I am writing this article from my hotel room in Buenos Aires, Argentina.  I am here for a very short 24 hours on business all the way from New York City and it is amazing to what one can learn from such a short trip.

You can get lucky while you are squished between 2 strangers on a crowded 767 airplane.

Since this business trip was very last minute and there are very few direct flights between New York and Buenos Aires, I got stuck in one of the worst seats on the plane.  Normally a person in this situation will try and get through the flight by sleeping, reading a book or walking the aisles until the flight attendant tells them to sit down already.  I chose to take the road less traveled and started a conversation with one of the people sitting next to me.  The person on the other side was one of those people that tried to just get through the flight. 

The person that I did end up talking to was actually a really nice guy from Buenos Aires who was visiting New York for the first time.  He told me about his experience but even more, he told me what to expect in Buenos Aires.  It happened to be that he used to work at the hotel that I was staying at and that I am currently planning a major conference at.  He gave me a list of things to watch out for and some other great advice which really helped me on my site visit. 

Besides all of the business advice, he gave me some history of the city and some places that I should visit.  The best thing was that he works in TV production in Argentina and is involved in marketing in the country.  We exchanged business cards and we will be in touch and maybe even do business together.

Learning another language can increase your luckortunity.

During my trip I have a colleague working as a translator for me since I do not speak Spanish.  I do know a few words here and there and can count and put together a few sentences and some other things that I learned from watching Dora the Explorer with my kids.  I noticed so many lost opportunities all day today because most people do not speak any English at all.  There were some places I visited that I am sure I would have gotten more out of if I knew what I was looking at. 

While I am here I am trying my hardest to put together some broken sentences to communicate with the locals.  When I get back to New York, I am going start learning more Spanish and maybe some basics of other languages so that I will not lose out on opportunities like this in the future.

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