Ugh, all this time, and everybody wants to relax (Day 11 + 12)

Friday started out slow....very slow. The day before my meeting with Vlad had dragged out...to 2 am! We got talk some more business, about exporting to Denmark, expanding the current portfolio, and upgrading the webpage to make it easier to see the portfolio and quantities/quality of wine. The meeting was at a place where they had something called retro night - yup greatest hits from the 60s to the 90's....from Russia. Some good numbers in between and some weird ones too, but it was electrifying. I meet a girl, Helen, who was studying industrial design - her passion was shaping and reshaping cars. She also spoke english very good, so I had someone to talk to about other stuff than business. She was really nice, and I hope to talk to her again, and not only about the educational system but also a little more about this city. She seamed pretty glad that I wanted to hear about her town (Chisinau) and her study. I really want to get as many views as possible about everything down here - just so I don't get one group of peoples opinion but a broader view. 

Anyway, I was so destroyed friday that the only thing exciting was that I proposed a meeting to the Chamber of Commerce in Monaco for the beginning of December between me, my boss and the president of the CoC. Everybody had the day off, and I was told to just relax. Sigh...When you really want to keep working its pretty hard to relax, but I managed to anyway. Look how relaxed and peaceful I look ;) 

Saturday was more relaxing - and I spent that just chilling, watching a movie and writing on a business idea for Chile in the fall of 2012 (It's going to be awesome, but man I got to work out all the angles!). And blogging, spent saturday blogging a bit and trying to reflect a little about my experiences so far. 

This country is littered with possibilities, and the next generations is going to be very special because besides having free education and a lot is taking a college degree (a degree at a very high theoretical level), they are also learning English, French, Italian and German - and downplaying Russian. The problem is that the infrastructure can't keep up, so more and more people are working abroad in other countries or even moving away completely. Furthermore, according to Helen, the educational system is really focused on theory and very little on practical knowledge. So these young academics are in need of some practical knowledge, and perhaps more abroad. I fail to see how they aren't more targeted for international businesses since the average salary is ridiculous low in this country, yet the skill level is very high. The focus on theory I might add is for academics - for the technical schools it's the other way around. They have amazing technical skills, but they don't have access to the know-how and machines that we do - which means that they are excellent with their limited means, but they could be even better is they just had some more "tools". 

Well, enough for me - have a good saturday everyone! I try getting some more pictures so I can put them in the blog :)