Greetings from the AW warehouse in Bali.
In the village of Ketewel, east of Denpasar and not far from Sukawati you will find the warehouse of Ancient Wisdom.
Named the Frangipani Depot, every day a steady stream of artisans arrive with small trucks loaded with handicraft products.
It's my Happy Place..
Last week I was in Malaga at our office there telling you about some game-changing ideas.. It was my birthday (on Friday 13th) and if you missed the fun you can catch up here.
Since then I have traveled via Istanbul on Turkish airlines to Kulala Lumpa to visit our IT wizard Raul (who lives there) to work on our plans for one of those Game Changing ideas.. and from there I took a short flight on AirAsia to Denpasar Bali.
The flights went smoothly, until I arrived in Denpasar - it was late at night and since now is low season so I'd expected to drift through immigration without too much delay and meet Ringo outside pretty quickly. But I arrived to see the arrival hall stuffed full of thousands of people waiting to buy visa on arrival tickets and then queueing again for passport control. I soon realised that the majority of the people were young Russians. There are rumours swirling of a general mobilization and the borders closing. It feels like anyone with a little money is running away... and Bali is a favored escape with established Russian communities.
I have a business visa so I skipped the first queue, but it still took more than two hours to get out of the airport.
It was 3am by the time I got to bed.. but Ringo had arranged an important meeting the next day so no rest.. We had a meeting in Ubud with our lawyer Cory and assistant, a Notary from Denpasar, Ringo, Bondan and myself.
We have been going through the process of setting up a PT/PMA a foreign owned Indonesian Company. This will allow us to do many more things in Indonesia including advertising for staff, employing more people and owning property.
Job done!
There is a digital nomad hotel and co-working space that belongs to a friend of mine, so we met there. (It's called The Onion) I signed lots of papers, Ringo signed them as our local director, Cory our lawyer signed them.. then when everything had been signed, the Notary gentleman - explained everything and he stamped and signed everything.
Then apparently it is only legal with the application of my big English thumb prints. I duly inked my thumbs and plonked them on the legalising paper.
The beginning of another adventure at AW.. in a few days Tomas (marketing wizard) and Raul (IT wizard) will arrive and we will progress this big idea.. you will understand more later.. but as an AW customer we hope to give you a game changing advantage..
Meanwhile it is almost a New Year.. the year of the Tiger is passing and an altogether more fluffy year of the Rabbit is beginning..
In Kuala Lumpur the shopping malls were decked out with pink rabbits..
Let's hope the year of the Rabbit is cuter and cuddly and less trouble than the last one.
Coco tells me this year is unusual, because it falls so early.. and the official holiday season has to be extended to end in February. Which for some complicated reason I can't quite understand means that there are two Februarys in China this year. This apparently is very unlucky.. let's hope not.
All the best from Bali..
More news next week.