Back in Phuket - part one

As promised, here are some pictures of our recent holiday to Phuket. Gordon was left at home as we didn't have confidence in our ability to look after both Gerry and Gordon without a maid. Poor Gordon.

It will be no surprise to my readers to learn that I really love going to Thailand. It seems that I end up going there at least once to twice a year. The people there are friendly, food is cheap and the weather is lovely! What's not to like?


Me and my homeboy checking in at the hotel!


This is us wandering into the local village. Believe it or not, the coffee shop at the local village does some really nice pasta! They also have pesto sauce which isn't very common in HK.


Gerry - getting into the local spirit.

We stayed at the Marriott while in Phuket. One of the good things is that the resort hotel has a very good kids club with lots of activities. One of them was an ice lolly making activity from which you can see the results here.

Probably the only way that Gerry will eat cold food is if he made it himself!


Another picture from inside the kids club. They had a very small indoor playground which Gerry had some fun clambering around in.

Coming to America

Wow - what a fortnight!

Two weeks ago, I was sunning myself in Phuket, Thailand (pictures to follow soon so keep tuned!). This was followed by a trip to Washington DC last week for a 2 day meeting. With the vagaries of international travel being what it is, I only got back to HK yesterday despite leaving Washington DC on Friday!

So, what did I make of my very first trip to the US?

TSA
Getting through customs in America really is as annoying as you have heard about. I'm not going to bother moaning about it too much here as my views on this are well known anyway. However, I think the border patrol guy at customs tried to catch me out in a lie!

After scanning my passport and asking a raft of questions, he asked me if I enjoyed my last trip to the US. The thing is - I've never been to the US before and I'm guessing he should have seen that when he scanned my passport. Naturally, I told him that I had never been to the US before but I can't help but wonder if I would still be in the US, locked away in a dark and dingy cell, if I had said anything else!

Streets
I knew about the street names in America before I went so this wasn't a surprise. Nonetheless, the European in me just can't get used to the way streets are named in the US.

In case you didn't know, streets in US cities are laid out in a classic Sim City grid. The first street is named 1st Street and the second street is named 2nd Street. Meanwhile, the streets running perpendicular to these are named A Street, B Street etc. As you can imagine, this makes it supremely easy to find your way around.

Having said that, while I love the ease of finding your way around, it does feel very artificial and manufactured. I guess its no surprise that The Matrix was made by Americans!
Zing!

Hot Dogs
The number of locations selling hot dogs is also unbelievable. Not sure if this is a symptom of the fact that I was walking around a tourist area but it felt like every couple of blocks, there was another street vendor selling hot dogs with an appropriate line of waiting customers, hungry for their processed meat and bread!

Chatty
Americans (or should that be DCians?) also seem to be incredibly chatty. They seem willing to chat about anything to anyone at the drop of a hat. While checking in to the hotel, it felt like the girl at the reception was trying to do a background check on me! Normally, I wouldn't mind but after a 20+ flight in economy class (the company wasn't willing to stump up the cash for business class tickets), the only thing I wanted to do was get to my room and crash.

And this isn't just the receptionist either. As another example, while on the metro, I noticed one of the passengers accidentally step on the bag of another passenger. After apologising profusely, the two people started to talk about what they had just bought and how it was a good deal!

Just feels so strange. In HK, if someone steps on your bag, they are more likely to give you the evil eye ("how dare you place your bag where I might step on it!!") before cursing at you and walking off!

Great day
They also seem to love saying "Have a great day!". On the metro, in hotels, in restaurants. And they say it with such passion as well - as if they really do want you to have a great day! Considering how friendly the general population appears to be, I wonder where they get custom agents from...
Zing!

Pictures

Not sure why but a lot of the buildings in downtown DC use this architectural style. When I showed the missus the pictures, she said it felt as if I had gone to Italy instead of DC. Didn't feel like I was in Italy at the time but there you go.


The Washington Memorial (or is it Washington Monument?) - one of the most instantly recognisable landmarks in DC. I've seen pictures of it before, but the pictures don't prepare you for the sheer size of the monument. That thing is frakking huge!

Also, as a Castle fan, I have to point out that in miniature souvenir form, this is also a deadly weapon!


A picture of the Lincoln Memorial taken from the National World War II memorial. Being the sad tourist that I am, I naturally went to the Lincoln Memorial and sat on the famous steps to take the below picture:


What can I say - its an iconic image!


Capitol Hill. Considering this is taken at night without a tripod, I'm fairly happy with the results. Also, the light at the top apparently means that congress is in session. Amazing what you can learn while on a business trip!

Measuring cost and benefit

Quick question. What benefit do you (as in you personally) get from donating to charity?

If you answered "none", then you may be interested in reading articles like this one from Terry Savage who may have a similar mentality to yourself.

In brief, while in an "upscale neighborhood", the author drove past 3 children who had setup a lemonade stand. Upon finding out that the children were giving away the lemonade for free, she then proceeded to lecture the children about how they should charge for the lemonade in order to cover the cost of the lemonade. She then goes from this to extrapolate that the problem with the US is that people expect a "free lunch" which is demonstrated by the kids giving away lemonade.

Yes, really. No, I'm not making this up - you can read the article for yourself if you don't believe me.

My issue with the article (but with a major caveat which I'll go into later) is how badly she savages basic economic theory. In this case, the cost vs benefit comparison. The basic mistake being made is that she did an income vs expense comparison instead of doing a cost vs benefit comparison. Cost vs benefit isn't just about money and also takes into account other factors.

What other factors are there? Good question - lets do a lazy brain dump and see what I can come up with off the top of my head.

Cost
The author says that the children don't have a spirit of giving as they aren't giving away their own things - they are giving away their parents things. The problem is that this only applies if the parents don't know what the kids are doing. As an example, if I give some food to Gerry and he decides to share it with other people, I don't consider this as him giving away my stuff.

Also, assuming the parents gave the kids the ingredients and cups, then the monetary cost to the kids is zero. The cost vs benefit analysis of this to the parents is beyond the scope of this article...
:)

Benefit
Clearly the benefit to the children isn't just the amount of money for which they are selling the lemonade for. The biggest benefit which the children may be getting is the feel good factor from giving away lemonade. Maybe the kids view it as a form of charity. Maybe they view it as them giving back to the community (now, there's a novel thought - wanting to give something back to the community in which you live!). Heck - maybe they just view it as a way of practicing their lemonade making skills!

The reality is that there are lots of reasons for people to do things for free. It has long been established that money is not always a particularly great motivator (anyone with a business degree should be able to tell you that money is not a motivator in itself but a hygiene factor). If nothing else, the growth of wiki's and open source software should tell you that. And, just to tie this into the original question at the beginning of this post, the whole act of giving to charity (either with a cash donation or with volunteer work) is done with no expectation of monetary reward.

Bear in mind that this incident occurred in an "upscale neighborhood". For children living in an upscale neighborhood, lack of money may not be a particularly huge issue for them so you have to consider that they are getting some other benefit out of this.

Caveat
I think by now, I've established why I think the author made a mistake in saying that the kids should charge money for the lemonade. So what is this caveat that I mentioned earlier then?

The thing is - the author is a finance columnist and a published author of best-seller finance books. With that in mind, I find it hard to believe that she would make what seems to be such a basic mistake. I find it more likely that she wanted to make a comment on people expecting free government handouts and used this story as a lead in without really thinking about what she was saying.

Either that or she put the story in just to get people talking about her and her column. Dayamn! I think I just been played!


PS I just love her tagline at the end - And that's the Savage Truth!

Would you know if the person next to you is drowning?

Read this post to find out.

In essence, if you were expecting a Hollywood style mad splashing and screaming then you probably wouldn't recognise someone drowning. The reality is that people who are drowning aren't able to scream or splash (for reasons which are fully explained in the article) and may simply look like they are treading water if you aren't paying attention.

Which is really useful for me to know particularly now that Gerry is learning to swim.

Granted, at the moment, Gerry doesn't spend any time in water in which he can't stand up. However, sooner or later, he is going to graduate to swimming in deeper water and at this point, it will be important to know how to spot the danger signs (did you know that people who drown tend to be swimmers as non-swimmers, like me, will avoid deep water).

Some of the people posting in the comments are former lifeguards and they posted some really great tips as well. I particularly like the Reach, Throw, Row, Go mnemonic. To quote his post:

"That translates to the preference of trying to assist the person with a reach (either just by hand from poolside or with a rescue crook or other long pole) first, a throwable flotation device (preferably on a line) second, then assisting with a boat, and only swimming out to provide manual assistance as a last resort."

Of course, if you aren't a proper lifeguard, then I guess the first thing you should do is scream for help at the top of your voice!

Lost opportunity for Brazil

And there goes Brazil - knocked out of the World Cup at the quarter final stage. Which is a shame as I really thought that they had a good chance of winning it this year.

The strengths of this years Brazil team, as I saw it, were:
1) Good (but not great) defence
2) Great technical ability
3) Great counter-attacking speed and ability

Those three qualities put together are a dangerous combination. If you play counter-attacking football against them, then Brazil would simply sit back and pass the ball around while patiently probing your defence for a weakness. And with the technical quality of the Brazil squad, they were comfortable in keeping the ball and you could almost guarantee that they would eventually score.

On the other hand, if you attacked, their defence was good enough that they weren't easy to score against. Add in their ability to turn defence into attack at the drop of a coin and there was a real risk that you would leave space for Brazil to score.

In short, despite the scorn leveled against Dunga's style by Brazilian media, I thought they had the right way of playing to win. And, in fact, if you look at the way the game against Holland was shaping up, this was exactly what happened initially. Brazil were controlling the game and Holland found it difficult to get hold of the ball.

Unfortunately, it appears that there were two critical weaknesses in the Brazil squad. Firstly, the mentality appears a weakness as the squad seemed to fall apart after Melo's own goal.

The other weakness appears to be squad depth. Late in the game, when Brazil were a goal down, you looked at the bench and realised that Dunga didn't have any options in terms of bringing someone on to change the game. As it was, with Holland continuing to attack, they almost fell victim to Brazil on the counter.

All in all, I think this goes down as a lost opportunity for Brazil to win their sixth World Cup. Still, all credit to Holland for fighting to the end and winning.