Rob Emrich » Travel

Bali – Uluwatu

admin — Thu, 17 Nov 2011 09:07:14 +0000

Uluwatu & Firedance ...

Lombok – Gili Air

admin — Mon, 17 Oct 2011 07:45:12 +0000

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Bali – Ubud

admin — Mon, 17 Oct 2011 04:59:21 +0000

Ubud was impossibly lush and beautiful. We had a wonderful time driving ourselves around the countryside and living in a tropical rainforest. Almost anything a family needed was in the forest behind their house. I think our favorite part was the cooking class. Check out the photos below.

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Bali – Kuta

admin — Mon, 19 Sep 2011 01:58:06 +0000

Kuta is a terrible tourist trap, but a beautiful setting. The streets are filled with touts and other hawkers and actually difficult to even walk down. Bali is far more crowded with people than I imagined. We stayed in the urban center in Denpasar this night and left for a smaller beach town the next day.

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LA to Bali

admin — Mon, 19 Sep 2011 01:52:29 +0000

This was an absolutely exhausting plane ride. We did get to do the upper deck of the new Airbus A380 on Singapore Airlines, which was the quietest plane ride I have ever had and the best airline service I have ever had, but it was still a 30+ hour trip which took alot out of us.

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Bali Bound

admin — Tue, 13 Sep 2011 03:05:29 +0000

So on the heels of selling two of my companies (BULX & FastFireplaces) I just finished my cross country move to California. Before we get settled down, Kara and I are going on a 5 week trip to Bali to celebrate, reflect and get ready for the next chapter of our lives. I will still be in touch by email so look forward to keeping in touch. I hope to resume my travel related blog posts as before when I traveled through Thailand and lived in India so keep your eye out.

Big Sur in March

admin — Fri, 18 Mar 2011 03:27:19 +0000

Some pics from a trip to Santa Cruz and Big Sur.

Alumni Fireside Chat: Rob Emrich – Topic: Social Entrepreneurship

admin — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 14:53:06 +0000

Alumni Fireside Chat: Rob Emrich
Sponsor: University Honors & Scholars Center

Nov 5 2009 6:00PM – Nov 5 2009 7:15PM

RSVP Required!
Location: Kuhn Honors & Scholars House Rm 201

Contact: Cheria V. Dial
Contact Email: dial.3@osu.edu
Contact Phone: (614)292-3135

Description:
Learn about social entrepreneurship and how you might consider starting your own nonprofit organization with Honors Program alum Rob Emrich.

Boulder, CO

admin — Thu, 07 Aug 2008 18:34:19 +0000

So for those of you who don’t know, I’m back in the US after a month-long interlude in good old Ohio. I’m spending my summer in Boulder. I traveled here after reading Richard Florida’s new book:
Who’s Your City?: How the Creative Economy Is Making Where to Live the Most Important Decision of Your Life

It was a great (and fast) read, and I strongly recommend it for anyone considering (or being forced into) moving soon. Boulder and Denver both made the list: Boulder for the 20-29 year-old age group and Denver for 30-44 year-olds. Being on the cusp, I opted for the greater metro area and I am living in North Boulder now. In some ways, it’s almost too perfect for my lifestyle. There are so many running trails out here in the mountains and on the prairie. I could run out here every day for a year and cover new ground each time. There is a strong tech community and so many interesting people live here. I stayed with Sara Stonehill, a friend from elementary school, and her fiancé for a week, while I was looking for a place. They were both very generous and hospitable.

One thing I absolutely love is exploring this beautiful state. I just did a drive-thru of Rocky Mountain National Park on my way to Hot Sulphur Springs for a nice two-hour soak. I ran the nascent headwaters of the Colorado River, where the water is just a small stream. On the way back, I ran into a herd of huge elk and I was so impressed by the giant creatures. I was also a little shocked to be standing only ten feet away. As were they, I’m sure, because I sneaked up on them so quickly with my super fast trail-running skills. I run with my iPhone, so I managed to take a few pics, albeit obscured by some moisture over the lens.

I was impressed, that is, until I went running again today in the city proper and saw a giant elk on someone’s front lawn. WHAT?! I was ready for something like that in the backcountry of a National Park, but not on a Boulder front lawn. I’m still unsure as to whether that was a typical or unique occurrence.

It’s great being back in the US with all of my usual tools for ‘getting things done,’ and I have actually really enjoyed getting caught up on a long list of things I’ve been meaning to do. So I hope all of you are ready for the barrage of emails, phone calls, and follow-through of pre-India Rob. If not, too bad.

My Butler: James Xavier

admin — Thu, 05 Jun 2008 18:53:01 +0000

As many of you know, I had a butler while living in Delhi. His name is James Xavier. Having a butler is one of the more outrageous things I’ve experienced. As an American, one of my main points of reference for butlers is from the Seinfeld episode when George and Jerry pitch their sitcom idea to network execs. In George and Jerry’s show, a judge sentences a man who has hit Jerry’s car to be his butler. It’s unusual to think of butlers in America. To be fair, many Americans have hired “help” in the US, but very few people have a “butler.”

I hired James on a full-time basis, and it was a great decision in terms of improving my time in India. James cooked amazing, spicy Indian food, cleaned, did laundry, worked as my personal Hindi translator, ran errands and most importantly, ALWAYS had my back.

Arguing and haggling is a way of life in India. Some arguments, as was the case with my landlord, extend beyond a single person and manage to include entire families. I can be pretty persuasive, but I’m no match when it comes to negotiating with seven people born into three different generations. No match, that is, until I enlisted James’ help. Every time I got into a rickshaw with James, I started to negotiate. One of the worst parts of traveling around Delhi is dealing with rickshaw drivers. You are almost always forced to argue with the driver, insisting that he use the meter, something that he (and it is always a man) is already legally required to do. James played good cop to my bad cop.

I would typically stand over the rickshaw driver and give him the Johnson Treatment, while James reasoned with him in Hindi. I’d come to each negotiation guns blazin’, yelling something to the effect of, ‘You are shaming your entire family by trying to cheat me.’ Then James would pipe in with, ‘You are cheat! This man is cheat!’ He would yell a little more in Hindi, and then we’d get a fair price.

At other times, when I needed a pick-me-up, James was always there to agree with me, regardless of what he thought. A great example was how I tolerated (or rather, didn’t at all) the heat. Every morning, I would wake up, take a shower and have my coffee outside on my porch. Generally, I would start to walk outside before being hit by a massive wave of choking heat. I’d yell out, ‘OH MY GOD, IT IS SO F***ING HOT HERE.’ James would then come out with my coffee, agreeing faithfully, ‘SO HOT, SO F***ING HOT Mr. Rob.’ If I ever confided to him that someone was being very friendly or perhaps being a jerk, James was always there to agree with me.

I love spicy food and to my surprise, the food in India (or Thailand) was not all that spicy. I sent James to a special Western market to get Frank’s Hot Sauce, my personal condiment of choice. He would always compliment me by saying how brave I was and how I was a very special person for eating such ‘chilly chilly food.’ James had cooked for a number of Europeans before working with me and assumed that Westerners didn’t eat spicy food. He was afraid to add spices, because he thought I would get upset with him.

I didn’t exactly need a person to help me on a full-time basis, but I wanted to make sure that James was around to translate as situations presented themselves. This left James with a lot of free time. At the beginning, he would occupy his time by pretending to do work or by simply relearning things. After insisting a hundred times to him that he was welcome to do whatever he wanted if he didn’t have work to do, he finally started to listen. At first James would make himself Chai and hang out on my living room couch, reading his Bible. If I didn’t mention it, James was a devout God-fearing Christian, not a Hindu. Later, after he realized that he had what he described as a ‘job like dream,’ he began to occupy himself by preening and grooming in front of the mirror. He did this for hours at a time. I learned that if I needed James, I should first look to the mirror in my bedroom, then to the mirror in the hall bathroom. James Xavier, the butler, loved looking at himself.

Once I decided to leave Delhi, I honored my promise to James by creating a website for him to market his services. You can check out his website here: Chef James Xavier. He received scores of calls and in the end, his whole family managed to get new jobs from the site. Incidentally, he also made me take multiple pictures until he got the perfect shot that truly ‘captured’ him.

Before I left, I asked James to record his thoughts about working with me. I promised I would not listen to them until he left. I’m posting his audio here: Link to Audio in New Window

My favorite things about the audio recording:

1. James acted as though my MP3 recorder was a phone. Stating at the beginning “I am James calling.”

This, by the way, was how our phone conversations went:
James: “Hello.”
Rob: “What’s up James? It’s Rob.”
James: “I am James.”
Long pause while I try to figure out what this means.
Rob: “Hey James, I need you to pick up coffee from the market.”
James: “I am James.”
Rob: “OK, are we clear?”
James: “Hello, sir.”
Rob: “OK, so you are going to pick up coffee?”
James: “OK, sir.”

2. The non sequitur nature of James’ thoughts.

3. James’ declaration that I am “1 in 100 man,” followed by the reconsideration that I am maybe “1 in 10 or 20 man.”

4. James’ saying that he is so sad that I am leaving. It makes me a little sad right now, thinking back on it.