Change of Plans...

Well, the whole point of the year was to stay flexible... and here is the first case. Back in January I had an absolute blast doing something that Christie would really prefer not to... building detailed calendars and travel itineraries. Christie complements me in many other areas, so glad to pick up the slack on the planning part. Anyways, the schedule was pretty set from Feb --> November. Immediately after India we'd travel to Bangkok, stay there a month and then onward to Taiwan, Japan, Singapore, and eventually make our way to Buenos Aires so I could work on my business.

During the Dubai and India segment of our trip, things started to sink in. I'm trying to build a business from the ground up and it needs more attention than me working from an internet cafe 15 hours ahead in some random Asian city, which was the original plan. I've been in contact with my newly hired team in Buenos Aires, which is 8.5 hours behind India and my co-founder, Alex who is in San Francisco and 13.5 hours behind. Let me take an aside here and say the .5 hour time difference that India throws in there drives me crazy. This place is already impossible to do business in (at least for me) and they throw the wrench in the time difference! Ok, back to the point, I felt like everything important happening was when I was sleeping, so I didn't want to go to sleep! After long 10-12 hour days in India during my EMBA program, this was wreaking havoc.

The final straw was when I had to get a legal document stamped by power of attorney in India. At first I went to my business hotel and asked the concierge. Pretty standard item I thought, and I requested for the notary to come to the hotel. After about 5 minutes of trying to explain what the notary was and I needed the special stamp, the concierge said that the notary was only available on Friday and Saturday nights. I was confused, but it happened to be early Saturday evening, and he summoned the bounder to the club over. He wanted to stamp me with the club stamp called "Ice Bar". I don't think that would be accepted by the courts in Buenos Aires! Thankfully my good friend from the EMBA program who lived in Singapore, but grew up in India took me to the notary public area in Bangalore. We took a tuk-tuk and negotiated with the agent for the notary, pushing hard for the special apostille needed to make the Argentina documents legal. It was very frustrating, slow, and confusing. And that was with the help of my friend! There is too much to do and we decided to change our plans. It's onwards to Buenos Aires, from Delhi to Dubai to Rio to Buenos Aires. We will spend a week getting settled and then look for longer term accomodations.