Albino Kangaroo: Pleasure and Pain

Thank God I enjoy what I do. Although life is always full of Sticks and Carrots, a new business is the ultimate case study.

Let’s take these current couple of days as an example:

I am currently in Durban for the Tourism Indaba, which is a big deal for young fledgling Mobiguide. Now, I am not sure if you know Durban, but it as a balmy beachy tropical place with amazing lush greenery and awesome diving.

There are a scary amount of stunning beaches and the ocean, especially in summer, is almost the temperature of bath water! The weather is lovely, a lot of people have flown in from overseas and are in a pretty good mood, and finally, most of the business is meant to be conducted at ‘beach parties’ and cocktail evenings at local swish hotels and restaurants.

Sounds fun, it is I suppose. However, Indaba is the biggest trade fair in Africa and the concentration of wealth available for my new little company in the form of deals, barters, relationships, and promotions is staggering. So, pleasure and pain, fun and work, here comes the hard part.

Every time I am having ‘fun’ I am not talking to someone about ‘business’. Who knows if the next person I speak to will be mobiguide’s angel in waiting. If I make the effort of visiting one more stand although my feet are about to fall off, is that going to be the one?

What’s worse at an exhibition is that it lasts four whole days! And you need to be able to speak to someone on the afternoon of day 4 with the same amount of passion, excitement, and energy that you did at the start of day 1 or you might as well have gone home. They should do courses on advanced extreme smiling techniques.

So, thank God I enjoy what I do, cause the line between ‘fun’ and ‘business’ blurs a bit. I am having fun when I am doing business, I love talking about my products and ideas to people, and seeing others interact with my product puts a smile on my anyways. It also means that it is slightly easier to maintain some kind of balance in life, cause all work and no play makes Danny a very dull Kangaroo.

Albino Kangaroo: An Alien in Africa

Albino Kangaroo: An Alien in Africa


Well, I suppose the place to start is the fact that I love South Africa and I love traveling, so if you hate yourself enough to start your own business, then you might as well torture yourself doing something you love. Amanda came to me having found an awesome gap in the market, and we are both plowing forwards doing things we have a passion for; travel, technology, self-employment, and of course a nice pay-off at the end of it.

An Albino Kangaroo highlights some of the situations you find yourself in when you travel, work, and live in foreign climes. Well, foreign in as much as you weren’t wearing your original birthday suit when you first arrived on those particular shores.

I’ve been in SA on and off for 10 years this October. Since arriving, SA has been hugely welcoming and integration has never been a problem, all this amongst the general upheavals of a young democracy. Integration for me has always been a key issue when traveling and throwing yourself in the deep end is what it’s all about if you are going to get a real ‘experience’. As my Dad used to say “ I am not dragging you half-way around the world to find the nearest English pub serving mushy peas!!” Or in modern times, a McDonalds.

However much you adapt though, your history and upbringing, culture and family makes you slightly different. This is good and bad, examples could be as simple as not having watched the same cartoons as children to serious pronunciation and cultural issues. I still have difficulty not torturing anyone who can speak Afrikaans with my accent. Hence, however well adapted a Kangaroo, I am definitely not indigenous.

Kangaroos, though, normally have a home to go back to. You send it back to Australia in a purely literal sense, or in my case, I suppose, Montreal, Canada. Yes, I was born in Montreal, but I left at the age of 20 months, and since have spent more than 1 year in countries as varied as Saudi Arabia (the theme for another blog, nice Jewish boy in the desert), the USA, Indonesia, UK, France, and so on. Two passports, numerous permanent residencies, and a Greencard to show for it, but where is home? So even in a herd of Kanooks, I would definitely be the albino J

Then of course, instead of just joining your new herd, you deliberately decide to do things differently from them and set up your new business!! This is where the fun really starts, so once again, make sure you are doing something you really love, cause at least when you put your 18 hours in, you might be able to do it in exotic destinations on ‘research’ or at least staring at material all day that you have a serious passion for. However, something that always gave me the strength to buck the trend was:

“In order to be an immaculate member of a flock of sheep, one must, first of all, be a sheep”

and the prospects of having to worry about yacht birthing fees one day ;)