Business is open- first day

I had prepared a small truck(bought a brand new one)with a full freezer on the back. Proud as we were, we rushed to our first client- straight to the best handmade sorbet/ ice cream in town: Vesuvius, right in front of Bondi beach. We got out of the truck and knocked on his door early on a Tuesday. The owner( a fine guy in his early fourties)opened the door, and we asked: “we have some different fruit pulps you might be interested to see”.

He was curious and invited us in. I had organized a month earlier a leather bag which I transformed in a sort of executive bag. Inside there were eight high and narrow transparent flower vases. I filled them in with defrosted samples of the fruit pastes and bought corks to close the open tops. The moment I put them on the table, it felt like we were in some laboratory, with all the pulps amazing colours bursting into view. We printed trays, where small plastic cups would be put on top, each with its name underneath. These were all new flavours, and clients could get mixed with their names.

Richard was surprisingly amazed. After trying all eight varieties, he bought 05 of them on the spot-each box containing eight kilos. They were: Cocoa, Cashew apple, Umbu, Kupua and Caja. Wrote down a AU$650.00 cheque straight away.

Next stop was a bakery we had known the patisseur previously. It was a small shop in a fancy neighborhood, and he was a Belgium guy who had worked for an international hotel chain. The experience in Ole Country was still in the back of his mind, and all the amazing fruits he had seen and tasted over there.

When we arrived he went straight for two boxes: Cocoa and Acerola. The day was ended and I look to Gus with excitement and extremely touched: “you’ll see, this will be our blessed country!”

Tell you later.

They arrived! They arrived! Those wonderful fruit pulps and juices!

Then we had to start all over again. Find a new supplier since the ones we settled with, would just not return calls. This time around, we would have to do it while living in Sydney. We informed the Customs and Quarantine that we were interested to bring in some new exotic varieties. The officer asked me to email him the varieties and specify their production process. In the meantime, asked me for my mobile number and said he would call me in a couple of weeks. Gus and I burst out laughing. A public employee calling you on your mobile to advise? Will never happen. Two weeks later, he called: “Mr. Marco-you can go ahead.”I choked: “100% sure? “. “Yes, mate”. “And what about any releasing documents?”. “No need. It will be electronic and awaiting in customs files”.

I was beginning to get a feeling on how quiet and wonderful and peaceful is to do business in First World. We found a new and professional supplier in Ole Country-no NGO, just sheer ole slave work etc. Kidding. They had all Hygiene International Standard Certifications . But…they had to apply to Export Public Officers in Ole Country to ask permission to…export!!! So we sat for another couple of months and discover the officers had not got to a final conclusion. The plant’s director called them up and one last fruit was missing the permission. We asked them to go ahead and produce, but they insisted on getting permission for the whole range. So, another month went by, then it was a festive season, and when we finally had it shipped it was August. It arrived to our storage on 1th October, exactly one year after we first flew to Ole Country to look for suppliers.

When I opened the first boxes, even frozen at -18C, you could literally smell the wonderful aromas from fresh fruits. Most of them are still wild harvested in Ole Country, so you can’t possibly ask for any better product to work with- no certified organic though, because farmers that side of the world don’t have the money to pay for these certificates. They are, as you know, very very expensive… Just harvested by simple people and processed immediately into juice by a plant nearby the area. What a dream come true: they pulps came in various colours also-white, purple, green, yellow, red. There is one thing about life that is worth knowing: nature is not dull, after all. And life is not only about apples , bananas ,pineapple, mango and berries.

Tell you later.

"Let's sell fruit juices!"

While collecting all documents related to the Visa, we realized that we would not be of any interest to Australian authorities should we want to pursue our Ole Country business. I used to be a Lloyd’s of London correspondent . I asked Gus:” what would you like to do? Anything we try now, we will be starting from scratch.” Since Ole Country is known for its huge exotic fruits variety, he came up with the concept to sell fruit juices. As I had no idea about the business, but still knew that a business is a business(as any other), I agreed with him, more due to the fact I was quite uninspired.

We saw some franchises available at the time: the” Blue Chip “ones were quite expensive, and we found out that any screw shop had become a master franchiser. I could have got into any of these, but would probably have burnt the whole savings on absolutely nothing. And fruit juices seemed an interesting industry.

We offered a business plan to our Australian Visa officer and were supposed to have an answer by eight weeks. When eight weeks were off, we asked what was happening and noticed that actually our case had not been reviewed yet. We were already through late September and when our Visa agent decided to raise some complaints to the Visa Officer on its tardiness, he announced that he would be sending the entire file to another embassy(moving the files from New Zealand to Ole Country). With the help of God, our Visa agent had been a public officer before and he probably said some nasty things to the Visa officer. So we were granted a 04 years Business Visa.

My immediate reaction was to fly back to Ole Country and look for suppliers. We found one at the very heart of the forest, who was being run by a cooperative. Very nice. Very “Forest Alliance” thing. The cooperative itself was managed by a local University NGO. Very nice. The director was a German fellow we did not get to know, who was completely absorbed on selling coconut fiber to stuff Mercedes Benz car seats. Very nice. We decided on 08 different varieties and sealed the deal. Flew back to Australia very happy.

When we arrived(after a month) we realized the deal had not taken place: the manager who took us to visit the factory just would not answer our phone calls(that we had to do late at night, due to hours’ differences) and when we finally called the director himself, he answered: “ooooh, you’re in Australia!!! Very far away country!!!” and that was that.

Tell you later.

Meeting new people

We were enjoying the stay. We decided on Price Waterhouse(the same AU$5,000.00 fees) and were oriented that the best Visa for us would be the Business one. It grants you four years to stay and by this time you need to have a AU$250,000.00 turnover and 03 full time employees. The other alternative would be to appear with AUS$2,500,000.00 in cash and have a permanent granted instantly. Or, either- AU$750,000.00(also in cash) to be locked in Australian Federal Treasure bonds for 03 years. It’s all true.

So, while we were preparing documents, we decided to “feel the country”. We rented the flat(03 months payment in advance) and looked for any social activity to interact with other people(apart from saunas). There was this “fruits in suits” thing, a gay entrepreneurial meeting, that would take place every once in a while. Gus and I were excited. We would get to know, first hand, businessmen out of the closet-and that really was exciting. First meeting was at the Hotel W, a posh venue in Wooloomooloo(the word with more “O”s you will ever find in the dictionary). I called the director of the group who told me:” It’s in Wooloomooloo! “And I asked him humbly:” We are new here. Would you give us some instructions on how to get there?”. And he answered: “Oh, just pick a taxi and he will know”. Fine. We were still excited.

We arrived by taxi and discovered we weren’t quite well dressed for the occasion. Mind you, there was also another group there: “Lemons with a twist”- the lesbian share of the group. People were all in suits(of course)while we were in Club Med sweaters(don’t ask me why-we just didn’t have any winter clothes). After presenting ourselves as two citizens from Ole country, we were forwardly presented to two other American lesbian professors from the US as a lovely Mexican couple. Thanks God for that-then we had, at least, found somebody to talk to. As we found out later, the group’s director was the proud owner of a newsagent shop, and he was getting tired of it too. So we were more or less discovering that Australians themselves were bored in their own country. And that they weren’t very good in Geography either.

Everything was clean in Sydney. We just could not(at least myself) get excited with the architecture, the landscape, the culture- well, maybe with Ned Kelly. He was bored to be told what to do and is now their national hero. Painted as a black squared headed guy by a famous Australian artist.

Tell you later.

First impressions

My first impression of Sydney was dullness. I just can’t explain why. We stayed in a hotel some 03 minutes walk from Darling Harbour. We had to wait until our room would be ready. It was a wet rainy grey day in May, and we decided to spend some hours there-Darling Harbour. I was already having second thoughts about the whole idea. The jet lag was huge: 13 hours ahead. And I was feeling it. I used to have this nightmare, for many years, that I travelled on a plane to the other end of the world, and the plane would need to be upside down in order for us to get there. In the middle of the journy, we would fly over the Andes and had to have an emergency landing. On some wide road. And actually this was the real fun about it all, because I was not very sure(in my dream)that I wanted to be on the other side of the world.

We quickly discovered that Australians hate to serve. Services Industry(Hospitality mostly)is some sort of misery that they do with heroic efforts. By the end of some years spending there, I always felt embarrassed to ask the waiter for anything. Just did not want to bother them. And we also discovered the same applied for real estate agents when we needed to rent a place for ourselves. Visits were held on Saturdays, on a 30 minutes window. Should you arrive on the 24th minute, the agent was already packing and leaving. And it was the only day to see flats. We could only schedule time wise, rather than interest wise, because we tried to have the full day packed with visits.

As for the Visa available for people like us- we went for a gay friendly visa agent. For one hour he explained to us what could be done(nothing that my partner hadn’t read about it before on the internet) and he charged us a symbolic fee of AU$150.00 for the meeting. Sweet. Also said, that should we wanted to apply, we would collect all the documents, pay him AU$5,000.00, leave the country and await his further instructions. Sweeter.

So I said to Gus: for this money, why don’t we go to the big guys? The big guys, at that time were Price Waterhouse-yes, the great Accountancy firm discovered that collecting fees/documents for Visas is simpler and more rewarding than rating Enron and affiliates. The appointment was brilliant: they don’t charge for the first visit. Now, that’s a real courtesy and how I believe business is done.

Tell you later.

Australia my homeland

I was stucked to be able to tell you on how we decided on Australia. I can’t get to a final conclusion myself. We thought it would have been “an Ole Country that went right”, being in the southern hemisphere and sunny. That was our guess.

We booked a flight to Sydney and went for the VISA. At US$150.00 you send them your passport, your last IRS statement, credit cards and bank accounts statement. The result was: multiple entries visa for us, as tourists-of course.

So, we embarked in this journey. My mother gave me some candies to take with me. On arrival at Sydney airport, we were put in cue and sniffed by big dogs at the very exit from plane. Then we were asked whether we had any food. I stated: “no”, because industrialized candies are not considered food any longer. They are more “dead nature” sort of food, since they will still be good after a plutonium bomb erases us from Earth. They passed my hand luggage in X-Ray and discovered the atrocity: “you do have food, sir”. I opened my hand bag and to their utter disgust, there was the key to the crime’s subject. I was alerted NOT to do it again or else I could be fined, jailed, deported or carved a big X on my back, calling me “3rd World gutter”.

This so much for first impressions of the very lovely Australia.

Where to...?

- “But why? Why would we move anywhere?”- Gus, my partner, asked me incredulous. “Is there anything missing for you here?”; “Do you want to be treated like a second rate citizen?”; “Do you want to feel and live what black people do here in Ole Country? Do you want to be part of this experience? Do we have enough money to live abroad like we live here?”. “Well, in that case-why not?”

We stared at the world map and got confused. So many options, for somebody who has no perspective at all. Anything is good, anything is just fine. I felt like the US would be wonderful for us, while Gus was more into the Old Continent. I had been to London so many times before(for work reasons) and had this impression that Londoners were sad. I don’t know why. Maybe read too much Dickens.

Maybe it was my actual experience in Brighton where I passed summer school in my teen years. I couldn’t tell what was summer, I couldn’t tell what was beach-from where I was coming. The landlady lived in a converted stable : she had 03 boys-one older and quiet(defeated?) who worked at a Rolls Royce factory; the middle was a hot 19 year old kid who knocked at old people’s houses asking whether they had anything they wanted to throw away. He would then check his antiques catalogue and resell them to antiques shop or go into auction with them. The smallest was a 12 year old kid who digged the Beach Boys. Ah,yes-there was also the 15 years old girl who(to be honest)just looked like a slut. And there was me and my other colleague from summer school.

So, all in all we were 06 people living in a 03 bedroom apartment, being that my colleague and I had each a separate room for ourselves. How was the equation solved, don’t ask me. I know that Mrs. Bird got a bit angry at me because I wanted to shower every day. She told me it was not needed in England. But we shared something, “me and Mrs. Jones”: we were both Shirley Bassey’s aficionados. So, for a while, we were friends, sharing the kind of stuff that only a forty something woman and a fourteen year old boy had in common back in the early eighties: plenty of drama.

Tell you later.