Smiles

This will be a short blog.  

As you know, for me and my family, 2014 has not been a good year.

So, it was very heartening that two very positive things have happened in the past few days.

First, after many significant and extremely diligent visits and examinations and questions and taste tests, GBT was able to announce this past week that we have signed our first overseas deal.

The following release was placed on the company web site this past Monday. (I think or maybe it was Sunday night.)

GBT Inks First International Project: Japan

GBT-International is honored to announce the signing of a joint-venture agreement to build a shrimp aquaculture facility using the GBT technology in Japan.  This will be the first GBT facility located outside of the United States. 

Contracts were signed after nearly a year of intense discussions with and in-person visits to GBT’s operations in Texas (that included multiple “tastings” of GBT shrimp) by an impressive range of the highest level of representatives of Japan’s cultural, financial and agricultural sectors.   Each approached the potential of bringing GBT to Japan with the same focus: safeguarding that nation’s strict standards of quality, safety, and excellence of seafood for the Japanese people. 

On every level, GBT shrimp received outstanding acclaim and approval.

The initial production “footprint” for Japanese operations is designed to increase according to an incremental and practical timetable.  The construction phase of the initial Japanese facility is targeted to break ground in the first quarter of 2015. 

The project will operate under the corporate auspices of GBT-International’s Japanese partners as GBT-Japan.  GBT-International will oversee construction, training, and technical management of the system.  GBT-Japan will provide on-site staffing and be responsible for day-to-day operations.  The chain of GBT bio-security will be maintained by the exclusive use of GBT-provided brood stock and PLs (Post Larvae) for stocking the bio-secure ponds.  Sustainable Sea Products International (SSPI) working with GBT-Japan will handle marketing and distribution.

This should mark a turning point and hopefully put an end to the past three years of countless questions such as, "do you really think your system will work?" or "are these projections and numbers real?"

The second very positive thing was that I came back to Maryland for a few days to attend to some things, both business and personal that I had simply let go unattended for far too long.

This is only the second time I have been back to our home in Maryland since the funeral and the last trip home (for Thanksgiving) my melancholy almost overwhelmed me.

Today, I went up take some carrots up to Charm and Annie, our two horses. I have not been able to even look at them the past year without tearing up.

Today, feeding Charm her carrots, remembering back over the almost 29 years I have had her, I smiled remembering how she looked as a six month old filly when I purchased her in Michigan. 

I smiled remembering how much Lori loved Charm and vice versa and the hours those two spent together back when we lived in Beallsville and brought Charm to Maryland from Michigan and virtually every week since that day Charm arrived. That is now over 18 years ago.

Arabian horses, if taken good care of, can live a long time. That said, Charm is approaching 29 (next March) and she is showing her age, but then again so am I.

But the point I am making is I smiled.

And that these two totally unrelated events were the first time in the past year that I have felt a true, good, and happy emotion inside of me, that let me actually smile.

                                      Charm and I today, December 10, 2014.