I Came for a Week

He came for one week. Five months later, he flew home to sell the life he had spent years building.

Jason D'Silva had the successful computer business, the beautiful house, the cars, the cottages, and the kind of life people are supposed to work toward. He also needed roughly CAD 10,000 every month just to keep it all moving.

Then he packed one suitcase and went to the Dominican Republic for a week.

He stayed another week. Then another.

Soon there was an apartment in Costambar, a restaurant and disco called 5th Avenue, two dogs to relocate, land to buy, a 3,500-square-foot house to build, a rooftop bar that taught an expensive lesson about location-and a daughter who changed what the word home meant.

I Came for a Week is a funny, candid story about what happens after the vacation fantasy becomes ordinary life. Jason writes about language mistakes, "gringo" pricing, cars that cost far more than expected, cold showers he refused to accept, fruit that comes through the neighbourhood in wheelbarrows, strange cravings for Canadian subs, music that can turn a gas station into a nightclub, and the dangerous discovery that you can move to an island without leaving your old habits behind.

It is also genuinely useful. The field guide at the back covers the questions he wishes he had asked before committing money: testing a location before buying, budgeting beyond cheap-living headlines, property and construction due diligence, healthcare, pets, remote work, shipping, local prices, language, and the first ninety days.

This is not a promise that paradise is perfect, and it is not an argument that everyone should leave home. It is one man's account of making money, losing money, taking risks, learning as he went, and discovering that the most valuable thing a different life gave him was not cheaper stuff.

It was time.

For anyone who has ever wondered what would happen if they actually went.