RedSwoosh. free your links

Does ant infestation violate your laptop warranty? How about monkey pee? When you move your office to the tropics, you open yourself to a wide new array of occupational hazards:

• Chemical warfare. It’s not called “rainforest” for nothing. When it rains, it pours, and just being indoors isn’t enough to keep you and your thousands of dollars of computer hardware dry.
• Arial bombardment. Remember when you switched from playing Doom to Quake, and for the first time you had to look “up” to fend off zombie attacks? Well, much the same thing here, but now they’re monkeys, and grenade launching takes on a whole new meaning.
• Swarming attacks. Remember your first Zerg rush? Hordes of minions swarming over your meticulous defenses so fast you question whether you and your opponent started at the same time? Experience the same joy each night when the lights turn off and the myriad brands of insects - drawn to the brightest light in the room - become mesmerized by your laptop LCDs.
• Minefields. Nothing better complements a sunburn than the sting of a jellyfish. From the deck of the Swoosh speedboat on a recent snorkeling adventure, we admired the aquamarine waters rushing beneath… as well as the high density of fluffy pink deathtraps (each bigger than a basketball) lurking just beneath the surface.
• Electrocution. Just because you can plug it in doesn’t mean you should. There’s no quicker reminder that the world hasn’t standardized on 120V than a fried wifi router.
• Civilians. Generally you don’t have confused (and often drunk) tourists walking through your office asking such brilliant questions as “is that a laptop?” Even after years of enduring the same idiocy at my favorite late-night SF wifi zone (the Matrix Fillmore), I’ve yet to determine the best reply.

All told, offshoring isn’t for everyone, and certainly not for the feint of heart. But if you’ve got the fortitude, you might find your abilities to navigate the urban jungle helped by a few weeks navigating the real thing. The opportunity to step outside your life and look back with a critical eye doesn’t come often, and not without serious effort on your part. But there’s a reason the Temple of Doom wasn’t buried in SOMA. Indiana went to the ends of the earth to find his treasure; how can you justify doing less?