mustache tie clip
I just bought this. Saw it, had to have it, looked it up on the internet and bought it. Found at http://www.tsaiclip.com/.
(via elongatedpantaloons)
My Heart is so Jetlagged
22 hours till Jenn lands in Nice. I have a 5 hour drive ahead of me. Staying in a Marriott Courtyard by the Toulouse airport, these points sure come in handy. Now the question is whether I spend the night at the airport, or would the parking cost trump that of a cheap hotel. Can’t seem to reach my French host family which I guess isn’t the best sign.
By the way, Toulouse is beautiful - except it turns into a ghost town after 8pm on a Friday night. People seem to drink their dinners… Which I learned starts at 7:30p. Another useful lesson was the difference between restaurant (full quality service), bistro (small with untrained services, dishes scribbled on chalkboards with standard dishes), cafe (coffee, booze, moulds frites and croquet monsieurs), bouchon (pig and duck), brasserie (wine), salon (like a US cafe), and bar (same).
Detour into Spain
As the sun slowly dips into the ocean and the crowds are migrating from the sand to the bars, I can still clearly see the outline of Christ overlooking the city at 9:30pm. Unlike the famous Redeemer looking over Rio de Janeiro welcoming guests with open arms, this Christ stands above a castle praying quietly over thousands of topless sunbathers.
I write this while sitting on Zorriolo beach, a surfer paradise in San Sebastian. I’ve decided that I’m really too old for hostels now and have been fortunate to find a place to stay at an apartment owned by a surf instructor, literally living across the beach. My private instruction with in the ocean helped me correct some of the bad habits I carried from my previous experience in Biarritz - spread wide after the jump, arch up before catching the wave, and stare into the distance. The feeling is nostalgic of old time travel films, where the screens become wavy like the motion of the ocean and coasting/warping toward an idyllic ancient town with so much history. Then I lose balance, fall overboard, swallow some sand, and arrive amongst the beautiful Basque people frolicking on the beach.
Finding warmth in Cote D’Azure
After spending two days of driving and coming very close to reliving my homeless night in Lyon story 6 years ago, I have arrived in Nice… Only to find that the friends I were to meet up were nowhere to be seen on the French Riviera, well at least till I wandered around the city for 2 hours, bumping into these ladies in their “Sunday’s best” hats. It was a bit moment watching them go parasailing a few hours later coming out with battle wounds. Good news is that we have a few weekend trips planned together, including Oktoberfest in Munich.
This would be my first in-depth trip to Nice, very different then my previous backpack and run experience. The city has grown on me now that I have discovered the old town and some nice restaurants. I still cannot comprehend why people like the rocky beach though.
Shiny FoundersCard Invitation
FoundersCard is a members-only community for leading entrepreneurs and innovators. Our members are entitled to unprecedented rates and benefits from premier travel, lifestyle, and business brands as well as access to invitation-only networking events.
I received an exclusive invitation to a passport to the entrepreneurial lifestyle. It reminds me of the time I discovered the American Express Black Card and spent a few Google searches trying to discover how I could possess such prestige.
The FoundersCard almost validates my transitionto entrepreneurship, and even perhaps the success of the Moustache Tie Clip Project. It’s quite excessive; without a serious expense account (a la gdifc) I may be missing out on some of the baller benefits with NetJets and Maverick Business Adventures. There are, however, many practical benefits for startups including major discounts with Fedex (25-50% off, Shopify (our Tsaiclip host), and the occasional chiq hotels (The Standard, W, and Ace). Most of the discounts seem to be New York-centric, which really makes it a shame that I’ll be leaving for Paris in a few days. With a $495 annual fee and $65 initiation fee it isn’t the easiest pill to swallow for a start-up, but I will make sure to splurge on all the local benefits if end up in the Wharton exchange for INSEAD P4.
Hope the card has a nice ring to it when I drop it on the VIP counter - well actually I’m going to hold off until I find more Euro/Asia uses for it.
Biarritz is the Ritz
It’s not usual I start the day after noon but after my 1,000km/8hr drive from Nice to Biarritz, I decided to reward myself with some extra shut eye. My first stop was the beach, where else? I looked for the surf school that my hostel recommended (and offered discounts to) and was able to catch the last class of the day. My classmates were 4 French girls, 2 sets of twins if you can imagine that. With my board in hand marching excitedly toward the waves, I barely noticed that the topless women on the beach were very beautiful, unlike those I’ve encountered in previous experiences.
I learned fairly fast on my beginner’s foam longboard. I have previously taken courses at Newport Beach so the basics came naturally - the weather was beautiful and the ocean had a clean salty taste. I came back very tired and treated myself to some canard (duck) and a glass of wine in the city centre. The next day I would discover the Basque sandwich comprised of nothing but bacon and fries stuffed in French bread. I’ve decided to cut my week trip in Biarritz short and spend some time in Spain - I wasn’t really improving in French and the costs were getting out of control.
Kickstarter Epic Win!
I can’t tell you how excited and relieved I am that we reached our $3,000 funding goal in 30 days. There were a lull during the middle that I was not sure I if we could recover from. Biggest lessons I learned in marketing the moustache tie clip? Publicity needs to be personal. We had to reach out to credible people who want to tell their friends about our clips. Now that the tie clip “project” is finished, we will have to package/ship out a 100 clips before Jennifer leaves for France and figure out our future marketing plan with business post-Kickstarter.
Monaco is Nice
Monaco is a very difficult country to drive given its cliffside environment - tight passageways, hairpin turns, and blind hills. After viewing the 100th Ferrari/Lamborghini/Maserati/Bentley F1 wannabe pass by I started to hardly noticed. The only car still in my memory is the matte black stealth Lamborghini Reventon (€1M). That car was a beauty and the poor car was surrounded by tourists and the car was planted with handprints. A few minutes later the Monte Carlo casino employee had to set a sign that said please do not touch the car in 3 languages. More money more problems… Or as a colleague once put it, “rich white guy problems.”
And if you feel just like a tourist in the city you were born
Then it’s time to go
And define your destination
There’s so many different places to call home
