The only downside to packing your suitcases and setting off to a faraway destination, is that you can only get hired “locally”, as opposed to signing an expatriate contract, which means the company will not only pay for your expenses to relocate, along with a few other significant perks, but, most importantly, your salary will be dollar based…

Well, as you know, I just showed up one good day in Mexico, and therefore eventually got paid in local currency, Mexican Pesos, which were exchanging at a rate of 3 to 1 against the dollar when I started working in Merida.

As often in Latin America in those days, the Peso suffered a massive devaluation at the end of 1994, so my already basic resources became three times more basic… Around the same time, after a year in Hyatt Regency Merida, I naively thought that I had gained quite a bit of international experience, and decided it would be a good idea to put it to good use in French hospitality…

I returned to France at the beginning of 1996, and started applying to various hotels in Paris and the South… 8 months of a difficult search finally landed me a job as event coordinator in the South of France, which unfortunately, absolutely did not work for me 🙁

So there I was, a bit distraught and wondering what to do on my 30th birthday… I finally decided that the best thing was to go back to Mexico, at the same time an idea of a micro business started forming in my mind…. so, back on the plane !

The plan was to :

• buy a VW beetle, because they still made them there at the time, and I was so crazy about these expressive little smily things (I owned a total of five, in very diverse conditions….), below is a picture of my first one, bought in Switzerland during my studies

Un amour de coccinelle !

• Find a place to rent, buy a fridge, a stove, pots and pans (I had brought the pasta machine already)
• Produce flyers (no internet or printers at the time, so had to be on the  typewriter…), and distribute them all around Merida….
• Produce fresh pasta and French specialties
• Organize deliveries anywhere in Merida, under 30 minutes…

 

“L’Olivier, Especialidades Francesas y Pastas Frescas” was born…

 

To my surprise, my micro business picked up quite rapidly and I often got caught up in awkward situations where I had the phone in one hand and another one in the oven, whilst my Beetle was impatiently waiting to go out and deliver some pasta on the other side of town… (and getting directions was not always easy eheheh, oh and no GPS by the way… does it not seem like centuries ago?)

To add to this, my dear 14 year old, temperamental, hardly ever maintained Beetle would decide not to start once in a while… luckily the neighbor was a good friend !

Although Merida is a real beautiful city, I just could not stand the heat there all year long, so as I was debating whether to develop this emerging experimental business or keep on seeing the world…

Well, I did not have to debate for very long, as a call from the Hyatt Cancun Caribe put me back on the road and into suitcases…

The job was Restaurant Manager of the once famous Blue Bayou and Jazz Lounge, back in the days when there were only a handful of restaurants in Cancun’s Zona Hotelera.

Feet got itchy and my mind went wandering around the world in a heartbeat, thinking about all the possibilities an international chain could bring for a traveler, and in the most beautiful of settings at that, gorgeous beaches all around!

During my career, I often got asked the question by hotel guests “Isn’t it wonderful to live in Paradise??” … it turns out that working life is not always a postcard…  as we’ll see in next week’s post, which will officially initiate the Cancun era….

Until then, have fun, do what you most enjoy doing, and as we say here in Paris, A+ 