Blogs from Mahé, Seychelles, Africa - page 6

It’s all go, I don’t know which way to turn, beset on all sides by potential work opportunities - though they barely pay me more in a month than I earned in a day in the UK. I neglected to complete a Cass Business School survey on salaries after graduation fearing that I’d completely skew their results leading them to conclude that their graduates actually earn less when they leave. I don’t think they’d like me for that. Social Seychelles helped me along as I received an email from a marketing company here who’d seen the site and invited me for a chat. I spent an hour with the manager who was really friendly and the role sounded interesting but at a level lower than that I usually work, ideally they wanted full time and the ... read more

Or is it SIBA? With a few irons in the fire as they say, I felt it high time to start the whole business application cycle again. I’d adapted my business plan to reflect just my experience and qualifications but had a few questions remaining so trotted off to the business advice place again that I had thought was SIBA (Seychelles International Business Authority) but was actually SIB (Seychelles Investment Bureau) - someone should point out that this similarity in names is mighty confusing. At the building entrance, I nodded at a guy who looked vaguely familiar and realised it was the same guy who a few days earlier I’d inanely grinned at thinking I knew him then too. He stopped and said hello under the impression that he knew me. It was soon established that ... read more

Perhaps I should have followed the car saint route more doggedly; if a higher being exists, it seems to be trying, bizarrely, to communicate to me via motor vehicles. I don’t know what I’ve done to vex it so, I think it may be the destruction I wrought on cars I learnt to drive in and the ‘expressive’ language that accompanied such outings. Whatever it is, we have another sodding puncture and it’s not sodding funny. We seek the advice of various ‘experts’ that helpfully don’t agree on anything but then that’s what I think experts are meant to do. Someone suggests rims, someone else a need for good quality tyres. We opt for the tyre route first and make for Providence, a mecca for car enthusiasts (though enthusiastic is not exactly how I’d describe myself, ... read more

Adding further to my efforts gone awry for getting busy in the Seychelles, is the withdrawal of a possible partner for setting up a communications consultancy in Seychelles. Having had my own UK business, I’ve finally decided to try something like that here and having met a lovely lady with similar skills, we were in the process of developing the business plan. It’s been rolling on since February and just as we were getting the proposal tip top, she mailed while I was on holiday to say that she’s been offered something else. So now it’s back to the drawing board, rewriting the business plan and a couple of months lost, boo hoo. More positively, due to having our flight bumped by Air Seychelles on the way to SA, I met someone from a Seychelles ... read more

Not sure that it’s been a conscious thing but ever since we got back from SA, we’ve been doing a lot more socially than we usually do. I think perhaps because we were out a lot more and enjoying the different places we went to in SA, back in Seychelles, we’ve decided that we should do more to enjoy our time here. Money, both the costs of going out and also saving to go away, is what has tended to keep us indoors, but the balance needs to be right and I think, right now, the pendulum needs to swing the other way. So a flurry of social activities have been on the agenda, dinner at Bravo on Eden Island with my meditation buddy and her friend who works for the organisationthat has been sent my ... read more