One of many great shots of the falls.

I just got back to Buenos Aires after a quick 3 day trip to Iguazu Falls.  The falls themselves were pretty surreal.  It kept building on itself where I at first thought, alright, those are some pretty cool waterfalls, but what’s all the fuss?  I mean, it was a bit wider than usual… and then you keep walking and realized the scope of the whole thing.  It got bigger and bigger, and finally, seeing Devils throat from both the Argentine and Brazil (yeah! go brazilian visa!) side were awe inspiring.

Some other ‘highlights’

• Overnight bus journeys both ways. On the way there, I got champaign, wine and whisky, which masked some of the crappy food.  On the way back, I switched bus companies, and got stuck beneath an apparently unfixable leak from the air conditioner that dropped cold water on me ALL night.  Kind of like the Argentine version of Chinese water torture.
• Met lots of travelers from Europe, Israel, Canada, and the US.  Trading stories was awesome.
• Left my glasses on the bus upon arriving in Puerto Iguazu.  the story:  had to chase it down on foot, with all my luggage, plead with a passing truck to help, hopped in the truck bed and lost my flip-flops, but in the end caught the bus on the other end of town, and hoofed it back barefoot.
• Met some Brazilian girls on the Brazil side, and breathed a sigh of relief to be conversing in Portuguese.  They took me to an exotic animal zoo and I got to hold snakes and parrots, and see lots of exotic birds.  Brazilians win the prize for friendliness.

  

  My new Brazilian friends at the falls.

Friends in the Startup Community in Buenos Aires

My first three days in Buenos Aires have reminded me a lot of my first time in Brazil.  Not because things are similar here, but because I had forgotten what it was like to land in a new place, not speaking the language, and just try to jump-start life. I had forgotten that I didn’t fall in love with Brazil over night.  It took weeks of wandering around alone before I could fill my schedule with friends.

Before that happened it was lonely as it was my first days here.  I’ve had some success meeting people, but its challenging and the downtime is quite a contrast to the social-blitz during my 4 days in NYC.  This is how its gone so far:

Monday: Arrival, stop at OLX office, then out to dinner with Evan (went to Rice with me) and his friend Andres.  Ate all kinds of strange meats including intestines and blood sausage.

Tuesday: Spent the day at the OLX office, then after work went to meet Diego from Flaptor.com for coffee.  Later I walked to Bar Unico, hoping to meet up with a friend of a friend, but there was a problem with my cell phone and we didn’t see each other.  I ate dinner by myself and was finishing my beer before I had the courage to strike up a brief conversation with some Europeans whom I overheard speaking English.

Sidenote:  In Brazil, I always avoid Americans and speaking English in general which is why I learned Portuguese as quickly as I did.  For that reason, I have an aversion to speaking English here, but since my stay is too short to really make much progress in Spanish, I’m going to have to get over it, and make friends with ex-pats.

Wednesday: Meetings at OLX during the day.  Then a failed attempt to find a book on learning Spanish at the bookstore.  On the way back to my hotel I heard a couple speaking in English and followed them to a cafe, and sat at the table next to them.  It turned out, the girl was Dutch, and the guy was American, and currently studying abroad in Chile for the year.  Both were friendly, and staying at a nearby hostel, which I plan on staking out for friends if I get lonely again. Another difficulty? Travelers typically don’t have cell phones, or set plans, so meeting again is tough.  They invited me out that night, but I had dinner plans which ended at 1am.

I went to a bi-monthly dinner with a bunch of other tech guys in the startup community here.  Apparently tech communities are the same the world over, and I’ve been corresponding with a few of them over the past few weeks and they invited me to join them last night.  Lucas, who runs United Virtualities, picked me up at the hotel, and introduced me to everyone at dinner.  Some of the sites they are running are:

www.unitedvirtualities.com
www.killerstartups.com
www.dataopedia.com
www.socialmetrix.com
www.geelbe.com

I felt like it was my first breakthrough as far as meeting Argentines and having a good time going out here.  I still haven’t experienced the real “Buenos Aires nightlife” but I’m hoping that will happen this weekend.

Tonight, I’m meeting with a bunch of foreigners that I arranged using ASmallWorld.com (thanks Fil!) which is a ‘high-end’ private social network.  While it may seem like I’ve got a full schedule, I still feel a bit alone here, mostly because of the Spanish (or lack thereof).  I introduced myself to the Brazilians in the office, which was a breath of fresh air as I could finally speak Portuguese and be understood.  I really prefer to be the one stuck for words, rather than forcing people to speak English when its not their native tongue.

I’m expecting tonight and this weekend to be much more exciting on the social front…  Will report back soon!

I’m currently in Guarda Do Embau, which is just a hop away from Florianopolis in the south of Brazil.  I’m staying in a pousada (a minimal beach hotel of sorts) and after two days of rain (Droga!) the skies cleared yesterday to reveal an absolutely marvelous scene.   At night, despite the rain, the bars in this small surf town are packed with Brazilians listening to live music… mostly reggae covers and brazilian music that everyone seems to know the words to (except me!). 

We befriended the guy (Boca) next door in the Pousada and since his girlfriend had to leave early, he’s joined our group, and it’s like we’ve been friends for years.  While I’ve seen this elsewhere, it’s the way Brazilians act towards people they’ve just met (waiters, taxi drivers, grocery clerks, new friends) that I can’t get over.  There is almost no difference in the way they talk to them versus the way they talk to long-time friends.  I love it and if I could bring back one thing to the States, this would be it.   Its almost the exact opposite of what I find in Seattle. 

This place is crawling with Argentinians too… The men are easily identified with their mullet-like haircuts.  I can’t understand how this style is popular.  I met a few Argentinian girls who were very friendly (and gorgeous), but we soon realized that conversation was nearly impossible at any sort of bearable speed.  Whoever said that Spanish and Portuguese are so similar hasn’t been to Argentina.  Holy cow.  I managed with our Argentinian waitress later, but with these girls… it was just awkward.  Anything more than slowly getting main points across seems to be beyond me.  Even my Brazilian friends say they can’t follow Argentinians at their normal speed of Spanish.

This makes me sad because I had thought I would have an easy time with Spanish.  I’m headed to Buenos Aires in less than two weeks and I am going to be screwed.  My Portuguese is getting pretty decent too.  I watched my first movie in Portuguese (without subtitles) and could follow along pretty well.

Rodrigo just read this and made me translate it verbally in Portuguese.  Not bad. It’s largely because of his patience that I’ve learned as much as I have.  Truly a unique friend.

I’ve finally made it back to Brazil after nearly two years.   I’ve only been here for a few days, but the return to this culture was wasn’t without a few surprises.   Rodrigo picked me up at the airport on Sunday with Carol (Kah-Role); they have been together since my last trip here and say they met because of me, which always makes me smile.  One thing is certain, my friendship with Rodrigo has definitely changed the path of both of our lives, and I don’t think either of us have seen the end of that change yet.  It’s good to see him and his family again.

A couple quick notes.

When picking up my chip for my cell phone at the local mall, they gave me a “promotion” where if I buy one chip, I get two more for free.  Each chip has a separate phone number.  It doesn’t make much sense to me, but apparently people spread these to friends and the company grows its subscriber base.  Because of its expense, many people only have phones because they get accounts like this, and will only ever receive calls (which is free, as opposed to making a call).

Today (New Years Eve) when running, a bus passed me with loud music and everyone yelling and dancing. People waved, shouted and gave me a thumbs up.  The fervor for life here is as unmatched as the pace of life in New York is unique.

Yesterday I met up with Emanuela, who I first met through Filipe during my last trip to NYC.  She’s brazilian, and at home visiting family for the holidays.  In the restaurant where we first had a drink, there was a sign that said “It’s Prohibited to Sing, Dance, Beat on the Table, or Make Noise With Other Instruments.”  Apparently, Brazilians can break out into song and dance at any moment, and there needs to be signage to prevent an unruly environment. (No doubt after watching a soccer game, etc.)

It was awesome to see Emanuela here, to speak with her in Portuguese, and meet her family Rodrigo, Diego and Carol.  Rodrigo and Carol (my friends, same names, separate people) eventually came out too, and everyone got along famously.

Since returning from my trip to India, I’ve reconnected with a number of friends, and I routinely get the “So,… what are you doing now?” question. After fielding it a number of times over this past weekend, I thought I should do a better job of getting the word out to my friends.

I’ve been out of Microsoft for over two years, and after working for an outsourcing firm on contract for a year, I split off and decided I could do a better job of it myself. I had been working with the one company that had approached me, and I wasn’t tremendously happy with their work, so I decided to go to India myself, find the best companies possible, and work with them instead. This let me cherry pick the best, as well as spread the number of services I could offer to my US clients.

Now that I’m back, I’ve partnered with three firms (working on the 4th). The first is a market research firm, called ValueNotes, who is like an outsourced version of Forrester or Gartner, and does custom research reports in a number of industries. Competitive research and customer intelligence are specifically what I deal with, and any size company that needs to know more about their customers or competitors is a potential client.

The other two companies are in the more familiar IT sector. Synerzip does software development for funded companies, and Verisoft specializes in doing software testing. Both of these companies focus on creating teams and long term relationships.

I chose these three companies because I trusted their management, and found that their hiring practices were sound. There were a multitude of other factors involved, but those two things went a long way to solving a lot of the issues most people complain about when it comes to outsourcing.

So now that I’m back, and I’m working on the client side of things, which is reaching out to companies who want to utilize resources overseas, and need to find a provider they can trust. I’m happy to talk to anyone who needs to know more about outsourcing. I’ve made a number of contacts in India, in a number of industries where outsourcing now takes place (including software, market research, legal services, publishing, telemarketing, etc) and I’m happy to talk to friends of friends who need to know more about the landscape there.

How can I help people you know? To make it simple: If you hear someone talk about needing more resources, or about outsourcing… point them my way. I’m happy to help out in whatever way I can.

You can reach me at craig (at) dossantospartners.com, and my company website is www.dossantospartners.com

Well, it took a while, but Superbowl Sunday finally kicked me back into life here in Seattle. It’s been 10 days since I returned, but it has truly been the hardest reverse-culture shock I’ve had in all my travels. I haven’t figured out why, because I’ve definitely been abroad for much longer time periods. It was my longest trip to India so far, and this time I feel like I was more delved into life outside my family.

Coming home involved a long, overdrawn 33-hour journey, which included 9 hours in the New York airport thanks to looking at my wristwatch (still on India time) and missing my connection. I came home to the comforts of my house, my room and my bed, all of which were welcome. Mostly I just wanted to stop living out of a bag. However, my social life here, felt completely out of place. Until Sunday, I felt like I was watching myself interact with others in 3rd person. India always has a grounding effect on me, and this trip was no different.

The world here initially looked like it was made of plastic. So shiny, and machine created. In India, it seems like you can see the connection between your environment and how it was created by humans. Whether you’re buying food at a market, or looking at street signs that were written in paint. It’s difficult to explain, but I really felt so much more in touch with humanity while there. In all it’s glory and disgust. Whether you’re being pushed by 45 sweaty Indian men in a Bombay train, or just walking past the hordes of people on the street, I was routinely, and literally, in touch with humans during my day to day existence.

As an American (from the land of wide open spaces), it’s suffocating, and frustrating at first. But after a few months, it feels more comfortable, and returning to the US felt like entering a place devoid of human connection. My morning runs here were peaceful, but strangely quiet. I can go the whole day here, and see less than 50 people easily. I saw more than that by 11am while in India; like it or not.

No matter what the differences, I cannot deny that this country, sometimes for better, sometimes for worse, is my home. I am happy to be with my friends again who have made me feel great, because I know I was missed.

Well, at least I can say I that I ran it. The most accurate description of the marathon, is that I put the appropriate amount of time and effort into it. The race was a bit more organized but less well-planned than I had anticipated. On one hand, the course was well marked out, and they had advertisements the entire way. Sadly, there were a lot of indications that Mumbai doesn’t really understand the physical requirements of a marathon that well.

Getting to the race venue, there was a lot of confusion about where to go. There was a lot more commotion than I anticipated. (Roped off areas, lots of speakers and music, people throwing out free things to mobs of thrashing Indians). We had to walk about a mile to get to a large field, where people were milling about, and it wasn’t entirely clear where the runners go. There were 1/2 and full marathoners, and corporate and sponsored teams, and I think the directions were different for each group.

I entered into a fenced off area, where you couldn’t see over the solid fence. I felt like a horse at the track, because all of a sudden, one of the walls slid to the side, and everyone piled out. There really weren’t that many runners in the full marathon; I’m guessing less than 2000. I was fairly close to the front, but didn’t hear any gun go off. We passed an archway and a clock at 1:53, so I figured the race had started.

The race course was quite nice. A lot of it was along the sea, and it was fairly cool in the morning. Water (small bottles) were readily available during the first 20 miles, though it was spread out rather haphazardly, so I didn’t know when it was coming.

I was carrying my phone (I didn’t find the race bags, so I didn’t have anywhere to put it until after the race) and was pleasantly surprised with phone calls from my friends back home in the States, much to the amusement of the spectators. Technology truly is amazing. I can talk to friends 12,000 miles away while running a marathon.

I ran pretty easy, and was having no trouble at all until about mile 20. Besides water, there was a ‘energy drink’ that was available. Not only was it available, it was also clear, and in the same bottles as the water, so it was like playing Russian roulette when you went for a drink. It was the nastiest energy drink I’ve ever tasted. It tasted like a really bad version of tang + salt + sugar, all partially diluted so that at the end you get a nice shot of the powder straight in your mouth.  I gagged and spat the first time I got it.

By mile 20, things had spread out considerably. Water was sparsely available, and with the lack of carbs on the course (no gels, or bananas, etc) the few people around me were dropping like flies. I started to feel dizzy and light headed, and knew I was going to tank if I didn’t get some fuel. I stopped at a roadside stand, dug out 10 rupees and bought some salty chips (carbs + salt). About 10 minutes of stumbling in the hot sun, I recovered, and was able to keep running fairly normally.

Surprisingly, it was really the lack of fuel that stopped me from running better. I was on target for about a 3:13, which is not bad considering my prep and that I was not racing hard. However, the tanking cost be about 20 min total, and I came in at 3:33.

Oh yeah, and since they timed the 6K and 1/2 marathon to finish before the marathon, by the time we got to the last few miles, nobody really cared. The crowds were using the streets as usual, and I had to fight my way through to find the finish line. When I got there, a group of volunteers were standing and chatting, and looked at me as if to ask why I was there. I asked where the food was, and the first guy brushed me off, and the second gave me a vague reference to something behind him. I went to another roadside stand, and got more chips.

All in all, it was quite the experience. Nothing like hearing people cheer you on in a language you don’t understand. Occasionally I would hear (insert heavy Indian accent) “Go Uncle, Go!” from little kids, or “Go India!” as people assumed I was a local. Special thanks to Ashwin, Gerard, and Liesl for coming out to cheer me on, and to Alfie and family for opening their home to me afterwards.

No matter how many times I have thought about it myself, or talked with other travelers about the roller coaster of emotions when traveling, I have not been able to stop myself from going through highs and lows during my trip. I find that it is much more pronounced than during my normal day-to-day life back home. Perhaps this is part of the allure of travel. The down moments make the highlights extraordinary, and I always feel changed by the experience.

Last week at this time, I was literally counting the days until my flight home. The amount of trips from city to city in the past two months has been exhausting, and I found myself longing for home. I spent the weekend (extended into this week) at home in Mahableshwar, and even took a trip to my family’s lake house on Lake Tapola for my uncle’s birthday. It was exactly what I needed to get back into the swing of things and I’m now counting the days until I’m forced to get on the plane, and leave India.

After looking through pictures of the last year, I am slightly apprehensive about returning home to the life I was leading when I left. It seems so distant and far away now. Now that I’m fairly used to things over here, it almost seems like I wouldn’t fit in, at least in the same way. I’m sure that in reality, I’ll jump back into the swing of things right away, but I’ve been surprised at how different I feel, just in the last week. When I was in Brazil in 2006, I was there for twice as long, but the change in cultures, and my day-to-day life was not as different as it is over here. I think a lot of this is because my social life takes a large portion of my time in Seattle, and here it is largely non-existent outside of my family gatherings.

In other news, I was in my first accident on the way back to Pune from Mahableshwar. When I arrived here, nearly every car that passed would raise my heart rate. I was not used to being missed by mere inches and continuing normally down the road. Once, while walking in Goa, I was knocked on the shoulder roughly, and turned around to discover the culprit was a bus. Since those first few weeks, very little phases me, and I’ve lost the fight or flight instinct when cars pass closely by.

The day before yesterday, I was in the backseat of a car headed down to Pune, and dozed off while listening to my Ipod. I was awakened as the car braked sharply, but I found that even in the midst of the accident, I was quite calm. It wasn’t until I actually saw the two guys in front of us fly off the motorbike that I realized this was a real accident, not another close call. Thankfully, everyone was fairly alright, minus a few scrapes and bruises. A small price to pay for getting rear ended by a car when no one is wearing a helmet.

The car actually fared worse, and started leaking radiator fluid, so we overheated and had to pull over again 20K down the road. We were stuck for a few hours but eventually I made it to Pune.

Since I last wrote, I’ve been on a whirlwind of travel, mostly for pleasure. I had 5 friends come visit me in Mahableshwar for Christmas, and from there we traveled to Goa for New Years, then down south for an excellent houseboat trip in Kerala, and then I came back north solo to Pune for my cousin’s wedding, and now I’m finally back in Mahableshwar for the final time. Since being in India, I’ve attended a Catholic wedding of a friend of a friend, a Hindu wedding of a friend of my cousin, a family wedding (cousin) in Goa, and another cousin’s wedding, which was a triple hitter since I attended the court wedding, Hindu ceremony and Catholic ceremony. Whew!

I’m now back in Mahableshwar, after a few business meetings in Pune… I’m hoping to celebrate my Uncle’s birthday with him before heading back to Pune for more meetings, then to Bombay for a few more before finally returning to the states on the 24th. It has been quite a journey so far, and after all this travel, I can honestly say I’m eager to stop living out of my backpack.

As always with long trips, I’ve experienced the ups and downs of being elated at all that is new and exciting in India, to being homesick for simple things like my bed and my guitar. This afternoon, my uncles were asking if I was still in the same house in Seattle that I had been living in when they had visited a few years back. After showing them pictures of my new place in Seattle, I was momentarily transported back to my life in Seattle.

I’m sure everything will play out normally, but right now, I have a hard time imagining myself resuming life as usual back in Seattle. I guess two and a half months is enough to get fairly accustomed to things over here, even if I do miss the comfort of being at home. I looked at pictures of our potluck dinners at the house, and those times seem so long ago. Every time I travel for a long period, I’m shocked at how easily the experience can make normal life at home seem so foreign.

I’ll leave you with a spattering of photos from the last few weeks. I take full responsibility for all the jumping photos, as those are a favorite of mine. Take for example, the last two photos of my cousins and friends… isn’t the second jumping photo more interesting to look at?

A number of people have been asking me how business has been since I arrived here. I’ve now been meeting with Indian companies for over a month, and while I am far from exhausting the available resources, I’ve gotten a pretty good picture of the service (outsourcing) industry over here.

I chose to go broad in my meetings, and have looked at a number of different industries including, legal services, publishing, healthcare, call centers, IT development, Multimedia and design, and even a few venture capital firms. In addition to looking for quality partners for my outsourcing partnership, I met with directors, CEO’s and founders of a number of companies or VC firms simply to pick their brains. This was hugely valuable in assessing where my value lies in being a US liaison to these service providers.

What I’ve found here has surprised me. There are thousands of service providers here, but it is truly hard to find the high quality ones. I started out with a database of 1000′s of companies, contracted a research firm to pair it down based on my criteria (which has changed after getting here), then did my own online research based on the company’s web presence, and questioned people over the phone.

Even with all these steps, I still found that after over 30 meetings in 4 weeks, I’ve found only a handful of companies that I’ll likely be doing business with. Not all of the rest were bad, but some just didn’t fit the profile I was looking for. However, I was surprised that I was running into that problem after taking the steps that I did.

This has shown me that it must be extremely hard to find an appropriate vendor if you are in the US. Without some extensive research, coupled with a trip over here, it’s really a crap shoot. I can now understand why I get so many complaints about the pains of outsourcing. This made the last month more difficult than I imagined, but it also lends more value to what I end up bringing back, which are high quality, trustworthy, capable companies.

The economy is booming over here, and the marketplace (not just in service providers, but in other industries as well) has been flooded with competitors. I do believe it’s somewhat of a bubble, but not too large of one. India has a huge amount of potential, and is still uncovering it. The issue is that not everyone who enters is ready to, or has the competency to take on the customers that approach them. The media-funded idea that the Indian market is tapped is nonsense. The amount of competition has made hiring and retention harder, as the infrastructure here is trying to keep up with the demand. However, there is still a lot of room for growth, and new industries in outsourcing that are popping up constantly.

I’ll be taking off the next few weeks (from meetings, anyhow), and vacationing with friends and family in Mahableshwar, Goa, then Kerala. When I return to work in January, I’ll be doing a second round of meetings with the companies I’m partnering with, and should be coming home at the end of January with an offering I can be proud to offer.