right now, especially after I talked to my local computer repair guys and they said they were in love with the insides of the Asuses the took apart. (Asus porn?) “Really quality components,” they hubba-hubba’d. Who can argue with love?