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