nieviety at its best

this is why I love traveling with jeff:
yesterday was sweltering so I purchased a bottle of water. as i popped it open to drink it, Jeff look horrified.

"what are you doing?" he questioned in a very concerned manner.
"what?" i said inquisitively.
" everyone knows you are not supposed to drink the water in India. You're going to get sick."

i had to explain that the rule didnt apply to bottled water.

he isnt convinced and brushes his teeth with coca cola.

just a quick up date

cant believe we have only been here for just a day - it feels like its been a while. we haven'thad as much access to internet as would have liked/needed so please forgive the lack of updates.

just very quickly -yesterday, our first day, we spent exploring the city and setting up meetings with our team . we also hired a driver, saw the whole city, and had a great dinner with Tarni's family at her house. we will fill in more details later.

we wanted to update you all on our next moves... . we will stay there about 4 or 5 days. we just booked a nice serviced apartment so we should make a lot of progress on our work while there. we will be going south to Chennai this afternoon, and

we leave bombay tonight via plane at 530 and its a two hour flight.

thanks for all the emails, keep em coming.

will update longer when we get to chennai later tonight.

Quick update

Hey everyone!!! We are safely in Mumbai! We landed last night after the most amazing 17 hour flight. It felt like we were royalty in business class. Our hotel does not have internet so right now our internet access is limited. Once we find wifi we will upload pictures and videos. We would love to hear from you guys!


Jeff y Zak

Day 1

Let the journey begin! Today (July 29th) is our first day of travel. After being up till almost three o'clock packing, the alarm woke us up at 5:30AM for the beginning of long day. We left SRQ @ 7:35am, laid over in Atlanta for a few hours and we are currently waiting in NYC for our flight to India which leaves at 9:00 pm). While here, we spent a few hours wandering the airport trying to find free wireless - but eventually gave up and threw down the $9 to use the only available network.

So far we have just flown coach, but we are hoping for business class to India, we won't find out till right before we get on the flight. Jeff is convinced a coach ticket may condemn us to a very very smelly & cramped 16 hours... I told him, no matter what ticket - were going to end up somewhere with those same characteristics.


We have been passing the time doing some interesting business reading: Jeff is working through Malcom Gladwell's The Tipping Point, and Zak is reading 'the longer long tail', a book that is relevant and about niche products in the digital realm, and spends a good amount of time focusing on Amazon.

Our friend Tarini's mother insisted she help us find a hotel, [she lives in Mumai] so we have a reservation waiting for us when we get to Mumbai. (http://www.landmarkhotels.in/ Its got AC so I think well be happy).

We are continuing to make progress with adding more talented help to our team. We plan on staying 2 nights in Mumbai then we are off to Chennai or Bangalore, we haven't decided yet to meet with our coders, brain storm, and go from there. One of Jeff's good friends from Panama is actually in Chennai for this next week (she is working with UNICF), and Zak has a friend there too.

Zak also has friends and their relatives scattered all over the country - so we have plenty of numbers and emails to go to if we get in a bind.

we are very excited and optimistic about the trip, although already tired from the travel thus far. We are now both sitting down to go over a list of goals and benchmarks we need to accomplish on this trip.

We will be updating this blog probably more than once a day - it gives us an ability to reflect on our progress and also maybe get feedback. we'd love to hear from all of you whenever you get a second, but if we are slow to respond, please remember we are working and will get back to you as soon as we can.

thats all from here -----

J and Z