I hope you find your peace this Easter  

Greetings from my very peaceful quarantine hotel room in Sheffield.  Hope you are well, feeling like a spring chicken and ready for the long weekend.

I am able to work the same way I did in Spain: via Wechat, Whatsapp, Slack & Zoom. With Ringo in Indonesia, Coco in China, Mr Chatterjee in India and all the AW offices in Europe. The only difference is now I have a nice view of the car park, rather than the sea.

Oh but at least I brought the sunshine with me, it's a lot more sunny and warm than I expected. 

So this week since it's Easter, a less business and more reflective newsletter with some amazing news and memories from another age..

Last week I was writing from Malaga airport as I prepared to leave Spain. I was telling you about how I could see those mega container ships pass by our house there, and an update on the container ship blocking the Suez Canal. You can read about it here.

The flight should have been fully booked, it was the only direct flight from Malaga to Manchester in a month. But quite a few people failed to negotiate the complicated passenger locator and booking covid tests system.

Even though the online guidance said you could show pdf proofs on your phone, the easyjet guy checking papers in the queue wanted to see printed off papers. Covid tests needed to be valid within 72 hours and there is no guidance of which types of tests are valid or not. In short it was a complete (insert expletive) mess. It was not peaceful.. it was very stressful. Once on board maybe 20% of seats were empty - so many didn't make it.  

Regular readers will remember the story of Rodrigo. He is our main marketing guy in the UK, (although he involves himself in all sorts of projects). He is from Brazil and married to Jess, a lovely Yorkshire lass. In the age of Teresa May and her hostile environment for immigrants Rodrigo got trapped in a bureaucratic mess and was almost deported back to Brazil, even though he was (very happerly) married to an English girl. It seemed crazy and heartless that they would force him to leave his wife indefinitely to go back to Brazil and reapply for UK residency from there. We fought tooth and nail, and many of you signed a petition.. it was stressful. Finally we got a slight compromise that Rodrigo could go to Spain and reapply from there. So Rodrigo went to live in and work remotely from my house in Spain.  The story wasn't smooth.

From there it took seven months and seven day, many protests, great expense and a lot of forms, tears and mixups. Although there were visits from Jess, I was there some of the time, and we shared tapas and tears. Many evenings drinking wine on the terrace listening to Guns and Roses and discussing life. And I remember the day Rodrigo was finally granted leave to remain, and his passport was returned to him.  Within hours we got him back on a flight to the UK to be reunited with Jess. 

What do they say?  pictures speak a thousand words. If you want to message Rodrigo & Jess and you can here: rodrigo@ancientwisdom.biz

 

In Europe it's Easter, a time of chocolates, rebirth and more chocolate... 

In India it is also that time of year, they call it Holi. Holi is the most popular Hindu festival, also known as the "Festival of Love", the "Festival of Colours", and the "Festival of Spring".

You probably know about the colours.. this thing with dancing and playing Holi. It's as though all India's social norms are abandoned, people dance with strangers, lose their clothes, smear paint on each other. In Mr Chatterjee area they drink a kind of intoxicating yogurt drink and everyone gets stoned. It's quite normal. Coronavirus seems to have passed in his area, and everyone is more relaxed. Mr Chatterjee was even able to go on holiday to a mountain resort with his family and friends this week.

Here's some pictures of the local kids getting in the vibe, that's Mr Chatterjee on the left picture in the middle. 

It brings back memories.. It was a long time ago almost in another age.. five years ago in Goa it was Holi time and Mr Chatterjee took Coco, me and Tomas, to a posh Holi party.  

It was mad, totally wild..a kind of Holi rave come pool party. Later on it became too crazy and we had to escape.. It took weeks to scrub off the paint. But the memory remains.

Those were the days. Hopefully one day we will all be able to go out and live our lives in multi colours again.

Wishing you fond memories and a peaceful Easter.

 

Take care

David