Name our warehouse competion
Fri Aug 16 2019 23:54:00 GMT+0800 (Malaysia Time)
Greetings from Bali.
Last week I was telling you about going Mad in Marrakesh. You can read about it here.
From there Tomas and I flew to Malaga, Spain - finalised a deal on an amazing new warehouse just 9 minutes from the airport, Tomas went to our Slovakia warehouse (which is his baby) I flew to Kuala Lumpur to see Raul who is our IT wizard.. Spent a couple of days with the team who are working on some game changing projects.. Jet lagged and seriously knackered I almost missed the flight to Bali, arriving late last night. So in a week.. Morroco, Spain, Malaysia & Indonesia. PHEW!
In Bali airport, I got profiled.. passport control asked me lots of questions, why was I travelling alone? Why did I come from Malaysia business class, what was I doing in Bali.. He looked suspiciously at all the Indonesia entry stamps in my passport. So it was no surprise that they pulled me in at customs, a uniformed guy in black gloves, emptied all my luggage every item one by one and inspected even my toothpaste. Are you looking for drugs? I asked him, Yes sir.. He said, sorry its my job.. No problem at all, I said and gave him my business card.. I have samples of gemstone things from Morocco which rather confused him.. he sniffed at a selenite heart stone. But after a while he smiled helped me repack everything.. And thanked me warmly for doing business with his country.
Arrived at the hotel late.. Worked until 1am, up at 7am.. Ringo here at 8am.. Breakfast with Ringo and big catch-up then we go to see the new warehouse. Last time I was here was to sign the lease. And the place was seriously run down and in need of TLC.. I made a plan with Ringo and had given him a budget.
I'm so excited to see it.. Wow.. It's lovely I absolutely love the place now. Amazing what a paint job, new gates, new floor and some attention can do.
Ringo, always a man to get things done has exceeded himself and done it under budget. The warehouse has been transformed from an abandoned dump to place of beauty.
Let's go buy some big pots and nice plants and make the yard beautiful.. Frangipani trees I suggested. By 3pm we had a truck load of pots come, a truck load of flowers and a truck load of potting soil. We diverted some staff from packing molten glass bowls and walking sticks to potting plants. But we couldn't find any frangipani tree's in roadside garden centres.. next week we will find. My first day in Bali has been blooming marvellous.
We went for a walk down to the sea, it's about 10 minutes and along the way past frangipani trees and jack fruit trees.. Ringo explained that the Village is called Jack Fruit Village, it's actually a fishing village, it's very peaceful an absolute backwater in Bali. . Near the sea are a few fishing boats being cleaned and repainted. We made friends a fisherman called Ketut who carves fish from driftwood in his spare time, from him we learned that a Japanese millionaire built a villa here but never comes, he took us to see, did we want to buy it? There a small warung (snack bar), a guy making rattan furniture and running a street bar in his show room, a shipping company and one villa style hotel. Everything else is local business. By the sea (which wild and natural) is a temple with a coral display by the door, a sign says "Pura Segara" it means Sea Temple. So many temples in Bali - this is a fishing village so a sea temple is apt. Even our warehouse has a small sacred place.. of course we will keep it pretty and well maintained.
I loved the village, and I'm looking forward to getting to know the locals.
Regular readers will know our last warehouse was in Yellow Coconut Village, so we named our warehouse "AW Yellow Coconut Depot" and we had an artist paint a yellow coconut tree on the entrance with our logo - and Yellow Coconut Depot in English and Indonesian.
It's part of our lease that we have to make the place beautiful, we will need to paint something on that blue door and office walls..
"AW Jack Fruit Depot" just doesn't feel right to me..
Anybody got any idea.. lots of clues in the pictures and descriptions above.. let me know your ideas..
The winner gets - A bottle of fine wine, a £50 worth of Bali stock, a big thank you from Ringo and me, lots of karma points and the bragging rights to your idea being painted on our warehouse.
More news next week.
Have a great weekend whatever the weather!!
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