OT: Is Only Butch Retiring??

[Guest guest]

Hi Ylva,

 

Been off line all day .. young feller here tweaking my PC .. then I ran

a defrag that took TEN HOURS .. mind boggling that was. Its now 3:10 in

the morning here.

 

> or do AV-AT cease to exist due to that event??? Horrible, horrible

> thought.....

 

When I retire .. Appalachian Valley Natural Products and the Anatolian

Treasures Trademark retires. I am AV-AT and AV-AT is me. ;-)

 

But .. I am not going to retire until at least January 2006 .. and its

possible that it could stretch a couple or three months beyond that as

there are a few things that I can not totally control at present.

 

> But Butch - you have well earned your retirement!!

 

Thankee ma'am .. been working since I was 14 .. started after school and

weekends .. then at age 17 I graduated and joined the U.S. Army for 30

years .. retired from that and did a few other things .. I never could

hold a job long. ;-) Now there are things I wanna do again and things

I've never done that I wanna do for the first time .. and the way my

company is set up I must give attention to it on a daily basis .. its

like having a herd of milk cows that need attention every day.

 

I'll never sell the company or the name .. I'll keep paying the domain

name and web site for a few years to keep others from getting it .. I'm

doing that now for a variation of the name.

 

When I closed my Turkish company in January 2004 I did the same thing.

Companies are marketable here as it costs $5,000 or so in admin fees to

open one .. and most companies have a debt due them from the government

as we have to pay advance taxes in excess of our actual commitment ..

so when you sell a company the government debt to the company goes along

with the company .. makes the company even more valuable. In my case,

the government owed me close to $28,000 in advance Value Added Tax and

it could only be recouped by offsets to future VAT paid. Additionally,

to close a company here takes a year and costs right at $2,500 .. then

an accountant must sit on company records for a period of TEN years ..

lots of Big Brother crap. I had offers to buy the company .. turned

them all down and forfeited the government debt and paid the $2,500 + to

close it and I feel good about it because the name of Business Services

International (BSI) meant something to me and I was NOT going to have it

soiled by others .. which would have been a GUARANTEE if I had sold it

to a Turk .. they do business differently than I do.

 

Folks who know me understand that I am a bull headed and opinionated

kuntry boy .. and I have no regrets about it. ;-)

 

> I only hope that you still are doing that project in Afganistan (changing

> crops from opium to roses), since it sounds so worthful to do :-D

 

For now it appears to be dead in the water. The dude that was running

the show turned out to have more imagination than power to make things

happen. He is a Canadian Afghani (thought he was American at first) who

works for Asian Development Bank and has wrangled a position as Deputy

Foreign Minister in the Afghan government .. he is a liar and a two bit

con artist. We made an agreement in October and he said my proposal was

acceptable and the ADB would be cutting a contract with my fees to begin

on 1 December .. I fed him much information and technical data for two

months .. but he kept coming up with BS reasons why funds were not yet

available .. it never went down so I told him to go suck eggs. Within a

couple of weeks I got a call from a Frenchman who said the Afghani had

stolen his ideas and it was he who was preparing a proposal for the

Asian Development Bank (it had not even been approved) and the Afghani

was trying to do something on the side. The Frenchman then asked to

purchase one of my table top stills (trying to stroke me he was) and to

meet with me the second week of January .. and he had many questions. I

told him no more Pro Bono effort from this end and when he came up with

a shipping address and a credit card number I would ship the still ..

and when I met him here in Turkey the second week in January he must

bring $$$ and I would become his consultant. He never wrote back .. all

of them have wild ideas, big eyes and big dreams and they want free

consulting and are not willing to cough up the cash so I am out of it

till somebody is willing to pay for my time .. and for my knowledge.

There is a possibility that a friend in D.C. can get the proper backing

for the real thing .. its now being looked at. There is lots of money

being wasted in Afghanistan now by a lot of multi-national mega-buck

agribusiness companies .. but its mostly eye wash.

 

If the government of Afghanistan had wanted me to help them .. and they

were willing to pay my expenses .. nothing else .. I would have helped

them under those conditions .. but these greedy bastards are just trying

to make a buck for themselves and I'm not playing their games.

 

> Hugs and Fragrant Blessings,

> Ylva

 

And to you .. and y'all keep smiling. :-)

 

Butch http://www.AV-AT.com