Recently my IB team has been experiencing the process of applying visa. We applied to China and Australia. And we found that it is MUCH easier to get a Chinese visa than an Australian one. How does this tell you about doing business in the world?
For those of you who are from the Anglo-Saxon/EU countries, it would have been another way around. I am sure you will get the Australian visa within 2 hours/anytime/anywhere if you’ve got a computer/iphone/ipad. However, the Chinese visa will be a little bit more time consuming because you have to wait at least a day. However, people from non-of-the-above countries will find it extremely difficult to enter Australia but we can still get a chinese visa within a day as well. (I love that Chinese government is very fair, lolz) My team composed of Thai, Egyptian (Political Activist), and Russian (Bombshell). We applied together last Tuesday. Thai got the visa within 2 days while the rest have problems with their application. They needs to sent a lot more support documents that you couldn’t imagine to the embassy. The good things about the school is they will never let us walk alone. A lot of people have been helping us including our school professors, members in MBA offices, clients (Thank you!), and all contacts that they have known us for just a day. (I don’t know a lot of Aussie but people whom I have contacted are pretty friendly).
Also after contacting all the people I need to interview in Australia, I started to realized that it is very very difficult from the UK company to run a business in Australia without having any presence there. The time in Sydney is GMT+11. When you send the email to them from the UK during our day time. You do nothing but wait because it is night time over there. They will reply back when they go to work the next day and it means you will see their message in the morning after you waking up. Hence, you need to expect at least 24 hours for them to reply. What if you need something really really urgent? (Telephone does not work as well because you will wake them up in the middle of the night) Then what would you do? You can wait to call them in the morning but calling 9AM in Australian time meaning that you have to stay up working until 9PM. I think it is ok for just once in awhile but will it be ok for a regular meeting?
I know that this is just the small stuff that I shouldn’t sweat. But don’t forget that one of many reasons that the acquisition of Sendit (by Microsoft) fail is the geographical/Time Zone difference (USA west coast and Sweden)
So after a long long while of waiting, all members in my team have received their visa and we are finally going to fly to Australia (on Monday)
Have fun traveling, all MBA Class of 2012!
P.S. Thank you Phil G., Nathan P.Michelle W., Lynne Mc., Janak, and Rajnish. Really appreciate your help and this trip can’t happen without you.
