2 of the more interesting and unique people I have met so far

I've met plenty of people in this country so far. Random people at restaurants or bars, classmates obviously, so on and so forth. I would say 2 of the more interesting people I have met so far are John Coulter and some guy named Eric.

John Coulter is an Australian economist that is doing work with Qinghua (pronounced ching-huwah) University. His research is based on how the individual economic Chinese culture is steadily swirling towards entropy. He is expecting a deterioration of the Chinese society for a couple of reasons. 1) He says that the mass majority of Chinese people only care about material things. They would rather have a new pair of Nikes a couple of times per year than take advantage of a simple investment where they could easily leverage compounding interest and build wealth. They are "consumers" in the truest sense, and haven't been saving a thing and I guess don't plan on saving a thing. 2) He was rattling off data about the world not having enough natural resources to be able to sustain the global population in the not too distant future and he expects China to be hit especially hard. Besides having such a high level of intellect on those types of topics he was an absolute character. There's just something about an Aussie, a Scot, or an Irishman that will make you smile or chuckle. He had that rascally twinkle in his eye that made you want to know more about him, but perhaps also made you hesitant of asking. Maybe you were better off not knowing! Nicest guy in the world though. If anyone wants to check him or his research out he's a friend of mine on Facebook.

The other guy, Eric, was one of the MBA students that we met from the University of Tampa over this past weekend. He along with his business partner apparently created the market for seedless watermelons in the United States. He produces the seeds up somewhere near Mongolia close to the desert, focuses on the scientific quality of the germination and other stuff I guess... Then ships the seeds to the USA where he sells them to farmers. I forget what percentage of the seedless watermelon market he said he had... I think he said about 10%, and his business consists of only 3 people. I just thought that was pretty cool. Apparently some of the larger agriculture companies started to enter the space over the past few years and he was thinking about selling his operation to them, but things didn't work out. Either way, he was a solid guy to toss back a couple of drinks with and get to know a tad better too.