Stuck in Paradise: How to Run a Business and Survive a Quarantine in a Faraway Country

[jisansorkar12]

This simply can't be happening! - I confidently declared to my family on the phone a month ago. - ALL planes can't stop flying!

They can, as it turns out.

I am one of those Russian citizens “who have found themselves in a difficult situation abroad” and whose assistance is the subject of indignant exchanges of fire with the use of obscene language on social networks.

Those stuck in India, Thailand, the US, Europe or, like me, Bali, mostly want to go home.

There are a little over three thousand of us in Bali. And we are much better off than many venezuela whatsapp list other tourists who have not yet flown out of other countries: we are not chased with sticks by wild, frightened locals, as in Goa and other states of India, although many here in Bali now cover their noses with their hands over their masks or even T-shirts when a white person approaches, exposing their bellies.

We don't have to pay overstay penalties like in Thailand.

We were not thrown out of all the hotels onto the street overnight, as happened on some Philippine islands.

There are also those among us who have decided not to return at all and to wait out the epidemic here, frightened by the news from Moscow.

I'm going to come back. In May. Or June. As luck would have it.

Stuck in Paradise: How to Run a Business and Survive a Quarantine in a Faraway Country 1

I am not a downshifter. I just leave Moscow often, usually alternating: a month or two at home, a month or two in Southeast Asia. I have my own business, the Stop Threat security school (www.stopugroza.ru), which I started from scratch. I came up with safety training back in 2013, after trying to find at least some courses for my thirteen-year-old daughter. So that instead of completely useless parental “don’t go anywhere with anyone” and “if anything happens, scream”, professionals would teach my child to automatically act in any dangerous situation. Children leave with strangers themselves. And not at all because they don’t know that it’s dangerous, but because they simply can’t be impolite with adults, they are embarrassed to attract attention to themselves, they fall for tricks. And what can we say about social networks and instant messengers, where they communicate with anyone.

There were no such trainings, so I created them myself. I had to break through hundreds of walls until my methods were officially approved by Roskomnadzor, until the Russian Academy of Education gave me expert opinions and recommendations, until government agencies recognized the trainings as not just useful, but necessary for every child.

My project turned into a business only two years later, when I had a partner, Alexey Anisimov, who took over the operational side. By that time, I was conducting trainings in Moscow and the region with one assistant, and was completely overwhelmed with accepting applications, content on the website and in social networks, and a multitude of tasks. We packaged the project into a franchise, and within a year we had more than 30 branches.