Opening a business in Romania

If you're thinking of opening an SME business in Romania, I have good and bad news for you.

The good news: Romania has a Chamber of Commerce and Industry, and it not only has an English version to its website, but it seems to be updated fairly regularly (that is MASSIVE in Romania - kudos to the team behind it!). Here's the link: http://ccir.ro/en

The bad news: Romania also has a dedicated Department of Small and Medium Enterprises. You might think that that's good news with a lot of valuable resources for you, but that's where the bad news comes in. You guessed it: English does not exist, according to this website. http://www.aippimm.ro/

Ok, so it's the typical mixed bag. Curiously, I also discovered a very useful business overview with a stack of additional resources on the Romanian Embassy in India and New York's official minisites. Take your pick: http://newdelhi.mae.ro/en/romania/319 or http://newyork.mae.ro/en/romania/319

As a parting thought, I'll leave you with this fact from the above two sites: "97% of all Romanian companies are SMEs."  Certainly it's quick to see even in Bucharest that there bitterly few big-name franchises like you'd be swamped with in any other major city. That leaves a LOT more room for entrepreneurship, and a LOT more competition for you. Good luck!

Looking for glamour? Not in this life.

Here's the thing ... I'm just about to turn 30 (in December), and it makes you (me?) philosophical.

Looking back on my glorious twenties - not really, probably just as much of a rollercoaster as yours - I realised that that's the whole point. Contrary to what I'd expected as a teenager, life doesn't suddenly make more sense when you're older.

An awesome movie I've just finished watching sums that up perfectly: Man Up. Finally a British romantic comedy that almost hits all the right Notting Hill notes, but with more zany and less soppy. Also a chance to see Simon Pegg in something semi-normal ... heck, even Game of Thrones' Sam Tarly puts in a surprise cameo.

If you're still in your twenties and hoping it'll all make sense soon, chances are it won't, but that's ok. I have it on good authority one's thirties aren't any clearer, so I'm just going to press on.

What makes Man Up so awesome is its really refreshingly accurate portrayal of the dark comedy that is 'romance', and I reckon it teaches a really valuable lesson I wish I could have grasped early on in my twenties: we're all equally vulnerable, and the stories we tell about ourselves as we go are fragile and beautiful.

Reminds me of this famous poem by Emily Dickinson:

'Hope' is the thing with feathers—
That perches in the soul—
And sings the tune without the words—
And never stops—at all—